"God Wills It!" A Tale of the First Crusade.

by William Stearns Davis

"Praised be the Compassionate! Since the battle at Harenc they keep closer to their camps, though Allah that day vouchsafed them victory. It is told that Yaghi-Sian is making so many sallies, they are more than taxed to repel him, glory be to the Most High!"

"I thank you, good sheik; peace be with you!" And Mary had hastened on her way, leaving the peasants to wonder.

One said: "Let us go back. This youth is no common wayfarer. Let us question him further."

But the other wisely answered:—

"The day is hot. What is written in the book of doom is written. Leave the youth to God! Let us reach Aleppo and rest!"

So they fell again to beating the ass, while Mary dropped them out of view. She had been made less weary then, and the dialogue had lent wings to her feet. Presently she came to a wretched village: squalid, dark, rubble houses with thatched roofs; a few poor fields around, with the weeds growing higher than the sprouting corn. She hesitated to walk through the single street, but not a soul met her. The doors of the houses gaped open; within was scanty household stuff scattered over the earthen floors. Every house bore signs of hasty leaving. Two or three were mere charred shells, for the torch had been set to their thatches. Over in the field a flock of crows and kites were wheeling,—some carrion,—but Mary did not go near. Yet, as she walked this street, as it seemed of the dead, forth ran snapping and barking several gray, blear-eyed dogs. For a moment she quaked lest they tear her in pieces. But at the sound of her voice they sank back whining, and followed on a long time, sniffing the bread under her girdle, and hoping to be fed.

She shook them off at last, half glad, half sorry, to have nothing living near her. And now she was sitting by the roadway, looking down into the tiny pool and thinking. She took off her shoes and let her little white feet trail in the water,—very little and very white, never fashioned by the Creator, so she told herself with a sobbing laugh, to be bruised by the hard road. Once Musa at Palermo had composed verses in praise of her feet; how they were shaped only to tread upon flowers, or to whisk in dances, or be bathed with perfumes worth an emir's ransom. Holy Mother! and what were they like to walk over now! She looked at her hands; as she dipped them in the brook nearly all the bronzing of Morgiana had washed away. They too had been praised, times past numbering. A learned poet at Constantinople had written some polished iambics, likening them to the hands of Artemis, virgin huntress on the Arcadian hills. How helpless and worthless they were! Mary saw her face in the pool also. Her beauty—despite the disguise—her curse; the bane of so many lovers! "Better, better," came the thought, "a thousand times I had been foul as an old hag, than to have my beauty lay snares for my soul!" And then the thought followed: "No, not better, whatever be my fate; for by my beauty I won the love of Richard, and the memory of his love cannot be taken from me in a thousand years!" Then, speaking to herself, she said resolutely: "Now, my foolish Mary de St. Julien, though your feet are so weary, they must prepare to be still more weary. For there is many a long league yet before you see the Christian camp at Antioch, and set eyes on your dread Frankish lord."

So, telling herself that she was a soldier's daughter and a soldier's wife, that the toils of travel would be as nothing to her father's campaign with the Patzinaks, she arose to continue the toilsome way. But as she stood over the little pool, the water looked more cool and tempting than ever. It was tedious to drink from the hands—a cup! Her hands went up to her hair, where was the blue muslin turban so carefully wound by Morgiana; and underneath it a silken skullcap. She unwound the turban, her hair fell in soft brown tresses all over her shoulders. As she bent to fill the cap, in the water she saw again her face, framed now in the shining hair.

"Allah!" she cried, after the manner of the Arabs, "how beautiful I am! how Richard will love me!" And she laughed at her own complacency. A sudden shout made her start like a fawn when the hounds are baying; then a rush of hoofs, an outcry.

"Iftikhar! He is pursuing!" her thought; and Mary sprang to run up the sandy hillside. Not Iftikhar; from behind the little sand-hill to the west six horsemen had appeared in a twinkling: all on long-limbed, sleek-coated desert steeds. Mary ran as for dear life, scarce knowing what she did.