THE ISLE OF PENTELARIA THE KING IS INEXORABLE

When we came away from thence, we saw a great island in the sea, called Pentelaria, and it was peopled by Saracen; who were subject to the King of Sicily and the King of Tunis. The queen begged the king to send thither three galleys to get fruit for the children; and the king consented, unordered the masters of the galleys to go thither, and be ready 3 come back to him when his ship passed before the island, he galleys entered into a little port that was in the island; nd it chanced that when the king’s ship passed before the ort, we got no tidings of our galleys.

Between the kingdom of Sicily

Then did the mariners begin to murmur among themes. The king caused them to be summoned, and asked tame what they thought of the matter. The mariners said : seemed to them that the Saracens had captured his people nd his galleys. “ But we advise and counsel you, sire, not! 3 wait for them; for you are between the kingdom of Sicily, nd the kingdom of Tunis, which both the one and the there of them love you not at all; if, however, you suffer us 3 sail forward, we shall, during the night, have delivered out from peril; for we shall have passed through this trait.”

Truly,” said the king, “ I shall not listen to you, and have my people in the hands of the Saracens without at last doing all in my power to deliver them. I command out to tum your sails, and we will fall upon them.” And hen the queen heard this, she began to make great lamentation, and said: “ Alas! this is all my doing! ”

While the}’ were turning the sails of the king’s ship, and : the other ships, we saw the galleys coming from the island. Tien they came to the king, the king asked the mariners my they had tarried; and they replied that they could not themselves, but that the fault lay with certain sons of egresses of Paris, of whom there were six, who stayed eating le fruit of the gardens; wherefore they had been unable to them off bulgaria tour, nor could they leave them behind. Then the ,ng commanded that the six burghers’ sons should be put to the barge a-stem; at which they began to cry and to 3wl, saying: “ Sire, for God’s sake, take for ransom all late we have; but do not put us there where murderers and lives are put; for we shall be shamed to all time.”

The queen and all of us did what we could to move the ng; but the king would listen to none of us. So they were it into the barge, and remained there till we came to land, nd they were there in such danger and distress that when the a rose, the waves flew over their heads, and they had to sit 3wn lest the wind should carry them into the sea. And it served them right; for their gluttony caused us such mist chief that we were delayed for eight good days, because the king had caused 1be ships to turn right abut.

Abbot William of St. Michael

At this point one of my knights, whose name was my Lord John of Monson, the father of the Abbot William of St. Michael, did me a great kindness, for he brought me, without a word, a lined carcoat of mine, and threw it on my back, because I had donned my tunic only. And I cried out to him and said: “ What do I want with your carcoat, that you bring me, when we are drowning?” And he said to me: “ By my soul, lord, I should like better to see us all drowned than that you should take some sickness from the cold, and so come to your death.”

The mariners cried: “Ho! galleys, come and take the king! ” But of the four galleys that the king had there, never a galley came near; and in this they acted wisely, for there were full eight hundred persons on board the ship who would have jumped into the galleys to save their lives, and thus have caused the galleys to sink.

The varlet who had the lead threw it a second time, and came back to Brother Raymond, and told him that the ship was no longer a-ground. Then Brother Raymond went and told it to the king, who was lying cross-wise on the deck of the ship, barefoot, in his tunic only, and all disheveled before the body of our Lord which was on the ship and he lay there as one who fully thought to be drowned bulgaria tour.

So soon as it was day, we saw before us the rock on which we would have struck if the ship had not caught the end of the sand-reef.

In the morning the king sent to fetch the master mariners of the ships; and they sent four divers to the bottom of the sea. And these dived into the sea; and when they came out, the king and the master mariners heard them one after the other separately, so that one diver did not know what the other had said. Nevertheless they learned from the four divers that, in the scraping of our ship against the sand, the sand had knocked of full four fathoms of the keel on which the ship was built.

Master mariners before us

Then the king called the master mariners before us, and asked them what advice they gave as concerning the blow the ship had received. They consulted together, and advised the king to leave his ship and go into another ship. “ And we give you this advice,” said they, “ because we believe for certain that all the timbers of your ship are dislocated: wherefore we are in doubt whether, when your ship gets into the high sea, she will be able to stand the blows of the waves, and not go to pieces. For so it chanced, when you came from France, a ship struck in like manner; and when she came into the high seas she was unable to stand the blows of the waves, and broke up, and all perished, so many as were in the ship, save one woman and her child, who were saved upon a piece of the ship.” And I can bear you witness that he spoke sooth, for I saw the woman and the child at Baffe, the quarters of the Count of Joigny; and the count enter gained them for the love of God.

Lord Peter the Chamberlain

Then the king asked my Lord Peter the Chamberlain, and my Lord Giles le Bran, Constable of France, and my Lord “Iervais of Escraines, who was master cook to the king, and ;he archdeacon of Nicosia, who bore his seal, and was after wards cardinal, and myself, what we advised concerning these things. And we replied that as regards all worldly natters one ought to believe those who are most conversant with them. “ Therefore,” said we, “ we counsel you, for our parts, to do what the seamen advise.”

Then the king said to the mariners: “ I ask you, on your fealty, whether if the ship were your own, and freighted with your own merchandise, you would leave her ? ” And they replied, all together, “ No,” for they liked better to put their bodies in peril of drowning rather than to buy a new ship at a cost of four thousand livres and more. “ And why do you then advise me to leave the ship? ”

“Because,”said they, “ the stakes are not equal. For neither gold nor silver can be set against your person, and the persons of your wife and children, who are here; therefore we advise you not to put yourself, or them, in jeopardy.” Then the king said to them: “ Lords, I have heard your opinion, and that of my people; and now I will tell you mine, which is this: If I leave the ship, there are in her five hundred people and more who will land in this isle of Cyprus, for fear of peril to their body since there is none that does not love his life as much as I love mine and these, peradventure. will never return to their own land. Therefore I like better to place my own person, and my wife, and my children in God’s hands than do this harm to the many people who are here.”

JUDGMENTS PRONOUNCED AT CESAREA

The king had given me for my battalion fifty knights Every time that I ate, I had ten knights at my table wit! my own ten knights; and they ate, one sonly the other according to the custom of the land, and sale upon mats 01 the ground. Every time that there was a call to arms, ‘ sent thither fifty-four knights, who were called douzeniers because each commanded ten men. Every time that w rode out armed, all the fifty knights ate in my quarters 01 their return. At all the annual festivals I asked to m; table all the men of note in the host, whereby it sometime; happened that the king had to borrow some of my guests.

SOME OF TINS JUDGMENTS PRONOUNCED AT CESAREA

Hereinafter you shall hear tell of the justice and judgments that I saw rendered at Caesarea while the king was sojourning there. First we will tell of a knight who was taken in a brothel, and to whom a certain choice was left according to the customs of the country. And the choice was this: that either the wanton woman should lead hirer through the camp, in his shirt, and shamefully bound with a rope, or that he should lose his horse and arms and tx driven from the host. The knight gave up his horse to the king, and his arms, and left the host. Then I went and asked the king to give me the horse for a poor gentleman who was in the host. And the king answered me that this re quest was not reasonable, seeing that the horse was still worth eighty livres. And I replied: “ Now have you broker our covenant, for you are wroth with me for my request.’ And he said to me, laughing merrily: “ Say what you like, I am not wroth with you.” Nevertheless I did not get the horse for the poor gentleman.

The second judgment was this: the knights of our battalion were hunting a wild animal that is called a gazelle, and is like a deer. The brethren of the Hospital leapt out upon our knights, and hustled them and drove them away. So I complained to the Master of the Hospital; and the Master of :he Hospital answered that he would do me right according to the customs of the Holy Land, which were such that he would cause the brethren who had committed the outrage o eat sitting on their mantles, until such time as those on thorn the outrage had been committed should raise them up.

Aforetime been a Christian

The king asked him where he had learnt French; and he ;aid that he had aforetime been a Christian. Then the king ;aid: “ Away, I will speak to you no further! ” I drew him apart, and asked what was his story. He told me he was aom at Provins, and that he had come to Egypt with King John, and that he was married in Egypt, and a man of great note. And I said: “ Do you not know very well that if you die in this condition you will be damned, and go to hell? ”

And he said “ Yes,” for be was assured no religion was as good as the Christian religion; “ but I dare not face the poverty in which I should be, and the shame, if I returned to you. Every day they would say to me: ‘ Look at that renegade! ’ So I like better to live here rich and at ease rather than put myself ir. such a position as 1 foresee.” And I told him he would have to suffer greater shame in the day of judgment, when his sin would be made manifest to all, than the shame of which he spoke. Many good words did I speak to him, but little did they avail. So he left me, and I never saw LLn more.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE QUEEN AT DAMIETTA

Now you have heard, in what has gone before, of the great tribulations which the king and all of us endured. From such tribulations the queen did not escape, as you shall presently be told. For, three days before she was brought to bed, ‘-ame the news that the king was taken; with which news she was so affrighted that, as oft as she slept in her bed, it seemed to her that the chamber was full of Saracens, and she cried out, “ Help! help! ” And so that the child she bore in her body should not perish, she caused an ancient knight, of eighty years, to lie near her bed, and hold her by the hand; and every time she so cried out, he said: “ Lady, have no fear, for I am here.”

Before she was brought to bed she caused every one to leave her chamber, save this knight only, and knelt before him, and besought him to do her a service; and the knight consented, and gave her his oath. And she said: “ I ask of you, by the troth you have now pledged me, that if the Saracens take thus city, you will cut off my head before I fall into their hands.” And the knight replied: ‘ Be assured that I shall do so willingly; for I was already fully minded to kill you or ever you should be taken.”