would not keep him against the will of the king of England.”[565] The time was now approaching when the seas would again be navigable, and Philip presently asked Richard to get ready to accompany him on what was called “the March passage” to Holy Land. Richard is said by a French chronicler to have answered that he could not go before August.[566] It seems that either August here must be a mistake for April, or Richard cannot have been serious in answering thus, unless indeed he entertained some vague project of going back for a short visit to his island realm before proceeding further eastward. Such a project is not impossible; for the reports which had been coming to him through the winter about the state of affairs in England were at once so disquieting and so contradictory that he may well have longed to see for himself how matters really stood and settle by his personal authority the quarrels which had arisen between his justiciars and his brother. In the end he committed the solution of these very puzzling difficulties to Archbishop Walter of Rouen. He had, however, another reason for delaying at least for a few weeks his own departure for Acre. Early in the year King Sancho of Navarre had placed his daughter Berengaria in Queen Eleanor’s charge to take her to Richard to become his wife.[567] Before the end of February the two ladies reached Naples, and Richard sent some galleys to meet them there; but “on account of the multitude of men who accompanied them” Tancred’s people refused them leave to go to Messina—which indeed must have been already overwhelmed with foreign visitors—and they had to spend a month in his continental dominions.[568] Their coming was a clear intimation that Richard was now fully determined to shake off the bonds of his engagement to Aloysia. Philip peremptorily bade him, as his vassal, choose between two alternatives: either to go with his overlord across the sea, in which case he should be at liberty to marry Berengaria, or, if he would not go, to keep his promise of marriage with Aloysia. Richard bluntly refused both.[569] Meanwhile Tancred had invited him[570] to a [Sidenote: _March 3_] meeting at Catania. A splendid welcome was given him there on March 3, and for three days he was Tancred’s guest in the palace. Tancred offered him “gifts many and great” in gold and silver, cloth of silk, and horses, but Richard, “needing none of such things,” would accept only one small ring as a token of friendship; in return for this he presented Tancred with a sword which he seems to have asserted to be the famous Excalibur of King Arthur. Finally Tancred offered a substantial gift which Richard did not decline: a contribution of four large ships “which they call ussers” and fifteen galleys to the crusading fleet.[571] The Sicilian king escorted his guest on the way back as far as Taormina, where Philip was to meet them on March 8. There Tancred is said to have put into Richard’s