“Who takes the cross and wendeth over seas,
Jerusalem!
Will save his soul thereby, raze out his sins,
Jerusalem!”
Here was the calvary again, and the monk sitting beside it—here was the church, jutting out from the monastery—and people about it, and priests and monks—and a loud and deep chanting—and a mounting sea of emotion. Many broke into cries, some, phrensied, fell to the earth, crying that they had a vision.
“To slay Mahound, and cleanse our sacred places!”
The mass was sung, the sacrament given those who were going to the land over sea. Garin found his priest and was shriven, then knelt with the esquires and men-at-arms and with them took the Body. Upon his breast was sewn a white cross. He had, with all who went, the indulgence. He was delivered from all the sins that through his life, until that day, he had committed.
The mass was sung. A splinter of St. Andrew’s cross—the church’s great possession—was venerated. The two de Panemondes, rising from their knees, passed from the church to the monastery, and here, in the prior’s room, their kinsmen and peers about them, they were clothed as knights again. Without, in a grey square, shaded by old trees, Garin purchased a horse from Pierre Avalon.
Sir Eudes and his son came forth in hauberk and helm. The knights for the ships and the land over the sea mounted, their followers mounted. Farewells were said. Those who were going drew into ranks. A priest blessed them. The people wept and cried out blessings. The monks raised a Latin chant. The sky was sapphire, a light wind carried to and fro the autumn leaves. Sir Eudes de Panemonde and his son touched their horses with their gilded spurs. The knights followed, the esquires and men-at-arms. Behind them the voices, at first swelling louder, sank as lengthened the road between. They pressed on, and now they lost that sound and lost the church, the monastery, and the castle of Panemonde.... Now the leper by the roadside was passed, still sitting beneath the cross, tinkling his bell. In the distance was seen the town that Garin had left that morning. The company did not enter it, but turned aside into a road that ran to the southward and then east and then south again. So at last, to-morrow at sunset, they would come to the port and to the ships that would bring them to Syria.
Garin rode in a dream. He thought of Raimbaut and of Foulque, of Castel-Noir and Roche-de-Frêne, but most he thought of the Fair Goal, and tried to see her, in her court he knew not where.