Richard was still holding Mary's hands, and she saucily told Musa that she had begun early those lessons of obedience which her lord would surely teach her.
"Flower of Greece," laughed the Spaniard, "in Andalusia the women are our rulers; at their beck palaces rise, wars are declared, peace is stricken. The king of Seville for his favorite wife once flooded his palace court with rose water, to satisfy her whim. Come with me to Spain, not Auvergne."
"No," answered Mary, tugging free her hands and shaking a dainty sleeve of Cyprian gauze, "we will never turn infidel and peril our souls—not even to please you, Sir Musa."
She saw a dark shadow flit over Musa's face: was it as the ship's lantern swayed in the slow swell of the sea? But he replied quickly:—
"Alas! I am not such a friend to the lord of Andalusia to-day that I can proffer there princely hospitality."
Then their talk ran fast on a thousand nothings; but the shadow on Musa's face haunted Mary. She resolved in her heart, she would never again remind him that their faith lay as a gulf between them.
The stout ship reached Marseilles, where she was to barter her Eastern wares for Frankish iron, oil, and wax. Her passengers sped joyously to La Haye, a rich and stately castle in the pleasant South Country, where Baron Hardouin, Mary's uncle, received his niece and future nephew with courtly hospitality, as became a great seigneur of Provence. And when Richard rode again northward with a lock of brown hair in his bosom, he had a promise that, when he returned in autumn, there should be a wedding such as became the heiress of a Greek Cæsar and a great Baroness of the Languedoc.
Never again was Longsword to ride with fairer visions and a merrier heart. He was in France, the home of knightly chivalry, of Christian faith. As they passed through Aix and Avignon and Orange, and all along the stately Rhone, the wealthy lords and ladies entertained him in their castles, Theroulde paying by his stories for all the feastings and wassail. And Richard carried his head high, for the fame of his deeds in Sicily had run overseas; and men honored him, and the great countesses gave soft looks and words,—with more perchance, had he only suffered. "Verily," thought Richard in his heart, "the jongleurs did well to sing that when King Alexander the Great lay a-dying, he had only one sorrow,—that he had not conquered France, head of the whole world." But for the ladies, their troops of troubadours and their "courts of love," Richard had only pleasant words, no more. For Longsword had a vision before his eyes that two years before he had never dreamed. Fairer than all knightly glory, the sweet delirium of battle, the cry of a thousand heralds proclaiming him victor, rose the dream of a strong and beautiful woman ever beside him; her voice ever in his ears, her touch upon his arm, her breath upon his cheek; and from year unto year his soul drawing to itself joy and power merely by looking upon her—this was the dream. And Richard marvelled that once his life had found rest in hawking and sword-play. So as he rode northward, all the little birds upon the arching trees sang that one name "Mary"; and the great Rhone, hastening seaward, murmured it from each eddy and foaming boulder; and the kind west wind whispered it, as it blew over the pleasant corn-lands of Toulouse and Aquitaine.
Thus ever toward the north; at last they touched the domain of the Count of Vaudan close to Auvergne, and near St. Flour they entered Auvergne itself. Then around them rose the mountains like frozen billows of the angry North Sea, their jagged summits crowned with cinder-filled craters; upon their bold flanks patches of basalt, where clinging pines shook down their needles. On nigh each cliff perched a castle, black as the rock and as steep; and amid the clefts of the mountains were little valleys where browsed sure-footed kine; where the people were rude, rough men, with great beards, leather dresses, surly speech, and hands that went often to their sword-hilts.
"Sure, it is a wild land I have come to set right!" cried Richard, gazing at the fire-scarped ranges of puys; and he rejoiced at thought of ordering his grandsire's barony with a strong hand. But Sebastian again was only gloom and warnings.
"Ah, dear son, how much better to leave your grandfather's petty seigneury to its fate, and heed the word of holy Peter the Hermit, who is preaching the war against the infidels."
"Not while Mary Kurkuas lives will I quit her to go to Jerusalem," proclaimed Richard, boldly, and Sebastian shook his head, as was his wont. "'The woman tempted me, and I did eat,'" was his bitter answer; "God is not mocked; your pride shall yet be dashed utterly."
CHAPTER XII
HOW RICHARD CAME TO ST. JULIEN
Now at last they were drawing near to St. Julien, whither Richard sent advance messengers. And as he saw how, despite the rocks and the ragged landscape, fair meadow valleys began to spread out, and wide fields bursting with their summer fatness, he grew still more elated and arrogant in soul. How many gallant adventures awaited beyond those hills! How he would rule with a strong hand his grandsire's seigneury! Nay more, he would do better: he would some day ride over this road with Mary Kurkuas at his side, and hear knight and villain hail him, "Richard, by the Grace of God, Count and Suzerain of all Auvergne." With only five horsemen had Robert Guiscard left Normandy, and when he died, half Italy and nigh all Sicily were at his feet; and should not Richard of Cefalu do better, with a fair, rich barony to build upon?
Presently, after a long day's ride, the young knight's company came forth from the last pass amongst the hilltops, and before them—St. Julien. Richard could see the tall square towers of the distant castle shining yellow gray in the dying sun; he could see the long reaches of ploughed land, the glebe of the Abbey of Our Lady of St. Julien, to whose abbot the local baron paid each year six bunches of wild flowers, token of nominal fealty. Far away were the dun masses of the monastery's many roofs and walls; about the castle nestled the thatches of a little town, a fair stream ran through the valley, and all around the beetling mountains kept watch.
"A goodly land," cried Sebastian, shading his eyes with a gaunt hand; "a goodly land; ah, dear Christ, grant that the hearts of the men within it be as pure as thine own heavens above!"
"And have I done wrong," declared Richard, pointing from corn-land to castle, and thence to river, "to come so far to possess it? Does not God will rather that I should play my part here, than throw away life and love in a mad wandering to Jerusalem?"
But Sebastian shook his head.
"They say the devil can appear as an angel of light; God forfend that the earthly beauty of this country breed perdition for your soul."
So they went down the hillside, laughing and singing, and pricking on their flagging steeds, though Richard saw that Musa was only half merry.
"Tell me, brother mine," said he, "why are you not gay? Do you envy me my first inheritance?"
The Spaniard threw up his hands in inimitable gesture.
"Wallah; is not your joy my joy, soul of my soul!" cried he, earnestly. "Not gay? Allah forbid that there be truth in portents. As at noon we rested, and I slept under the trees, I dreamt that I was grievously plucked by the hair."
"And that forbodes—?"
"That some calamity or ill news comes either to me or to some dear to me. So our Arabian diviners interpret dreams, and so some years since Al-Aāzid, my master at Cordova, instructed me."
"Christ defend us!" quoth Richard, crossing himself. He was not imagining ill for himself nor for Musa, but for Mary Kurkuas.
"Be not troubled," continued the Spaniard; "the surest presages often fail." Richard rode on in silence. The melancholy of his friend was contagious. A cloud drifted over the sun; the bright landscape darkened. As they passed by a wayside cross on the hillside, a skeleton swung from an oak in the hot wind—some brigand or villain, who had enraged the seigneur. A wretched beggar met them, just as they plunged into the trees to enter the valley.
"Alms! alms! kind lord," he croaked, his face red with bloody patches; and as he spoke he lay on the ground, and foamed as if grievously