The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

For an instant all remained petrified, as it were, by wonder and vexation of spirit. The next moment a fierce rush toward the captive, with naked weapons and bended brows, threatened immediate destruction to the wretched renegado.

Scarcely, however, was this spirit manifested, before it was checked by the grand-master of the temple, who stood beside the seat of Lusignan. He threw his venerable person between the victim and the uplifted weapons that thirsted for his blood.

“Forbear!” he cried, in the deep tones of determination—“forbear, soldiers of the cross, and servants of the Most High! Will ye contaminate your knightly swords with the base gore of a traitor to his standard, a denier of his God? Fitter the axe of the headsman, or the sordid gibbet, for the recreant and coward! Say forth, Beau Sire de Lusignan—have I spoken well?”

“Well and nobly hast thou spoken, Amaury de Montleon,” replied the monarch. “By to-morrow’s dawn shall the captive meet the verdict of his peers; and if they condemn him—by the cross which I wear on my breast, and the faith to which I trust for salvation, shall he die like a dog on the gallows, and his name shall be infamous for ever! Lead him away, Sir John de Crespigny, and answer for your prisoner with your head! And you, fair sirs, meet me at sunrise in the tiltyard: there will we sit in judgment before our assembled hosts, and all men shall behold our doom. Till then, farewell!”

In the dogged silence of despair was the prisoner led away, and in the silence of sorrow and dismay the barons of that proud array passed away from the presence of the king: and the night was again solitary and undisturbed.

It wanted a full hour of the appointed time for the trial, when the swarming camp poured forth its many-tongued multitudes to the tiltyard. The volatile Frenchman, the proud and taciturn Castilian, the resolute Briton, and the less courtly knights of the German empire, crowded to the spot. It was a vast enclosure, surrounded with palisades, and levelled with the greatest care, for the exhibition of that martial skill on which the crusaders set so high a value, and provided with elevated seats for the judges of the games—now to be applied to a more important and awful decision.

The vast multitude was silent, every feeling absorbed in breathless expectation; every brow was knit, and every heart was quivering with that sickening impatience which makes us long to know all that is concealed from our vision by the dark clouds of futurity, even if that all be the worst—

“The dark and hideous close,
Even to intolerable woes!”

This expectation had already reached its highest pitch, when, as the sun reared his broad disk in a flood of radiance above the level horizon of the desert, a mournful and wailing blast of trumpets announced the approach of the judges. Arrayed in their robes of peace, with their knightly belts and spurs, rode the whilome monarch of Jerusalem, and the noblest chiefs of every different nation which had united to form one army under the guidance of one commander. Prelates, and peers, and knights—all who had raised themselves above the mass, in which all were brave and noble, by distinguished talents of either war or peace—had been convoked to sit in judgment on a cause which concerned no less the welfare of the holy church and the interests of religion than the discipline and laws of war. The peers of France and England, and the dignitaries of the empire, many of whom were present, although their respective kings had not yet reached the shores of Palestine—were clad in their robes and caps of maintenance, the knights in the surcoats and collars of their orders, and the prelates in all the splendor of pontifical decoration. A strong body of knights, whose rank did not as yet entitle them to seats in the council, were marshalled like pillars of steel, in full caparison of battle, around the listed field, to prevent the escape of the prisoner, no less than to guard his person from premature violence, had such been attempted by the enthusiastic and indignant concourse.

Arnold of Falkenhorst—stripped of his Moorish garb, and wearing in its stead his discarded robes of knighthood, his collar and blazoned shield about his neck, his golden spurs on his heel, and his swordless scabbard belted to his side—was placed before his peers, to abide their verdict. Beside him stood a page, displaying his crested burgonet and the banner of his ancient house, and behind him a group of chosen warders, keeping a vigilant watch on every motion. But the precaution seemed needless: the spirits of the prisoner had sunk, and he seemed deserted alike by the almost incredible courage which he had so often displayed, and by the presence of mind for which he had been so widely and so justly famous. His countenance, even to his lips, was as white as sculptured marble, and his eyes had a dead and vacant glare; and scarcely did he seem conscious of the purpose for which that multitude was collected around him. Once, and once only, as his eye fell upon the fatal tree, which cast its long shadow in terrible distinctness across the field of judgment, with its accursed noose, and the ministers of blood around it, a rapid and convulsive shudder ran through every limb; it was but a momentary affection, and, when passed, no sign of emotion could be traced in his person, unless it were a slight and almost imperceptible rocking of his whole frame from side to side, as he stood awaiting his doom. Utter despondency seemed to have taken possession of his whole soul; and the soldier who had looked unmoved into the very eye of death in the field, sunk like the veriest coward under the apprehensions of that fate which he had no longer the resolution to bear like a man.