Lionheart's Scribe Read Online Free Page B

the goat to me for comfort.
    It didn’t end there.
    All the next day and on into the night, King Richard’s soldiers plundered and looted, completely out of control. Their commanders made no effort at all to stop them.
    I suppose I should feel sympathy for the townspeople and anger at the English king for what he has done to them. I suppose I should feel that these are my people who have been harmed. I do not though. No one on this island has shown me the least bit of kindness in my whole life since my mother and father died. The guards in King Richard’s stables treat me better than anyone here ever has. And King Richard had just cause. How could he not have acted to free his own sister?
    But I cannot forget the monstrosity of it. Is this the reward that soldiers take in return for risking their lives? Is this the only way they can work off thebloodlust of battle? Perhaps it is fortunate that I am a cripple. I could never be a soldier. Perhaps that is just cowardice, but that is the way of it.
    The eleventh day of November
    Life in Messina has still not settled down to normal. I wonder if it ever will.
    The thirtieth day of November
    There is an uneasy kind of peace now. The townsfolk still cast nervous glances over their shoulders, but they are beginning to go about their business again. I am back working down at the harbor with Vulgrin. No one taunts the foreign soldiers anymore though, and people hasten to get out of their way whenever they appear. Vulgrin fawns in a most disgusting way over any of them who come to him to write letters. The two kings, however, now seem to be on the best of terms, at least in public. It is most odd. They are preparing for the Yuletide festivities and the priests are preaching the holiness of the crusade with even more fervor.
    â€œIt is God’s will,” my priest says. He paints the most wondrous pictures of Jerusalem and of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is one of the most holy places in Christendom. He talks of the divine joy of walking the streets where Our Lord Jesus trod. When I listen to him my mind fills with glorious visions. I forget the horror of what happened here. I want nothing more than to be a part of it all.
    What will it be like to watch the crusaders sailaway? To remain behind, with nothing to do for the rest of my life but toil away as a slave to Vulgrin?
    The first day of December
    I have started going back into the camp, and the spirits there are so high after their great victory that no one bothers me. All is preparation for feasts and celebrations. King Richard is a great lover of music and poetry, I have heard, and is even a poet himself. How strange that seems for a man of war such as he is. But it is true. A few times I have managed to creep close enough to his pavilion to hear the sound of minstrels playing and once I heard a lady laughing. I wonder if it was the Queen Joanna. They say she is a great beauty and a kindly lady.
    King Philip keeps to himself. No one seems to have a good word to say for him. The talk is that he despises music and all kinds of learning. Considers them a waste of time for a man. He is jealous too of King Richard’s victory.
    The second day of December
    I am back to working regularly at the stables and being beaten regularly by Vulgrin for arriving late in the mornings.
    The fifth day of December
    There is such a bustle in the camp getting ready for the Yuletide festivities. The excitement has spilled over into the city too and seems to be helping people forget what happened. Only the Christians are involved, of course, not the Muslims.
    Mistress Matilde, the woman who rents my goat, is making cheeses at such a great rate that she doesn’t even have time to talk. She lets her children run wild and keeps the youngest tethered on a long rope to a tree so that she doesn’t have to keep running after it. It is a boy, I think, but so dirty and ragged that it is hard to know for certain.
    King Richard