CHAPTER XXIX IN THE HOLY LAND
"Last scene of all,
Which ends this strange eventful history."
Our tale is all but told. Osric reached the Holy Land in safety, more fortunate than many of his fellows; and there, hearing Brian's recommendations and acknowledged as his son, joined the order of the Knights Templars,—that splendid order which was astonishing the world by its valour and its achievements, whose members were half monks, half warriors, and wore the surplice over the very coat of mail; having their chief church in the purified Mosque of Omar, on the site of the Temple of Jerusalem, and their mission to protect pilgrims and defend the Holy City.
He was speedily admitted to knighthood, a distinction his valour fully justified; and we leave him—gratifying both the old and the new man: the old man in his love of fighting, the new man in his self-conquest—a far nobler thing after all. It was a combination sanctioned by the holiest, best men of that age; such as St. Bernard, whose hymns still occupy a foremost place in our worship.[31]
Brian still continued his warlike career, but there was a great change in his mode of warfare. Wallingford Castle was no longer sullied by unnecessary cruelties. Coupe-gorge and Tustain had an easy time of it.
In 1152 Stephen again besieged Wallingford, but the skill and valour of Brian Fitz-Count forced him to retreat. Again, having reduced the Castle of Newbury, he returned, and strove to reduce the place by famine, blocking them in on every side; so that they were forced to send a message to Henry Plantagenet to come to their aid from Normandy. He embarked in January 1153 with three thousand foot and a hundred and forty horse. Most of the great nobles of the west joined his standard in his passage through England, and he was in time to relieve Wallingford, besieging the besiegers in their Crowmarsh fort. Stephen came in turn to relieve them with the barons who adhered to his standard, accompanied by his son, the heir presumptive, Eustace, animated with strong emulation against Henry. On his approach, Henry made a sudden sally, and took by storm the fort at the head of the bridge, which Stephen had erected the year before, and following the cruel customs of the war, caused all the defenders to be beheaded on the bridge. Then leaving a sufficient force to bridle Crowmarsh, Henry marched out with great alacrity to offer Stephen a pitched battle and decide the war. He had not gone far when he found Stephen encamped on Cholsey Common, and both sides prepared for battle with eagerness.
But the Earl of Arundel, assembling all the nobility and principal leaders, addressed them.
"It is now fourteen years since the rage of civil war first infected the kingdom. During that melancholy period what blood has been shed, what desolation and misery brought on the people! The laws have lost their force; the Crown its authority; this great and noble nation has been delivered over as a prey to the basest of foreigners,—the abominable scum of Flanders, Brabant, and Brittany,—robbers rather than soldiers, restrained by no laws, Divine or human,—instruments of all tyranny, cruelty, and violence. At the same time our cruel neighbours the Welsh and the Scotch, taking advantage of our distress, have ravaged our borders. And for what good? When Maude was Queen, she alienated all hearts by her pride and violence, and made them regret Stephen. And when Stephen returned to power, he made them regret Maude. He discharged not his foreign hirelings; but they have lived ever since at free-quarters, plundering our houses, burning our cities, preying upon the very bowels of the land, like vultures upon a dying beast. Now, here are two new armies of Angevins, Gascons, and what not. If Henry conquer, he must confiscate our property to repay them, as the Conqueror that of the English, after Senlac. If Stephen conquer, have we any reason to think he will reign better than before? Therefore let us make a third party—that of peace. Let Stephen reign (with proper restraint) for life, and Henry, as combining the royal descent of both nations, succeed him."
The proposal was accepted with avidity, with loud shouts, "So be it: God wills it."
Astonishment and rage seized Eustace, thus left out in the cold; but his father, weary of strife, gave way, and Stephen and Henry met within a little distance from the two camps, in a meadow near Wallingford, the river flowing between the two armies—which had been purposely so disposed to prevent collision—and the conditions of peace were virtually settled on the river-bank.
Eustace went off in a great rage with the knights of his own household, and ravaged the country right and left, showing what an escape England had in his disappointment. His furious passion, coupled with violent exertion, brought on a brain fever, of which he died. Alas, poor young prince! But his death saved thousands of innocent lives, and brought peace to poor old England. The treaty was finally concluded in November 1153, in the fourteenth year of the war. Stephen died the following year, and Henry quietly succeeded; who sent the free-lances back to the continent, and demolished one thousand one hundred and fifteen robbers' castles.
"Peace and no more from out its brazen portals
The blasts of war's great organ shake the skies,
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy harmonies of peace arise."
And now Brian Fitz-Count could carry out his heart's desire, and follow Osric to the Crusades. His wife, Maude of Wallingford, had before retired into Normandy, weary of strife and turmoil, and taken the veil, with his consent, in a convent connected with the great monastery of Bec.
In the chamber overlooking the south terrace, the river, and the glacis, once the bower of Maude d'Oyley, sat the young King Henry. He was of ruddy countenance and well favoured, like David of old. His chest was broad but his stature short, his manners graceful and dignified.
Before him stood the lord of the castle.
"And so thou wilt leave us! For the sake of thy long and great services to our cause, I would fain have retained thee here."
"My liege, I wish to atone for a life of violence and bloodshed. I must save my poor soul."
"Hast thou sinned more than other men?"
"I know not, only that I repent me of my life of violence: I have been a man of blood from my youth, and I go to the tomb of Him Who bled for me that I may lay my sins there."
"And who shall succeed thee here?"
"I care not. I have neither kith nor kin save one—a Knight Templar. A noble soldier, but, by the rules of his stern order, he is pledged to poverty, chastity, and obedience."
"I have heard that the Templars abound in those virtues, but they are a monastic body, and can hold no property independently of their noble order; and I have no wish to see Wallingford Castle a fief of theirs."
"I leave it all to thee, my liege, and only ask permission to say farewell."
"God be with thee, since go thou must."
Brian kissed the royal hand and was gone.
Once he looked back at the keep of Wallingford Castle from the summit of Nuffield in the Chilterns, on his road to London en route for the sea. Ah! what a look was that!
He never saw it again.
And when he had gone one of the first acts of the king was to seize as an "escheat" the Castle and honour of Wallingford which Brian Fitz-Count and Maude his wife, having entered the religious life, had ceased to hold.
The sun was setting in the valley between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim—the mountains of blessing and cursing. In the entrance to the gorge, thirty-four miles from Jerusalem and fifteen south of Samaria, was the village of El Askar, once called Sychar.
An ancient well, surmounted by an alcove more than a hundred feet deep—the gift of Jacob to his son Joseph—was to be seen hard by; and many pilgrims paused and drank where the Son of God once slaked His human thirst.
The rounded mass of Ebal lay to the south-east of the valley, of Gerizim to the north-west; at the foot of the former lay the village.
As in that olden time, it yet wanted four months of harvest. The corn-fields were still green; the foliage of leafy trees afforded delicious shades, as when He sat weary by that well, old even then.
Oh what memories of blessing and cursing, of Jacob and Joseph, of Joshua and Gideon, clung to that sacred spot! But, like stars in the presence of a sun, their lustre paled at the remembrance that His sacred Feet trod that hallowed soil.
In a whitewashed caravansary of El Askar lay a dying penitent,—a pilgrim returning from Jerusalem, then governed by a Christian king. He seemed prematurely old,—worn out by the toils of the way and the change of climate and mode of life. He lacked not worldly wealth, which there, as elsewhere, commanded attention; yet his feet were blistered and sore, for he had of choice travelled barefoot to the Holy Sepulchre.
A military party was passing along the vale, bound from Acre to Jerusalem, clad in flexible mail from head to foot; armed, for the rules of their order forbade them ever to lay their arms aside. But over their armour long monastic mantles of scarlet were worn, with a huge white cross on the left shoulder. They were of the array of the Knights Templars. Soldiers, yet monks! of such high renown that scarcely a great family in Europe but was represented in their ranks. Their diet was simple, their discipline exact; they shunned no hardship, declined no combat; they had few ties to life, but were prepared to sacrifice all for the sake of the holy warfare and the Temple of God. Their homes, their churches, lacked ornament, and were rigidly simple, as became their vow of poverty. Never yet had they disgraced their holy calling, or neglected to bear their white banner into the heart of the foe; so that the Moslem trembled at the war-cry of the Templars—"God and His Temple."
Such were the Templars in their early days.
The leader of this particular party was a knight in the prime of life, of noble, prepossessing bearing; who managed his horse as if rider and steed were one, like the Centaur of old.
They encamped for the night in the open, hard by the Sacred Well.
Scarcely were the camp-fires lit, when a villager sought an audience of the commander, which was at once granted.
"Noble seigneur," he said, "a Christian pilgrim lies dying at the caravansary hard by, and craves the consolations of religion. Thou art both monk and soldier?"
"I am."
"And wilt visit the dying man?"
"At once."
And only draining a goblet of wine and munching a crust, the leader followed the guide, retaining his arms, according to rule; first telling his subordinate in command where he was going.
On the slopes of the eastern hill stood the caravansary, built in the form of a hollow square; the courtyard devoted to horses and cattle, chambers opening all round the inner colonnade, with windows looking outward upon the country.
There the Templar was taken to a chamber, where, upon a rude pallet, was stretched the dying man.
"Thou art ill, my brother; canst thou converse with me?"
"God has left me that strength."
"With what tongue dost thou adore the God of our fathers?"
"English or French. But who art thou?"
The dying man raised himself up on his elbows.
"Osric!"
"My father!"
It was indeed Brian Fitz-Count who lay dying on that couch. They embraced fervently.
"Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine in pace," he said. "Osric, my son, is yet alive—I see him: God permits me to see him, to gladden my eyes. Osric, thou shalt close them; and here shalt thou bury thy father."
"Tell me, my sire, hast thou long arrived? why have we not met before?"
"I have been to Jerusalem; I have wept on Calvary; I have prayed at the Holy Sepulchre; and there I have received the assurance that He has cast my sins behind my back, and blotted them out, nailing them to His Cross. I then sought thee, and heard thou wert at Acre, at the commandery of St. John. I sought thee, but passed thee on the road unwittingly. Then I retraced my steps; but the malaria, which ever hangs about the ruins of old cities, has prostrated me. My hours are numbered; but what have I yet to live for? no, Nunc dimittis, nunc dimittis, Domine; quia oculi mei viderunt salutare Tuum."
And he sank back as in ecstasy, holding still the hand of his son, and covering it with kisses.
The setting sun cast a flood of glory on the vale beneath, on Jacob's Well.
Once more the sick man rose on his bed, and gazed on the sacred spot where once the Redeemer sat, and talked with the woman of Samaria.
"He sat there, weary, weary, seeking His sheep; and I am one. He has found me. Oh my God, Thou didst thirst for my soul; let that thirst be satisfied."
Then to Osric—
"Hast thou not a priest in thy troop, my son?"
"Our chaplain is with us."
"Let him bring me the Viaticum. I am starting on my last long journey, I want my provision for the way."
The priest arrived; the last rites were administered.
"Like David of old, I have been a man of blood; like him, I have repented that I have shed innocent blood," said the sick penitent.
"And like Nathan, I tell thee, my brother," said the priest, "that the Lord hath put away thy sin."
"And my faith accepts the blessed assurance."
"Osric, my son, let me bless thee before I die; thou dost not know, canst never know on earth, what thou didst for me."
"God bless thee too, my father. We shall meet before His throne when time shall be no more."
He fell back as if exhausted, and for a long time lay speechless. At last he raised himself on his elbow and looked steadfastly up.
"Hark! they are calling the roll-call above."
He listened intently for a moment, then, as if he had heard his own name, he answered—
"ADSUM."
And Brian Fitz-Count was no more.