It is strange that Richard did not see how impracticable was his advice. The first half of the scheme proposed by the barons at Tyre was futile without the other half. The kingdom of Jerusalem was sold, beyond redemption, into the hand of a woman. Isabel’s hour had come; she was now, beyond all question, the “right heir” of all the land. Henry of Champagne, nephew to both Richard and Philip, constant companion and faithful follower of the one, yet loyal homager of the other, was exceptionally qualified to become a sovereign round whom all parties could rally, and a healer of their divisions; but these qualifications must prove useless if Isabel should give him a rival by choosing another consort. His election would be of no avail for himself or for the realm unless he took the queen with the crown. The barons at Tyre were urgent that he should do so; he hesitated from fear of Richard’s displeasure, but his personal inclination seconded their arguments. Finally Isabel herself brought him the keys of the city; a priest was hurriedly fetched, and there and then, on May 5, the couple were wedded. The king-elect sent representatives to Acre, Joppa, and elsewhere, to take seisin of the royal rights, and summoned his men to join him for an expedition against Darum.[893] During Henry’s absence from the host Richard had been scorning the country round Ascalon in a series of bold excursions, made sometimes almost alone, and from which he always returned “bringing ten or a dozen, or a score, or may be thirty, Saracens’ heads, and some live Saracens besides.”[894] Another object of these expeditions probably was to reconnoitre the inner border of the plain, and endeavour to find out what were the possibilities of penetrating by some way, other than the vale of Ajalon and its ramifications, through the Shephelah and across the trench and the mountain-rampart of Judea. The most direct way up from the plain to Jerusalem was by the next valley south of Ajalon, the Wady es Surar (Valley of Sorek); but if this were to be attempted, the base for the attempt must be some place further north than Ascalon. The entrance to the third main inlet into the Shephelah, the Vale of Elah or Wady es Sunt, was guarded by a great castle set on a height called by the Arabs Tell es Safiyeh, “the Bright Hill,” and by the Franks (who in earlier days had built the castle) Blanchegarde; both names being derived from the nature of the site, a solitary chalk-hill whose gleaming sides were plainly visible from Ascalon, seventeen miles away, while the tower on its summit commanded a wide view over the surrounding plain, as well as of Ascalon itself, and also of the roads leading northward to Natroun and southward to Ibelin of the Hospital and Hebron. Once already—in December, from Ramlah—Richard had set out to explore the neighbourhood of Blanchegarde,[895] but had turned back again without reaching the place. When on April 22 he led his troops to attack it,