On the morning of Shrove Tuesday, in the year of our Lord 1249, Sir Aimery of Beaumanoir, the envoy of the most Christian king, Louis of France, arrived in the port of Acre, having made the voyage from Cyprus with a fair wind in a day and a night in a ship of Genoa flying the red and gold banner of the Temple.Weary of the palms and sun-baked streets of Limasol and the eternal wrangling of the Crusading hosts, he looked with favour at the noble Palestine harbour, and the gilt steeples and carven houses of the fair city.From the quay he rode to the palace of the Templars and was admitted straightway to an audience with the Grand Master.For he had come in a business of some moment.
The taste of Cyprus was still in his mouth; the sweet sticky air of the coastlands; the smell of endless camps of packed humanity, set among mountains of barrels and malodorous sprouting forage-stuffs; the narrow streets lit at night by flares of tarry staves; and over all that rotting yet acrid flavour which is the token of the East.The young damoiseau of Beaumanoir had grown very sick of it all since the royal dromonds first swung into Limasol Bay.He had seen his friends die like flies of strange maladies, while the host waited on Hugh of Burgundy.Egypt was but four days off across the waters, and on its sands Louis had ordained that the War of the Cross should begin.
...But the King seemed strangely supine.Each day the enemy was the better forewarned, and each day the quarrels of Templar and Hospitaller grew more envenomed, and yet he sat patiently twiddling his thumbs, as if all time lay before him and not a man's brief life.And now when at long last the laggards of Burgundy and the Morea were reported on their way, Sir Aimery had to turn his thoughts from the honest field of war.Not for him to cry Montjole St.Denis by the Nile.For behold he was now speeding on a crazy errand to the ends of the earth.
There had been strange councils in the bare little chamber of the Most Christian King.Those locusts of the dawn whom men called Tartars, the evil seed of the Three Kings who had once travelled to Bethlehem, had, it seemed, been vouchsafed a glimpse of grace.True, they had plundered and eaten the faithful and shed innocent blood in oceans, but they hated the children of Mahound worse than the children of Christ.On the eve of Christmas-tide four envoys had come from their Khakan, monstrous men with big heads that sprang straight from the shoulder, and arms that hung below the knee, and short thin legs like gnomes.For forty weeks they had been on the road, and they brought gifts such as no eye had seen before--silks like gossamer woven with wild alphabets, sheeny jars of jade, and pearls like moons.Their Khakan, they said, had espoused the grandchild of Prester John, and had been baptized into the Faith.He marched against Bagdad, and had sworn to root the heresy of Mahound from the earth.Let the King of France make a league with him, and between them, pressing from east and west, they would accomplish the holy task.Let him send teachers to expound the mysteries of Cod, and let him send knights who would treat on mundane things.The letter, written in halting Latin and sealed with a device like a spider's web, urged instant warfare with Egypt."For the present we dwell far apart," wrote the Khakan; "therefore let us both get to business."So Aimery had been summoned to the King's chamber, where he found his good master, the Count of St.Pol, in attendance with others.After prayer, Louis opened to them his mind.Pale from much fasting and nightly communing with God, his face was lit again with that light which had shone in it when on the Friday after Pentecost the year before he had received at St.Denis the pilgrim's scarf and the oriflamme of France.
"God's hand is in this, my masters," he said."Is it not written that many shall come from the east and from the west to sit down with Abraham in his kingdom? I have a duty towards those poor folk, and I dare not fail."There was no man present bold enough to argue with the white fire in the King's eyes.One alone cavilled.He was a Scot, Sir Patrick, the Count of Dunbar, who already shook with the fever which was to be his death.
