Theroulde tugged at the hairs on his own chin.
"If we see no razor ere long, fair lord, we may swear by our beards as did Charlemagne, were they but whiter, and, as the song has it, of two hundred years' growth."
"Verily," answered Richard, making shift to keep a merry face, "I think I have lived two hundred years in the past month; and if troubles make white hairs, the saints know I am like to become most venerable."
Theroulde said no more, and Richard, looking into the shield, thought in his heart, "Were Mary to see me now, would she still love me?"
But the answer came, "Though your face were changed black as an Ethiopian's, yet she would love you!" Then the further thought, at which Richard's soul grew black as night: "Should he never—never in this world—set eyes on Mary again? Why had God dealt with him thus? Why should she suffer for his sin,—even if it had not been purged at Clermont?" Each day Richard's face grew more terrible; men feared him and praised his holy zeal against the infidels.
Thus the host came to the pleasant city of Antiochetta. Time would fail to tell of all their later troubles: how Tancred and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, took Tarsus and quarrelled over its mastery; how Baldwin seized Edessa and founded there a principality; how the great army trudged its weary way across Lycaonia and mounted the rugged steeps of the "Mountain of the Devil." Many a stout man-at-arms died by the way, of sheer weariness; but the host pressed on. "God wills it! To Jerusalem!" was still the cry, and the ranks closed up.
Then leaving Marash and descending Taurus, they met new foes: no more Turks, but bronzed Arabs on roe-limbed steeds, men armed with cimeters of Damascus, and bright with the silks and cottons of Ispahan and Bussorah. Richard was a busy scout-master now, for he and the few other Christians who came from Sicily alone could speak the Arabic, and need not trust to uncertain interpreters. So he rode before the host with his forty knights, no spirit madder than he,—a very St. George when he fell upon the Moslems.
When they were close to Artesia on their way to invest Antioch, several Arab riders fell into Richard's hands, and he put to them the inevitable question:—
"Dogs,—can you tell me if Iftikhar Eddauleh, one time emir in Sicily, is in Syria, and where did he part company with Kilidge Arslan?"
And the men answered, all trembling:—