THE CHAFFER CALLED MATE-GRIFON
Differing from the Mantuan as much in sort as degree, I sing less the arms than the man, less the panoply of some Christian king offended than the heart of one in its urgent private transports; less treaties than the agony of treating, less personages than persons, the actors rather than the scene. Arms pass like the fashion of them, to-day or to-morrow they will be gone; but men live, their secret springs what they have always been. How the two Kings, then, smeared over their strifes at Vézelay; how John of Mortain was left biting his nails, and Alois weeping at the foot of a cross; how Christian armies like dusty snakes dragged their lengths down the white shores of Rhone, and how some took ship at Marseilles, and some saved their stomachs at the cost of their shoes; of King Richard's royal galley Trenchemer, a red ship with a red bridge, and the dragon at the mast; of the shields that made her bulwarks terrible; of who went adventurous and who remained; of a fleet that lay upon the waters like a flock of sea-gulls—countless, now at rest, now beating the sea into spumy wrath; of what way they made, qualms they suffered, prayers they said in their extremity, vows they made and afterwards broke, thoughts they had and afterwards were ashamed of—of these and all such things I must be silent if I am to make a good end to my history. It shall be enough for you that the red ship held King Richard, and King Richard his own thoughts, and that never far from him, in a ship called Li Chastel Orgoilous, sat Jehane with certain women of hers, nursing her hope and a new and fearful wonder she had. Prayer sits well in women, and age-long watching: one imagines that Jehane never left the poop through those long white days, those burning nights; but could always be seen or felt, a still figure sitting apart, elbow on knee, chin in hand-like a Norn reading fate in the starred web of the night. In the dark watches, when the ships lay drifting under the stars, or lurched forward as the surges drove them on, and the tinkling of the water against the side was all the sound, some woman's voice (not Jehane's) would be heard singing faint and far off, some little shrill and winding prayer.
Saincte Catherine,
Vélà la nuict qui gagne!
they would hear, and hang upon the cadence. At such times Richard, stretched upon his lion-skin, would raise himself, and lift up his face to the immense, and with his noble voice make the darkness tremble as he sang—
Domna, dels angels regina,
Domna, roza ses espina,
Domna, joves enfantina,
Domna, estela marina,
De las autras plus luzens!
But so soon as his voice filled the night, the woman's faltered and died; and he, holding on for a stave or more, would stop on a note that had a wailing fall, and the lapping of the waves or cry of hidden birds take up the rule again. This did not often obtain. Mostly he watched out the night, sleeping little, talking none, but revolving in his mind the great deeds to do. By day he was master of the fleet, an admirable seaman who, knowing nothing of ships' business before he embarked, dared not confess so much to himself. Richard must be leader if he was to be undertaker at all. So he led his fleet from his first hour with it, and brought it safely into the roadstead.
They made Messina prosperously, a white city cooped within walls, with turrets and belfries and shining domes, stooping sharply to the violet sea. King Philip with his legions was to have come by land as far as Genoa, and was not expected yet awhile. Nor was there any sign of the Queen-Mother, of Berengère, or of the convoy from Navarre.
A landing was made in the early morning. Before the Sicilians were well awake Richard's army was in camp, the camp entrenched, and a most salutary gallows set up just outside it, with a thief upon it as a warning to his brothers of Sicily. So far good. The next thing was an embassy to King Tancred, the Sicilian King, which demanded (1) the person of Queen Joan (Richard's sister), (2) her dowry, (3) a golden table twelve foot long, (4) a silk tent, and (5) a hundred galleys fitted out for two years. This despatched, Richard entertained himself with his hawks and dogs, and with short excursions into Calabria. On one of these he went to visit the saintly Abbot Joachim, at once prophet and philosopher and man of cool sense; and on another to kill wild boars. When he came back in October from the second of these, he found matters going rather ill.
King Tancred avoided seeing him, sent no tables, nor ships, nor dowry. He did send Queen Joan, and Queen Joan's bed; moreover, because she had been Queen of Sicily, he sent a sack of gold coins for her entertainment; but he did not propose to go any further. Richard, seeing what sort of courses his plans were likely to take, crossed once more into Calabria, attacked a fortified town which the Sicilians had settled, turned the settlers out, and established his sister there with Jehane, her shipload of ladies, and a strong garrison. Then he returned to Messina.