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Updated: June 22, 2025
"I am an envoy, sire, from a brother majesty, and of such it is the custom to respect the persons." "Tush!" said the Ilkhan, "there is no brother majesty save Kublai. Between us we rule the world." "Hear me, then," said Aimery. The duel had swept all cobwebs from his brain and doubts from his heart. "I am a knight of the Sire Christ and of the most noble King Louis, and I can own no other lord.
The Norman chieftains murmured whilst they smiled; and one of them, an Aquitanian, Aimery de Thouars, cried out, "It is passing modest to ask soldiers if they wish their chief to be king: soldiers are never, or very seldom, called to such deliberations: let what we desire be done as soon as possible."
"For the present we dwell far apart," wrote the Khakan; "therefore let us both get to business." So Aimery had been summoned to the King's chamber, where he found his good master, the Count of St. Pol, in attendance with others. After prayer, Louis opened to them his mind.
"Joan," said William Aimery, professor of theology, "you ask for men-at-arms, and you say that it is God's pleasure that the English should leave the kingdom of France, and depart to their own land; if so, there is no need of men-at-arms, for God's pleasure alone can discomfit them, and force them to return to their homes."
Weighted with a massive head-dress of pearls and a robe of gold brocade, the little grandchild of Prester John seemed like a doll on which some princess had lavished wealth and fancy. The black eyelashes lay quiet on her olive cheeks, and her breathing did not stir her stiff, jewelled bodice. "I have seen death in life," thought Aimery as he shivered and looked aside.
The lord of Jaffa turned back when the snows of Lebanon were falling behind on their right. He had nodded towards the mountains. "There lives the Old Man and his Ishmaelites. Fear nothing, for his fangs are drawn." And when Aimery asked the cause of the impotence of the renowned Assassins, he was told "That Khakan whom ye seek."
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.
Aimery bent his knee and thanked him, but from the courtiers rose a hubbub of mirth which chilled his gratitude. He was aware that he sailed on very desperate waters. Among the Tartars was a recreant Genoese who taught them metal work and had once lived at the court of Cambaluc. The man had glimmerings of honesty, and tried hard to dissuade Aimery from the journey.
The Maid's hand took Catherine's, and her touch was like the fall of gossamer. She fingered the girl's broad ring which had come from distant ancestors, the ring which Sir Aimery of Beaumanoir had worn in the Crusades. She raised it and pressed it to her. Catherine's limbs would not do her bidding. She would fain have risen in a hospitable bustle, but she seemed to be held motionless.
The ambition of the grandmother found nothing to feed upon in the young lord of Beaumanoir. He was kind, virtuous and honest, but dull as a pool on a winter's highway. Catherine would fain have had the one youth a soldier and the other a saint, and of the two ambitions she most cherished the latter. The first made shipwreck on the rustic Aimery, and therefore the second burned more fiercely.
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