Arab countries -- Fiction; Crusades -- Fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485 -- Fiction
Here also, after giving them a drink of barley gruel, and rubbing their
backs and legs with ointment, they led the horses Smoke and Flame,
slowly and with great trouble, for these could hardly stir, and laid
them down on thick beds of straw, tempting them with food, which after
awhile they ate. The four—Rosamund, Masouda, Godwin, and Wulf—ate also
of some soup with wine in it, and after the hurts of Wulf had been
tended by a skilled doctor, went to their beds, whence they did not
rise again for two days.
Chapter XVI.
The Sultan Saladin
In the third morning Godwin awoke to see the ray of sunrise streaming
through the latticed window.
They fell upon another bed near-by where Wulf still lay sleeping, a
bandage on his head that had been hurt in the last charge against the
Assassins, and other bandages about his arms and body, which were much
bruised in the fight upon the dreadful bridge.
Wondrous was it to Godwin to watch him lying there sleeping healthily,
notwithstanding his injuries, and to think of what they had gone
through together with so little harm; to think, also, of how they had
rescued Rosamund out of the very mouth of that earthly hell of which he
could see the peaks through the open window-place—out of the very hands
of that fiend, its ruler. Reckoning the tale day by day, he reflected
on their adventures since they landed at Beirut, and saw how Heaven had
guided their every step.
In face of the warnings that were given them, to visit the Al-je-bal in
his stronghold had seemed a madness. Yet there, where none could have
thought that she would be, they had found Rosamund. There they had been
avenged upon the false knight Sir Hugh Lozelle, who had betrayed her,
first to Saladin, then to Sinan, and sent him down to death and
judgment; and thence they had rescued Rosamund.
Oh, how wise they had been to obey the dying words of their uncle, Sir
Andrew, who doubtless was given foresight at the end! God and His
saints had helped them, who could not have helped themselves, and His
minister had been Masouda. But for Masouda, Rosamund would by now be
lost or dead, and they, if their lives were still left to them, would
be wanderers in the great land of Syria, seeking for one who never
could be found.
Why had Masouda done these things, again and again putting her own life
upon the hazard to save theirs and the honour of another woman? As he
asked himself the question Godwin felt the red blood rise to his face.
Because she hated Sinan, who had murdered her parents and degraded her,
she said; and doubtless that had to do with the matter. But it was no
longer possible to hide the truth. She loved him, and had loved him
from the first hour when they met. He had always suspected it—in that
wild trial of the horses upon the mountain side, when she sat with her
arms about him and her face pressed against his face; when she kissed
his feet after he had saved her from the lion, and many another time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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