by Harold Lamb
Not a spark of recognition of the silly pilgrim’s cloak, not in good Otto. “His name is Mark, Otto."
Otto eyed them, sensing vaguely something not as it should be. The sunburned stranger said nothing.
"Also," said Eugenia, “he’s the thief who stole Sava wine from Karth yester-night."
She waited expectantly. Otto's wits had to be spurred. “Then what are you doing with him?” he demanded.
“Not I with him, Otto,” she corrected, “but he with me. He holds me prisoner by force.”
Then the agile Luke snatched the horn from Mark’s belt, and sounded off a fine strong call. Otto’s small eyes fastened on the silvered horn that was his own. "Thieves!” he roared. “Ditch them, lads.”
At that his huntsmen rushed Mark, who did not surrender himself. Instead, backing his horse against the nearest oaks, he slashed open the face of the first rider to get near him.
“You’ve done it now, Blondel,” he called out, beating off the thrusting spears and the swords that struck at him. He gave no battle cry, nor tried to break away. He handled his horse well, Eugenia thought, without a saddle; but the spearmen were encircling him.
She wanted to ride her mare between them, since Mark was standing against nine men. But when she pulled on her rein, Luke, or Blondel, held it fast.
Eugenia did not see the third thief enter the fight. Of a sudden he was there among them, on his dappled, high horse. Or rather he had passed through them, leaving two huntsmen rolling on the ground behind him. He did look, as he turned, like a wide-shouldered wagoner.
“Laissez aller!” he shouted. “Let’s go!” And he went through the huntsmen again.
Because Eugenia had been raised in the code of chivalry—which had its rules for hunting beasts and making songs, and love to ladies, as well as fighting men—she knew his shout was no war shout but only the call that sets men in motion in a tournament test of arms. And, amazed, she saw that this third thief was striking only with the flat of his long blade.
He leaned clear of blows and lashed out with the precision of a fine machine. Sifting through Otto's riders, he stopped only when two together rode at him from the sides and Otto, enraged at last, rushed at his back. Then he pivoted the great war horse clear of the three of them, reaching out his free hand as he did so, to grip and pull away Otto's small shield, leaving Otto on the ground with a broken arm.
That ended it. Because Otto and the rest fled from the swords of the two dangerous strangers.
Eugenia had not got away. Mark was riding up to her. With his pilgrim cloak off, he did not look gentle. “What was that oath you swore?" he flung at her.
She had braced her body for a blow or a tongue-lashing. “Jasomirgott,” she repeated obediently.
Suddenly the weariness left his eyes and he laughed, sheathing his sword. “Never trust an Austrian.” Taking her rein away from her, he wrapped it twice around his arm and held the end. “Now,” he said, “we can’t let you go."
Eugenia, now that her fright at the weapons had passed, felt a mighty curiosity. Luke, who had managed to catch a riderless mount during the skirmish, had removed the saddle and was fitting it on the dappled horse, to the satisfaction of the third thief. The other two, Eugenia thought, seemed to wait on him. Somewhere, she had heard of three such lawless wanderers: and somehow, she had known Mark before. Yet she had not set eyes on him before—
The big thief had paced over to inspect her. His wide dark eyes had a child’s curiosity and eagerness in them. “A fair, sweet face," he observed, and pulled her down to kiss it.
“If the other rogues are Mark and Luke," she cried, "I suppose you are Matthew, or John."
"John, if it pleases you, sweet lady,” agreed the third thief carelessly. His yellow mustache was unclipped, his leather jack shirt was soiled and shrunk tight to his massive chest, but Eugenia’s eyes saw more than any wagoner in him.
His kiss had been the casual kiss of courtesy—like a sniff at a fragrant flower. Now he held out a scarred hand to help her dismount. “Will you honor three desperate men by taking dinner with them?”
On his hand gleamed a signet ring, bearing three charging leopards or lions. A royal signet, she thought.
"Sire!” There was warning in the one word wrung out of Mark’s anger. “She is my prisoner,” he added quickly. “She has to be."
“Eyes of God." swore John, “we can’t have that! Release the lass.”
Although John frowned, Mark held tight to her rein. “Think!" he urged. “By now those hunting fellows will be out on the roads, with their tongues wagging. This woman has wit, she has used her eyes, and she is kin to the whole German court. I would trust her no more than a scorpion."
Even while she smiled brightly, she tried to guess their secret. Two of them were noble-born, yet here they stole carelessly; they had driven nine sturdy huntsmen away, as two wolves might drive a pack of house dogs: they wore disguise, clumsily enough, yet they were, she guessed, Crusaders returning home. By every law that Eugenia knew, returning Crusaders were safe from molestation. What crime had these committed? Why did they steal? Where was their home?
“We must ride on, now,” Mark insisted.
“Yes, I suppose so,” grumbled John, and then shook his head doggedly. “No, not without dinner! I am hungry.”
Yes and no—yea and nay. Suddenly Eugenia caught her breath. There was one illustrious man who said yea and nay—so little did he care what happened to him. And only one man in Christendom could use a sword like that.
Yes, this thoughtless warrior had quarreled bitterly with her cousin, Leopold, beyond the sea, and had drawn down upon himself the wrath of other kings, even of the German Emperor. So he had been taken captive on his return from Jerusalem, and had been held in the castle of Durenstein. She had thought he was still there, safely barred in.
“Sire," she cried, “Richard of England!"
When he stared at her, she bowed gracefully in the saddle. "May I, Eugenia Babenberg, offer my poor hospitality to Your Majesty at dinner, in my forest? You already have venison of mine, and my best wine."
Richard the Lionhearted threw back his head and laughed. Mark said nothing.
The three thieves made a good camp quickly. They spread the pilgrim cloak for her under the very tree where she and Walt had sat by the stream. Luke gathered dry wood so that the smoke would not rise from the fire to be easily seen. Mark heated the venison strips on a peeled wand, while Richard jested with her and gave her wine to drink first, out of their one silver cup. She thought how foolish he was to sit idling away the afternoon when he should be in the saddle riding to escape the hue and cry that must be raised after him. If she could hold him here in the glade until darkness, he would lose his way in the forest and might be caught again.
Restlessly Richard took the harp, tuning it painstakingly and singing a ballade that he had made himself, about love being like a red rose. Eugenia told herself that her love was not like a red rose, because it had been bleeding its life away for four years.
But she said no word of that. Mark also was silent. In him she felt a strangeness. When a stone gave way in the stream and the water rushed louder, he lifted his head. His sword lay close to his hand, and his eyes were weary from lack of sleep.
His eyes were not like Walt’s. They were hardened against the glare of unknown deserts, and the sights that he kept to himself. She thought: Our ordinary words of courtesy can have no meaning for him now. Her side under her breast still hurt where he had gripped it.
“Can’t you tell me of Jerusalem, Mark?" She asked gently the question always asked of pilgrims.
“I've nothing to tell,” he said, not angrily, but as if explaining.
Richard wiped his great hands on the grass. “I did not see Jerusalem,” he said.
Luke leaned forward anxiously. “Of three sieges, my lady, and seven battles, of starvation, plague, and winters in the mud, of the jealousy and quarreling of the Christian leaders, we can
tell—”
“No,” said Richard, “we were beaten.”
He spoke heavily, as if trying to think out something not clear in his mind. Across the fire, he looked at Eugenia, anxiously. “After the peace, Saladin offered us safe conduct to visit the Sepulcher. I couldn't go like that, could I?”
“No,” she said, understanding that.
MARK came and raised her up and led her by the hand, away along the stream. Heedless of them, Richard sat brooding over the fire. Luke stayed by him.
The long shadow's of the day’s end fell across them as they walked. “He—Richard never plans too well, except in a battle,” Mark told her. “We should have been riding on before now.”
“To England?”
Mark smiled at that. “Every court in Europe will take pains to keep us from getting to England. Much is at stake."
“How much?"
“The throne of England, I think. I don’t understand very well, and it is hard to believe. We stayed too long in Palestine.” He was talking almost to himself; then he looked at her. “Richard thought we could land, disguised, at Trieste and steal through Austria where we were least expected. But we didn’t manage well." By the tethered horses he stopped. He tightened the saddle on the mare. “We were out of money, Eugenia, so we stole the coins from the lodge. You’d better go now, to be home before dark.”
“Mark—”
“My name isn’t Mark. It’s—”
“Don’t tell me. I want to ask a foolish question first: How old were you when you took ship, to go on the Crusade?”
He had to think to answer. “Seventeen.”
“I was seventeen, then.”
Surely he seemed older, but she knew he was not lying to her. The bitterness in him was not of his making—no more than were the gaunt bones of his homely face. Somehow, she was not surprised, now, that he would let her go.
When she stretched out her hand to him in farewell, he bent his head suddenly, uncontrollably, to kiss it. Not in the polite gesture of chivalry. And she drew back, staring at him. His eyes had changed and become like Walt's, holding hers in grief and longing.
She lifted her arms to let him hold her body close against his. His arms held her not as before when he had caught her on the trail, but as if he never meant to let her go.
EUGENIA the brilliant, the beautiful, ceased to think of herself. She did not think at all, she only felt—the wanting to heal what was wounded and weary in him. Her fingers touched the scar on his face, shyly. “We're foolish." she whispered. It was an old, secret instinct in her body that spoke.
“I’ll never let you go," he cried, as if the words were torn out of him in pain.
The pain of four long years left her, like flood waters released, flowing away downstream. She began to cry but not because she was sad. He held her away from him, and each looked into the other’s face, frightened.
There was a silence in the wood. Through that silence came the baying of the dogs. For some time she had been hearing it without heeding; now she thought of it—the hounds were not of the Karth pack, she knew, nor Otto's. They were strange hounds, drawing nearer, although this hour of sunset was not the hour of hunting.
Richard came stooping under the pines, up to the horses. He was alert, listening curiously. “They come the way we came. They bay as if the scent were old, yet clear. Could they follow the scent of our horses, my lord of Lothian?"
Carefully, the two men listened. “Blondel walked most of the way," said Mark thoughtfully.
Because of the baying of the hounds which might be leading a hunt for the three fugitives, Mark was thinking in that moment only of Richard, his king. To Richard he was bound by the tie of comradeship in war and the oath of fealty.
Her quick ears caught what Mark was saying as they freed the horses. That Richard must ride on the charger up to the higher ridge, while Mark and Luke lingered and drew the pursuit down the other way, until darkness. “We’ll hold them through the night, until you are clear—”
Eugenia cried out, frightened, at that: “It won’t work. There is nowhere to run, you are too few to fight!”
They paid no attention to her. They were leading the three horses back to the clearing, where Luke had moved every vestige of the camp away, into the stream, except the single pack of their gear. But if the signs of their occupancy were gone, the scent remained.
She touched Mark’s arm.
He said, “We must get the king away safe.”
She knew that. And she knew she had to catch Richard's attention by telling him clearly what he could best understand. “Sire, it will be full dark in an hour. Above here”—she pointed up the forested height—“there is no trail, only the tracks of animals and charcoal burners. I know that. You would lose your way and wander—” He was listening to her. “They are bound to overtake you, and they will be well armed. What chance will you have against dogs and huntsmen in the brush and in the dark? You would try to fight them off?”
“Yes.” said Richard simply. “What else is there to do?”
She was ready with an answer. “Stay together, do not hide. Come down with me to Karth and the highway. Those hounds can track you, but they cannot speak. They cannot tell whom they are tracking. Ride with me to the castle, and you become my three guests—for an hour, until you can ride free on the highway in the dark.”
Feeling Mark’s eyes on her, she waited, trying to be as calm as the men were in the face of danger. “And if there’s someone in the pursuit who catches up with; us and recognizes the king?" he probed.
"They may not come up in time. Even if they do”—for a second she hesitated—“we'll be within the lands of Karth and you will be my guests in spite of all. Who will dare say you are not?"
All three of them stared at her. “Will you trust her?” Richard asked Mark.
Luke made as if to speak, and she held her breath while Mark kept silent.
“She is kin to the duke, your enemy,” said Mark then. “Still I would trust her.”
“Then lead on, girl." Carelessly, Richard nodded, and Eugenia laughed from sheer excitement.
“Oh, please,” she cried, “put off the silly cloaks and cap. A lion cannot hide under a sheep's skin. Please!"
They nodded and flung their flimsy disguises to Luke, to hide in the brush. Still, Eugenia was not satisfied. With his shield and great sword and broad shoulders, the king looked to her like nothing so much as a stout man-at-arms. And men-at-arms did not ride thoroughbred chargers. So she made Richard change mounts with Mark.
When they mounted and Mark paced beside her on the dappled war horse—with the king and the minstrel trailing behind—Eugenia was satisfied.
Behind them echoed the baying of the dogs, like strokes on a far-off anvil.
FOR these few moments, galloping down by the stream, she had Mark to herself. Her hand touched his scarred hand. When his head turned, his eyes sought hers as if she had been the holy image of a wayside shrine. He wanted her, she knew, in body and in faith.
Closing her eyes, she could imagine they were riding home at the end of the day, to be in their room the night and the morrow and the morrow’s morrow—he must never ride off from her, she told herself. Something hurt and helpless in her cried out at that.
And she thought: If his king is recognized and caught, he must stay here and be with me for a year, or even for many years.
Out of the forest’s edge, down the upland pastures and by the byres they rode, with Eugenia leading the way and the shadow of the mountains falling over them beneath the fading sunset glow. At the orchard they turned into the castle road. And when they rounded the last turn before the castle gate, they came full upon a posse of a dozen horsemen, armed and armored.
Her first sweeping glance picked out the embroidered jacket of Gerard, a herald of her cousin the duke, and passed on to the black eagle on the shield of Albrecht, warden of the East March of the Empire. Austrian and German officials, they would be the leaders of t
he hunt for the missing Richard.
“I never thought they would come around by the road, Mark.” she whispered, and her heart leaped because he was not there. He was pulling back toward Richard, the three of them were gathering close to make a stand.
Even in the dusk, the men in the cavalcade had noticed this suspicious movement. Gerard's trained voice challenged: “Who is with Your Grace?”
The warden spoke to the men-at-arms, who moved their mounts quietly to form a half circle across the road. They were disciplined Germans this time—not qualmish huntsmen of Otto’s—their shields on arm, their chain mail dark and oiled. Even as she whispered to Mark, “Come," Eugenia thought: Now Richard is stopped and Mark must needs stay here.
The baying of the hounds resounded up the mountain.
“Do you hunt my guests with hounds, Gerard?" she cried, pacing her mare forward. “Make way for them!”
It was the German warden who answered, curtly, “We have an order to search—”
“On my lands, Albrecht?"
“To search on any land, for an escaped prisoner.”
“Who?"
Bowing to her, the Austrian herald lifted a parchment roll he held, and his cadenced voice repeated words he must have known by memory: “I, Gerard, herald to Leopold of Austria, make known the command of the said Leopold the Duke that wherever he be found and in whatever company, Richard Plantagenet calling himself King of England is to be detained to answer for wrongs inflicted by words of his mouth assailing the said duke—”
“What has this rigmarole to do with me?"
“We in our duty must identify your friends”—the warden hesitated, peering at her face—“if it please you, Countess,” he added uncertainly.
She thought: They do not know Richard by sight. “It does not please me,” she cried angrily. “It will not please Cousin Leopold if I tell him of it.”
Contemptuously she stared at them, the cold spirit of anger in her Indeed her beauty was in that moment like a sheathing of armor. “I will identify them,” she said. She touched Mark’s hand. “This crusader who is from Palestine is Mark, lord of Lothian,” she looked at them, “and will be lord of Karth when I shall be his wife.”