The Making of the Morning Star/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
For those who watch the highway and for those who sit by the carpet of sickness, the sands run slowly from the hour-glass, and the water lingers in the wheel of the water clock.
THAT day the muezzin did not call from the minarets at the noon hour. Will Bunsley and Ellen had grown accustomed to hearing the cry to prayer when the sun was at its highest point, and they looked up at the white spires without seeing turbaned figures in the tiny platforms that stood against the blue of the sky.
It was a cloudless day, and no wind stirred the spray of the fountain in the garden. Ellen hung about the path, making pretense of gathering flowers, but really listening with all her ears to the sounds in the street beyond the wall, to be ready to unbar the door the moment she heard Robert's ringing—
“Gate ho!”
She noticed that the noises of the street had changed. There was a steady mutter of voices and a shuffling of feet. The cries of children and the quarreling of loiterers were lacking. And no word came of Robert.
“Lady,” quoth Will Bunsley, arranging his collection of arrows in sundry quivers, “the foe doth make a bruit with drum and horn, so methinks Sir Robert is yet upon the wall.”
“But there is no fighting now.”
Will scratched his head and looked up at the sky dubiously.
“Fighting? Nay, I think so. Armed bands do pass anigh us; so perchance Sir Robert hath driven the foe out upon the plain.”
“Master Will! You know as well as that my lord would permit of no sally!”
Squinting down an arrow, the archer paused to cut back the feathering a trifle. Every day of their stay in the garden he had come in with news of Robert's deeds and his health, and he was well aware that the maid loved the knight with an enduring love.
“Hum. Why then, being weary, my lord doth sleep. For, look ye, a night of sword-strokes doth weary a wight somewhat. Even I”
Ellen smiled at him.
“You are a brave liar and a hardy rogue, Will Bunsley. Think you Sir Robert would sleep when the clarions were sounding? Oh, for one word”
She broke off to listen to the murmur outside the gate, her brown eyes dark with anxiety, for Ellen herself had not slept while the clarions were heard upon the wall.
“Why, lass, he will be here anon,” nodded the archer confidently. “Aye, he sought you out i' the mountain pass and in the wizarder's palace. So go thou within and change to thy warrior dress to greet him.”
The girl knew that Will was hiding his misgivings and wished her to be clad as a man because he thought danger was at hand. So she went to her chamber and donned the light mail and steel cap, thrusting her hair beneath the cotton drop. Casting the silk khalat over her shoulders, she hurried forth to the garden. For a moment her glance quested in search of Will, who had disappeared. Then she heard his voice, loud with amazement.
“Lass—lass! The good father sees—he sees! A miracle hath come to pass!”
Ellen caught her breath, and, realizing better than the yeoman what his words portended, ran swiftly to the room of Father Evagrius. The patriarch was sitting up, one hand clasping his thin chest, the other outstretched in the air; his emaciated face was flushed, and his lips quivered. Will Bunsley stood agape in a far corner.
“Monseigneur!” cried the girl.
The eyes of the priest held a new light; no longer did they wander or lift viewlessly to the sky. They were fixed on the white wall, where the sunlight struck through a latticed embrasure.
“The mercy of God!”
Evagrius framed the words with difficulty, and then his voice grew clearer.
“I see the light of the sun! O blessed and fortunate! Nay, this is no abode of payrams!”
He glanced into the shadows, and Ellen sank on her knees beside him, supporting his shoulders with her arm. The hand of the patriarch felt her mailed throat and the steel head-piece.
“Who attends me? I can not see you, but surely you must be one of the warriors of the Sepulcher. Behold—” his finger darted at the wall—“the tomb! Aye, the sun is bright on the Via Dolorosa and the walls of the blessed city. I can see the ensign of the cross—there.”
His eyes closed, and Ellen felt under her hand the heat of the fever that had made him delirious. Yet his lips twitched in a ceaseless smile.
“Happy are those who have taken up the cross!” he cried again, stretching out his thin arms. “They are at home in Jerusalem, and the weary lie here at rest. O warrior, will you come with me to the tomb—yonder, a little way?”
“Aye, father,” said Ellen, bowing her head.
“And bring the good knight Robert. For the Lord hath called to him the mighty men, and they come from the far places.”
“Aye, father.”
She eased the patriarch back to his couch and looked steadily into his face. After a moment she bent forward to close the blind man's eyes and to cross his hands on his breast.
“Evagrius hath died,” she said to the archer, who had drawn nearer uncertainly.
“Nay,” objected Will. “A moment agone he could see. 'Here is a miracle,' said I, and a miracle it was.”
“Perchance it was, Master Will,” assented the girl. “Now do you leave me, for a prayer must be said and candles placed fittingly. And then—what can we do?”
Will sought the garden and halted in his tracks. A dull crashing resounded from the alley, and the outer door quivered back against its bars. The wood splintered, and the head of an ax showed through. Catching up his bow, the archer strung it swiftly. Kneeling in the threshold of the house, he emptied a quiver at his foot and stuck the heads of a score of arrows in the earth in front of him.
“So-ho!” he muttered. “No friend knocks in that fashion.”
The door fell into fragments, and the bars were cast aside by a tall Kankali who strode into the garden with drawn simitar. The light of the afternoon sun was full in the man's eyes, and he saw nothing of the archer until Will's bow snapped and a shaft struck the warrior's throat, knocking him down.
Two others leaped over the dying man and started across the garden. Will sent a shaft fairly between the eyes of the first. The other reached the fountain, where an arrow clanged into the mail above his girdle, and he plunged into the water. An angry shout from the alley showed that the fall of the three had been observed, and the door remained vacant for a moment. Will heard Ellen's step behind him and called over his shoulder.
“We are beset by the paynims. Go thou to the roof with thy bow, but keep below the parapet. Watch lest they climb the wall in the rear.”
“Who are they?”
“What matter—ha!”
The yeoman drew a shaft to his ear and paused alertly. Two shields had been thrust across the opening on the alley side, and behind this protection two warriors knelt hastily, bow in hand. They could not see Will, and he waited until they had sped their shafts hurriedly and without harm to him.
The attempt was repeated, more boldly this time, and an arrow thudded into the empty quiver at his foot. Evidently the assailants hoped that they had wounded the archer, because a Kankali ran into the garden, keeping his head down prudently so that the steel helmet protected his face. His round shield he held in front of his body.
Will rose to his feet and loosed an arrow that ripped through the tough hide target and pierced deep into the warrior's chest. The man stumbled and lay where he fell.
“They will eke be wiser now,” he muttered, fearful that the Moslems would scatter around the wall and climb it out of his range of vision. “What tidings, my lady?” he called cheerily.
“I can see naught beyond the wall. What happened in the garden?”
“A fat man hath gone to pare the 's hoofs! His comrades hang back. Nay, I think they are brewing mischief.”
He heard feet running in the alley, and a loud outcry. Then a couple of Kankalis swept past as if the fiend Will had invoked were after them. Ellen appeared at his side, fearful that he had been hurt, and they ventured a few steps into the garden.
Horses trotted up from somewhere and halted outside the wall. Through the door stepped a man who was not a Kankali—a warrior whose long beard swept his bare chest, whose iron helm bore the upper portion of a tiger's head by way of a crest and whose wide shoulders were wrapped in the tigerskin. Will fingered his bow, planting himself before the girl. But Ellen caught his arm with a cry of amazement.
“'Tis Abdullah, the minstrel!”
Abdullah, or Chepe Noyon, the Tiger Lord, glanced at them and laughed. Then, while a dozen squat Mongols crowded after him, he began to turn over the bodies in the garden to look into the faces, evidently seeking to identify one of them.
When he reached the last of the Kankalis, who had been smitten through the shield, he bent over and uttered an exclamation of satisfaction. The dead man was Osman, the wazir.
Chepe Noyon signed to one of his followers, who promptly struck off the head of the Moslem minister. Then the Mongols crowded around the two Christians to stare and finger Will's tattered garments. The archer faced them defiantly, while Chepe Noyon studied Ellen curiously. Resistance was useless, and the girl was the first to throw down her weapons.