He sprang up and slipped it on over his broad young shoulders. It fitted like a glove, and the sunset glow flushed in at the window and streamed across him in a ruddy battle-flood. In that same second he was seized with a longing to leave all this peacefulness, this land of lowing cattle and calm sunset, and see other lands and other ways of living. It was in his blood. A roamer he must be, as his great- grandfather had been before him. Then and there he made up his mind to be in the fashion with the courtly world that stirred in the heart of England. He would join the Crusade!
Do you know what that was?
In Palestine lies the holy city of Jerusalem, the burial-place of Jesus. For hundreds of years men had journeyed there,—folk called them pilgrims,—because it was such a holy place that just to visit it was thought to make men better, and more sure of Heaven in the eternity to come. But the way was hard and dangerous, and the journey at last became almost impossible; for from the far East had come Arabs, Moors, Syrians, dark races who wore turbans, whose flag was red with a silver crescent in it, and who worshipped God in another and a bloodier way than ours. To them, also, Jerusalem was a holy place.
Westward their armies swept until at last they captured the city, and they hold it as a Moslem possession to this day,—though twice for a short time it was wrested from them by the armies of the West. It seemed to those western men a terrible thing thus to surrender the sacred city to the "infidel." So king after king planned expeditions, with his neighbours, and sailed away with their bravest knights and fighting-men to recover it. These expeditions were called "crusades," and it was the third of these that Louis of Daneshold made up his mind to join.
Now, if he had been a great captain he would have sailed with a small army of fighting-men at his back, but being as he was, but a youth, with his war days all before him, he started more modestly; for in those times young men who had not learned by experience were content to work their way upward in the train of some knight of renown and wait for chances to win their names. Also, it was thought to be such a privilege that a famous knight was likely to have in his company as squires (as such usually well-born attendants were called) only the sons of his own personal friends; thus the best chance that Louis could obtain was but to be a squire in the troop of a poor knight who was quite unknown, and who was glad indeed to have a broad-shouldered youth along who paid his own way, and his own retainer's also, instead of asking payment.
So, while on ship and in camp, and on the journey, Louis was but one of a multitude, and his leader little better. But when they entered Palestine it was another story. Both were light-weights, and their horses stood the journey better than their comrades; thus gradually they began to be in the leading troops while on the march. The old- style cut of Louis's armour had caused him some heartaches when he was with his plate-armoured mates, but the very uniqueness of it caused the leading knights to rest their eyes on him when scanning their men for a good one to send out as a scout, and after one or two trials they began to learn that in all their host they had no swifter horseman, nor a keener eye for an ambush; nor, when it came to the point, a deadlier swordsman than that same blue-eyed, fair-haired lad.
And at last there came a day when the army was in line of battle against the Saracen; when the Knights of the Temple vied with the knights of other orders each striving to carry their flag farthest into that thorny jungle of flashing scimitars, and the huge arm of King Richard the Lion-hearted hewed a red road for them all which none could equal; for was he not the strongest man in the two entire armies—this King who could sever an iron bar with a swordstroke? But ever as he plunged with fresh zeal and ringing warcry into the heart of the fray, he became aware of a knight and his squire that as surely as his shadow, kept but a pace behind him; and the blows that were struck in that fight under the burning sun and with the loose sand of the desert underfoot made the day one to be remembered long by those that lived beyond it.
At last a fresh troop of tried warriors pressed forward on the wearied men of the West. Louder rang the shout of the turbaned men—
"Allah! Allahu!"
Backward, slowly yet surely, they drove their enemies everywhere save in that one spot where Richard swung his mace; and even he, too, gave place for a yard or two, leaving Louis and the other knight fighting like wildcats, back to back. Then Louis went down—down—into darkness. Of what happened next, how his leader for long minutes stood above him guarding both, till with a roar the angry King burst through the Saracens and rescued them, he knew nothing until he woke days afterward, feeling very tired, and a little light-headed, and oddly weak; just awake enough to wonder how he happened to be in a royal tent, watched over by a handsome, golden-haired young man, who smiled sunnily at him and talked to him in good French, saying that his name was Blondel. That Richard had declared so good a squire was worth being cared for by a king; and that Louis had but one business on hand, which was to go to sleep again, which he presently very contentedly did.