Arab countries -- Fiction; Crusades -- Fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485 -- Fiction
As it happened, at the full tide they floated off the bank and drifted
with the ebb down towards the sea. At the first break of dawn she
looked up, and there, looming large in the mist, lay a galley, anchored
in the mouth of the river. Giving thanks to Allah for their safe
arrival, the band brought her aboard and led her towards the cabin. On
the poop stood a tall man, who was commanding the sailors that they
should get up the anchor. As she came he advanced to her, bowing and
saying:
“Lady Rosamund, thus you find me once more, who doubtless you never
thought to see again.”
She looked at him in the faint light and her blood went cold. It was
the knight Lozelle.
“You here, Sir Hugh?” she gasped.
“Where you are, there I am,” he answered, with a sneer upon his coarse,
handsome face. “Did I not swear that it should be so, beauteous
Rosamund, after your saintly cousin worsted me in the fray?”
“You here?” she repeated, “you, a Christian knight, and in the pay of
Saladin!”
“In the pay of anyone who leads me to you, Rosamund.” Then, seeing the
emir Hassan approach, he turned to give some orders to the sailors, and
she passed on to the cabin and in her agony fell upon her knees.
When Rosamund rose from them she felt that the ship was moving, and,
desiring to look her last on Essex land, went out again upon the poop,
where Hassan and Sir Hugh placed themselves, one upon either side of
her. Then it was that she saw the tower of St. Peter’s-on-the-Wall and
her cousins seated on horseback in front of it, the light of the risen
sun shining upon their mail. Also she saw Wulf spur his horse into the
sea, and faintly heard his great cry of “Fear not! We follow, we
follow!”
A thought came to her, and she sprang towards the bulwark; but they
were watching and held her, so that all that she could do was to throw
up her arms in token.
Now the wind caught the sail and the ship went forward swiftly, so that
soon she lost sight of them. Then in her grief and rage Rosamund turned
upon Sir Hugh Lozelle and beat him with bitter words till he shrank
before her.
“Coward and traitor!” she said. “So it was you who planned this,
knowing every secret of our home, where often you were a guest! You who
for Paynim gold have murdered my father, not daring to show your face
before his sword, but hanging like a thief upon the coast, ready to
receive what braver men had stolen. Oh! may God avenge his blood and me
on you, false knight—false to Him and me and faith and honour—as avenge
He will! Heard you not what my kinsman called to me? ‘We follow. We
follow!’ Yes, they follow, and their swords—those swords you feared to
look on—shall yet pierce your heart and give up your soul to your
master Satan,” and she paused, trembling with her righteous wrath,
while Hassan stared at her and muttered:
“By Allah, a princess indeed! So have I seen Salah-ed-din look in his
rage. Yes, and she has his very eyes.”
But Sir Hugh answered in a thick voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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