"This Khakan is far away, sire," he said."If it took his envoys forty weeks to reach us, it will be a good year before his armies are on the skirts of Egypt.As well make alliance with a star."But Louis was in missionary mood."God's ways are not as our ways.To Him a thousand years are a day, and He can make the weakest confound a multitude.This far-away King asks for instruction, and I will send him holy men to fortify his young faith.And this knight, of whom you, my lord of St.Pol, speak well, shall bear the greetings of a soldier."Louis' face, which for usual was grave like a wise child's, broke into a smile which melted Aimery's heart.He scarcely heard the Count of St.Pol as that stout friend enlarged on his merits."The knight of Beaumanoir,"so ran the testimony, "has more learning than any clerk.In Spain he learned the tongues of the heathen, and in Paris he read deep in their philosophy.Withal he is a devout son of Holy Chutch."The boy blushed at the praise and the King's kindly regard.But St.Pol spoke truth, for Aimery, young as he was, had travelled far both on the material globe and in the kingdom of the spirit.As a stripling he had made one of the Picardy Nation in the schools of Paris.He had studied the metaphysics of Aristotle under Aquinas, and voyaged strange seas of thought piloted by Roger, the white-bearded Englishman.Thence, by the favour of the Queen-mother, he had gone as squire to Alphonso's court of Castile, where the Spanish doctors had opened windows for him into the clear dry wisdom of the Saracens.He had travelled with an embassy to the Emperor, and in Sicily had talked with the learned Arabs who clustered around the fantastic Frederick.In Italy he had met adventurers of Genoa and Venice who had shown him charts of unknown oceans and maps of Prester John's country and the desert roads that led to Cambaluc, that city farther than the moon, and told him tales of awful and delectable things hidden beyond the dawn.He had returned to his tower by the springs of Canche, a young man with a name for uncanny knowledge, a searcher after concealed matters, negligent of religion and ill at ease in his world.
Then Louis cast his spell over him.He saw the King first at a great hunting in Avesnes and worshipped from afar the slight body, royal in every line of it, and the blue eyes which charmed and compelled, for he divined there a spirit which had the secret of both earth and heaven.
While still under the glamour he was given knighthood at the royal hands, and presently was weaned from unwholesome fancies by falling in love.The girl, Alix of Valery, was slim like a poplar and her eyes were grey and deep as her northern waters.She had been a maid of Blanche the Queen, and had a nun's devoutness joined to a merry soul.Under her guiding Aimery made his peace with the Church, and became notable for his gifts to God, for he derived great wealth from his Flemish forbears.Yet the yeast of youth still wrought in him, and by Alix's side at night he dreamed of other lands than his grey-green Picardy.So, when the King took the croix d'outre mer and summoned his knights to the freeing of Jerusalem, Sir Aimery of Beaumanoir was the first to follow.For to him, as to others like him, the goal was no perishable city made by mortal hands, but that beata urbs without foundations which youth builds of its dreams.
He heard mass by the King's side and, trembling with pride, kissed the royal hands and set out on his journey.His last memory of Louis was of a boyish figure in a surcoat of blue samite, gazing tenderly on him as of bidding farewell to a brother.
The Grand Master of the Templars, sitting in a furred robe in a warm upper chamber, for he had an ague on him, spoke gloomily of the mission.He would have preferred to make alliance with the Soldan of Egypt, and by his aid recover the Holy Cities."What Khakan is this?" he cried, "to whom it is a journey of a lifetime to come nigh? What kind of Christian will you make of men that have blood for drink and the flesh of babes for food, and blow hither and thither on horses like sandstorms? Yours is a mad venture, young sir, and I see no good that can come of it." Nevertheless he wrote letters of commendation to the Prince of Antioch and the Constable of Armenia; and he brought together all those about the place who had travelled far inland to make a chart of the journey.
Aimery heeded little the Templar's forebodings, for his heart had grown high again and romance was kindling his fancy.There was a knuckle of caution in him, for he had the blood of Flemish traders in his veins, though enriched by many nobler streams."The profit is certain," a cynic had whispered to him ere they left Aigues Mortes."Should we conquer we shall grow rich, and if we fail we shall go to heaven." The phrase had fitted some of his moods, notably the black ones at Limasol, but now he was all aflame with the quixotry of the Crusader.He neither needed nor sought wealth, nor was he concerned about death.His feet trod the sacred soil of his faith, and up in the hills which rimmed the seaward plain lay all the holiness of Galilee and Nazareth, the three tabernacles built by St.Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, the stone whence Christ ascended into heaven, the hut at Bethlehem which had been the Most High's cradle, the sanctuary of Jerusalem whose every stone was precious.
Presently his King would win it all back for God.But for him was the sterner task--no clean blows in the mellay among brethren, but a lone pilgrimage beyond the east wind to the cradle of all marvels.The King had told him that he carried the hopes of Christendom in his wallet; he knew that he bore within himself the delirious expectation of a boy.Youth swelled his breast and steeled his sinews and made a golden mist for his eyes.The new, the outlandish, the undreamed-of!--Surely no one of the Seven Champions had had such fortune! Scribes long after would write of the deeds of Aimery of Beaumanoir, and minstrels would sing of him as they sang of Roland and Tristan.
