SPEARS OF DESTINY

A STORY OF THE FIRST CAPTURE
OF CONSTANTINOPLE

BY

ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH

AUTHOR OF "THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURES
OF MILES McCONAUGHY," ETC.

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America

TO
ARTHUR SULLIVANT HOFFMAN
IN A SPIRIT SOMEWHAT
MALICIOUS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I [In Crowden Wood]
II [Strangers at Blancherive]
III [The Knife in the Twilight]
IV [The Jongleur and the Greenwood Men]
V [Hugh Gains a Friend]
VI [The Swart Shipman]
VII [The Sea-Wolves]
VIII [Spears of Destiny]
IX [The Comrades Take the Cross]
X [How Hugh Was Tested]
XI [The Green Gondola]
XII [The Isle of Rabbits]
XIII [In The Power of the Doge]
XIV [The Bargain of the Host]
XV [Hugh's Enemies Strike Again]
XVI [The Imperial City]
XVII [How Hugh Won Knighthood]
XVIII [The Storming of the Walls]
XIX [How the False Alexius Fled]
XX [Treachery]
XXI [How Hugh's Quest Was Ended]
XXII [The Treasure of the Bucoleon]
XXIII [How Bartolommeo Trusted a Strange Jailer]
XXIV [How the Comrades Rode to Blachernae]
XXV [Vengeance]
XXVI [Lords of the World]
[Epilogue]

SPEARS OF DESTINY

CHAPTER I
IN CROWDEN WOOD

"Harrow! On, hounds! On, hounds! Take him, dogs! Out, harrow!"

The aisles of Crowden Wood rang to the clamour of voices and the belling of shaggy hounds. Through the budding foliage of beech and oak and ash the spring sunlight streamed upon the leaf-brown mould that floored a winding ride. Around one end of this leafy tunnel scampered a fox, nose close to the ground, brush held high. His pink tongue dripped over slavering jaws and his little eyes were very bright, but his stride was tireless. One look he cast over his shoulder as he turned the corner—and as he saw the leading hounds leap into view, he stretched his pace until he seemed a red shadow flickering through the golden-greens of sunshine and foliage.

"Harrow! Harrow!"

Two mounted figures swept into the ride on the heels of the galloping hounds. Side by side they rode—a girl in a green doublet and soft deerskin breeches, astride a gallant black mare, and a tall youth, also in forest-green, upon a great grey stallion. Behind them followed a third horseman, a gigantic figure of a man, young, red-faced, intensely serious, above whose shoulder rose the end of a six-foot bow stave.

"The scent is fresh," cried the youth. "Hear them give tongue, Edith."

The girl nodded merrily. She was a slim, lissome creature, who might have seemed a boy had it not been for the exquisite fineness of her features and her crown of sun-pierced yellow hair, scarce covered by a jaunty little hunting-cap. She was Saxon, beyond a doubt. The youth beside her, a lean-flanked stripling of twenty, was as plainly Norman. His face was dark and narrow and his nose aquiline. His black hair already was clipped close for the helmet. He held his stallion as easily as the girl controlled her mare.

"We are fair on him now," she answered. "But look you, Hugh, he makes toward the London road, and if he wins across we may lose him in the wilds beyond."

"He'll not go far, except the Saints speed him, with this handicap," retorted the young man confidently. He turned in his saddle. "How far hence is the London Road, Ralph?" he called back.

The giant with the long-bow pressed his steed closer and peered ahead.

"'Tis closer than I like to think of, Messer Hugh," he said. "There is another long ride, and then——"

They spoke in that peculiar dialect of Norman French which was the language of the ruling class in England and of its retainers.

The girl interrupted with an exclamation, pointing her hunting-spear toward the far distance where the ride ended in an arched opening that showed dusty-white. Midway of it trembled the red brush of Dan Russell, and hard after him raced the hounds. Hugh stood up in his short stirrups.

"On, Pelleas! On, Hector!" he cried. "Bravely, hounds! Harrow! Out, harrow!"

He touched his heels ever so lightly to the grey stallion's flanks, and the big horse flew over the leaf-strewn ground like an arrow from a long-bow. The black mare closed up to the stallion's flank, and hung there, graceful as a swallow in flight. With a despairing yell, Ralph was left far behind. His lumbering war-horse, good only for joust or battle-charge, was hopelessly out-classed.

That was a brave race. Dan Russell forgot to flick his tail, and put every ounce of his plucky heart into out-distancing the hounds. Across the white highroad, he knew, there was a wilderness untracked by winding rides, virgin forest that rolled away across several shires, peopled by the red deer, charcoal-burners, the forest's wild things and out-laws. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the hounds overhauled him, but Dan Russell kept his lead. He might have kept his freedom and his life, too, but when he burst from the ride onto the highroad, scrambling up the embankment the Romans had raised when they built it, he found himself in a confused huddle of horsemen, who shouted and reined back and spurred ahead and blocked his escape effectually.

Into this turmoil leaped the hounds, their fangs flashing. There was one yelp, a flurry of bloody fur, and Dan Russell's last race was run. The youth and the girl pounded out of the ride in the midst of the confusion, and reined in their horses barely in time to avoid riding down a couple of pack-mules and a frightened servant who cowered in the dust.

"By the Bodyless Ones, but you ride hard, gentles!" drawled a voice in Norman French with a sibilant lisp.

Hugh pulled his stallion around on its haunches. The speaker was a man of his own height, dark with a Latin darkness quite unlike Hugh's Northern tincture, clothed richly in stuffs that even Hugh's untutored eye identified as the fabrics of Eastern looms. He might have been anywhere from thirty to forty years in age, and he had an assurance of manner that indicated wide experience. Involuntarily, Hugh hated the man, hated him coldly, but implacably, for his cruel thin-lipped mouth and inscrutable eyes that hinted at grim secrets within and greedily fastened on Edith's flushed face.

But Hugh was an English gentleman, this man was a stranger, and the courtesies of the day were just beginning to elaborate into the full-flowered perfection of the age of chivalry. Off came Hugh's cap, and he bowed to his saddle-bow.

"I crave your pardon, sir, if my hounds disturbed your servants," he apologised. "We are not wont to kill in the highroad. 'Twas a mischance."

"Say no more," replied the stranger, forced to withdraw his eyes from the girl's face. "You ran your quarry well, young sir. In sooth, you took us by surprise. One moment, and we plodded calmly along, dull as pilgrims. The next, and I feared me some robber baron was worrying my train."

He spoke with a tentative lilt of humour, his eyes again fastened on the girl's face, as if to force her into the conversation. But Hugh refused to be drawn.

"Give you god-den, Messer," he said curtly. "Come, hounds! Good dogs!"

A lift of his eyebrows, and Edith reined around and backed her mare into the shadows of the ride. Hugh was about to follow, when the stranger interposed.

"May I crave your indulgence further?" he asked, pressing his horse forward. "I seek Blancherive, a castle of Sir Godwin Halcroft. Can you direct me towards it?"

"Blancherive!"

Hugh's jaw dropped.

"Yes. Do you know it?"

"'Tis on the first road beyond the wood, turning off the highroad," answered Hugh, ignoring the last question, and without giving the stranger opportunity to speak again he wheeled his stallion and dashed up the ride, the hounds a silent pack at his heels, the girl beside him all curiosity.

"He asked for Blancherive," she exclaimed. "Why, Hugh, who can he be? No friend of Uncle Godwin's that I wot of."

"No, the man is new to me," Hugh agreed. "You heard him ask his way. A stranger. No Frenchman by his talk, either. It may be he is from Italy."

"From Italy? But who would come seeking Uncle Godwin from Italy?"

"Would that I knew, Edith. Well, shall we head back to the Castle and find out?"

She considered, her face of a sudden very grave.

"No, I have a feeling bids me not, Hugh," she decided. "Let us make the most of this day while we have it. What next?"

"First pick up Ralph. Then—what say you to flushing Prior Thomas? I am starved, and there is always good food at the Priory."

"Excellent," she applauded. "'Tis better far than the Castle hall and company manners, if strangers be there. Yonder is Ralph. I'll race you to him."

"Done!"

Away galloped the two steeds, neck and neck, and Ralph, seeing them coming, drew aside. They thundered up to him and reined to a halt.

"Who won?" demanded Edith.

"Nay, mistress, I did not see," stammered the giant. "There was not a whisker between the noses of the two. But this long time past I have thought ye dead or broken."

"We have had an adventure, Ralph," Hugh told him. "We have met strangers for Blancherive on the highroad."

"Not the King's heralds from London?"

"Nay, fool! King John is too concerned with his own affairs to waste heralds on us. They were strangers—from Outremer, mayhap."

Ralph's eyes grew big.

"From Outremer? Belike they have seen the heathen lands, where the Paynims and the man-eaters live."

"Well, of that we shall learn more anon," returned Hugh, by no means sceptical. "For this present, Ralph, we seek the Prior and food. Canst lead us thither the shortest way?"

"Ay, and that readily."

It was a half-hour's canter to Crowden Priory on the near edge of the Wood, and they rode as youth loves to ride: a headlong gait. Crupper to crupper, the black mare and the grey stallion kept even pace, with never a snort of fatigue from distended nostrils.

For a time they rode in silence, each buried in thoughts that had risen since the odd meeting in the highroad. Then Hugh said abruptly to his comrade:

"I shall ask this man if he wots aught of my father."

Her eyes met his.

"You are still of a mind to go knight erranting, Hugh?"

"Ay, naught shall shake me," he answered gloomily. "'tis a mystery ill likes me. I have a mind to know: Have I a father or have I not? It seems there is none can tell me. I shall go and search for myself when I am free."

"And that will be a year's time hence?"

"'Tis so set down in the deed in Prior Thomas's chest. The day I shall be one-and-twenty I shall be free of the Chesby lands, free of myself, free to do as I list, go as I list, come as I list."

He straightened in his saddle.

"Ah, that day is long in coming, Edith! I find no fault with Prior Thomas. Fair he hath been with me always, and lenient. But these two years now, I have longed to be up and doing, riding with the King or for my own hand. The world goes on apace, and I must sit home here and play at jousting in the Castle yard or——"

"Or ride in Crowden Wood with me," she finished for him reproachfully. "Nay, Hugh, you are not gallant."

"'Twas not what I meant to say," he retorted. "And in sooth, I can find fault with you no more than with Prior Thomas. But you are growing fast to womanhood, and——well, I marked your uncle cast dubious eyes at those breeches as we rode forth this morning."

She laughed.

"Bless his dear old heart! That will have been Dame Alicia, dropping words of wisdom in his ear. Can I not hear her! 'But my lord, she grows over-old for such pranks! 'Tis time a stop was put to such hoydenish ways!' Oh, I know her! Soon, Hugh, they will have me in bounds worse than ever were set for you."

Her voice took on a melancholy note, and Hugh involuntarily stretched out his hand to pat her shoulder.

"But I shall be ready to squire you," he said. "Have we not planned that I shall be your knight?"

"Ay, but mayhap you will be far away." She spoke quite seriously, her eyes fixed on the distance where the spire of Crowden Priory soared above the opening fields. "Do not forget, Hugh, that my way lies toward Outremer, no less than yours. Some day my father will send for me, and that day must I go. He has lacked me over-long."

"That is all settled," declared Hugh. "Have we not agreed that my errantry lies eastward into Outremer, to Constantinople and Byzantium, as well as to the Holy Land?"

She looked at him shyly, half-woman, half-child; underneath the soberness of maidenhood, the gaiety of childhood only half-suppressed.

"Dame Alicia says that men are prodigal of words, and loath to make them good," she answered.

"A plague on her for a sour old maid!" cried Hugh. "Here, there shall be no doubt of this! Wilt have me for your knight, Edith?"

Her cheeks reddened, her eyes suffused and dropped, at the note of mastery ringing in his voice.

"Yes, Hugh," she murmured so low he scarce could hear her above the thudding of hoofs on the leaf-mould.

"Then 'tis fitting you give me a badge to wear for you as my lady," he pressed.

"Art in earnest, Hugh?"

"Never was I more so."

"What—what shall it be?" she asked faintly.

He surveyed her swiftly.

"It must be something I can wear on my helm without fear of its tattering," he explained. "I know not——"

"My glove?" she offered.

"Ay, the very thing!"

She stripped it from her right hand and gave it to him. Hugh bent low as he received it, then stood in his stirrups and waved it high in air.

"A pledge to you, Edith," he cried. "I swear to you by St. James, my father's patron saint and mine, that whilst I have this token no barriers shall keep me from you, if you call me to your aid. I will be a true knight to you, and serve you diligently in all that you require."

Her eyes shone.

"That was finely spoken, Hugh, and I know there was never knight so true as you will be."

"Ay, when I have won knighthood," rejoined Hugh, a trifle moodily, his first enthusiasm past. "We forget I have yet to earn the accolade—at an age when many men are warriors of name and fame."

"Fear not," she reassured him. "You will make your name, Hugh. How often have Uncle Godwin and Robin Fletcher said you would turn out such a man of your hands as your father was?"

"Ay, but——"

He broke off, and thrust the glove into his doublet.

"I trust not words," he went on presently. "And I shall trust myself better after I have been put to the proof. Who can trust an unbloodied sword?"

"I trust you," she answered. "And so does Ralph. Do you not?" she demanded of the huge follower who had closed up on their heels.

"Whatever you say, Lady," he returned simply. "So be it is what Messer Hugh wishes."

She laughed merrily and, despite himself, Hugh joined in.

"I am a churl," he said. "Forgive me, Edith."

"Right willingly. And here is the Priory."

Prior Thomas was standing on the porch of the Prior's Lodge as his visitors rode up. He was a round, merry little man, with shrewd, twinkling eyes and the imperious manner of a great administrator, upon whose shoulders rested the burden of vast interests. No baron of the surrounding shires bulked grander in importance. Crowden Priory boasted twenty knights' fees, maintained its own feudal retainers and exerted a sway that was reckoned with by the King—and respectfully, at that.

"How now, my children?" exclaimed the Prior jovially. "What do you clattering in my close in this worldly fashion, disturbing my monks in their orisons and dazzling the lay-brothers with your pomp and circumstance? A penance on you, naughty ones!"

"And what may that be, Father Thomas?" inquired Edith, as she slipped lithely from her saddle and handed her bridle to Ralph.

"A fine, fat carp," whispered Prior Thomas. "If Brother Engild has done as I directed him, it should be a morsel of a daintiness equal to yourself. Will you join me, the two of you?"

"'Twas what we had determined upon," announced Hugh frankly, as he, too, dismounted. "Ralph, do you take the dogs back to Chesby. Anon, ride on to Blancherive and await me there. Ay, Father Thomas, I would best warn you that we are sore hungered, for all morning we have ridden the Wood."

"Hunting the King's deer, I'll be bound!" exclaimed the Prior. "Now, what ado is this? If the Wardens——"

"Nay, 'twas only Red Dan, and your pullets will flourish the safer for our work."

"Humph," grunted the Prior. "And even so I am somewhat of a mind to turn you over to the King's Verderers. It is not so many years since the fox was made a beast of the chase and reserved."

"I'll chance it," laughed Hugh. "Sir Godwin hath told me of Canute's law, which gives all a free hand at Red Dan, and his Saxon spirit will not put up with any other. I'm with him in that, Father Thomas."

"A naughty fellow, indeed!" protested the Prior, as he led them into the great hall of the Lodge. "Well, you shall have my protection, Hugh, and you have well-earned your meal if you have helped us preserve those pullets. Sit ye down, children, sit ye down. What news do ye bring?"

"We met strangers on the London Road who asked the way to Blancherive," said Edith.

"Strangers? Humph! What manner of strangers?"

"Dark, ill-favoured," volunteered Hugh. "Oh, well enough dressed, I grant you"—this in reply to an objection from Edith—"but I liked not the looks of their leader."

"Whence come they?" inquired Prior Thomas. Foreigners were seldom seen in that out-of-the-way corner of England.

"They did not say."

"No clue to their race?"

"The leader swore 'by the Bodyless Ones,'" suggested Edith.

Hugh gave her an admiring glance.

"Now, that is a clever maid," he said. "I never remembered it."

"It sounds schismatical," commented Prior Thomas doubtfully. "Ay, I suspect that to be a wickedness of the heretics of the Eastern church. Too bad! When you first spoke I had hoped they might be travellers from Rome, who could give us word of the Holy Apostle and his Cardinals. Ah, well, 'tis passing strange if they have come all this way to England from Outremer."

A light flooded Edith's face.

"Oh," she exclaimed, leaping to her feet, "and if they are come from Constantinople, do you think it may be they bring word of my father?"

Prior Thomas stroked his clean-shaven face in reflection.

"Belike, belike," he assented slowly. "It may be, my maid. 'Tis all of a year since last Sir Cedric wrote. Had he known these travellers would venture so far he might well have entrusted them with letters."

"And you will read them to me?"

"What need, with Scholar Hugh to help you?" Prior Thomas laughed. "Ah, Hugh, some day wilt thou give thanks that I made a clerk out of you, for all your arrogant Norman blood."

"In sooth, I see cause for thankfulness already," admitted Hugh a trifle shame-facedly. "This last year I have found it easier to keep my accounts, and there are fewer rents scamped for the records I have writ on my scrolls."

"Good youth," approved the Prior. "'Tis a meritable combination, Hugh, clerkship and swordcraft. Some day, I say—but here comes the carp. To your trenchers, my children."

CHAPTER II
STRANGERS AT BLANCHERIVE

The courtyard at Blancherive was thronged and noisy, as Hugh and Edith rode across the drawbridge and through the passage under the gate-tower. Men-at-arms, grooms and servants swarmed about a group of swarthy, bright-garbed men, who lounged by the Castle stables. Voices clacked high in speculation over these mysterious persons who could not understand either of the tongues known to the Castle's company—that is, Norman French and the Saxon dialect. So great was the turmoil that Hugh must needs force a path for Edith to the steps that led up to the entrance to the Great Hall in the Keep.

There they dismounted, and leaving their horses with Ralph, who awaited them, Hugh and Edith entered the rush-strewn Hall. It stretched before them, high-ceiled, gloomy, its bareness scarce concealed by flapping tapestries and the long tables that reached from the door to the platform reserved for the Lord of the Manor and his family and guests. In one corner a fire blazed dimly in a huge, open hearth. Otherwise the only illumination was the scant sunlight that crept through loopholes in the massy walls.

On the dais sat Sir Godwin and the man they had met that morning on the London Road. The Lord of Blancherive sprang to his feet as they entered. He was a small man, very wiry, with immensely broad shoulders; but he carried himself with a dignity that enhanced his stature.

"What ado we have had!" he called in a deep, brazen voice—the voice of a warrior. "Could you not have done your hunting some other time, my children? But no—I am unfair. You could have done it no other time. You did right to pleasure yourselves, whilst you could."

"Why, Uncle Godwin, what do you mean?" cried Edith.

"Anon, anon," he answered, and turned to Hugh. "I have had great need of you, Hugh," he went on. "You are our clerk, and without you I have been helpless."

He held up several rolls of parchment, tied with parti-coloured silk and decorated with elaborate pendant seals.

"Is it from father?" exclaimed Edith.

"It is. Sore news, my maid. Nay, do not weep. 'Tis fine news for you. For me it spells loneliness, an Hugh makes good his threat and leaves me, too."

Both Hugh and Edith regarded him in bewilderment. Hugh shifted his gaze suddenly to the stranger, and met a stare focussed on his own face. But the man from Outremer looked quickly away.

"But I do not understand," said Hugh.

"'Tis simply that my brother hath sent for Edith, as we knew he must when it seemed him best," answered Sir Godwin. "He hath sent word by the Most Noble Messer Andrea Mocenigo, Special Ambassador to King John, who, he hath been telling me, journeyed hither in one of the dromons of the Emperor of Constantinople, all the way by the Inner Sea, past the country of the Soldan of Babylon, the country of the man-eating people and around the land of the Moors through the Great Ocean. Truly a marvellous venture!"

The stranger bowed.

"You exalt me unduly, my lord," he said.

"And Edith must go by the same way?" asked Hugh, turning the parchments in his hands.

Sir Godwin looked to his guest.

"'Tis so," replied Mocenigo. "But fear not, Sir Englishman. My ship is large, my crew brave and well-armed. I have done the journey before this."

"I like it not," said Hugh stubbornly.

"Indeed, lordling, you concern yourself over nothing," the stranger insisted suavely. "The Most Noble Grand Acolyth, Commander of the Varangian Guard of his Most Eminent, Holy and Christian Majesty, the Emperor of Constantinople, deigned to commission me especially for this task, under the Emperor's sanction, and all arrangements have been made to insure the protection of the young maid. Off Sicily we shall pick up a squadron of escort galleys, but without help we can easily beat off the corsairs of the Narrow Seas."

From the rear of the platform came the sound of weeping. Hugh turned and strove to peer through the shadows.

"'Tis Dame Alicia," said Sir Godwin. "She goes with the maid."

Hugh fumbled with the seals of the parchments.

"When?" he asked.

"So soon as may be," returned the Ambassador. "I must make haste. 'Tis many months since I left my master, the Emperor. I have fulfilled my mission at London, and I must lose no time in carrying back the message of your King. We should ride hence to-morrow."

"But I could never make ready in that short time," protested Edith.

"All is ready for you, lady," answered Mocenigo. "Your father, the Grand Acolyth, requested that you bring with you your old nurse, but he was at pains to provide me with several dames to keep you company on the voyage. They have brought with them dress-stuffs, everything needful."

Edith stood staring into the depths of the hall for a moment. Then she made a little gesture of assent.

"'Tis right I should go, is it not, Uncle Godwin?" she questioned.

"Yes, my maid—but first I would have Hugh read us these letters. It may be they contain further instructions."

Hugh broke the seals and unrolled the first parchment. It was writ fairly in Latin, a tongue the monks had taught him, and dated at Constantinople four months before. It began:

"Sir Cedric Halcroft, known as the Grand Acolyth of the Empire, Commander of the Varangian Guard, from the Palace of the Bucoleon in Constantinople to his brother Godwin, Lord of Blancherive, a Castle which is in England beyond the Great Sea and the Land of the French:

"Brother Godwin, I write this by the pen of one Dominick, a holy monk sojourning at the Hospice of the Knights of St. John, to say to you that I have grown lonely for the maid, my daughter, and it is my desire that you send her, with Dame Alicia, her nurse, in the custody of the bearer of this, one Messer Andrea Mocenigo, Ambassador of my master, the Emperor, and a man learned in travel and the ways of the sea, who hath been commissioned particularly for this task. He is to be trusted. Accept my thanks for the care you have taken of the maid. All goes well with me, and I pray God and His Blessed Saints daily that your lot may be happy."

The other was the most beautiful parchment Hugh had ever seen. It was inscribed in vermillion ink, bedight with gilding and the capitals of the Latin letters all enscrolled with gold.

"To all strangers in all lands," it read. "Be it known that the Most Sacred, Holy and Christian Sovereign, Alexius, Emperor of Rome, Lord of Constantinople, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Scythia, Hungary, Bithynia, Armenia, Anatolia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Mesopotamia, the Islands of the Sea, Jerusalem and the lands beyond, Augustus, hath commissioned his trusty servant, Andrea Mocenigo, to fare forth from the harbour of the Golden Horn in the Imperial dromon Kyrie Eleison and to sail the seas to the realm of England, there to deliver the Emperor's message to the King who hath succeeded him men called Lion-Heart and to bring back with him the daughter of the Emperor's right trusty servant, the Grand Acolyth of the Empire, Sir Cedric Halcroft, in such state as would be accorded a daughter of the Imperial Court. Christ save us all!"

"Well-spoken, well-spoken," cried Sir Godwin warmly. "His Majesty doth my brother great honour."

"None stands higher in the confidence of the Augustus than the Grand Acolyth," replied Mocenigo, with a low bow to Edith. "And all the Court await with expectation the coming of Sir Cedric's daughter."

Hugh glared at the Emperor's Ambassador, wroth at the flush that tinted Edith's cheek.

"After all, 'tis no more than is fitting for her," he said haughtily. "I have heard you say often, Sir Godwin, that she hath in her veins the blood of King Harold and the Sainted Edmund."

Sir Godwin laughed.

"True, lad, but it ill becomes your Norman blood to prate of our Saxon lineage."

It was Hugh's turn to flush.

"Good blood is good blood," he muttered. "No Norman denies it. How many lords of my race have wooed your womankind?"

"Nay, now, that issue is buried, Hugh." Sir Godwin banished the argument with a wave of the hand. "In the haste of our greetings I have forgotten to present you to my guest. Messer Mocenigo, I make known to you my neighbour, the Lord Hugh de Chesby. His lands march with mine."

"Young sir, I am honoured." Mocenigo bowed from his supple hips, his cap sweeping the rushes. To Hugh it seemed there was a touch of irony in the exaggerated courtesy. But his resentment was forgotten in the man's next words. "De Chesby? Surely, that is a name familiar to the folk of Outremer!"

"You know my father, Messer Mocenigo?" asked Hugh eagerly.

"Not the great Sir James?"

"Yes, Sir James de Chesby—'the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre' he was called in the Holy Land."

The Italian gave Hugh a sidelong look out of his heavy-lidded eyes.

"It was never my fortune to know your father," he answered. "But he was indicated to me once in the streets of Tripoli. A stout knight and of matchless fame! The jongleurs still sing of his deeds. 'Tis a vast pity, young sir, he is not with us to-day to fend off the Paynims."

Hugh stepped closer on the dais.

"Do you think him dead?" he asked tensely.

Mocenigo made a gesture of surprise.

"But is not that accepted?" he returned. "It is a part of the story, a legend of itself. I, myself, the time I speak of, saw Sir James de Chesby going down to his galley to start upon his last voyage from Tripoli."

"He is not dead," declared Hugh.

The Italian laughed uneasily.

"Not dead? But——"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course, the jongleurs have that tale, too," he went on. "The heroes of Outremer never die, you know. They say that even Barbarossa, the German Emperor, who perished in the last Crusade, is not dead, but sleeps in a cavern in the mountains of his own land, and that some day he and all his knights will wake up again."

"But none saw my father die," insisted Hugh. "He sailed away from Tripoli. His galley reached Constantinople. Some say he was then on board of her; some say he was not. But nobody saw him die. He disappeared."

Mocenigo raised his eyebrows.

"There is the Grand Acolyth," he suggested. "Has he not——"

"Sir Cedric made inquiries," interposed the Lord of Blancherive. "He could learn nothing. The galley Sir James sailed upon had disappeared from those seas. There was no trace of him in Constantinople, nor was he ever seen or heard of in any other part of the Empire or in the Holy Land."

"He might have been taken by the Saracens," said Mocenigo.

"Think you they would have let pass the chance to boast of such a prisoner?" retorted Hugh. "Or the ransom he would have brought?"

"Lion-heart, himself, bade the Templars and Hospitallers make inquiries of the Emirs of his fate," added Sir Godwin. "King Richard loved Sir James, and would have given much to ransom him, had it been possible."

The Italian shrugged his shoulders again.

"Sirs, you baffle me," he said. "I can make no suggestions in face of what you say. In Outremer Sir James has become a memory, a stirring echo from the past, a shadowy figure in a tale men gather to hear. I have not thought of him as living this many a year."

"He lives," said Hugh stoutly. "And I shall find him—or make certain of his fate."

A startled look came into Mocenigo's face.

"You would seek him out?" he questioned.

"Yes," answered Hugh shortly.

"'Tis a far journey from England to Outremer."

"Yet you have made it."

"True, lordling. But the way was smoothed for me." The Italian wetted his lips nervously. "There are many dangers in Outremer, dangers on sea and dangers on land. The Saracens pin the Franks closer and closer to their few castles on the seaboard of the Holy Land. The Old Man of the Mountains sends his Assassins to slay whom he pleases. Corsairs ravage the shipping. Men slay the stranger first, and empty his wallet and strip off his armour, afterward. When the Franks are not fighting one another or the Emirs, they are quarrelling with my master. Few men live long in Outremer."

A slight smile twisted Hugh's mouth.

"What you say hath interested me still more in my purposed venture, Sir Ambassador," he said quietly. "And if I find only peril and no aid in the Holy Land, I may come to Constantinople, where all is peace and order."

"To Constantinople?" Mocenigo leaned forward, sweat beading out on his face. "But why Constantinople, young sir?"

"Did not my father's galley sail for Constantinople from Tripoli?"

"Ay, but if there was trace of him in the realms of the Augustus, the Grand Acolyth would have found it by this."

Mocenigo settled back in his seat as he spoke, and smiled palely.

"I must go everywhere," answered Hugh steadily. "I may leave no spot untouched in my quest. I have sworn it."

"If my advice had weight with you, lordling, you would abandon your venture. 'Tis more promising of danger than glory."

Hugh looked at him, but said nothing, and after the silence had grown embarrassing, Mocenigo turned to Edith, who stood quietly by her uncle's chair.

"Perchance, you would care to hear of the life at my master's court—the centre of the world, it hath been called," he proposed.

"With your leave, Messer Mocenigo, she must put off that pleasure to relieve the tedium of the voyage," interrupted Sir Godwin. "Dame Alicia hath need of her to settle many matters ere morning."

The Italian bowed his assent.

"Rest assured, lady, no step has been left untaken to secure your comfort," he said.

Hugh felt the hot blood surge through his veins at the hint of devotion in Mocenigo's voice. But to his surprise Edith accepted it with queenly indifference. An hour before she would have blushed and known not what to do. Now, already, she had learned her first lesson in the higher school of life, had leaped at a single bound from the hoyden to the threshold of womanhood.

"I must ride back to Chesby," he said, fighting down the heart-soreness that was growing within him. "Give you god-den, Messer Mocenigo. Sir Godwin, I shall come to bid you god-speed to-morrow, and you ride hence with Edith."

"Do so, lad, do so," boomed Sir Godwin. "St. Edmund willing, I ride with our maid to Hastings port, where the dromon awaits her."

Mocenigo gave Hugh a sinister look from the corner of his eye.

"Forget not my advice, young sir," he said. "Toward Outremer lies danger. Here in England is all that man may desire."

"I know my path," answered Hugh coldly. "I must journey it."

He held back the curtain over the door to the living quarters of the Keep, so that Edith might pass out, then followed her. As the arras fell into place, Mocenigo leaned toward Sir Godwin, his fingers gripping tight hold of the arms of his chair.

"A sturdy youth and a bold," he remarked with studied calm. "How is it he hath not yet set forth upon this quest he speaks of?"

"No fault of his," laughed Sir Godwin. "By the terms of his father's charter, left with the monks of Crowden, Hugh must bide by his lands under tutelage of the Prior until he is one-and-twenty. Then he is his own master. He hath a year to wait."

"I knew not Sir James de Chesby had a son—-or if I did, it slipped my mind," replied Mocenigo.

"He was married but a year. His wife died at the birth of Hugh. Sir James conceived the idea that he could help to win her eternal joy in Paradise by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He set forth ere Hugh was a year old."

"On his way he stopped at Constantinople, I believe?"

"Ay, he was much thought of by the Emperor Andronicus. But he went on to the Holy Land. He fought at Hattin, when King Guy and the Holy Cross were taken. He was of those few who escaped, and he reached the Holy City with Balian d'Ibelin and helped in its last defence. Saladin so admired him, as you must know, that he granted him freedom and presented him with a purse of gold. When our King Lion-heart crossed to Outremer on crusade, Sir James joined him and fought at Acre and Arsouf. When Lion-heart left and the Crusade broke up, Sir James stayed on and fought as chance allowed. He was the best knight ever I knew. We were lads together. Many a spear I have shivered with him."

Mocenigo listened to this with an air of interest that masked his burning desire to get away. He was on his feet so soon as Sir Godwin had spoken the last word.

"If it pleases you, my lord," he said, "I must instruct my men for the night."

"Ay, do so," agreed Sir Godwin. "Whatever they require they shall have. My household are at your disposal, Sir Ambassador."

CHAPTER III
THE KNIFE IN THE TWILIGHT

Hugh paused at the foot of the stairs that led through the thickness of the wall to the upper stories of the Keep.

"We have ridden farther than to Crowden Wood this day," he said sombrely.

Edith's fingers picked at the lacings of her jerkin.

"Yes, Hugh, and we are at the parting of the ways."

"You seem not over-burdened with grief at the thought," he exclaimed bitterly.

She raised her eyes to his with new-found shyness.

"I do not grieve, because it is my thought that your path will follow mine," she answered. "If you went adventuring to Outremer, and I stayed home in England, our parting would be longer than 'tis like to be as things have fallen out."

"I am a churl," said Hugh remorsefully. "Forgive me!"

"Nay, this time I shall not forgive," she teased. "Hast beat me with a stick in years past, Hugh. Hast ordered me about as man-at-arms and squire. Always have I forgiven you. But this time I have a mind to hold my anger over your head."

Hugh's stern young face relaxed into a boyish grin.

"And now I know you for the same old lass," he cried. "Ever ready with words and—— But this talk serves naught. Wilt name me always your knight?"

"Always, Hugh."

"One thing more." He lowered his voice. "Trust not this man Mocenigo. He hath an evil manner."

"He is my father's friend, it seems," she replied.

"Friend or not, he——"

"Trust him I must, Hugh," she rebuked. "He bears my father's warrant as well as that of his Emperor. A great man he must be."

"A great man, indeed!" scoffed Hugh. "An Italian swaggerer, some cut-throat expelled his own country!"

"If you do not like him, I am sorry," answered Edith, with dignity. "But I must travel with him, and I intend that he shall be quick to serve me."

Hugh gnashed his teeth.

"I believe you," he snapped.

He turned on his heel and strode down the corridor. He had gone but half-a-dozen steps, when there came a rush of feet behind him and two arms encircled his neck.

"Great silly!" whispered a voice in his ear. "An you are my knight, what matters any one else?"

He felt something brush his cheek, then was pushed violently from behind. When he regained his balance the corridor was empty, but his ears caught an echo of elfin laughter that floated down the corkscrew stairs.

Probably he would have pursued the laughter up the staircase, but at that moment appeared Dame Alicia, a buxom creature who had nursed Edith from babyhood. She was wiping her eyes and occasionally emitted a rasping sob.

"Take heart, good dame," said Hugh, smiling involuntarily at her lugubrious air. "'Tis not every one goes travelling through the world the guest of the Emperor of Constantinople."

"Oh, Messer Hugh, Messer Hugh!" she wailed. "And if we ever come to Constantinople, it will not be so bad—although how am I to talk with the strangers in the land for want of knowing their tongue? But I doubt sorely we will get there, sailing all those leagues in the Great Ocean, where they say if the mariners be not careful they are like to slide off the edge of the world. And if we do not fall over the edge, then there will be the Moors and the black men that eat people and the Saracens and the pirates and the strange animals that come out of the deep to devour whole ships that pass by! Well-away and alas! Sorrow on the day that brought me to this!"

She stumbled up the stairs after Edith, utterly unconsolable.

Hugh felt no disposition to laugh at the woman's fears. He did not think that she exaggerated the perils of the voyage. But he was convinced that a vessel equipped by so mighty a sovereign as the Emperor of Constantinople must be reckoned able to beat off all except the most determined attacks and capable of withstanding the ordinary perils of the sea.

It was growing toward dusk and he did not linger. He gained the courtyard by a side passage, and sent a varlet to summon Ralph with his horse. Whilst he waited he noticed Mocenigo descend the steps from the main entrance to the Keep and a bustle amongst the stranger's swarthy attendants. But his mind gave the matter no second thought, and he thrust his foot in the grey stallion's stirrup and swung into saddle without a word.

They had ridden over the drawbridge and placed some distance betwixt themselves and Blancherive, when Ralph urged his horse alongside his master's.

"Messer Hugh," he said eagerly. "Did you learn aught of these queer people behind us? They do say they come from Constantinople and the lands of Outremer."

"They are from Sir Cedric," returned Hugh briefly.

"Did they have word for Lady Edith?"

"She sets out with them to-morrow."

Hugh strove to speak as if it mattered nothing to him, but the effort pained.

"Ah, Messer Hugh, this is great dolour for us," cried Ralph. "We shall have no more fine rides in Crowden Wood. Who would have thought this morning she would be——"

Hugh cursed impatiently.

"Ralph," he said, "'tis a matter I like not to think over any more. I would be alone for a space. Do you drop back and follow at a distance."

"Ay, Messer Hugh."

Ralph touched his cap and reined in his mount, an ache in his honest heart at the thought that his idol did not want him.

Hugh rode on slowly, the reins loose on the stallion's neck, his head drooped in meditation. He tried not to think of the events of the afternoon. He tried to fasten his mind upon the accounts he must go over that evening with old Robin Fletcher, Ralph's father and the bailiff of the Chesby lands. He tried, when he was convinced that accounts held no interest for him, to recall the verses of some brave chanson and hum them to himself. He tried to think of the new harness he meant to order in London town against his own journey over-seas. He tried a dozen ways of diverting his mind, all equally without success.

The sky darkened in the west and the shadows lengthened. The trees that lined the narrow track cast a weaving shuttle of shade, as the wind brushed their tops. But Hugh was heedless of all about him. The stallion knew the homeward path and was safe to follow it. Hugh was enwrapped in gloomy consideration of his own affairs. He never saw the slinking figure that crept among the trees, gained the roadside copse and stole slowly nearer as the light waned.

Hugh's first warning was the sudden swerving of the stallion. Out of the tail of his eye he had a momentary vision of a compact object that hurled itself across the road at him, of a knife that flashed in air. Then came the impact. Hugh half-turned in his saddle, and struck out with the hunting-spear he held in his right hand. The blow served to deflect the knife, but his assailant caught him about the waist with one arm and dragged him, tussling, to the dust of the path. The spear flew from Hugh's hand. The stallion snorted and reared, hesitated and galloped back along the way they had come.

Hugh found strength for one despairing cry.

"Ralph!" he shouted. "Ralph! To——"

The threatening knife cut short his words. The man he had to contend with was squat and immensely agile, and very slippery to hold. Time and again in that brief struggle in the dust Hugh thought he had pinned him down, only to find the dark, villainous face, with deep-set, wicked eyes, leering at him from above, the knife barely held off by such a grip as Hugh had secured on the assassin's wrist. It was a battle fought in silence. Hugh was too busy to speak after his first frantic cry. The assailant grunted a few exclamations in some language Hugh did not understand, but he, too, had no wind to spare.

Over and over they rolled, the knife circling and stabbing, slicing and cutting. Hugh's doublet was cut to ribbons, a long scratch on his shoulder bled freely. But always he managed to ward off the point in time to avert a deadly blow. He was tiring fast, however, and a look of ferocious satisfaction was dawning in the squat man's eyes, when the thunder of hoofs resounded in the narrow way.

"Messer Hugh, Messer Hugh!" came Ralph's voice.

The squat man raised his head, sniffed with his nostrils like a wild animal, launched one more desperate blow, and without warning leaped clear and darted along the road. Hugh scrambled to his feet as Ralph galloped up, leading the stallion.

Hugh caught the bridle of his mount.

"Shoot me a shaft at yon knave," he commanded grimly. "See, he runs in the shadows of the wood."

Ralph leaped from his horse, nicked the string of his long-bow and drew a shaft from the quiver at his belt. But the squat man, after a look over his shoulder, swerved abruptly into the woods.

"He is gone from us," said Hugh regretfully.

"Nay, Messer Hugh. I think I know how he must head. Ride after me, an it please you."

Hugh led Ralph's horse between the trees, and followed the archer's footsteps. They travelled swiftly in a direction at right angles to the road, and presently emerged upon an open meadow, surprisingly clear in the twilight. Against the farther wall of woodland showed a running figure.

"I thought so," said Ralph with satisfaction.

He stepped into the clearing, raised his bow and drew the string to his ear.