The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

On this morning of universal joy—to him a period fraught with the gloomiest recollections, for it was the anniversary of that sad day on which he had parted from the idol of his heart, never to behold her more!—on this morning he had secluded himself from the sight of men; he was alone with his memory! His eyes indeed rested on the letters of an illuminated missal which lay open before him; but the long, dark lock of silky hair which was grasped in his feverish hand, showed too plainly that his grief was still of that harrowing and fiery character which prevents the mind from tasting as yet the consolations of Divine truth. He had sat thus for hours, unconscious of the passing multitude, whose every sound was borne to his unheeding ears by the fresh breeze of spring. His courtly robe and plumed bonnet, his collar, spurs, and sword, lay beside him, arranged for the approaching festival by his officious page; but no effort could have strung his nerves or hardened his heart on that day to bear with the frivolous ceremonies and false glitter of a court. He recked not now whether his presence would lend a zest to the festival, or whether his absence might be construed into offence. The warrior, the politician, the man, were merged in the lover! Utter despondency had fallen upon his spirit. Like the oak of his native forests, he was proud and unchanged in appearance, but the worm was busy at his heart. Even tears would have been a relief to the dead weight of despair which had benumbed his very soul; but never, since that fatal hour, had one drop relieved the aching of his brain, or one smile gleamed across his haggard features. Mechanically he fulfilled his part in society: he moved, he spoke, he acted, like his fellow-men; but he was now become, from the most ardent and impetuous of his kind, a mere creature of habit and circumstance.

So deeply was he now absorbed in his dark reveries, that the increasing clamor of the multitude had escaped his attention, although the character of the sounds was no longer that of unmingled pleasure. The voices of men, harsh and pitched in an unnatural key, rude oaths, and tumultuous confusion, proclaimed that, if not engaged in actual violence, the mob was at least ripe for mischief. More than once, during the continuance of these turbulent sounds, had the plaintive accents of a female voice been distinctly audible—when on a sudden a shriek arose of such fearful import, close beneath the casements of the abstracted baron, that it thrilled to his very heart. It seemed to his excited fancy that the notes of a well-remembered voice lent their music to that long-drawn cry; nay, he almost imagined that his own name was indistinctly blended in that yell of fear.

With the speed of light he had sprung to his feet, and hurried to the lattice; but twice before he reached it, had the cry repeated, calling on the name of “Gilbert!” with a plaintive energy that could no longer be mistaken. He gained the embrasure, dashed the trellised blinds apart, and there—struggling in the licentious grasp of the retainers who ministered to the brutal will of some haughty noble—her raven tresses scattered to the winds of heaven, her turbaned shawl and flowing caftan rent and disordered by the rude hands of lawless violence—he beheld a female form of unrivalled symmetry, clad in the well-remembered garments of the East. Her face was turned from him, and the dark masses of hair which had escaped from their confinement entirely concealed her features; still there was an undefined resemblance which acted so keenly upon his feelings, that the thunder of heaven could scarcely burst with a more appalling crash above the heads of the guilty than did the powerful tones of the crusader as he bade them, “as they valued life, release the damsel!” With a rapid shudder which ran through every limb at his clear summons, she turned her head. It was—it was his own lost Leila! the high and polished brow; the eyes that rivalled in languor the boasted organs of the wild gazelle; the rapturous ecstasy that kindled every lineament as she recognised her lover’s form—

——“the voice that clove through all the din,
As a lute’s pierceth through the cymbal’s clash,
Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling”—

were all, all Leila’s! To snatch his sword from its scabbard, to vault at a single bound from the lofty casement, to force his way through the disordered press, to level her audacious assailants to the earth, was but a moment’s work for the gigantic power of the knight, animated as he now was by all those feelings which can minister valor to the most timid, and give strength to the feeblest arm! He beheld her whom he had believed to be snatched for ever from his heart, nor could hundreds of mail-clad soldiers have withstood his furious onset! He had already clasped his recovered treasure in one nervous arm, while with the other he brandished aloft the trusty blade, which had so often carried havoc and terror to the centre of the moslem lines; when the multitude, enraged at the interference of a stranger with what to them appeared the laudable occupation of persecuting a witch or infidel, seconded by the bold ruffians who had first laid hand upon the lovely foreigner, rushed bodily onward, threatening to overpower all resistance by the weight of numbers.

Gallantly, however, and at the same time mercifully, did Sir Gilbert à-Becket support his previous reputation. Dealing sweeping blows with his huge falchion on every side, yet shunning to use the point or edge, he had cleft his way in safety to the threshold of his own door. Yet even then the final issue of the strife was far from certain; for so sudden had been the exit of the baron, and from so unusual an outlet, that none of his household were conscious of their lord’s absence, and the massy portal was closed against the entrance of the lawful owner. Stones and staves flew thick around him; and so fiercely did the leaders of the furious mob press upon his retreat, that, yielding at length to the dictates of his excited spirit, he dealt the foremost a blow which would have cloven him to the teeth though he had been fenced in triple steel; thundering at the same time with his booted heel against the oaken leaves of his paternal gate, and shouting to page and squire within till the vaulted passages rang forth in startled echoes.

At this critical moment the din of martial music, which had long been approaching, heralded the royal procession; though so actively were the rioters engaged in their desperate onset, and so totally engrossed was the baron in the rescue of his recovered bride, that neither party were aware of it until its clangor rang close at hand, and a dazzling cavalcade of knights and nobles came slowly on the scene of action.

Of stature almost gigantic, noble features, and kingly bearing—his garb glittering with gold and jewels till the dazzled eye could scarcely brook its splendor; backing a steed which seemed as though its strength and spirit might have borne Goliath to the field; and wielding a blade which no other arm in Christendom could have poised even for a second—the lion-hearted Richard, followed by every noble of his realm, dashed with his native impetuosity into the centre.

“Ha! St. George!” he shouted, in a voice heard clearly above the mingled clang of instruments and the tumult of the conflict; “have ye no better way to keep our festival than thus to take base odds on one? Shame on ye, vile recreants! What, ho!” he cried, as he recognised the person of the knight, “our good comrade à-Becket thus hard bestead! Hence to your kennels, ye curs of England!—dare ye match yourselves against the Lion and his brood?”

Loud rang the acclamations of the throng, accustomed to the blunt boldness of their warrior-king, and losing sight of his haughty language in joy for his return and admiration of the additional glory which had accrued to the whole nation from the prowess of its champion: “God save thee, gallant lion-heart! Never was so brave a knight! never so noble a king!”