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It seems that at one time, when Richard was paying a visit to Tancred, the King of Sicily, Tancred showed him a letter which he said he had received from the French king. In this letter, Philip if, indeed, Philip really wrote it endeavored to excite Tancred's enmity against Richard. It was just after the treaty between Tancred and Richard had been formed, as related in the last chapter.
There was one from Peter, but it was another letter that Jan seized first, turning it over and looking at the post-mark, which was remarkably clear. She knew the excellent handwriting well, though she had seen it comparatively seldom. It was Hugo Tancred's; and the post-mark was Port Said. She opened it with hands that trembled, and it said: "MY DEAR JAN,
Lady Tancred's first impression was, "It is true she is a very disturbing type, but how well bred and how beautiful!" And Zara thought, "It is possible that, after all, I may be wrong. She looks too proud to have stooped to plan this thing. It may be only Lord Tancred's doing men are more horrible than women." "This is Zara, Mother," Tristram said.
At last Innocent had reluctant recourse to Count Walter of Brienne, the French husband of Tancred's daughter Albina, and now a claimant for the hereditary fiefs of Tancred, Lecce, and Taranto, from which, despite Henry VI's promise, he had long been driven. For almost the first time in Italian history, Frenchmen were thus called in to drive out the Germans.
Richard, however, cared little or nothing for this complaint; and in consideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised his pretty little nephew ARTHUR, then a child of two years old, in marriage to Tancred's daughter. We shall hear again of pretty little Arthur by-and-by.
The winter sets in upon Richard and Philip in Sicily. Winter quarters. Tancred. His history. William of Sicily. Constance. Oath of allegiance. Joanna's estates in the promontory of Mont Gargano. Tancred seizing the power. Richard's demand. Tancred's response. Reprisals. Fortifying a monastery. Soldiers' troubles. The army provokes a riot in Messina. The intense excitement.
He observed, that he had no hand in Tancred's elevation, and only concluded a treaty with a prince whom he found in possession of the throne; that the king, or rather tyrant of Cyprus, had provoked his indignation by the most ungenerous and unjust proceedings; and though he chastised this aggressor, he had not retarded a moment the progress of his chief enterprise: that if he had at any time been wanting in civility to the Duke of Austria, he had already been sufficiently punished for that sally of passion; and it better became men, embarked together in so holy a cause, to forgive each other's infirmities, than to pursue a slight offence with such unrelenting vengeance: that it had sufficiently appeared by the event, whether the King of France or he were most zealous for the conquest of the Holy Land, and were most likely to sacrifice private passions and animosities to that great object: that if the whole tenour of his life had not shown him incapable of a base assassination, and justified him from that imputation in the eyes of his very enemies, it was in vain for him, at present, to make his apology, or plead the many irrefragable arguments which he could produce in his own favour: and that, however he might regret the necessity, he was so far from being ashamed of his truce with Saladin, that he rather gloried in that event; and thought it extremely honourable, that, though abandoned by all the world, supported only by his own courage, and by the small remains of his national troops, he could yet obtain such conditions from the most powerful and most warlike emperor that the East had ever yet produced.
Tancred's heart, for a moment, was overcome with awe and pity; but recollecting himself, and resolving to make amends for his credulity, he smote with all his might at the cypress. The blow, wonderful to see, produced an effusion of blood, which dyed the grass about the root. Tancred's hair stood on end.
Indeed, great Sheikh, the longer I live and the more I think and here the chibouque dropped gently from Tancred's mouth, and he himself sunk upon the carpet. The Road to Bethany BESSO is better, said the Consul Pasqualigo to Barizy of the Tower, as he met him on a December morning in the Via Dolorosa. 'Yes, but he is by no means well, quickly rejoined Barizy.
The Emperor of Germany was his special enemy, on account of his having supported Tancred's cause in Sicily, the emperor himself, as the husband of the Lady Constance, having been designated by the former King of Sicily as his successor. Richard's route led, too, through the dominions of the Archduke of Austria, whom he had quarreled with and incensed so bitterly in the Holy Land.
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