The Children's Crusade Read online

  The Heritage of Literature Series

  SECTION A NO. 94

  THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE

  The Children’s Crusade

  HENRY TREECE

  ILLUSTRATED BY

  CHARLES KEEPING

  LONGMANS

  LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO LTD

  48 Grosvenor Street, London W1Associated companies, branches and representatives throughout the world

  First published by The Bodley Head Ltd 1958 © Henry Treece 1958

  This Edition first published by Longmans, Green &. Co Ltd in association with The Bodley Head Ltd 1964 Second impression 1967

  PRINTED IN HONG KONG

  BY DAI NIPPON PRINTING CO (INTERNATIONAL) LTD

  To

  BARBARA KER WILSON who

  suggested this theme

  Table of Contents

  About this book

  Map

  PART I

  1. Lost hawk

  2. The Castle of Beauregard

  3. Bertrand de Gisors

  4. Stephen of Cloyes

  5. Strange meeting and bad news

  6. The magic flute

  7. The boy prophet

  8. Night walkers

  PART II

  9. Strange interlude

  10. Sick child

  11. Gentle priest

  12. Golden chalice

  13. Three riders

  14. Nearing Marseilles

  15. Duel with the sea

  16. Two kind merchants

  PART III

  17. Loss and reunion

  18. Storm and treachery

  19. Abu Nazir

  20. The secret room

  21. ‘Run now, if you wish to live!’

  PART IV

  22. Audience with Al-Kamil

  23. Little Prince

  24. Geoffrey in the garden

  25. Change of fortune

  26. To go a-riding!

  27. Death in the hollow

  28. Captured

  29. Plan of escape

  30. The dream of Gerard

  31. The man in the black burnous

  PART V

  32. The prison at Jedalah

  33. Prisoned birds

  34. The man in the yellow gown

  35. A ship! A ship!

  About this book

  In a.d. 1212 a twelve-year-old shepherd boy, called Stephen, from the little town of Cloyes, near Orleans, went to King Philip of France, with a letter which he said came from Christ Himself, bidding Stephen to organise a Crusade.

  In spite of the King’s disapproval, this strange shepherd boy announced that he would lead a Crusade, of children, to rescue Christendom. He said that the sea would dry up before them, to let them walk safely to the Holy Land.

  Such was his confidence and enthusiasm that children from many parts of France flocked to join him, and, in June, at Vendome, it is said that 30,000 Young Crusaders gathered. So, most of them on foot, and finding food and shelter where they could, these children marched through Tours and Lyons, to Marseilles.

  But that summer was unusually hot, and food and water were scarce in the drought. Many of the children died by the wayside, and others turned back and tried to find their way home once more.

  When the remainder at last arrived in Marseilles, they found, to their great disappointment, that the sea did not dry up, to let them walk, as Stephen had promised, to the Holy Land.

  After a few days, two unscrupulous Merchants (who were later hanged for trying to kidnap the Emperor Frederick for the Saracens), called Hugh the Iron and William the Pig, offered to transport the children, free of charge, to Palestine, in seven ships.

  A few days out, they ran into storms and two of these ships were wrecked off Sardinia. The rest reached the north coast of Africa, where, at Bougie, in Algeria, the children were sold into slavery.

  Some of them were sent on to Egypt, where Frankish slaves fetched a good price, and here about 700 of them were bought by the Governor of Egypt, al-Kamil, who was interested in European languages and wanted the children as interpreters and secretaries. It is probable that the children who stayed in Egypt led a relatively comfortable life, since al-Kamil was a civilised ruler, who made no attempt to convert his slaves.

  But not all of them were so fortunate. It is said that a small company of children were carried as far away as Bagdad, where eighteen of them were put to death for refusing to become Moslems.

  In my story, I have taken the liberty of setting this sad incident in an imaginary town, Jedalah, ‘not too far from Egypt since the distance from Cairo to Bagdad would have been too great for my characters to get there in the time at their disposal!

  It is alleged that, of all the ‘Crusaders’ who started out from Marseilles, only one, a young priest, ever returned to France—and that after eighteen years of slavery

  Medieval histories are notorious for their exaggerations; but the one fact that remains, without doubt, is that the Children’s Crusade (and there was a smaller German one, too) was a great and pitiful tragedy.

  In writing about it, I have tried to be as accurate as I could, without being too depressing, I hope! Anyway, I feel that it is a story which should be told. I hope you do, too.

  Henry Treece

  PART I

  1. Lost hawk

  The great green hill of Saint Antoine stood hunched and bristling with stout oaks in the early spring sunshine. Far below, beside the shallow blue stream with its grey stone bridge, lay the little castle of the Count Robert de Villacours de la Franche. Above the hill stretched the immense blue sky, broken here and there by bellying white clouds which seemed for all the world as though they were themselves monstrously battlemented fortresses of snow.

  Here and there on the hillside sheep moved intently, their new white lambs beside them, nibbling the sweet green grass. A tousle-headed shepherd boy in a blue smock played a catchy little tune on a pipe, jigging on his wooden pattens in time to his melody as he followed the flock along.

  Below, in the flat water-meadows by the stream, a herd of sullen black cattle grazed quietly in the sunlight, flicking their tails lazily to drive away the flies that were already beginning to be troublesome as the day’s heat increased.

  To the south the distant hills of the Auvergne loomed blue-grey in the spring sunshine. All seemed at peace—as though there were no robbers and murderers in the whole of France—no warring noblemen to ambush each other out of jealousy and revenge—no ambushes, no battles, no Crusades… .

  Suddenly, beyond the crown of the hill, this peace was broken. A white dove swept down out of the blue sky, almost as low as the clustered oaks, its wings beating in terror. Above it poised the reason for this fear—a fully grown peregrine falcon, its broad wings flickering on the still air as it took sight of its quarry before the swoop.

  Given twenty seconds more, the dove might have reached the shelter of the oakwoods, where the low-hung branches, thick with leaves, would have afforded protection… . But the hunted bird was allowed no such grace; the hawk was already in full career down the spring sky, its grey wings held so closely to its body that the bird resembled a viciously clenched fist holding a dagger, rather than a creature of feathered flight.

  Yet even as the falcon’s plunge carried it to within a lance’s length of the terrified dove, there came a drumming of hooves from within the wood and a white palfrey appeared, lathered with haste, and bearing a young girl who waved her blue mantle furiously in her hand like a banner as she rode forward.

  ‘Shoo, you brute!’ she shouted, her golden hair fallen from its snood and flying behind her as she rode.

  ‘Shoo! Shoo! Away with you, murderer!’

  She flicked upward with the blue cloak, as
her pony circled the turfy hollow beside the oakwood. The falcon seemed to halt with shock in his swoop, and with a violent fluttering of wing, narrowly avoided crashing to the ground.

  The girl rode towards the hawk, swishing the mantle outwards violently. The bird of prey swept round, its cold eye glinting fiercely at her in the sunlight, then with a high-pitched scream of rage it swung above the trees.

  ‘Hek-kek-kek-kek!’ it cried as it disappeared.

  The girl wiped her brows and smiled. The dove was nowhere to be seen, but at least it was not a mangled heap of bloodstained feathers on the grass, as it would have been had she arrived a moment later than she did.

  ‘Good luck, Jeannine, my dove, my pretty!’ she called.‘Stay in the wood till dusk and then come down to the cote in safety. I will bring you corn and broken bread in the morning, my pet!’

  Then the smile left her face. There was a thundering of hooves behind her and she turned her pony to face the oncoming rider on the foaming black horse. He towered above her, his grey eyes blazing, his golden hair as tumbled as her own. On his left hand he wore the thick horsehide glove of a falconer; a bunch of coloured feathers swung at his gilded saddle-bow. In his right hand he held a riding switch.

  ‘Alys, you fool!’ he shouted. ‘You milksop idiot! I saw what you did to my best tiercel! And all for a worthless pigeon!’

  The girl tried to smile at the boy. ‘Brother Geoffrey,’ she said haltingly, ‘I could not help myself. But I could not stand by to see little Jeannine torn to pieces by that killer, could I ?’

  The boy’s eyes blazed. He kicked so hard in his rage at the black horse’s flanks that the creature, almost as angry as its master, reared and snorted, and almost charged the white palfrey, which now stood panting and shuddering with fright.

  ‘Do you know what it is to train a hawk ?’ yelled the boy. ‘Do you ? Do you ? If you had sat up with it, night after night, for weeks at a stretch, you would know how much I love it. If you had suffered its anger, its beak and its talons, as I have done, you would understand why I am furious! And after what you’ve done, the tiercel will never return. My hawk is lost for ever!’

  Suddenly the girl’s face changed. Her own fear left her and in its place came an expression of haughty disdain. She gazed up at the angry boy as though he were a petulant little child.

  ‘There, there, mon petit,’ she said, masking the fright that still made her heart flutter, ‘you shall have another hawk! I will model you one out of clay—then it will not peck you, little brother! Nor will it fly away and leave you as this stupid creature has done!’

  She could not have chosen more insulting words if she had thought hard for a week. The boy’s mouth opened, as though he was about to say something that would wipe the girl from the face of the earth. But his fury made him dumb and no words would come.

  Then, with a hoarse cry, he kicked at his mount and raised the long riding-switch to strike the girl across the shoulders in his temper. She gazed at him in fear once more, but did not shrink from the blow.

  Vet that blow never fell. The angry boy felt a sharp blow on the hand, and stared aghast at the heavy bull’s hide whip-thong which encircled his wrist tightly. His own riding-switch dropped from his imprisoned hand.

  He swung round in the saddle, groping with his left hand for his dagger, hampered by the thick hide falconer’s glove.

  ‘Splendeur de Dieu!’ he exclaimed.

  He faced another horseman, a man who seemed as broad as he was high, whose thick curly black hair hung over his swarthy forehead, whose thin black moustaches curled up almost until they touched his eyes, whose square black beard jutted forward arrogantly. Geoffrey noted that the man wore thin gold ear-rings, a worn leather tunic, with the rust-marks of chain-armour, and that a much dented iron helmet swung at his plain wooden saddle-bow.

  Geoffrey dragged out the dagger with his left hand and kneed his horse round so as to slacken the tension on the whip-thong which held his right arm prisoner.

  The black-haired man swung away from him then, sprawling the boy from the saddle with the violence of the sudden movement.

  ‘Mon Dieu!‘ he growled in a deep voice. ‘But is there not enough fighting to do in the world but a boy must lake a whip to a girl?’

  His sneering lips, which bared to show his white teeth were too much for Geoffrey’s pride. He had never been spoken to before in this manner, and in the presence of his sister too!

  The boy ran forward. ‘I dare take a dagger to you, horse thief,’ he shouted, and raised his hand.

  The long lash streaked out again and the dagger flew away harmlessly into a clump of gorse at the wood’s edge. Geoffrey stared ruefully after it, now almost in tears.

  Then, collecting what dignity he still had, he controlled himself and said, ‘Very well, my friend; you may think that you have scored over me now, but I give you this advice—turn your horse now and ride as fast as you can go, which will not be far by the sorry look of the animal, for within a quarter of an hour my father’s hounds will be nosing you out. And when they catch you, I can promise you that Robert de Villacours de la Franche will show little mercy to a common soldier who has insulted his only son!’

  The man stared down at Geoffrey, his brown eyes narrow. He shook the whip-lash free from the lad’s arm. Then he coiled it slowly and hung it over his saddle-bow. His movements were so studied, so deliberate, that even the angry young nobleman was impressed. This man’s hands did not shake, nor did his voice tremble as he turned to the girl, and, bowing slightly from the saddle, said gently, ‘I beg you, lead me to Robert de Villacours de la Franche, if that is your father, lady. I shall have something to say to him about his son, something which will make that son forget his high-flown talk of hounds and mercy to common soldiers. Pray, lead on, lady, and I will follow.’

  Then without another glance at Geoffrey, the man turned his horse and rode after Alys, who by this time had gathered her wits again and was not displeased to see her quick-tempered young brother dealt with so firmly, ‘He has too much of his own way,’ she thought, since mother died. It is time someone put him in his place …’

  Crestfallen by the loss of his hawk, his dagger and his dignity, Geoffrey mounted his black horse once again and swung round to follow them down the hill.

  If he knew anything, his father would deal short shrift to this shabby fellow—who could expect to find himself chained to the dungeon wall before half an hour was past … and lucky if he escaped a whipping at that!

  Geoffrey’s spirits rose at the thought. He even began to whistle as he descended the slope, a light little tune that he had picked up from a troubadour of Provence a few days before.

  2. The Castle of Beauregard

  As he rode on down the grassy slope, Geoffrey’s spirits rose still higher, in spite of the loss of his hawk, for the castle of Beauregard below him, almost golden in the sunshine, circled by its blue moat, lay safe and solid and comfortable.

  And he thought of his father’s words to him, only the night before, as they sat together by the central hearth in the great hall, with the men-at-arms singing and joking together about the long oak tables. ‘One day, my son,’ said Robert de Villacours, ‘this house will be yours, to maintain and to add to, as the mood takes you, just as I have done, and my father and grandfather before me did.’

  Geoffrey looked down with pride on Castle Beauregard. True, it was not one of those massive affairs, with many keeps and immensely high walls, and a great clanking portcullis. But then, who needed such castles now! They were as dead as the Great Circle at Carnac, where the Druids used to worship.

  He gazed down at Beauregard, running his eye the length of the place—from the octagonal North Tower with its arrow-slits and battlements, along the adjoining great hall, with its four jutting gables and their leaded windows, then on to the Solar, that snug little room where the thick woollen tapestry hid the rough stonework of the walls and kept the draughts out. He remembered his mother and her ladies working a
t that tapestry, day in, day out, when he was a little lad playing on the floor with a wooden horse that the castle carpenter had made him. That tapestry had once shown a gay hunting scene, in reds and blues and deep yellows; but already it was faded with sun and the rain that beat through the little windows. It was hard to pick out all the figures in the picture. The serving women said that this was because the dyes had not been fast ones! But the Lord of the Manor, Geoffrey’s father, only clucked with his tongue, as though dyes and tapestries did not matter very much… Geoffrey thought that his mother would have minded, if she had been living still, for she had been proud of the tapestry. He remembered that when it was finished she had turned to one of her Ladies to say, ‘There! Now let anyone talk to me of Queen Matilda and that silly piece of stitchery at Bayeux!’

  Geoffrey blinked away a tear and then looked across at the squat South Tower, with its conical leaden roof. That was where he and Alys used to hide, scuttering like mice round and round the spiral stairway that lay in the thickness of the wall, whenever they had been so outrageous as to incur their gentle mother’s anger.

  He recalled the occasion when he and his sister had last taken refuge on the roof. They had done something so terrible that, had the drawbridge across the little moat been down, they would have raced over the cobbled courtyard, past the Gatehouse, and have hidden in the church which lay outside the Castle bounds.

  It had been the day before one of the festivals, Geoffrey forgot which, there were so many; but he recalled that the cooks had been working like demons, inventing stuffings, cracking bones for the tender marrow, plucking wild-fowl and polishing the pewter and wooden dishes.

  He and Alys had wandered down into the cellar below the Solar, and there, in the cool dusk, had sampled some of the barley beer from the great hogshead kept for the fifty men-at-arms. It had been grand fun, each turning the spigot while the other caught the liquid in cupped hands.