The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade — John Shaqi
The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last CrusadeYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
General
The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Crusades -- Eighth, 1270 -- Fiction
gave him an inexplicable sense of being again among kindred and friends.
He told himself that it was base, resolved that he would show himself
determined to cast in his lot with his exiled brethren, and made up his
mind to maintain a dignified silence during these two days, and at the
end of them to leave with the Prince a challenge, to be fought out when
he should have attained manly strength and skill in arms.
In pursuance of this resolution, he appeared at the morning mass and meal
still grave and silent, and especially avoiding young Hamlyn de Valence,
who, as the son of one of the half brothers of Henry III., stood in the
same relationship to Prince Edward and to Richard, whose mother was the
sister of King Henry. Probably Hamlyn had had a hint from the Prince,
for though he regarded young Montfort with no friendly eyes, he yielded
him an equality of precedence, which hardly consorted with Richard’s rude
forest garments.
The chase was the order of the day. The Prince rode forth with a boar
spear to hunt one of these monsters of the wood, of which vague reports
had reached him, unconfirmed, till Adam de Gourdon had undertaken to show
him the creature’s lair. He had proposed to Richard to join the hunt;
but the boy, firm to his resolution of accepting no favour from him, that
could be helped, had refused as curtly as he could; and then, not without
a feeling of disappointment, had stood holding Leonillo in, as the
gallant train of hunters rode down the woodland glade, and he figured to
himself the brave sport in which they would soon be engaged.
The most part of the day was spent by him in lying under a tree, with his
dog by his side, thinking over the scenes of his earlier life, which had
passed by his childish mind like those of a drama, in which he had no
part nor comprehension, but which now, with clearer perceptions, he
strove to recall and explain to himself. Ever his father’s stately
figure was the centre of his recollections, whether receiving tidings of
infractions of engagements, taking prompt measures for action, or
striving to repress the violence of his sons and partizans, or it might
be gazing on his younger boys with sad anxiety. Richard well remembered
his saying, when he heard that his sons, Simon and Guy, had been
plundering the merchant ships in the Channel: “Alas! alas! when I was
more loyal to the law than to the Crown, I little deemed that I was
rearing a brood who would scorn all law and loyalty!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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