The Talisman by Walter Scott (important books to read TXT) 📗

Richard kept his eye fixed on the Scot's face, beheld and beholding, smiling inwardly at the relief produced by the turn he had given to his general accusation.

“So please you, my lord,” said the Scot, “your majesty must be good to us poor gentlemen of Scotland in this matter. We are far from home, scant of revenues, and cannot support ourselves as your wealthy nobles, who have credit of the Lombards. The Saracens shall feel our blows the harder that we eat a piece of dried venison from time to time with our herbs and barley-cakes.”

“It skills not asking my leave,” said Richard, “since Thomas de Vaux, who doth, like all around me, that which is fittest in his own eyes, hath already given thee permission for hunting and hawking.”

“For hunting only, and please you,” said the Scot. “But if it please your Majesty to indulge me with the privilege of hawking also, and you list to trust me with a falcon on fist, I trust I could supply your royal mess with some choice waterfowl.”

“I dread me, if thou hadst but the falcon,” said the King, “thou wouldst scarce wait for the permission. I wot well it is said abroad that we of the line of Anjou resent offence against our forest-laws as highly as we would do treason against our crown. To brave and worthy men, however, we could pardon either misdemeanour.—But enough of this. I desire to know of you, Sir Knight, wherefore, and by whose authority, you took this recent journey to the wilderness of the Dead Sea and Engaddi?”

“By order,” replied the knight, “of the Council of Princes of the Holy Crusade.”

“And how dared any one to give such an order, when I—not the least, surely, in the league—was unacquainted with it?”

“It was not my part, please your highness,” said the Scot, “to inquire into such particulars. I am a soldier of the Cross—serving, doubtless, for the present, under your highness's banner, and proud of the permission to do so, but still one who hath taken on him the holy symbol for the rights of Christianity and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, and bound, therefore, to obey without question the orders of the princes and chiefs by whom the blessed enterprise is directed. That indisposition should seclude, I trust for but a short time, your highness from their councils, in which you hold so potential a voice, I must lament with all Christendom; but, as a soldier, I must obey those on whom the lawful right of command devolves, or set but an evil example in the Christian camp.”

“Thou sayest well,” said King Richard; “and the blame rests not with thee, but with those with whom, when it shall please Heaven to raise me from this accursed bed of pain and inactivity, I hope to reckon roundly. What was the purport of thy message?”

“Methinks, and please your highness,” replied Sir Kenneth, “that were best asked of those who sent me, and who can render the reasons of mine errand; whereas I can only tell its outward form and purport.”

“Palter not with me, Sir Scot—it were ill for thy safety,” said the irritable monarch.

“My safety, my lord,” replied the knight firmly, “I cast behind me as a regardless thing when I vowed myself to this enterprise, looking rather to my immortal welfare than to that which concerns my earthly body.”

“By the mass,” said King Richard, “thou art a brave fellow! Hark thee, Sir Knight, I love the Scottish people; they are hardy, though dogged and stubborn, and, I think, true men in the main, though the necessity of state has sometimes constrained them to be dissemblers. I deserve some love at their hand, for I have voluntarily done what they could not by arms have extorted from me any more than from my predecessors, I have re-established the fortresses of Roxburgh and Berwick, which lay in pledge to England; I have restored your ancient boundaries; and, finally, I have renounced a claim to homage upon the crown of England, which I thought unjustly forced on you. I have endeavoured to make honourable and independent friends, where former kings of England attempted only to compel unwilling and rebellious vassals.”

“All this you have done, my Lord King,” said Sir Kenneth, bowing—“all this you have done, by your royal treaty with our sovereign at Canterbury. Therefore have you me, and many better Scottish men, making war against the infidels, under your banners, who would else have been ravaging your frontiers in England. If their numbers are now few, it is because their lives have been freely waged and wasted.”

“I grant it true,” said the King; “and for the good offices I have done your land I require you to remember that, as a principal member of the Christian league, I have a right to know the negotiations of my confederates. Do me, therefore, the justice to tell me what I have a title to be acquainted with, and which I am certain to know more truly from you than from others.”

“My lord,” said the Scot, “thus conjured, I will speak the truth; for I well believe that your purposes towards the principal object of our expedition are single-hearted and honest, and it is more than I dare warrant for others of the Holy League. Be pleased, therefore, to know my charge was to propose, through the medium of the hermit of Engaddi—a holy man, respected and protected by Saladin himself—”

“A continuation of the truce, I doubt not,” said Richard, hastily interrupting him.

“No, by Saint Andrew, my liege,” said the Scottish knight; “but the establishment of a lasting peace, and the withdrawing our armies from Palestine.”

“Saint George!” said Richard, in astonishment. “Ill as I have justly thought of them, I could not have dreamed they would have humbled themselves to such dishonour. Speak, Sir Kenneth, with what will did you carry such a message?”

“With right good will, my lord,” said Kenneth; “because, when we had lost our noble leader, under whose guidance alone I hoped for victory, I saw none who could succeed him likely to lead us to conquest, and I accounted it well in such circumstances to avoid defeat.”

“And on what conditions was this hopeful peace to be contracted?” said King Richard, painfully suppressing the passion with which his heart was almost bursting.

“These were not entrusted to me, my lord,” answered the Knight of the Couchant Leopard. “I delivered them sealed to the hermit.”

“And for what hold you this reverend hermit—for fool, madman, traitor, or saint?” said Richard.

“His folly, sire,” replied the shrewd Scottish man, “I hold to be assumed to win favour and reverence from the Paynimrie, who regard madmen as the inspired of Heaven—at least it seemed to me as exhibited only occasionally, and not as mixing, like natural folly, with the general tenor of his mind.”

“Shrewdly replied,” said the monarch, throwing himself back on his couch, from which he had half-raised himself. “Now of his penitence?”

“His penitence,” continued Kenneth, “appears to me sincere, and the fruits of remorse for some dreadful crime, for which he seems, in his own