Splendidly handsome she was, and doubtless Eleanor had
chosen her for her beauty to be standard bearer of the troop, well
knowing that no living face could be compared with her own, and willing
to outshine a rival whose features and form were the honour and boast
of the South.
They rode in a sort of order, in squadrons of fifty each, but not in
serried ranks, for they had not the skill to keep in line, though they
rode well and boldly. And before each squadron rode a lady who for her
beauty or her rank, or for both, was captain, and wore upon her steel
cap a gilded crest. Each squadron had a colour of its own, scarlet and
green and violet, and the tender shade of anemones in spring, and their
mantles had been dyed with each hue in the dyeing-vats of Venice, and
were lined with delicately tinted silks from the East, brought to the
harbours of France by Italian traders. For the merchants of Amalfi
filled the Mediterranean with their busy commerce and had quarters of
their own in every Eastern city, and had then but lately founded the
saintly order of the Knights Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem,
whence grew the noble community of the Knights of Malta, which was to
live through many centuries even to our day.
Nor could the Queen's ladies have worn mail and steel and wielded sword
and lance, so that at a long stone's throw they might almost have
passed for men, but that cunning jewellers and artificers of Italy, and
Moorish smiths from Spain, had been brought at great pains and cost to
France to make such armour and weapons as had never been wrought
before.
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