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 prospect¹ 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 aged² bishop³ Egbert, who had nursed him so well, entered his tent, and, noting his face, asked:
 
“What ails⁴ you, my son?”
 
“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 Creek⁵; of the vows⁶ which he and Wulf had vowed⁷ 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:
 
“And now?”
 
“Now,” answered Godwin, “I know not. Yet it seems to me that I hear the sound of my own feet walking upon cloister⁹ 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.
 
Godwin shook his head.
 
“Not for me, my father.”
 
“Then there are the knightly¹⁰ Orders, in which you might rise high.”
 
Again he shook his head.
 
“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?”
 
“Oh! my son,” the old bishop said, his face lighting¹² up, “if God calls you, come to God. I will show you the road.”
 
“Yes, I will come,” Godwin answered quietly. “I will come, and, unless the Cross should once more call me to follow it in war, I will strive to spend the time that is left to me in His service and that of men. For I think, my father, that to this end I was born.”
 
Three days later Godwin was ordained¹³ a priest, there in the camp of Saladin, by the hand of the bishop Egbert, while around his tent the servants of Mahomet, triumphant¹⁴ at the approaching downfall of the Cross, shouted that God is great and Mahomet His only prophet.
 
Saladin lifted his head and looked at Balian.
 
“Tell me,” he said, “what of the princess of Baalbec, whom you know as the lady Rosamund D’Arcy? I told you that I would speak no more with you of the safety of Jerusalem until she was delivered to me for judgment¹⁵. Yet I see her not.”
 
“Sultan,” answered Balian, “we found this lady in the convent of the Holy Cross, wearing the robe of a novice¹⁶ of that order. She had taken the sanctuary¹⁷ there by the altar which we deem so sacred and inviolable, and refused to come.”
 
Saladin laughed.
 
“Cannot all your men-at-arms drag one maiden¹⁸ from an altar stone?—unless, indeed, the great knight⁸ Wulf stood before it with sword aloft,” he added.
 
“So he stood,” answered Balian, “but it was not of him that we thought, though assuredly he would have slain¹⁹ some of us. To do this thing would have been an awful crime, which we were sure must bring down the vengeance²⁰ of our God upon us and upon the city.”
 
“What of the vengeance of Salah-ed-din?”
 
“Sore as is our case, Sultan, we still fear God more than Saladin.”
 
“Ay, Sir Balian, but Salah-ed-din may be a sword in the hand of God.”
 
“Which sword, Sultan, would have fallen swiftly had we done this deed.”
 
“I think that it is about to fall,” said Saladin, and again was silent and stroked his beard.
 
“Listen, now,” he said at length. “Let the princess, my niece, come to me and ask it of my grace, and I think that I will grant you terms for which, in your plight²¹, you may be thankful.”
 
“Then we must dare the great sin and take her,” answered Balian sadly, “having first slain the knight Wulf, who will not let her go while he is alive.”
 
“Nay²², Sir Balian, for that I should be sorry, nor will I suffer it, for though a Christian²³ he is a man after my own heart. This time I said ‘Let her come to me,’ not ‘Let her be brought.’ Ay, come of her own free will, to answer to me for her sin against me, understanding that I promise her nothing, who in the old days promised her much, and kept my word. Then she was the princess of Baalbec, with all the rights belonging to that great rank, to whom I had sworn that no husband should be forced upon her, nor any change of faith. Now I take back these oaths, and if she comes, she comes as an escaped Cross-worshipping slave, to whom I offer only the choice of Islam or of a shameful²⁵ death.”
 
“What high-born lady would take such terms?” asked Balian in dismay. “Rather, I think, would she choose to die by her own hand than by that of your hangman, since she can never abjure²⁶ her faith.”
 
“And thereby²⁷ doom²⁸ eighty thousand of her fellow Christians²⁹, who must accompany her to that death,” answered Saladin sternly. “Know, Sir Balian, I swear it before Allah and for the last time, that if my niece Rosamund does not come, of her own free will, unforced by any, Jerusalem shall be put to sack.”
 
“Then the fate of the holy city and all its inhabitants hangs upon the nobleness of a single woman?” stammered³⁰ Balian.
 
“Ay, upon the nobleness of a single woman, as my vision told me it should be. If her spirit is high enough, Jerusalem may yet be saved. If it be baser than I thought, as well may chance, then assuredly with her it is doomed³¹. I have no more to say, but my envoys³² shall ride with you bearing a letter, which with their own hands they must present to my niece, the princess of Baalbec. Then she can return with them to me, or she can bide³³ where she is, when I shall know that I saw but a lying vision of peace and mercy flowing from her hands, and will press on this war to its bloody³⁴ end.”
 
Within an hour Balian rode to the city under safe conduct, taking with him the envoys of Saladin and the letter, which they were charged to deliver to Rosamund.
 
It was night, and in their lamp-lit chapel³⁵ the Virgins³⁶ of the Holy Cross upon bended knees chanted the slow and solemn Miserere. From their hearts they sang, to whom death and dishonour³⁷ were so near, praying their Lord and the merciful Mother of God to have pity, and to spare them and the inhabitants of the hallowed town where He had dwelt and suffered, and to lead them safe through the shadow of a fate as awful as His own. They knew that the end was near, that the walls were tottering³⁸ to their fall, that the defenders³⁹ were exhausted⁴⁰, and that soon the wild soldiers of Saladin would be surging through the narrow streets.
 
Then would come the sack and the slaughter⁴¹, either by the sword of the Saracens, or, perchance, if these found time and they were not forgotten, more mercifully at the hands of Christian men, who thus would save them from the worst.
 
Their dirge⁴³ ended, the abbess rose and addressed them. Her bearing was still proud, but her voice quavered.
 
“My daughters in the Lord,” she said, “the doom is almost at our door, and we must brace⁴⁴ our hearts to meet it. If the commanders of the city do what they have promised, they will send some here to behead us at the last, and so we shall pass happily to glory and be ever with the Lord. But perchance they will forget us, who are but a few among eighty thousand souls, of whom some fifty thousand must thus be killed. Or their arms may grow weary, or themselves they may fall before ever they reach this house—and what, my daughters, shall we do then?”
 
Now some of the nuns⁴⁵ clung together and sobbed⁴⁶ in their affright, and some were silent. Only Rosamund drew herself to her full height, and spoke⁴⁷ proudly.
 
“My Mother,” she said, “I am a newcomer among you, but I have seen the slaughter of Hattin, and I know what befalls Christian women and children among the unbelievers. Therefore I ask your leave to say my say.”
 
“Speak,” said the abbess.
 
“This is my counsel,” went on Rosamund, “and it is short and plain. When we know that the Saracens are in the city, let us set fire to this convent and get us to our knees and so perish.”
 
“Well spoken; it is best,” muttered several. But the abbess answered with a sad smile:
 
“High counsel indeed, such as might be looked for from high blood. Yet it may not be taken, since self-slaughter is a deadly sin.”
 
“I see little difference between it,” said Rosamund, “and the stretching out of our necks to the swords of friends. Yet, although for others I cannot judge, for myself I do judge who am bound by no final vows. I tell you that rather than fall into the hands of the Paynims, I will dare that sin and leave them nothing but the vile⁴⁸ mould which once held the spirit of a woman.”
 
And she laid her hand upon the dagger⁴⁹ hilt that was hidden in her robe.
 
Then again the abbess spoke.
 
“To you, daughter, I cannot forbid the deed, but to those who have fully⁴² sworn to obey me I do forbid it, and to them I show another if a more piteous way of escape from the last shame of womanhood. Some of us are old and withered⁵⁰, and have naught⁵¹ to fear but death, but others are still young and fair. To these I say, when the end is nigh, let them take steel and score face and bosom⁵² and seat themselves here in this chapel, red with their own blood and made loathsome⁵³ to the sight of man. Then will the end come upon them quickly, and they will pass hence unstained to be the brides of Heaven.”
 
Now a great groan⁵⁴ of horror went up from those miserable⁵⁵ women, who already saw themselves seated in stained robes, and hideous⁵⁶ to behold⁵⁷, there in the carved chairs of their choir⁵⁸, awaiting death by the swords of furious and savage⁵⁹ men, as in a day to come their sisters of the Faith were to await it in the doomed convent of the Virgins of St. Clare at Acre.*
 
* Those who are curious to know the story of the end of those holy heroines, the Virgins of St. Clare, I think in the year 1291, may read it in my book, “A Winter Pilgrimage,” pp. 270 and 271—AUTHOR.
 
Yet one by one, except the aged among them, they came up to the abbess and swore that they would obey her in this as in everything, while the abbess said that herself she would lead them down that dreadful road of pain and mutilation. Yes, save Rosamund, who declared that she would die undisfigured as God had made her, and two other novices⁶⁰, they swore it one by one, laying their hands upon the altar.
 
Then again they got them to their knees and sang the Miserere.
 
Presently, above their mournful chant, the sound of loud, insistent⁶¹ knockings echoed down the vaulted⁶² roofs. They sprang up screaming:
 
“The Saracens are here! Give us knives! Give us knives!”
 
Rosamund drew the dagger from its sheath.
 
“Wait awhile,” cried the abbess. “These may be friends, not foes⁶³. Sister Ursula, go to the door and seek tidings.”
 
The sister, an aged woman, obeyed with tottering steps, and, reaching the massive portal, undid⁶⁴ the guichet, or lattice, and asked with a quavering voice:
 
“Who are you that............