“By chance,” said Helie; “but if I were free, I know what I would do.”
“What would you do, you knave?” said William. “Hence, go, fly, I give you leave to do all you can; and if you catch me, I ask nothing in return.”
Helie was set at liberty, and the next year, while William was absent in England, managed to retake Mans. The Red King was hunting in the New Forest when he heard the tidings; he turned his horse’s head and galloped away, as his father had once done, with the words, “He who loves me, will follow.” He threw himself into a ship, and ordered the sails to be set, though the wind was so boisterous that the sailors begged him to wait. “Fools,” he said, “did you ever hear of a drowned king?” He cruelly ravaged Maine, but could not take the city, and, having been slightly wounded, returned to meet his fate in the New Forest.
After this story, no one could wonder that it required a great deal of enthusiasm to persuade a man to leave his inheritance exposed to the grasp of the Red King, who, unlike other princes, set at nought the anathemas by which the Pope guarded the lands of absent Crusaders. Stephen, Count de Blois, the husband of William’s sister Adela, took the Cross. He was wise in counsel, and learned, and a letter which he wrote to his wife is one of the chief authorities for the early part of the expedition; but his health was delicate, and it was also said that his personal courage was not unimpeachable; at any rate, he soon returned home.
One of the foremost of the Crusaders was, however, our own Norman Prince, Robert Courtheuse. Every one knows the deep stain of disobedience on Robert’s early life; and yet so superior was he to his brothers in every point of character, that it is impossible not to regard him with a sort of affection, though the motto of his whole career might be, “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
Never was man more completely the tool of every villain who gained his ready ear. It was the whisper of evil counsellors that fired his jealousy of his young brothers, and drove him into rebellion against his father; the evil counsel of William led him to persecute Henry, loving him all the time: and when in possession of his dukedom, his careless, profuse habits kept him in constant poverty, while his idle good-nature left unpunished the enormities of the barons who made his country miserable.
But in generosity he never failed; he heartily loved his brothers, while duped and injured by them again and again; he always meant to be true and faithful, and never failed, except from hastiness and weakness; and while William was infidel, and Henry hypocritical, he was devout and sincere in faith, though miserably defective in practice.
The Crusade was the happiest and most respectable period of his life, and no doubt he never was more light-hearted than when he delivered over to William the mortgage of his dukedom, with all its load of care, and received in return the sum of money squeezed by his brother from all the unfortunate convents in England, but which Robert used to equip his brave knights and men-at-arms, assisted by some of the treasures of his uncle, Bishop Odo, who had taken the Cross, but was too feeble and infirm to commence the expedition.
The Crusaders were not sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of navigation to attempt to enter Palestine by sea, and they therefore traversed Germany, Hungary, and the Greek Empire, trusting to the Emperor Alexis Comnenus to give them the means of crossing the Hellespont. Alexis was in great dread of his warlike guests; the schism between the Greek and Roman Churches caused continual heart-burnings; and at the same time he considered, very naturally, that all the lands in the East at present occupied by the Mahometans were his right. He would not, therefore, ferry over the Crusaders to Asia till they had sworn allegiance to him for all that they might conquer, and it was a long time before Godfrey would comply. At last, however, on condition that the Greeks would furnish them with guides and reinforcements, they took the oaths; but as Alexis did not fulfil his part of the engagement, they did not consider themselves bound to him.
At Nicea, the Crusading army, of nineteen different nations, of whom 100,000 were horse and 500,000 infantry, came in sight of the Turks, and, after a long siege and several hotly-contested battles, won the town. They continued their march, but with much suffering and difficulty; Raymond of Toulouse had an illness which almost brought him to the grave, and Godfrey himself was seriously injured by a bear, which he had attacked to save the life of a poor soldier who was in danger from its hug. He killed the bear, but his thigh was much torn, and he was a long time recovering from the effects of his encounter.