“You are a good lad to receive your mother’s brother with as much transport as a lover his sweetheart, but you have been gazing at a bit of sorcery down there, and that accounts for a great deal. Try to forget what you have seen, or your royal head may soon be displayed from the towers of Muntabure, where the lovely witch lives with that old heathen, her father.”
“She is a real person then,” cried Ortnit quickly. “She must be mine. I would stake my life to win her.”
“What is that you say?” answered Ylyas. “A king’s head for a woman’s curl! That would make a new song for the minstrels to sing in Lombardy.”
“How am I to find her?” asked the king. “Tell me the story, which I suppose some wandering fiddler has sung.”
“Why, nephew,” replied the elder man, “I have seen with my own eyes and have heard with my own ears what I am now going to tell you. It is no minstrel’s tale I am going to amuse you with. Machorell is the name of the maiden’s father, and he is ruler of Syria, Jerusalem, and other eastern lands. When I was returning from my pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre, I arrived one evening at the gates of Castle Muntabure, weary and footsore, and the Saracen porter had compassion on me, took me in, and showed me no little kindness. Then it was that I saw the wicked heathen king, whose skin is as black as that of a Moor, and also the beautiful princess Sidrat. I heard it said that he intended to marry his own daughter, when her sick mother was dead, and that was why he cut off the heads of all the wooers who came to ask for the princess’s hand in marriage. Seventy-two skulls already grin from the towers of Castle Muntabure. Say, bold youth, do you intend to offer your head to the Moorish king as the seventy-third?”
“I have been through many a strange adventure before now,” returned Ortnit, “and I shall try to get the better of the infidel.”
On the following day the notables of the realm were summoned to a council. The king told them that he intended to make a campaign in Syria, and desired their help in calling together his army. After many attempts to dissuade Ortnit from such a fantastic enterprise, all was at last settled as he wished, even to the appointment of the governors and deputy-governors in whose hands the country was to be left during his absence. The only person besides the king who carried his point was Ylyas, who insisted on his right to go to Syria or anywhere else he chose, and expressed his firm determination not to lose sight of his nephew.
As the council were separating, Zacharis appeared. He was Lord of Apulia and Sicily, a heathen, but a faithful comrade of the king. When he heard what they had settled, he at once announced his readiness to provide a ship to take the armament across the sea, for which offer the king thanked him warmly. On the advice of Ylyas, it was agreed to put off the expedition until spring, when the weather would be more favourable for a sea voyage.
So the king had to smother his impatience as best he might. He was very lonely, for he knew that no one quite sympathized with him. His mother, indeed, did her best to persuade him to give up the enterprise, by setting its dangers plainly before him, and telling him how ridiculous it was to be so much in love with a woman whom he had only seen in a vision, and about whose character and disposition he knew nothing. He fretted against the idleness and uniformity of the life he was leading, and determined to ride up into the mountains for something to do. When he went to take leave of his mother, she begged him not to go, for fear of some accident happening to him; but, finding that he was not to be dissuaded, she took a ring from her finger, saying, “If you are determined to go, take this ring. The gold is thin, and the stone of little apparent value, but it possesses a magic power that could not be bought with a kingdom. Go where you like in the wild mountains, but first of all ride down the road to the left, that leads over the heights to the lake, then sideways under a wall of rock to the valley. Look about till you find a spring gushing out of a rock, and, close to it, a great lime-tree; there you will have a more wonderful experience than any you could imagine.”
Her voice trembled with nervous excitement, and her tearful eyes seemed to entreat him to ask her no questions.