The Talisman

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The Baron of Gilsland, who took this for a literal assertion that
he was a century old, looked doubtfully upon the prelate, who,
though he better understood the meaning of El Hakim, answered his
glance by mysteriously shaking his head. He resumed an air of
importance when he again authoritatively demanded what evidence
Adonbec could produce of his medical proficiency.

"Ye have the word of the mighty Saladin," said the sage, touching
his cap in sign of reverence--"a word which was never broken
towards friend or foe. What, Nazarene, wouldst thou demand
more?"

"I would have ocular proof of thy skill," said the baron, "and
without it thou approachest not to the couch of King Richard."

"The praise of the physician," said the Arabian, "is in the
recovery of his patient. Behold this sergeant, whose blood has
been dried up by the fever which has whitened your camp with
skeletons, and against which the art of your Nazarene leeches
hath been like a silken doublet against a lance of steel. Look
at his fingers and arms, wasted like the claws and shanks of the
crane. Death had this morning his clutch on him; but had Azrael
been on one side of the couch, I being on the other, his soul
should not have been left from his body. Disturb me not with
further questions, but await the critical minute, and behold in
silent wonder the marvellous event."

The physician had then recourse to his astrolabe, the oracle of
Eastern science, and watching with grave precision until the
precise time of the evening prayer had arrived, he sunk on his
knees, with his face turned to Mecca, and recited the petitions
which close the Moslemah's day of toil. The bishop and the
English baron looked on each other, meanwhile, with symptoms of
contempt and indignation, but neither judged it fit to interrupt
El Hakim in his devotions, unholy as they considered them to be.

The Arab arose from the earth, on which he had prostrated
himself, and walking into the hut where the patient lay extended,
he drew a sponge from a small silver box, dipped perhaps in some
aromatic distillation, for when he put it to the sleeper's nose,
he sneezed, awoke, and looked wildly around. He was a ghastly
spectacle as he sat up almost naked on his couch, the bones and
cartilages as visible through the surface of his skin as if they
had never been clothed with flesh. His face was long, and
furrowed with wrinkles; but his eye, though it wandered at first,
became gradually more settled. He seemed to be aware of the
presence of his dignified visitors, for he attempted feebly to
pull the covering from his head in token of reverence, as he
inquired, in a subdued and submissive voice, for his master.

"Do you know us, vassal?" said the Lord of Gilsland.

"Not perfectly, my lord," replied the squire faintly. "My sleep
has been long and full of dreams. Yet I know that you are a
great English lord, as seemeth by the red cross, and this a holy
prelate, whose blessing I crave on me a poor sinner."

"Thou hast it--BENEDICTIO DOMINI SIT VOBISCUM," said the prelate,
making the sign of the cross, but without approaching nearer to
the patient's bed.

"Your eyes witness," said the Arabian, "the fever hath been
subdued. He speaks with calmness and recollection--his pulse
beats composedly as yours--try its pulsations yourself."

The prelate declined the experiment; but Thomas of Gilsland, more
determined on making the trial, did so, and satisfied himself
that the fever was indeed gone.

"This is most wonderful," said the knight, looking to the bishop;
"the man is assuredly cured. I must conduct this mediciner
presently to King Richard's tent. What thinks your reverence?"

"Stay, let me finish one cure ere I commence another," said the
Arab; "I will pass with you when I have given my patient the
second cup of this most holy elixir."

So saying he pulled out a silver cup, and filling it with water
from a gourd which stood by the bedside, he next drew forth a
small silken bag made of network, twisted with silver, the
contents of which the bystanders could not discover, and
immersing it in the cup, continued to watch it in silence during
the space of five minutes. It seemed to the spectators as if
some effervescence took place during the operation; but if so, it
instantly subsided.

"Drink," said the physician to the sick man--"sleep, and awaken
free from malady."

"And with this simple-seeming draught thou wilt undertake to cure
a monarch?" said the Bishop of Tyre.

"I have cured a beggar, as you may behold," replied the sage.
"Are the Kings of Frangistan made of other clay than the meanest
of their subjects?"

"Let us have him presently to the King," said the Baron of
Gilsland. "He hath shown that he possesses the secret which may
restore his health. If he fails to exercise it, I will put
himself past the power of medicine."

As they were about to leave the hut, the sick man, raising his
voice as much as his weakness permitted, exclaimed, "Reverend
father, noble knight, and you, kind leech, if you would have me
sleep and recover, tell me in charity what is become of my dear
master?"

"He is upon a distant expedition, friend," replied the prelate--
"on an honourable embassy, which may detain him for some days."

"Nay," said the Baron of Gilsland, "why deceive the poor fellow?
--Friend, thy master has returned to the camp, and you will
presently see him."

The invalid held up, as if in thankfulness, his wasted hands to
Heaven, and resisting no longer the soporiferous operation of the
elixir, sunk down in a gentle sleep.

"You are a better physician than I, Sir Thomas," said the
prelate--"a soothing falsehood is fitter for a sick-room than an
unpleasing truth."

"How mean you, my reverend lord?" said De Vaux hastily. "Think
you I would tell a falsehood to save the lives of a dozen such as
he?"

"You said," replied the bishop, with manifest symptoms of alarm
--"you said the esquire's master was returned--he, I mean, of the
Couchant Leopard."

"And he IS returned," said De Vaux. "I spoke with him but a few
hours since. This learned leech came in his company."

"Holy Virgin! why told you not of his return to me?" said the
bishop, in evident perturbation.

"Did I not say that this same Knight of the Leopard had returned
in company with the physician? I thought I had," replied De Vaux
carelessly. "But what signified his return to the skill of the
physician, or the cure of his Majesty?"

"Much, Sir Thomas--it signified much," said the bishop, clenching
his hands, pressing his foot against the earth, and giving signs
of impatience, as if in an involuntary manner. "But where can he
be gone now, this same knight? God be with us--here may be some
fatal errors!"

"Yonder serf in the outer space," said De Vaux, not without
wonder at the bishop's emotion, "can probably tell us whither his
master has gone."

The lad was summoned, and in a language nearly incomprehensible
to them, gave them at length to understand that an officer had
summoned his master to the royal tent some time before their
arrival at that of his master. The anxiety of the bishop
appeared to rise to the highest, and became evident to De Vaux,
though, neither an acute observer nor of a suspicious temper.
But with his anxiety seemed to increase his wish to keep it
subdued and unobserved. He took a hasty leave of De Vaux, who
looked after him with astonishment, and after shrugging his
shoulders in silent wonder, proceeded to conduct the Arabian
physician to the tent of King Richard.

CHAPTER IX.

This is the prince of leeches; fever, plague,
Cold rheum, and hot podagra, do but look on him,
And quit their grasp upon the tortured sinews. ANONYMOUS.

The Baron of Gilsland walked with slow step and an anxious
countenance towards the royal pavilion. He had much diffidence
of his own capacity, except in a field of battle, and conscious
of no very acute intellect, was usually contented to wonder at
circumstances which a man of livelier imagination would have
endeavoured to investigate and understand, or at least would have
made the subject of speculation. But it seemed very
extraordinary, even to him, that the attention of the bishop
should have been at once abstracted from all reflection on the
marvellous cure which they had witnessed, and upon the
probability it afforded of Richard being restored to health, by
what seemed a very trivial piece of information announcing the
motions of a beggardly Scottish knight, than whom Thomas of
Gilsland knew nothing within the circle of gentle blood more
unimportant or contemptible; and despite his usual habit of
passively beholding passing events, the baron's spirit toiled
with unwonted attempts to form conjectures on the cause.

At length the idea occurred at once to him that the whole might
be a conspiracy against King Richard, formed within the camp of
the allies, and to which the bishop, who was by some represented
as a politic and unscrupulous person, was not unlikely to have
been accessory. It was true that, in his own opinion, there
existed no character so perfect as that of his master; for
Richard being the flower of chivalry, and the chief of Christian
leaders, and obeying in all points the commands of Holy Church,
De Vaux's ideas of perfection went no further. Still, he knew
that, however unworthily, it had been always his master's fate to
draw as much reproach and dislike as honour and attachment from
the display of his great qualities; and that in the very camp,
and amongst those princes bound by oath to the Crusade, were many
who would have sacrificed all hope of victory over the Saracens
to the pleasure of ruining, or at least of humbling, Richard of
England.

"Wherefore," said the baron to himself, "it is in no sense
impossible that this El Hakim, with this his cure, or seeming
cure, wrought on the body of the Scottish squire, may mean
nothing but a trick, to which he of the Leopard may be accessory,
and wherein the Bishop of Tyre, prelate as he is, may have some
share."

This hypothesis, indeed, could not be so easily reconciled with
the alarm manifested by the bishop on learning that, contrary to
his expectation, the Scottish knight had suddenly returned to the
Crusaders' camp. But De Vaux was influenced only by his general
prejudices, which dictated to him the assured belief that a wily
Italian priest, a false-hearted Scot, and an infidel physician,
formed a set of ingredients from which all evil, and no good, was
likely to be extracted. He resolved, however, to lay his
scruples bluntly before the King, of whose judgment he had nearly
as high an opinion as of his valour.

Meantime, events had taken place very contrary to the
suppositions which Thomas de Vaux had entertained. Scarce had he
left the royal pavilion, when, betwixt the impatience of the
fever, and that which was natural to his disposition, Richard
began to murmur at his delay, and express an earnest desire for
his return. He had seen enough to try to reason himself out of
this irritation, which greatly increased his bodily malady. He
wearied his attendants by demanding from them amusements, and the
breviary of the priest, the romance of the clerk, even the harp
of his favourite minstrel, were had recourse to in vain. At
length, some two hours before sundown, and long, therefore, ere
he could expect a satisfactory account of the process of the cure
which the Moor or Arabian had undertaken, he sent, as we have
already heard, a messenger commanding the attendance of the
Knight of the Leopard, determined to soothe his impatience by
obtaining from Sir Kenneth a more particular account of the cause
of his absence from the camp, and the circumstances of his
meeting with this celebrated physician.

The Scottish knight, thus summoned, entered the royal presence as
one who was no stranger to such scenes. He was scarcely known to
the King of England, even by sight, although, tenacious of his
rank, as devout in the adoration of the lady of his secret heart,
he had never been absent on those occasions when the munificence
and hospitality of England opened the Court of its monarch to all
who held a certain rank in chivalry. The King gazed fixedly on
Sir Kenneth approaching his bedside, while the knight bent his
knee for a moment, then arose, and stood before him in a posture
of deference, but not of subservience or humility, as became an
officer in the presence of his sovereign.

"Thy name," said the King, "is Kenneth of the Leopard--from whom
hadst thou degree of knighthood?"

"I took it from the sword of William the Lion, King of Scotland,"
replied the Scot.

"A weapon," said the King, "well worthy to confer honour; nor has
it been laid on an undeserving shoulder. We have seen thee bear
thyself knightly and valiantly in press of battle, when most need
there was; and thou hadst not been yet to learn that thy deserts
were known to us, but that thy presumption in other points has
been such that thy services can challenge no better reward than
that of pardon for thy transgression. What sayest thou--ha?"

Kenneth attempted to speak, but was unable to express himself
distinctly; the consciousness of his too ambitious love, and the
keen, falcon glance with which Coeur de Lion seemed to penetrate
his inmost soul, combining to disconcert him.

"And yet," said the King, "although soldiers should obey command,
and vassals be respectful towards their superiors, we might
forgive a brave knight greater offence than the keeping a simple
hound, though it were contrary to our express public ordinance."

Richard kept his eye fixed on the Scot's face, beheld and
beholding, smiling inwardly at the relief produced by the turn he
had given to his general accusation.

"So please you, my lord," said the Scot, "your majesty must be
good to us poor gentlemen of Scotland in this matter. We are far
from home, scant of revenues, and cannot support ourselves as
your wealthy nobles, who have credit of the Lombards. The
Saracens shall feel our blows the harder that we eat a piece of
dried venison from time to time with our herbs and barley-cakes."

"It skills not asking my leave," said Richard, "since Thomas de
Vaux, who doth, like all around me, that which is fittest in his
own eyes, hath already given thee permission for hunting and
hawking."

"For hunting only, and please you," said the Scot. "But if it
please your Majesty to indulge me with the privilege of hawking
also, and you list to trust me with a falcon on fist, I trust I
could supply your royal mess with some choice waterfowl."

"I dread me, if thou hadst but the falcon," said the King, "thou
wouldst scarce wait for the permission. I wot well it is said
abroad that we of the line of Anjou resent offence against our
forest-laws as highly as we would do treason against our crown.
To brave and worthy men, however, we could pardon either
misdemeanour.--But enough of this. I desire to know of you, Sir
Knight, wherefore, and by whose authority, you took this recent
journey to the wilderness of the Dead Sea and Engaddi?"

"By order," replied the knight, "of the Council of Princes of the
Holy Crusade."

"And how dared any one to give such an order, when I--not the
least, surely, in the league--was unacquainted with it?"

"It was not my part, please your highness," said the Scot, "to
inquire into such particulars. I am a soldier of the Cross
--serving, doubtless, for the present, under your highness's
banner, and proud of the permission to do so, but still one who
hath taken on him the holy symbol for the rights of Christianity
and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, and bound, therefore, to
obey without question the orders of the princes and chiefs by
whom the blessed enterprise is directed. That indisposition
should seclude, I trust for but a short time, your highness from
their councils, in which you hold so potential a voice, I must
lament with all Christendom; but, as a soldier, I must obey those
on whom the lawful right of command devolves, or set but an evil
example in the Christian camp."

"Thou sayest well," said King Richard; "and the blame rests not
with thee, but with those with whom, when it shall please Heaven
to raise me from this accursed bed of pain and inactivity, I hope
to reckon roundly. What was the purport of thy message"

"Methinks, and please your highness," replied Sir Kenneth, "that
were best asked of those who sent me, and who can render the
reasons of mine errand; whereas I can only tell its outward form
and purport."

"Palter not with me, Sir Scot--it were ill for thy safety," said
the irritable monarch.

"My safety, my lord," replied the knight firmly, "I cast behind
me as a regardless thing when I vowed myself to this enterprise,
looking rather to my immortal welfare than to that which concerns
my earthly body."

"By the mass," said King Richard, "thou art a brave fellow! Hark
thee, Sir Knight, I love the Scottish people; they are hardy,
though dogged and stubborn, and, I think, true men in the main,
though the necessity of state has sometimes constrained them to
be dissemblers. I deserve some love at their hand, for I have
voluntarily done what they could not by arms have extorted from
me any more than from my predecessors, I have re-established the
fortresses of Roxburgh and Berwick, which lay in pledge to
England; I have restored your ancient boundaries; and, finally, I
have renounced a claim to homage upon the crown of England, which
I thought unjustly forced on you. I have endeavoured to make
honourable and independent friends, where former kings of England
attempted only to compel unwilling and rebellious vassals."

"All this you have done, my Lord King," said Sir Kenneth, bowing
--"all this you have done, by your royal treaty with our
sovereign at Canterbury. Therefore have you me, and many better
Scottish men, making war against the infidels, under your
banners, who would else have been ravaging your frontiers in
England. If their numbers are now few, it is because their lives
have been freely waged and wasted."

"I grant it true," said the King; "and for the good offices I
have done your land I require you to remember that, as a
principal member of the Christian league, I have a right to know
the negotiations of my confederates. Do me, therefore, the
justice to tell me what I have a title to be acquainted with, and
which I am certain to know more truly from you than from others."

"My lord," said the Scot, "thus conjured, I will speak the truth;
for I well believe that your purposes towards the principal
object of our expedition are single-hearted and honest, and it is
more than I dare warrant for others of the Holy League. Be
pleased, therefore, to know my charge was to propose, through the
medium of the hermit of Engaddi--a holy man, respected and
protected by Saladin himself--"

"A continuation of the truce, I doubt not," said Richard, hastily
interrupting him.

"No, by Saint Andrew, my liege," said the Scottish knight; "but
the establishment of a lasting peace, and the withdrawing our
armies from Palestine."

"Saint George!" said Richard, in astonishment. "Ill as I have
justly thought of them, I could not have dreamed they would have
humbled themselves to such dishonour. Speak, Sir Kenneth, with
what will did you carry such a message?"

"With right good will, my lord," said Kenneth; "because, when we
had lost our noble leader, under whose guidance alone I hoped for
victory, I saw none who could succeed him likely to lead us to
conquest, and I accounted it well in such circumstances to avoid
defeat."

"And on what conditions was this hopeful peace to be contracted?"
said King Richard, painfully suppressing the passion with which
his heart was almost bursting.

"These were not entrusted to me, my lord," answered the Knight of
the Couchant Leopard. "I delivered them sealed to the hermit."

"And for what hold you this reverend hermit--for fool, madman,
traitor, or saint?" said Richard.

"His folly, sire," replied the shrewd Scottish man, "I hold to be
assumed to win favour and reverence from the Paynimrie, who
regard madmen as the inspired of Heaven--at least it seemed to me
as exhibited only occasionally, and not as mixing, like natural
folly, with the general tenor of his mind."

"Shrewdly replied," said the monarch, throwing himself back on
his couch, from which he had half-raised himself. "Now of his
penitence?"

"His penitence," continued Kenneth, "appears to me sincere, and
the fruits of remorse for some dreadful crime, for which he
seems, in his own opinion, condemned to reprobation."

"And for his policy?" said King Richard.

"Methinks, my lord," said the Scottish knight, "he despairs of
the security of Palestine, as of his own salvation, by any means
short of a miracle--at least, since the arm of Richard of England
hath ceased to strike for it."

"And, therefore, the coward policy of this hermit is like that of
these miserable princes, who, forgetful of their knighthood and
their faith, are only resolved and determined when the question
is retreat, and rather than go forward against an armed Saracen,
would trample in their flight over a dying ally!"

"Might I so far presume, my Lord King," said the Scottish knight,
"this discourse but heats your disease, the enemy from which
Christendom dreads more evil than from armed hosts of infidels."

The countenance of King Richard was, indeed, more flushed, and
his action became more feverishly vehement, as, with clenched
hand, extended arm, and flashing eyes, he seemed at once to
suffer under bodily pain, and at the same time under vexation of
mind, while his high spirit led him to speak on, as if in
contempt of both.

"You can flatter, Sir Knight," he said, "but you escape me not.
I must know more from you than you have yet told me. Saw you my
royal consort when at Engaddi?"

"To my knowledge--no, my lord," replied Sir Kenneth, with
considerable perturbation, for he remembered the midnight
procession in the chapel of the rocks.

"I ask you," said the King, in a sterner voice," whether you were
not in the chapel of the Carmelite nuns at Engaddi, and there saw
Berengaria, Queen of England, and the ladies of her Court, who
went thither on pilgrimage?"

"My lord," said Sir Kenneth, "I will speak the truth as in the
confessional. In a subterranean chapel, to which the anchorite
conducted me, I beheld a choir of ladies do homage to a relic of
the highest sanctity; but as I saw not their faces, nor heard
their voices, unless in the hymns which they chanted, I cannot
tell whether the Queen of England was of the bevy."

"And was there no one of these ladies known to you?"

Sir Kenneth stood silent.

"I ask you," said Richard, raising himself on his elbow, "as a
knight and a gentleman--and I shall know by your answer how you
value either character--did you, or did you not, know any lady
amongst that band of worshippers?"

"My lord," said Kenneth, not without much hesitation, "I might
guess."

"And I also may guess," said the King, frowning sternly; "but it
is enough. Leopard as you are, Sir Knight, beware tempting the
lion's paw. Hark ye--to become enamoured of the moon would be
but an act of folly; but to leap from the battlements of a lofty
tower, in the wild hope of coming within her sphere, were self-destructive madness."

At this moment some bustling was heard in the outer apartment,
and the King, hastily changing to his more natural manner, said,
"Enough--begone--speed to De Vaux, and send him hither with the
Arabian physician. My life for the faith of the Soldan! Would
he but abjure his false law, I would aid him with my sword to
drive this scum of French and Austrians from his dominions, and
think Palestine as well ruled by him as when her kings were
anointed by the decree of Heaven itself."

The Knight of the Leopard retired, and presently afterwards the
chamberlain announced a deputation from the Council, who had come
to wait on the Majesty of England.

"It is well they allow that I am living yet," was his reply.
"Who are the reverend ambassadors?"

"The Grand Master of the Templars and the Marquis of Montserrat."

"Our brother of France loves not sick-beds," said Richard; "yet,
had Philip been ill, I had stood by his couch long since.
--Jocelyn, lay me the couch more fairly--it is tumbled like a
stormy sea. Reach me yonder steel mirror--pass a comb through my
hair and beard. They look, indeed, liker a lion's mane than a
Christian man's locks. Bring water."

"My lord," said the trembling chamberlain, "the leeches say that
cold water may be fatal."

"To the foul fiend with the leeches!" replied the monarch; "if
they cannot cure me, think you I will allow them to torment me?
--There, then," he said, after having made his ablutions, "admit
the worshipful envoys; they will now, I think, scarcely see that
disease has made Richard negligent of his person."

The celebrated Master of the Templars was a tall, thin, war-worn
man, with a slow yet penetrating eye, and a brow on which a
thousand dark intrigues had stamped a portion of their obscurity.
At the head of that singular body, to whom their order was
everything, and their individuality nothing--seeking the
advancement of its power, even at the hazard of that very
religion which the fraternity were originally associated to
protect--accused of heresy and witchcraft, although by their
character Christian priests--suspected of secret league with the
Soldan, though by oath devoted to the protection of the Holy
Temple, or its recovery--the whole order, and the whole personal
character of its commander, or Grand Master, was a riddle, at the
exposition of which most men shuddered. The Grand Master was
dressed in his white robes of solemnity, and he bore the ABACUS,
a mystic staff of office, the peculiar form of which has given
rise to such singular conjectures and commentaries, leading to
suspicions that this celebrated fraternity of Christian knights
were embodied under the foulest symbols of paganism.

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