第26章 EYES OF YOUTH(7)

The damoiseau of Beaumanoir sat on a ridge commanding for fifty miles the snow-sprinkled uplands.The hum of the Tartars came faint from a hollow to the west, but where he sat he was in quiet and alone.

He had forgotten the ache of loss which had preyed on him....His youth had not been squandered.The joy of young manhood which had been always like a tune in his heart had risen to a nobler song.For now, as it seemed to him, he stood beside his King, and had found a throne in the desert.Alone among all Christian men he had carried the Cross to a new world, and had been judged worthy to walk in the footprints of his captain Christ.A great gladness and a great humility possessed him.

He had ridden beyond the ken of his own folk, and no tale of his end would ever be told in that northern hall of his when the hearth-fire flickered on the rafters.That seemed small loss, for they would know that he had ridden the King's path, and that can have but the one ending....Most clear in his memory now were the grey towers by Canche, where all day long the slow river made a singing among the reeds.He saw Alix his wife, the sun on her hair, playing in the close with his little Philip.Even now in the pleasant autumn weather that curly-pate would be scrambling in the orchard for the ripe apples which his mother rolled to him.He had thought himself born for a high destiny.Well, that destiny had been accomplished.

He would not die, but live in the son of his body, and his sacrifice would be eternally a spirit moving in the hearts of his seed.He saw the thing clear and sharp, as if in a magic glass.There was a long road before the house of Beaumanoir, and on the extreme horizon a great brightness.

Now he remembered that he had always known it, known it even when his head had been busy with ardent hopes.He had loved life and had won life everlasting.He had known it when he sought learning from wise books.When he kept watch by his armour in the Abbey church of Corbie and questioned wistfully the darkness, that was the answer he had got.In the morning, when he had knelt in snow-white linen and crimson and steel before the high altar and received back his sword from God, the message had been whispered to his heart.In the June dawn when, barefoot, he was given the pilgrim's staff and entered on his southern journey, he had had a premonition of his goal.But now what had been dim, like a shadow in a mirror, was as clear as the colours in a painted psaltery."Jerusalem, Jerusalem," he sighed, as his King was wont to sigh.For he was crossing the ramparts of the secret city.

He tried to take the ring from his finger that he might bury it, for it irked him that his father's jewel should fall to his enemies.But the wound had swollen his left hand, and he could not move the ring.

He was looking westward, for that way lay the Holy Places, and likewise Alix and Picardy.His minutes were few now, for he heard the bridles of the guards, as they closed in to carry him to his last fight....He had with him a fragment of rye-cake and beside him on the ridge was a little spring.In his helmet he filled a draught, and ate a morsel.For, by the grace of the Church to the knight in extremity, he was now sealed of the priesthood, and partook of the mystic body and blood of his Lord....

Somewhere far off there was a grass fire licking the hills, and the sun was setting in fierce scarlet and gold.The hollow of the sky seemed a vast chapel ablaze with lights, like the lifting of the Host at Candlemas.

.....................

The tale is not finished.For, as it chanced, one Maffeo of Venice, a merchant who had strayed to the court of Cambaluc and found favour there, was sent by Kublai the next year on a mission to Europe, and his way lay through the camp of Houlagou.He was received with honour, and shown the riches of the Tartar armies.Among other things he heard of a Frankish knight who had fallen in battle with Houlagou's champions, and won much honour, they said, having slain three.He was shown the shrivelled arm of this knight, with a gold ring on the third finger.Maffeo was a man of sentiment, and begged for and was given the poor fragment, meaning to accord it burial in consecrated ground when he should arrive in Europe.He travelled to Bussorah, whence he came by sea to Venice.Now at Venice there presently arrived the Count of St.Pol with a company of Frenchmen, bound on a mission to the Emperor.Maffeo, of whom one may still read in the book of Messer Marco Polo, was become a famous man in the city, and strangers resorted to his house to hear his tales and see his treasures.

From him St.Pol learned of the dead knight, and, reading the cognisance on the ring, knew the fate of his friend.On his return journey he bore the relic to Louis at Paris, who venerated it as the limb of a saint; and thereafter took it to Beaumanoir, where the Lady Alix kissed it with proud tears.The arm in a rich casket she buried below the chapel altar, and the ring she wore till her death.