"Father, were you a sinful man, I should say you were itching to peddle forth a good story."
But the story Sebastian never told.
Soon enough poor Barthelmy's fate was forgotten. For the host was now treading a soil made sacred by the steps of prophets and apostles and holy men of old. The Franks forgot weary feet, the long journey and all its pains, when the march wound under the rocky spurs of Lebanon, and by the green Sidonian country. From Tyre they saw the blue sea, behind whose distant sky-line they knew beloved France was lying. They traversed the plain of Acre, climbed Carmel's towering crest. And now the swiftest marching seemed feeble. Jerusalem was nigh—Jerusalem, the city of God, goal of every hope, for whose deliverance myriads had laid down their lives. The toilsome way through Illyria, the passage-at-arms at Dorylæum, the march of agony through "Burning Phrygia," the starving, the death grapple in battle, and the pestilence at Antioch—all forgotten now! "God wills it! To Jerusalem!" was the cry that made the eager steps press onward from sun to sun; and men found the summer nights too long that held them back. A strange ecstasy possessed the army. Without warning whole companies would break out into singing, clashing their arms and running forward with holy gladness.
"God is with us! The saints are with us! Jerusalem is at hand!" was the shout that flew from lip to lip, as the host passed Sharon, and prepared to strike off from the coast road for the final burst of speed across the Judean plains to the Holy City. Richard rode on, as in an unearthly dream. Half he thought to see legions of angels and hoary prophets rise from behind each hilltop. When he set eyes on a great boulder, a thrill passed at the thought, "Jesus Christ doubtless has looked on this." Almost sacrilege it was for Rollo to pound the dusty road; blessed dust—had it not felt the mortal tread of fifty holy ones, now reigning in eternal light?
So the march hastened. When the dusty columns tramped through Lydda, every man beat his breast, and said his Pater noster, in memory of St. George the warrior, who there had won his martyr's crown. At Ramla they halted to adore the very ground where Samuel the Prophet of God had been born.
And now at the end of a day's march they were only sixteen short miles from Jerusalem, and the leaders held a council. For some who even to the last were faint-hearted wished to march past Jerusalem and strike Egypt, since it was said water and provisions were failing about the Holy City. But Godfrey, standing in the assembly, said after his pure, trustful manner:—
"We came to Palestine, not to smite the Egyptian kalif, but to free the tomb of Christ. Bitterly reduced as we are in numbers, let us only go straight on. Will God, who plucked us out of the clutch of Kilidge Arslan and Kerbogha, suffer us to fail at the last? Up tents! weariness, away! and forward this very night!"
Then all the braver spirits cried with one voice: "We will not fail! God wills it!" So the order spread through the camp, though hardly yet pitched, to march forward at speed; and when the army heard it they blessed God, and each man strode his swiftest to be the first to set eyes on Jerusalem.
It was the evening of the ninth of June in the year of grace one thousand and ninety-nine; three years and a half since the great cry had swelled around Urban at Clermont, that the Christian army set out for this last march to the Holy City. The Christian army—alas! not the army that had ridden forth from France,—that had arrayed itself so splendidly on the plains of Nicæa! For of the hundred thousands, there were scarce fifty thousand left; and of these, twelve thousand alone were in full state for battle. The bones of the martyrs lined the long road from the Bosphorus to Judea. Many had fallen behind, sick; many had turned back craven. But the head of an army dies hardest; of the twelve thousand warriors that pricked their weary steeds across the arid Syrian land, not one but was a man of iron with a soul of steel. Bohemond and Hugh and Stephen of Blois had deserted; but Robert the Norman was there, with Raymond of Toulouse, Tancred, and Godfrey, bravest of the brave.