Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second CrusadeCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
General
Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Crusades -- Second, 1147-1149 -- Fiction
Gilbert knelt down and laid her head upon Dunstan's coat folded
together, and covered her with his own mantle, gazing into the
unconscious face, small and pale and pitiful, and he remembered how he
had seen it last in Antioch, full of anger and unbelief, so that he had
turned and left what he loved just when evil was at hands and his heart
stood still, and then smote him in his breast, and stood still again,
as the smith's hammer is poised in the air between the strokes.
Beatrix did not move and seemed not to breathe, lying as one dead, and
suddenly Gilbert believed that there was no life left in her. He tried
to speak to Dunstan, but he could make no sound, for his tongue and his
throat were suddenly parched and paralyzed, so that he was dumb in his
grief; but he took the small white hands, with the wrists all cut by
the cords, and folded them upon the breast, and he took his
cross-hilted dagger with its sheath, and laid it between the hands for
a cross, and gently tried to close the half-opened eyes.
Then, when Dunstan saw what his master meant, he touched him on the
shoulder and spoke to him.
"She is not dead," he said.
Gilbert started and looked up at him, and saw that he was in earnest;
but the man's lean face was drawn with anxiety.
"Sir," said Dunstan, "will you let me touch the Lady Beatrix?"
The knight's brow darkened, for that a churl's hands should touch a
high-born lady's face seemed to him something monstrous and against
nature; but in the moment he had forgotten something.
"She is quite dead," he tried to say.
Then Dunstan spoke sadly, kneeling down beside her.
"This lady is half my sister," he said. "I have some skill with
half-drowned persons. Let me save her, sir, unless we are to let her
die before our eyes. A gipsy taught me what to do."
The cloud passed from Gilbert's face, but still he did not believe.
"In heaven's name, do what you can, try what you know, and quickly!" he
said.
"Help me, then," said Dunstan.
So he did as all skilled persons know how to do with half-drowned
people, though only the gipsies knew it then. They turned her body
gently so that the clear water ran from her parted lips, and laying her
down again, they took her arms and drew them over her head, stretched
them out, and brought them down to her sides, again and again, so as to
make her breathe, and the breath was drawn in and breathed out again
with a delicate foam that clung to her lips.
Still Sir Gilbert did not believe, and though he helped his man, in the
despair of the instant, and in the horror of losing the least chance of
life, it all seemed to him a desecration of the most dear dead, and
more than once he would have let the poor little arm rest, rather than
make it limply follow the motion Dunstan gave to the other.
"She is quite, quite dead," he said again.
"She is alive," answered Dunstan; "stop not now one moment, or we shall
lose her."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account