Richard had been eager to make peace, but when the moment came when he had to leave the Holy Land, it seemed as if his heart would break. Although there were some in the army who did not trust him, and some who envied him, there were many hundreds who loved him so much that they did not care to serve under any other leader. They gathered round him weeping, and watched him step on to the vessel. As the king looked back over the land he had hoped to win, he said:
‘O Holy Land! God bless thy people and grant that I may come again to visit and help thee!’
Richard did not care to go through France on his way home, because he had made Philip so bitter an enemy. He tried to make his way across Europe further west and north. Sometimes he dressed as a pilgrim, sometimes as a merchant. But he had been too long a great king to find it easy to act like any one else.
In one place he had to ask a count to allow him to pass from one land to another. He called himself the merchant Hugo, and sent a squire to ask for leave to go on. He told him to offer a costly ruby ring to the count to whom he was sent. But the count was a friend of one of Richard’s foes. He had heard much about the wars, and he at once thought that this great ruby ring could only belong to the King of England. He sent back the ring with a kind message, but though he promised to do as he had been asked, he laid plans to capture the merchant Hugo! Richard escaped as a pilgrim, but even after that he would not be wise, for even in a pilgrim’s dress he went on wearing a great ring on his finger, and he let his squire go to market-places with a purse full of coins that came from the Holy Land. The lad boasted of them, and showed them to those who gathered round him. Then, when it was too late, he saw what he had done and ran to warn his master, but Richard would not flee. He was taken prisoner by Leopold, whose banner he had torn down from the walls of Acre, and who had been the first to throw away his building tools at Ascalon.
The people of England longed to see him. They had heard how brave he had been in battle. They loved the thought of him, but what could they do to save him? They did not know where he was. The story of the way in which they found out is a strange one. Before the king went to the Holy Land, he and his minstrel Blondel had made a little song which they sang verse about. Blondel loved Richard greatly, and he set out to search for him. He asked where Richard had last been seen. Then he went from village to village. If a castle stood in sight, he asked if any prisoner lay there. If there was one, he tried to find out what kind of a man he was. Once he was in great excitement. The villagers near a castle told him of a prisoner who seemed to be a man like King Richard. But Blondel wished to be certain that he was right before he went back to England. When he was sure that no one saw him he ran to the castle. He looked at all sides of it till he thought he knew where the dungeon was. Then he sang some lines of the old song. His voice was broken and shaky, and when he stopped and waited he could scarcely breathe, he was so eager to know if anything would happen. Something did happen. Richard’s voice from within the castle carried on the song.
When Blondel reached England and told where the king lay a prisoner, he soon roused the people to give a great sum of money in return for his freedom.
Before Richard had landed in England, Saladin lay dead. As the Christian pilgrims longed to go to Jerusalem, so he had longed to go to Mecca, for that is the holiest city in the world to those who follow the prophet. But Saladin was too ill to go to Mecca. When he lay dying in Damascus, he sent his heralds out to go through the streets of the city. As they marched, no banners were to stream behind them. Instead of a banner the shroud he was soon to need was borne along beside them, while they shouted as he bade them:
‘This, this is all that remains of the glory of Saladin who conquered the East!’
CHAPTER IV
HOW FREDERICK CAME TO HIS KINGDOM
The kingdom of Jerusalem was in dire need of help. But all the powerful people in Europe were busy fighting with each other. Once the thought of the Crusades had been enough to stir every heart, now the great wars had become the games of children. In the villages, children played at sieges and battles. The priests still longed to see the Holy City the centre of a strong kingdom. They spoke to kings and nobles, and pled with them to go forth bravely as others had done to win renown in wars of the Cross. But no one heeded them. They watched the children playing at war, and the thought came that if the men would not go, the children might. It was many years since [Pg 83]Richard and Philip had set forth, and men had a little forgotten how hard the way was. Besides, some people thought that if children left their homes and all the ease of life to fight in a holy war, God would give them the strength of men, and would make everything easy before them. So when the warriors would not listen, the priests preached to the children. They told them that a dry pathway would be made through the great sea, and that the children would have the strength of heaven in their arms. And the children listened and followed the preachers. Here and there a lad knew what the priest meant and believed what he said, and caught sight of the grand dream that had made Tancred and Godfrey leave all for Jerusalem so long before. But most of the children knew but little of what they wished or of what a Crusade meant. They had played at battles till they liked nothing else so much, and now they ran and danced along through the villages of Europe as merrily as if they had only been going to see a fair in the [Pg 84]nearest town. Mothers and fathers pled with them to stay. They tried to keep them back by force. But they had only one answer: