Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade

by F. Marion Crawford

Instantly Gilbert's hand dropped to his side and he assumed the attitude of a respectful protector. The Queen continued to stare into the darkness a moment longer, and then began to walk on.

"It was nothing," she said carelessly.

"I hear men singing," said Gilbert.

"I dare say," answered Eleanor, with perfect indifference. "I have heard them for some time."

One voice rose higher and louder than the rest as the singers approached, and the other voices joined in the rough chorus of a Burgundy drinking-song. Near the outskirts of the village, lights were flashing and moving unsteadily in the road as those who carried them staggered along. To reach the monastery which was the headquarters of the court, the Queen and Gilbert would have to walk a hundred yards down the street before turning to the right. Gilbert saw at a glance that it would be impossible for them to reach the turning before meeting the drunken crowd.

"It would be better to go back by another way," he said, slackening his pace.

But the Queen walked quietly on without answering him. It was clear that she intended to make the people stand aside to let her pass, for she continued to walk in the middle of the street. But Gilbert gently drew her aside, and she suffered him to lead her to a doorway, raised two steps above the street, and darkened by an overhanging balcony. There they stood and waited. A dense throng of grooms, archers and men-at-arms came roaring up the steep way toward them. A huge man in a dirty scarlet tunic and dusty russet hose, with soft boots that were slipping down in folds about his ankles, staggered along in front of the rest. His face was on fire with wine, his little red eyes glared dully from under swollen lids, and as he bawled his song with mouth wide open, one might have tossed an apple between his wolfish teeth. In his right hand he held an earthen jug in which there was still a little wine; with his left he brandished a banner that had been made by sewing a broad red cross upon a towel tied to one of those long wands with which farmers' boys drive geese to feed. Half dancing, half marching, and reeling at every step, he came along, followed closely by a dozen companions one degree less burly than himself, but at least quite as drunk; and each had upon his breast or shoulder the cross he had received that day. Behind them more and more, closer and closer, the others came stumbling, rolling, jostling each other, howling the chorus of the song. And every now and then the leader, swinging his banner and his wine jug, sent a shower of red drops into the faces of his followers, some of whom laughed, and some swore loudly in curses that made themselves felt through the roaring din. But loudest, highest, clearest of all, from within the heart of the drunken crowd, came one of those voices that are made to be heard in storm and battle. In a tune of its own, regardless of the singing of all the rest, it was chanting the Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Long-drawn, sustained, and of brazen quality, it calmly defied all other din, and as the crowd drew nearer Gilbert saw through the torchlight the thin white face of a very tall man in the midst, with half-closed eyes and lips that wore a look of pain as he sang—the face, the look, the voice of a man who in the madness of liquor was still a fanatic.

The hot close breath of the ribald crew went before it in the warm summer night, the torches threw a moving yellow glare upon faces red as flame, or ghastly white, and here and there the small crosses of scarlet cloth fastened to the men's tunics caught the light like splashes of fresh blood.

Eleanor drew back as far as she could under the doorway, offended in her sovereign pride and disgusted as gentlewomen are at the sight of drunkenness. By her side, Gilbert drew himself up as if protesting against a sacrilege and against the desecration of his holiest thoughts. He knew that such men would often be as riotous again before they reached Jerusalem, and that it would be absurd to expect anything else. But meanwhile he realized what a little more of disgust would be enough to make him hate what was before him. For a moment he forgot the Queen's presence at his side, and he closed his eyes so as not to see what was passing before them.

A little angry sound, that was neither of pain nor of fear, roused him to the present. A man with a bad face and a shock head of red hair had fallen out of the march and stood unsteadily before the Queen, plucking at her mantle in the hope of seeing all her face. He seemed not to see Gilbert, and there was a wicked light in his winy eyes. The Queen drew back, and used her hands to keep her mantle and hood close about her; but the riot pressed onward and forced the man from his feet, so that he almost fell against her. Gilbert caught him by the neck with his hand; and when he had torn the cross from his shoulder, he struck him one blow that flattened his face for life. Then he threw him down into the drunken crowd, a bruised and senseless thing, as island men throw a dead horse from the cliff into the sea.