F. Crawford - Via Crucis

"I will lay my life against a new tunic that I can make this multitude spin on itself like a whipped top," he said. "But I admit that you could not, sir."

"Why not?" asked Gilbert, instantly bending down in order to hear better. "What can you do that I cannot?"

"What gentle blood could never do," replied the man, with a shade of bitterness. "Shall I have the new tunic if I save the Lady Beatrix-and the Queen of France?"

"Twenty! Anything you ask for! But be quick-"

Dunstan stooped again, and again picked up something from under his foot.

"I am only a churl," he said as he stood upright again, "but I can risk my life like you for a lady, and if I win, I would rather win a sword than a bit of finery."

"You shall win more than that," Gilbert answered, his tone changing. "But if you know of anything to do, in the name of God do it quickly, for it is time."

"Good-by, sir."

Gilbert heard the two words, and while they were still in his ears, half understood, Dunstan had slipped away among the squires and knights around them, and was lost to sight.

One minute had not passed when a wild yell rent the air, with fierce words, high and clear, which thousands must have heard at the very first, even had they not been repeated again and again.

"The King has betrayed us! The King is a traitor to the Cross!"

At the very instant a stone flew straight from Dunstan's unerring hand, and struck the King's horse fairly between the eyes, upon the rich frontlet, heavy with gold embroidery. The charger reared up violently to his height, and before he had got his head down to plunge, Dunstan's furious scream split the air again, and the second stone struck the King himself full on the breast, and rolled to the saddle and then to the ground.

"The King has betrayed us all! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!"

There never yet was a feverish, terror-struck throng of men, suddenly disheartened by the unanswerable evidence of a great defeat by which they themselves might be lost, that would not take up the cry of "Traitor!" against their leaders. Before he raised his voice, Dunstan had got among men who knew him neither by sight nor by name, and the second stone had not sped home before he was gone again in a new direction, silent now, with compressed lips, his inscrutable dark eyes looking sharply about him. He had done his work, and he knew what might happen to him if he were afterwards recognized. But none heeded him. The uproar went surging towards the King with a rising fury, like the turn of the tide in a winter storm, roaring up to the breaking pitch, and many would have stoned him and torn him to pieces; but there were many also, older and cooler men, who pressed round him, shoulder to shoulder, with swords drawn and flashing in the sunlight, and faces set to defend their liege lord and sovereign. In an instant the flying Germans were forgotten; and the Emperor and his army, and the meaning of the Holy War and of the Cross itself, were gone from men's minds in the fury of riot on the one side, in the stern determination of defence on the other. The vast weight of men rolled forward, pushed by those behind, forcing the King and those who stood by him to higher ground. In dire distress, and almost hopeless of extricating her gentle troop from destruction, the Queen heard the new tumult far away, and felt the close press yielding on one side. The word 'traitor' ran along like a quick echo from mouth to mouth, repeated again and again, sometimes angrily, sometimes in tones of unbelief, but always repeated, until there was scarcely one man in a hundred thousand whose lips had not formed the syllables. Eleanor saw her husband and his companions with their drawn swords moving in the air, on the knoll; she heard the stinging word, and a hard and scornful look lingered in her face a moment. She knew that the accusation was false, that it was too utterly empty to have meaning for honest men; yet she despised her husband merely because a madman could cast such a word at him; and in the security of power and dominions far greater than his, as well as of a popularity to which he could never attain, she looked upon him in her heart as a contemptible kinglet, to marry whom had been her most foolish mistake. And it had become the object of her life to put him away if she could.

For a few moments she looked on across the sea of heads that had already begun to move away. Her mare was quieter now in the larger space, being a docile creature, but many of the other ladies' horses were still plunging and kicking, though so crowded that they could do each other little hurt. She saw how the knights were forcing their way to the King's side, and how the great herd of footmen resisted them, while the word of shame rose louder in their yells; and though she despised the King, the fierce instinct of the great noble against the rabble ran through her like a painful shock, and her face turned pale as she felt her anger in her throat.

There was room now, for the great throng was rushing from her, spreading like a river, and dividing at the hillock where it met the knights' swords, and flowing to right and left along the edge of the lake. The Queen looked behind her, to see what ladies were nearest to her, and she saw her standard bearer, Anne of Auch, fighting her rearing charger; and next to her, quiet and pale, on a vicious Hungarian gelding a great deal too big for her, but which she seemed to manage with extraordinary ease, sat Beatrix de Curboil, a small, slim figure in a delicate mail that looked no stronger than a silver fishing-net, her shape half hidden by her flowing mantle of soft olive— green with its scarlet cross on the shoulder, and wearing a silver dove's wing on her light steel cap.

Her eyes met Eleanor's and lightened in sympathy of thought, so that the other understood in a flash. The Queen's right hand went up, lifting the lance high in air; half wheeling to the left, and turning her head still farther, she called out to those behind her:-

"Ladies of France! The rabble is at the King-Forward!"

An instant later, the fleet Arab mare was galloping straight for the crowd, and Eleanor did not look behind her again, but held her lance before her and a little raised, so that it was just ready to fall into rest. Directly behind her rode the Lady Anne, the shaft of the standard in the socket of her stirrup, her arm run through the thong, so that she had both hands free; she sat erect in the saddle, her horse already at a racing gallop, neck out, eyes up, red nostrils wide, delighting in being free from restraint; and Beatrix was there, too, like a feather on her big brown Hungarian, that thundered along like a storm, his wicked ears laid straight back, and his yellowish young teeth showing under his quivering lip. But of all the three hundred ladies none followed them. The others had not understood the Queen's command, or had not heard, or could not manage their horses, or were afraid. And the three women rode at the mob, that was now four hundred yards away.

Straight they rode, heedless and unaware that they were alone, nor counting how little three women could do against thousands. But the people heard the hammering hoofs of the two big horses, and the Arab's light footfall resounded quickly and steadily, as the fingers of a dancer striking the tambourine. Hundreds glanced back to see who rode so fast, and thousands turned their heads to know why the others looked; and all, seeing the Queen, pressed back to right and left, making way, partly in respect for her and much in fear for themselves. Far up the rising ground, the riot ceased as suddenly as it had begun; the men-at-arms drew back in shame, and many tried to hide their faces, lest they should be known again. The tide of human beings divided before the swiftly riding women, as the cloud-bank splits before the northwest wind in winter, and the white mare sped like a ray of light between long wavering lines of rough faces and gleaming arms.