In the days that came it pleased Heaven to put a last test upon the faith and steadfastness of the army. Not even in burning Phrygia had they parched more with thirst. Midsummer, a Syrian sun, a country always nearly arid, and all the pools stopped by Iftikhar, ere he retired within the city;—no wonder there was misery!
"O for one cooling drop from some mountain stream of France!" Had the army joined in one prayer, it would have been this. For a skinful of fetid water, brought far, fetched three deniers, and when the multitude struggled around the one fountain Siloam, often as the scanty pool bubbled, what was it among so many? To secure water to keep the breath in Rollo, Richard went nigh to the bottom of a lightened purse; and still the heavens would cloud and darken and clear away, bringing no rain, but only the pitiless heat.
In Phrygia, and even at Antioch, men had been able to endure with grace. But now, with victory all but in their grasp, with the Tomb of Christ under their very eyes, how could mortal strength brook such delay? Yet the work on the siege engines never slackened. A rumor that a relieving army was coming from Egypt made them all speed. Out of the bare country Northern determination and Northern wit found timbers and water and munitions. They built catapults to cast arrows, mangonels to fling rocks. Gaston of Béarn directed the erecting of three huge movable towers for mounting the ramparts. There were prayers and vows and exhortations; then on Thursday, the fourteenth of July, came the attack—the repulse.
It must have been because Mary Kurkuas's prayers availed with God that Richard did not perish that day. If ever man sought destruction, it was he. When he saw the stoutest barons shrinking back, and all the siege towers shattered or fixed fast, he knew a sinking of heart, a blind rage of despair as never before. Then from the Gates of Herod and St. Stephen poured the Egyptians in their sally to burn the siege towers. Longsword was in the thickest of the human whirlpool. When he saw the garrison reeling back, and Iftikhar Eddauleh trying vainly to rally, he pressed in mad bravado under the very Gate of Herod, casting his war-cry in the infidels' teeth. But while a hundred javelins from the walls spun round him, of a sudden he heard a name—his own name, shouted from the battlements; and the blast of darts was checked as if by magic. The chieftain in the sombre armor had sprung upon the crest of the rampart, had doffed his casque, and was gesturing with his cimeter.
"Musa!" cried the Norman, falling back a step, scarce knowing what to hope or dread.
The Spaniard, while ten thousand stared at him, friend and foe, bowed and flourished in salutation, then, snatching up a light javelin, whirled it down into the earth at Longsword's feet.
"Death to the infidel!" the Christian crossbowmen at Richard's heels were crying as they levelled. But the Norman checked them with the threat:—
"Die yourselves if a bolt flies!"
Then he drew the dart from the ground, and removed a scrap of parchment wrapped round the butt.
"Be before the Gate of Herod two hours after sunset. Bear the shield with the St. Julien stag, and the sentinels will not shoot. Your wife is in the city and is well."