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And withal his eye lit on Richard, with a look of certainty of
response; of security that here was one to partake his genuine
ardour, and of refreshment in the midst of his disgust with the
selfish uncle and sluggish cousin. That look, that half smile, made
the youth's heart bound once more. Yes, with him he would go to the
ends of the earth! What was the freedom of Guy's castle, to the
following of such a lord and leader in such a cause?

Richard could have thrown himself at his feet, and poured forth
pledges of fidelity. But in ten minutes he was following home the
unapproachable, silent, cold warrior.

And the lack of any outlet for his aspirations turned them back upon
themselves, with a strange sense of bitterness and almost of
resentment. Leonillo alone, as the creature lay at his feet, and
looked up into his face with eyes of deep wistful meaning, seemed to
him to have any feeling for him; and Leonillo became the recipient of
many an outpouring of something between discontent and melancholy.
Leonillo, the sole remnant of his home! He burnt for that Holy Land
where he was to win the name and fame lacking to him; but there was
to be long delay.

Fain would the Prince have proceeded at once to Palestine; but the
Genoese, from whom, in the abeyance of the English navy, he had been
obliged to hire his transports, absolutely refused to sail for the
East until after the three winter months; and he was therefore
obliged to remain in Sicily. King Charles invited him to spend
Christmas at the court at Syracuse or Naples, in hopes, perhaps, of
persuading him to the Greek expedition; but Edward was far too much
displeased with the Angevin to accept his hospitality; recollecting,
perhaps, that such a sojourn had been little beneficial to his great-
uncle Coeur de Lion's army. He decided upon staying where he was, in
the remotest corner of Sicily, and keeping his three hundred
crusaders as much to themselves and to strict military discipline as
possible, maintaining them at his own cost, and avoiding as far as he
could all transactions with the cruel and violent Provencal
adventurers, with whom Charles had filled the island.

Thus Richard found his hopes of obtaining further intelligence about
his brothers entirely passing away. He did, indeed, venture on one
day saying to the Prince, "My Lord, I hear that my brother Guy hath
become a Neapolitan count!"

"A Tuscan robber would be nearer the mark!" coldly replied Edward.

"And," added Richard, "methought, while the host is in winter
quarters, I would venture on craving your license, my Lord, to visit
him?"

"Thou hast thy choice, Richard," answered the Prince, with grave
displeasure; "loyalty and honour with me, or lawlessness and violence
with thy brother. Both cannot be thine!"

And returning to his study of the Lais of Marie de France, he made it
evident that he would hear no more, and left Richard to a sharp
struggle; in which hot irritation and wounded feeling would have
carried him away at once from the stern superior who required the
sacrifice of all his family, and gave not a word of sympathy in
return. It was the crusading vow alone that detained the youth. He
could not throw away his pledge to the wars of the Cross, and it was
plain that if he went now to seek out Guy, he should never be allowed
to return to the crusading army. But that vow once fulfilled, proud
Edward should see, that not merely sufferance but friendliness was
needed to bind the son of his father's sister to his service. The
brother at Bednall Green was right, this bondage was worse than
beggary. Nor, under the influence of these feelings, had Richard's
service the alacrity and affection for which it had once been
remarkable: the Prince rebuked his short-comings unsparingly, and
thus added to the sense of injury that had caused them; Hamlyn de
Valence sneered, and Dame Idonea took good care to point out both the
youth's neglects and his sullenness, and to whisper significantly
that she did not wonder, considering the stock he came of. A
soothing word or gentle excuse from the kind-hearted Princess were
the only gleams of comfort that rendered the present state of things
endurable.

Just after Christmas arrived a vessel with reinforcements from home.
Among them came a small body of Hospitaliers, with the novice Raynal
at their head, now a full-blown knight, in dazzling scarlet and
white, as Sir Reginald Ferrers. Richard at once recognized him, when
he came to present himself to the Prince, and was very desirous of
learning whether he knew aught of that other brother, so mysteriously
hidden in obscurity. Sir Raynal on his side seemed to share the
desire; he exchanged a friendly glance with the page, and when the
formality of the reception was over sought him out, saying, "I have a
greeting for you, Master Fowen."

"From Sir Robert Darcy?" asked Richard. "How fares it with the kind
old knight?"

"Excellent well! Nay, nothing fares amiss with Father Robert!" said
the young knight, smiling. "Everything is the very best that could
have befallen him--to hear him speak. He is the very sunshine of the
Spital, and had he been ordered on this Crusade, I think all the
hamlets round would have risen to withhold him."

"Ah!" said Richard, hoping he was acting indifference; "said he aught
of the little maiden with the blind father?"

"Pretty Bessee and Blind Hal of Bednall Green? Verily, that was the
purport of my message. The poor knave hath been sorely sick and more
cracked than ever this autumn; insomuch that Father Robert spent
whole nights with him; and though he be better now, and as much in
his senses as e'er he will be, such another access is like to make an
end of him. Now, Father Robert saith that you, Sir Page, know who
the poor man is by birth, and that he prays you to send him word what
had best be done with the child, in case either of his death or of
his getting so frenzied as to be unable to take care of her."

"Send him word!" repeated Richard in perplexity.

"We shall certainly have some one returning soon to the Spital,"
replied Sir Raynal. "Indeed, methinks some of the princes will be
like to return, for the old King of the Romans is failing fast, and
King Henry implored that the Prince of Almayne would come to hearten
him."

"Then must I write to Sir Robert?" said Richard; "mine is scarce a
message for word of mouth."

"So he said it was like to be," returned the knight, "and he took
thought to send you a slip of parchment, knowing, he said, that such
things are not wont to be found in a crusader's budget. Moreover, if
ink be wanting, he bade me tell you that there's a fish in these
seas, with many arms, and very like the foul fiend, that carries a
bag of ink as good as any scrivener s.

"I have seen the monster," said Richard, who had often been down to
the beach to see the unlading of the fishermen's boats, and to share
little John of Dunster's unfailing marvel, that the Mediterranean
should produce such outlandish creatures, so alien to his Bristol
Channel experiences.

And the very next time the boats came in, Richard made his way to the
shore, on the beautiful, rocky, broken coast; and presently
encountered a sepia, which fully justified Sir Robert's comparison,
lying at the bottom of a boat. The fisherman intended it for his own
dinner, when all his choicer fish should have gone to supply the
Friday's meal of the English chivalry; and he was a good deal amazed
when the young gentleman, making his Provencal as like Sicilian as he
could, began to traffic with him for it, and at last made him
understand that it was only its ink-bag that he wanted.

The said ink, secured in a shell, was brought home by Richard,
together with a couple of the largest sea-bird's quills that he could
find--and which he shaped with his dagger, as best he might, in
remembrance of Father Adam de Marisco's writing lessons. He
meditated what should be the language of his letter, which was not
likely to be secure from the eyes of the few who could read it; and
finally decided that English was the tongue known to the fewest
readers, who, if they knew letters at all, were sure to be acquainted
with French and Latin.

On a strip of parchment, then, about nine inches long and three wide,
he proceeded to indite, in upright cramped letters, with many
contractions, nearly in such terms as these -

REVEREND AND KNIGHTLY FATHER,

The good ghostly father and knight, Sir Raynald Ferrers, hath borne
to me your tidings of my brother's sickness, and of all your goodness
to him--whereof I pray that our blessed Lady and good St. John may
reward you, for I can only pray for you. Touching his poor little
daughter, in case of his death or frenzy, which the Saints of their
mercy forefend, I would entreat you of your goodness to place her in
some nunnery, but without making known her name and quality until my
return; so Heaven bring me home safe. But an if I should be slain in
this Eastern land, then were it most for the little one's good to
present her to the gracious lady Princess, by whom she would be most
lovingly and naturally cared for; and would be more safe than with
such as might shun to own her rights of blood and heirship. Commend
me to my brother, if so be that he cares to hear of me; and tell him
that Guy hath wedded the lady of a castle in the land of Italy. And
so praying you, ghostly father, for your blessing, I greet you well,
and rest your grateful bedesman and servant,

RICHARD OF LEICESTER.

Given at the Prince's camp at Drepanum, in the realm of Sicilia, on
the octave of the Epiphany, in the year of grace MCCLXX.; and so our
Lord have you heartily in His keeping.

Letter-writing was a mighty task; and Richard's extemporary
implements were not of the best. He laboured hard over his
composition, kneeling against a chest in the tent. When at length he
raised his head, he encountered a face full of the most utter
amazement. Little John of Dunster had come into the tent, and stood
gazing at him with open eyes and gaping mouth, as if he were
perpetrating an incantation. Richard could not help laughing.

"Why, Jack, dost think I am framing a spell for thee?"

"Writing!" gasped John, relieving his distended mouth by at length
closing it.

"Wherefore not? Did not I see the chaplain teaching thee to write at
Guildford?"

"Ay--but that was when I was a babe! Writing! Why, my father never
writes!"

"But the Prince does. Thou hast seen him write. Come now," added
Richard: "if thou wilt, I will help thee to write a letter to send
thy greetings home to Dunster. Thy father and mother will be right
glad to hear thou hast 'scaped that African fever."

"They!--They'd think me no better than a French monk!" said John.
"And none of them could read it either! I'll never write! My
grandsire only set his cross to the great charter!"

And John retreated--in fear perhaps that Richard would sully his
manhood with a writing lesson!

The letter was rolled up in a scroll, bound with a silken thread, and
committed to the charge of Sir Raynald Ferrers, who was going shortly
to be commandery of his Order at Castel San Giovanni, whence he had
no doubt of being able to send the letter safely to Sir Robert Darcy,
at the Grand Priory.

It would perhaps have been more expeditious to have intrusted the
letter to one of the suite of Prince Henry of Almayne, who had been
recalled by the tidings of the state of his father's health; but
Richard dreaded betraying his brother's secret too much to venture on
confiding the missive to any of this party--none of whom were indeed
likely to wish to oblige him. Hamlyn de Valence was going with Henry
as his esquire; and his absence seemed to Richard like the beginning
of better days.

CHAPTER IX--ASH WEDNESDAY

"Mostrocci un ombra da l' un canto sola
Dicendo 'Colui feese in grembo a Dio
Lo cuor che'n su Tamigi ancor si cola.'"
DANTE. Inferno.

Shrovetide had come, and the Prince had, before leaving Trapani, been
taking some share in the entertainments of the Carnival. Personally,
his grave reserve made gaieties distasteful to him; and the
disastrous commencement of the Crusade weighed on his spirits. But
when state and show were necessary, he provided for them with royal
bounty and magnificence, and caused them to be regulated with the
admirable taste of that age of exceeding beauty in which he lived.

Thus, in this festal season, banquets were provided, and military
shows took place, for the benefit of the Sicilian nobility and of the
citizens of Trapani, on such a scale, that the English rose high in
general esteem; and many were the secret wishes that Edmund of
Lancaster rather than Charles of Anjou had been able to make good the
grant from the Pope.

Splendid were the displays, and no slight toil did they involve on
the part of the immediate train of the Prince, few in number as they
were, and destitute of the appliances of the resident court. Richard
hurrying hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little
of the diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken
treble the care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the
prying mistrustful eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little
John of Dunster was, however, no small part of his trouble; the
urchin was so certain to get into some mischief if left to himself--
now treading on a lady's train, now upsetting a flagon of wine, now
nearly impaling himself upon the point of a whole spitful of ortolans
that were being handed round to the company, now becoming uncivilly
deaf upon his French ear. Altogether, it was a relief to Richard's
mind when he stumbled upon the little fellow fast asleep, even though
it was in the middle of the Princess's violet velvet and ermine
mantle, which she had laid down in order to tread a stately measure
with Sire Guillaume de Porceles.

After all Richard's exertions that evening, it was no wonder that the
morning found him fast asleep at the unexampled hour of eight! His
wakening was a strange one. His little fellow-page was standing
beside him with a strange frightened yet important air.

"What is the matter, John? It is late? Is the Prince gone to Mass?
Has he missed me?" cried Richard, starting up in dismay, for
unpunctuality was a great offence with Edward.

"He is gone to Mass," said John, "but, before he comes back," he came
near and lowered his voice, "Hob Longbow sent me to say you had
better flee."

"Flee! Boy, why should I flee? Are YOUR senses fleeing?"

"O Richard," cried John, his face clearing up, "then it is not true!
You are not one of the traitor Montforts!"

"If I were a hundred Montforts, what has that to do with it?"

"Then all is well," exclaimed the boy. "I said you were no such
thing! I'll tell Hob he lied in his throat."

"If he said I was a traitor, verily he did; but as to being a
Montfort--But, how now, John, what means all this?"

"Then it is so! O Richard, Richard, you cannot be one of them! You
cannot have written that letter to warn them to murder Prince Henry."

"To murder Prince Henry!" Richard stood transfixed. "Not the
Prince's little son!"

"Oh no, Prince Henry of Almayne! At Viterbo! Hamlyn de Valence saw
it. He is come back. It was in the Cathedral. O Richard--at the
elevation of the Host! Guy and Simon de Montfort fell on him,
stabbed him to the heart, and rushed out. Then they came back again,
and dragged him by the hair of his head into the mire, and shouted
that so their father had been dragged through the streets of Evesham.
And then they went off to the Maremma! And," continued the boy
breathlessly, "Hob Long-bow is on guard, and he bade me tell you,
that for love of your father he will let you pass; and then you can
hide; if only you can go ere the Prince comes forth."

"Hide! Wherefore should I hide? This is most horrible, but it is no
deed of mine!" said Richard. "Who dares to think it is?"

"Then you are none of them! You had no part in it! I shall tell Hob
he is a villain--"

"Stay," said Richard, laying a detaining hand on the boy. "Why does
Hob think me in danger? Is anything stirring against me?"

"They all--all of poor Prince Henry's meine, that are come back with
Hamlyn--say that you are a Montfort too, and--oh! do not look so
fierce!--that you sent a letter to warn your brethren where to meet,
and fall on the Prince. And the murderers being fled, they are keen
to have your life; and, Richard, you know I saw you write the
letter."

"That you saw me write a letter, is as certain as that my name is
Montfort," said Richard, "but I am not therefore leagued with
traitors or murderers! In the church, saidst thou? Oh, well that
the Prince forbade me to visit Guy!"

"Then you will not flee?"

"No, forsooth. I will stay and prove my innocence."

"But you are a Montfort! And I saw you write the letter."

"Did you speak of my having written the letter?" asked Richard,
pausing.

The boy hung his head, and muttered something about Dame Idonea.

By this time, even if Richard had thought of flight, it would have
been impossible. Two archers made their presence apparent at the
entrance of the tent, and in brief gruff tones informed Richard that
the Prince required his presence. The space between his tent and the
royal pavilion was short, but in those few steps Richard had time to
glance over the dangers of his position, and take up his resolution
though with a certain stunned sense that nothing could be before the
member of a proscribed family, but failure, suspicion, and ruin.

The two brothers, Edward and Edmund, with the Earl of Gloucester, and
their other chief councillors, were assembled; and there were looks
of deep concern on the faces of all, making Edward's more than ever
like a rigid marble statue; while Edmund had evidently been weeping
bitterly, though his features were full of fierce indignation.
Hamlyn de Valence, and a few other members of the murdered Prince's
suite, stood near in deep mourning suits.

"Richard de Montfort," said Prince Edward, looking at him with a
sorrowful reproachful sternness that went to his heart, "we have sent
for you to answer for yourself, on a grave charge. You have heard of
that which has befallen?"

"I have heard, my Lord, of a foul crime which my soul abhors. I
trust none present here think me capable of sharing in it! Whoever
dares to accuse me, shall be answered by my sword!" and he glanced
fiercely at Hamlyn.

"Hold!" said Edward severely, "no one is so senseless as to accuse
you of taking actual part in a crime that took place beyond the sea;
but there is only too much reason to believe that you have been
tampered with by your brothers."

Then, as his brother Edmund made some suggestion to him, he added,
"Is John de Mohun of Dunster here?"

"Yea, my Lord," said the little boy, coming forward, with a flush on
his face, and a bold though wistful look, "but verily Richard is no
traitor, be he who he may!"

"That is not what we wished to ask of you," said the Prince, too sad
and earnest to be amused even for a moment. "Tell us whom you said,
even now, you had seen in the tent you shared with him in Africa."

"I said I had seen his wraith," said John.

No smile lighted upon the Prince's features; they were as serious as
those of the boy, as he commented, "His likeness--his exact likeness-
-you mean."

"Ay," said the boy; "but Richard proved to me after, that it had been
less tall, and was bearded likewise. So I hoped it did not bode him
ill."

"Worse, I fear, than if it had in sooth been his double," said
Gloucester to Prince Edmund. The Prince added the question whether
this visitor had spoken; and John related the inquiry for Richard by
the name of Montfort, and his own reply, which elicited a murmur of
amused applause among the bystanders.

The Prince, however, continued in the same grave manner to draw from
the little witness his account of Richard's injunction to secresy;
and then asked about the letter-writing, of which John gave his plain
account. The Prince then said, "Speak now, Hamlyn."

"This, then, I have to add, my Lord, that I, as all the world,
remarked that Richard de Montfort consorted much with Sir Reginald de
Ferrieres, who, as we all remember, is the son of a family deeply
concerned in the Mad Parliament. By Sir Reginald, on his arrival at
Castel San Giovanni, a messenger is despatched, bearing letters to
the Hospital at Florence, and it is immediately after his arrival
there, that the two Montforts speed from the Maremma to the unhappy
and bloody Mass at Viterbo."

You hear, Richard!" said the Prince. "I bade you choose between me
and your brothers. Had you believed me that you could not serve
both, it had been better for you. I credit not that you incited them
to the assassination; but your tidings led them to perpetrate it. I
cannot retain the spy of the Montforts in my camp."

"My Lord," said Richard, at last finding space for speech, "I deny
all collusion with my brothers. I have neither seen, spoken with,
nor sent to them by letter nor word."

"Then to whom was this letter?" demanded the Prince.

"To Sir Robert Darcy, the Grand Prior of England," answered Richard.

A murmur of incredulous amazement was heard.

"The purport?" continued Edward.

"That, my Lord, it consorts not with my duty to tell."

"Look here, Richard," interposed Gilbert of Gloucester, "this is an
unlikely tale. You can have no cause for secresy, save in connection
with these brothers; and if you will point to some way of clearing
yourself of being art and part in this foul act of murder, you may be
sent scot free from the camp; but if you wilfully maintain this
denial, what can we do but treat you as a traitor? No obstinacy!
What can a lad like you have to say to good old Sir Robert Darcy,
that all the world might not know?"

"My Lord of Gloucester," said Richard, "I am bound in honour not to
reveal the matters between me and Sir Robert; I can only declare on
the faith of a Christian gentleman that I have neither had, nor
attempted to have, any dealings with either of my brothers, Guy or
Simon; and if any man says I have, I will prove his falsehood on his
body." And Richard flung down his glove before the Prince.

At the same moment Hamlyn de Valence sprang forward.

"Then, Richard de Montfort, I take up the gage. I give thee the lie
in thy throat, and will prove on thy body that thou art a man-sworn
traitor, in league with thy false brethren."

"I commit me to the judgment of God," said Richard, looking upwards.

"My Lord," said Hamlyn, "have we your permission to fight out the
matter?"

"You have," said Edward, "since to that holy judgment Richard hath
appealed."

But the Prince looked far from contented with the appeal. He allowed
the preliminaries of place and time to be fixed without his
interposition; and when the council broke up, he fixed his clear deep
eyes upon Richard in a manner which seemed to the boy to upbraid him
with the want of confidence, for which, however, he would not
condescend to ask. Richard felt that, let the issue of the combat be
what it would, he had lost that full trust on the part of the Prince,
which had hitherto been his one drop of comfort; and if he were
dismissed from the camp, he should be more than ever desolate, for
his soul could scarce yet bring itself to grasp the horror of the
crime of his brothers.

The combat could not take place for two days--waiting, on one, in
order that Hamlyn might have time to rest, and recover his full
strength after his voyage, and the next, because it was Ash
Wednesday. In the meantime Richard was left solitary; under no
restraint, but universally avoided. The judicial combat did not make
him uneasy; the two youths had often measured their strength
together, and though Hamlyn was the elder, Richard was the taller,
and had inherited something of the Plantagenet frame, so remarkable
in those two

Lords of the biting axe and beamy spear,

"wide conquering Edward" and "Lion Richard"; and each believed in the
righteousness of his own cause sufficiently to have implicit
confidence that the right would be shown on his side.

In fact, Richard soon understood that though Prince Edward, with a
sense of the value of definite evidence far in advance of the time,
and befitting the English Justinian, had only allowed the charge to
be brought against him which could in a manner be substantiated, yet
that the general belief went much further. Proved to be a Montfort,
and to have written a letter, he was therefore convicted, by
universal consent, of a league with his brothers for the revenge of
their house; to have instigated the assassination at Viterbo, and to
be only biding his time for the like act at Trapani. Even the Prince
was deeply offended by his silence, and imputed it to no good motive;
trust and affection were gone, and Richard felt no tie to retain him
where he was, save his duty as a crusader. Let him fail in the
combat, and the best he could look for would be to be ignominiously
branded and expelled: let him gain, and he much doubted whether,
though the ordeal of battle was always respected, he would regain his
former position. With keen suffering and indignation, he rebelled
against Edward's harshness and distrust. He--who had brought him
there--who ought to have known him better! Moreover, there was the
crushing sense of the guilt of his brothers; guilt most horrible in
its sacrilegious audacity, and doubly shocking to the feelings of a
family where the grim sanctity of the first Simon de Montfort, and
the enlightened devotion of the second, formed such a contrast to the
savage outrage of him who now bore their name. Richard, as with bare
feet and ashes whitening his dark locks he knelt on the cold stones
of the dark Norman church at Trapani, wept hot and bitter tears of
humiliation over the family crimes that had brought them so low;
prayed in an agony for repentance for his brothers; and for himself,
some opening for expiating their sin against at least the generous
royal family. "O! could I but die for my Prince, and know that he
forgave and they repented!"

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