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.