“Yes, it is true,” answered Godwin, and he told the vision, and of how he had sworn to it on the Rood.

“And what did they say to you?”

“They laughed at me, and hinted that I was a sorcerer, or a traitor in your pay, or both.”

“Blind fools, who would not hear the truth when it was sent to them by the pure mouth of a prophet,” muttered Saladin.  “Well, they paid the price, and I and my faith are the gainers.  Do you wonder, then, Sir Godwin, that I also believe my vision which came to me thrice in the night season, bringing with it the picture of the very face of my niece, the princess of Baalbec?”

“I do not wonder,” answered Godwin.

“Do you wonder also that I was mad with rage when I learned that at last yonder brave dead woman had outwitted me and all my spies and guards, and this after I had spared your lives?  Do you wonder that I am still so wroth, believing as I do that a great occasion has been taken from me?”

“I do not wonder.  But, Sultan, I who have seen a vision speak to you who also have seen a vision—­a prophet to a prophet.  And I tell you that the occasion has not been taken—­it has been brought, yes, to your very door, and that all these things have happened that it might thus be brought.”

“Say on,” said Saladin, gazing at him earnestly.

“See now, Salah-ed-din, the princess Rosamund is in Jerusalem.  She has been led to Jerusalem that you may spare it for her sake, and thus make an end of bloodshed and save the lives of folk uncounted.”

“Never!” said the Sultan, springing up.  “They have rejected my mercy, and I have sworn to sweep them away, man, woman, and child, and be avenged upon all their unclean and faithless race.”

“Is Rosamund unclean that you would be avenged upon her?  Will her dead body bring you peace?  If Jerusalem is put to the sword, she must perish also.”

“I will give orders that she is to be saved—­that she may be judged for her crime by me,” he added grimly.

“How can she be saved when the stormers are drunk with slaughter, and she but one disguised woman among ten thousand others?”

“Then,” he answered, stamping his foot, “she shall be brought or dragged out of Jerusalem before the slaughter begins.”

“That, I think, will not happen while Wulf is there to protect her,” said Godwin quietly.

“Yet I say that it must be so—­it shall be so.”

Then, without more words, Saladin left the tent with a troubled brow.

Within Jerusalem all was misery, all was despair.  There were crowded thousands and tens of thousands of fugitives, women and children, many of them, whose husbands and fathers had been slain at Hattin or elsewhere.  The fighting men who were left had few commanders, and thus it came about that soon Wulf found himself the captain of very many of them.