“Oh! dismiss me not,” she sobbed, as she threw her white arms around his neck, and panted on his bosom; “oh! dismiss me not thus. I ask no vows; I ask no love. Be but mine; let my country be your country, my God yours—and you are safe and free!”
“My Master,” he replied coldly, as he disengaged her grasp, and removed her from his arms, “hath said, ‘What would it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ I have listened to thee, lady, and I have answered thee; but my heart is heavy—for it is mournful to see that so glorious a form should be the habitation of so frail a spirit. I pray thee, leave me! To-morrow I shall meet my God, and I would commune with him now in spirit and in truth!”
Slowly she turned away, wrapped her face in her veil, and moved with faltering steps—wailing as if her heart were about to burst—through the low portal. The gate clanged heavily as she departed; but the sounds of her lamentation were audible long after the last being, who would show a sign of pity for his woes, or of admiration for his merits, had gone forth, never again to return!
All night long the devotions, the fervent and heartfelt prayers of the crusader, ascended to the throne of his Master; and often, though he struggled to suppress the feeling, a petition for his lovely though deluded visiter was mingled with entreaties for strength to bear the fate he anticipated.
Morning came at last, not as in frigid climates of the North—creeping through its slow gradations of gray dawn and dappling twilight—but bursting at once from night into perfect day. The prison-gates were opened for the last time, the fetters were struck off from the limbs of the undaunted captive, and himself led forth like a victim to the sacrifice.
From leagues around, all the hordes of the desert had come together, in swarms outnumbering the winged motes that stream like dusty atoms in every sunbeam. It was a strange, and, under other circumstances, would have been a glorious spectacle. In a vast sandy basin, surrounded on every side by low but rugged eminences, were the swarthy sons of Syria mustered, rank above rank, to feast their eyes on the unwonted spectacle of a Christian’s sufferings. The rude tribes of the remotest regions, Arab and Turcoman, mounted on the uncouth dromedary, or on steeds of matchless symmetry and unstained pedigree, mingling their dark baracans with the brilliant arms and gorgeous garbs of the sultan’s court—even the unseen beauties of a hundred harems watched from their canopied litters the preparations for the execution with as much interest and as little concern as the belles of our own day exhibit before the curtain has been drawn aside which is to disclose the performances of a Pedrotti or a Malibran to the enraptured audience.
In the centre of this natural amphitheatre stood the scathed and whitening trunk of a thunder-stricken palm. To this inartificial stake was the captive led. One by one his garments were torn asunder, till his muscular form and splendid proportions were revealed in naked majesty to the wondering multitude. Once, before he was attached to the fatal tree, a formal offer of life, and liberty, and high office in the moslem court, was tendered to him, on condition of his embracing the faith of the prophet—and refused by one contemptuous motion of his hand. He was bound firmly to the stump, with his hands secured far above his head. At some fifty paces distant, stood a group of dark and fierce warriors, with bended bows and well-filled quivers, evidently awaiting the signal to pour in their arrowy sleet upon his unguarded limbs. He gazed upon them with a countenance unmoved and serene, though somewhat paler than its usual tints. His eyes did not, however, long dwell on the unattractive sight: he turned them upward, and his lips moved at intervals, though no sound was conveyed to the ear of the bystanders.
Some minutes had elapsed thus, when the shrill voice of the muezzin was heard, proclaiming the hour of matin-prayer in his measured chant: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet!” In an instant the whole multitude were prostrate in the dust, and motionless as though the fatal blast of the simoom was careering through the tainted atmosphere. A flash of contempt shot across the features of the templar, but it quickly vanished in a more holy expression, as he muttered to himself the words used on a far more memorable occasion, by Divinity itself: “Forgive them, Lord; they know not what they do!”
The pause was of short duration. With a rustle like the voice of the forest when the first breath of the rising tempest agitates its shivering foliage, the multitude rose to their feet. A gallant horseman dashed from the cavalcade which thronged around the person of their sultan, checked his steed beside the archer-band, spoke a few hasty words, and galloped back to his station.
Another minute—and arrow after arrow whistled from the Paynim bows, piercing the limbs and even grazing the body of the templar; but not a murmur escaped from the victim—scarcely did a frown contract his brow. There was an irradiation, as if of celestial happiness, upon his countenance; nor could a spectator have imagined for a moment that his whole frame was almost convulsed with agony, but for the weapons quivering even to their feathered extremities in every joint, and the large blood-drops trickling like rain upon the thirsty soil!