The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

The whole scene was in the highest degree picturesque, and such as no other age of the world could afford. The happiness which, although fleeting and fictitious, threw its bright illumination over the whole multitude, oblivious of the cares, the labors, and the sorrows of to-morrow, afforded a subject for the harp of the poet, no less worthy his inspired meditations than the gorgeous coloring and the rich costume of the middle ages might lend to the pencil of a Leslie or a Newton.

In a chamber overlooking with its Gothic casements this scene of contagious mirth—alone, unmoved by the gay hum which told of happiness in every passing breeze—borne down, as it would appear, by the weight of some secret calamity—sat Sir Gilbert à-Becket, of glorious form and unblemished fame. The bravest of the brave on the battle-plain, unequalled for wisdom in the hall of council, he had been among the first of those bold hearts who had buckled on their mighty armor to fight the good fight of Christianity—to rear the cross above the crescent—and to redeem the Savior’s sepulchre from the contaminating sway of the unbeliever.

There was not one among the gallant thousands who had followed their lion-hearted leader from the green vales of England to the sultry sands of Palestine, whose high qualities had been more frequently tried, or whose undaunted valor was more generally acknowledged, than the knight à-Becket; there was not one to whose lance the chivalrous Richard looked more confidently for support, nor one to whose counsel he more willingly inclined his ear. In the last desperate effort before the walls of Ascalon—when, with thirty knights alone, the English monarch had defied the concentrated powers, and vainly sought an opponent in the ranks of sixty thousand mussulmans—his crest had shone the foremost in those fierce encounters which have rendered the name of the Melec Ric a terror to the tribes of the desert that has endured even to the present day. It was at the close of this bloody encounter, that, conquered by his own previous exertions rather than by the prowess of his foemen—his armor hacked and rent, his war-steed slain beneath him—he had been overwhelmed by numbers while wielding his tremendous blade beside the bridle-rein of his king, and borne away by the Saracens into hopeless captivity.

Days and months had rolled onward, and the limbs of the champion were wasted and his constitution sapped by the vile repose of the dungeon; yet never for an instant had his proud demeanor altered, or his high spirit quailed beneath the prospect of an endless slavery. All means had been resorted to by his turbaned captors to induce him to adopt the creed of Mohammed. Threat of torments such as was scarcely endured even by the martyrs of old; promises of dominion, and wealth, and honor; the agonies of thirst and hunger; the allurement of beauty almost superhuman—had been brought to assail the faith of the despairing but undaunted prisoner: and each temptation had been tried but to prove how unflinching was his resolution, and how implicit his faith in that Rock of Ages which he had ever served with enthusiastic, at least, if erring zeal, and with a fervency of love which no peril could shake, no pleasure could seduce from its serene fidelity.

At length, when hope itself was almost dead within his breast; when ransom after ransom had been vainly offered; when the noblest moslem captives had been tendered in exchange for his inestimable head; and, to crown the whole, when the no-longer united powers of the crusading league had departed from the shores on which they had lavished so much of their best blood—his deliverance from the fetters of the infidel was accomplished by one of those extraordinary circumstances which the world calls chance, but which the Christian knows how to attribute to the infinite mercies of an overruling Providence. The eagerness of the politic sultan—whose name ranks as high among the tribes of Islam as the glory of his opponents among the pale sons of Europe—to obtain proselytes from the nations which he had the sagacity to perceive were no less superior to the wandering hordes of the desert in arts than in arms, had led him to break through those laws which are so intimately connected with the religion of Mohammed—the laws of the harem! As the pious faith of the western warrior appeared to gain fresh vigor from every succeeding temptation, so did the anxiety of his conqueror increase to gain over to his cause a spirit the value of which was daily rendered more and more conspicuous. In order to bring about this end, after every other device had failed, he commanded the admission to the Briton’s cell of the fairest maiden of his harem—a maid whose pure and spotless beauty went further to prove her unblemished descent than even the titles which were assigned to the youthful Leila, of almost royal birth.

Dazzled by her charms, and intoxicated by the fascination of her manner, her artless wit, and her delicate timidity, so far removed from the unbridled passion of such other eastern beauties as had visited his solitude, the Christian soldier betrayed such evident delight in listening to her soft words, and such keen anxiety for a repetition of the interview, that the oriental monarch believed that he had in sooth prevailed. Confidently, however, as he had calculated on the conversion of the believing husband by the unbelieving wife, the bare possibility of an opposite result had never once occurred to his distorted vision. But truly has it been said, “Magna est veritas et prævalebit!” The damsel who had been sent to create emotion in the breast of another, was the first to become its victim herself: she whose tutored tongue was to have won the prisoner from the faith of his fathers, was herself the first to fall away from the creed of her race. Enamored, beyond the reach of description, of the good knight, whose attractions of person were no less superior to the boasted beauty of the oriental nobles, than his rich and enthusiastic mind soared above their prejudiced understandings, she had surrendered her whole soul to a passion as intense as the heat of her native climate; she had lent a willing ear to the fervid eloquence of her beloved, and had drank in fresh passion from the very language which had won her reason from the debasing superstitions of Islamism to the bright and everlasting splendors of the Christian faith. From this moment the eastern maid became the bride of his affections, the solace of his weary hours, the object of his brightest hopes. He had discovered that she was worthy of his love; he was sure that her whole being was devoted to his welfare; and he struggled no longer against the spirit with which he had battled, as unworthy his country, his name, and his religion.

It was not long ere the converted maiden had planned the escape, and actually effected the deliverance, of her affianced lover. She had sworn to join him in his flight; she had promised to accompany him to his distant country, and to be the star of his ascendant destinies, as she had been the sole illuminator to his hours of desolation and despair.

Rescued from his fetters, he had lain in concealment on the rocky shores of the Mediterranean, anxiously awaiting the vessel which was to convey him to the land of his birth, and her whose society alone could render his being supportable. The vessel arrived: but what was the agony of his soul on learning that she whom he prized above light, and life, and all save virtue, had fallen a sacrifice to the furious disappointment of her indignant countrymen! Maddened with grief, and careless of an existence which had now become a burden rather than a treasure, he would have returned to avenge the wrongs of his lost Leila, and perish on her grave, had not her emissaries—conscious that in such a case the fate which had befallen the mistress must undoubtedly be theirs likewise—compelled him to secure their common safety by flight.

After weary wanderings, he had returned a heart-stricken wretch to his native England, at that moment rejoicing with unfeigned delight at the recovery of her heroic king. He sometimes mingled in the labors of the council or the luxuries of the banquet, but it was evident to all that his mind was far away! that for him there might indeed be the external semblance of joy, but that all within was dark and miserable! It was plain that, in the words of the poet—

“That heavy chill had frozen o’er the fountains of the tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.”