He heard not the sounds that came back from the royal train, the high
talking and glad laughter; for that would have jarred on him and set
his teeth on edge, and he had shut the doors of the body upon himself
to be alone within. It mattered not that young Baldwin was riding by
the Queen, already half in love, and making soft speeches within sight
of the hill whereon Christ died, nor that he took a boy's mischievous
pleasure in interrupting the King's droning litany, recited in verse
and response with the priest at his side; nor that some of the knights
were chattering of what lodging they should find, and the young
squires, in undertones, of black-eyed Jewish girls, and the grooms of
Syrian wine. They were as nothing, all these, as nothing but the
shadows of the world cast by its own ancient evil at the foot of the
Cross, and he only was real and alive, and the Cross only was true and
high in the pure light.
And in this he was not quite dreaming, for the train that rode up from
Acre was not all of those true Crusaders of whom many had been with the
army, both rich and poor, but of whom the rich had stayed behind in
Antioch and the poor had perished miserably by the swords of the
Seljuks or by the wiles of the Greeks, when they had tried to come on
by land; and many of them had been sold into slavery, and not one
reached Jerusalem alive, out of so many thousands. Of the forty or
fifty who were first in sight of the City, scarcely three were in
heartfelt earnest, and they were the Lady Anne of Auch, and Gilbert
Warde, and the King himself.
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