The Sultan stared at him and stroked his beard.
“Eighty thousand lives,” he muttered;
“eighty thousand lives, besides those of my
soldiers whom you will slay. A great slaughter—and
the holy city destroyed forever. Oh! it was of
such a massacre as this that once I dreamed.”
Then Saladin sat still and thought a while, his head
bowed upon his breast.
From the day when he saw Saladin Godwin began to grow
strong again, and as his health came back, so he fell
to thinking. Rosamund was lost to him and Masouda
was dead, and at times he wished that he were dead
also. What more had he to do with his life, which
had been so full of sorrow, struggle and bloodshed?
Go back to England to live there upon his lands, and
wait until old age and death overtook him? The
prospect would have pleased many, but it did not please
Godwin, who felt that his days were not given to him
for this purpose, and that while he lived he must
also labour.
As he sat thinking thus, and was very unhappy, the
aged bishop Egbert, who had nursed him so well, entered
his tent, and, noting his face, asked:
“Would you wish to hear?” said Godwin.
“Am I not your confessor, with a right to hear?”
answered the gentle old man. “Show me your
trouble.”
So Godwin began at the beginning and told it all—how
as a lad he had secretly desired to enter the Church;
how the old prior of the abbey at Stangate counselled
him that he was too young to judge; how then the love
of Rosamund had entered into his life with his manhood,
and he had thought no more of religion. He told
him also of the dream that he had dreamed when he lay
wounded after the fight on Death Creek; of the vows
which he and Wulf had vowed at the time of their knighting,
and of how by degrees he had learned that Rosamund’s
love was not for him. Lastly, he told him of
Masouda, but of her Egbert, who had shriven her, knew
already.
The bishop listened in silence till he had finished.
Then he looked up, saying:
“Now,” answered Godwin, “I know
not. Yet it seems to me that I hear the sound
of my own feet walking upon cloister stones, and of
my own voice lifted up in prayer before the altar.”
“You are still young to talk thus, and though
Rosamund be lost to you and Masouda dead, there are
other women in the world,” said Egbert.
“Then there are the knightly Orders, in which
you might rise high.”
“The Templars and the Hospitallers are crushed.
Moreover, I watched them in Jerusalem and the field,
and love them not. Should they change their ways,
or should I be needed to fight against the Infidel,
I can join them by dispensation in days to come.
But counsel me—what shall I do now?”
