Free The White Cross by Richard Masefield

clear into another!
    In fact the splendour of the leap was somewhat lessened by the saturated state in which I reached the further bank, to be presented to Christ’s Deputy in England on muddy hands and knees.
    ‘Most Reverend Father, I will take the cross,’ I said, and laid my life before him like a dog who runs to fetch a stick and drop it at his master’s feet. That’s what I was, an eager dog retrieving an idea.
    ‘Dieu le veut, God wishes it.’ The old man smiled as he removed a strand of duckweed from behind my ear, then grasped my wrist to help me stand.
    ‘My son, I bid you welcome to our company of crucesignati,’ he pronounced. ‘Take up thy cross and make this pledge as I enjoin thee…’
    ‘I give myself to He who as a victim surrendered His own body by dying for my sake.’ Repeating the croisade oath, I stared up like a man in love into the archbishop’s saintly face. ‘I reject hereby the trappings of this world and scorn it’s fleshly pleasures, praise the Lord!’
    Of those who watched us from the further bank, only my stepfather and the two squires seemed unaffected. All about them men were whooping with excitement – Sir Rob, Sir Dickon and Sir Mark le Jeune, tearing up the bank toward the river bridge, or leaping down as I had done to splash across the muddy stream. With giant Sir Wolstan braying like a jackass and daring everyone to cast themselves into the bishop’s trawl.
    Jos told me afterwards what happened next.
    ‘Well Joscelin, we all of us look better by comparison with fools,’ Hugh told him drily. ‘So I’m guessing that you’re not about to trust your soul to an old churchman who’s too frail to lift a sword?’
    ‘My Lord, if that’s your best guess then ’tis well adrift,’ Jos dared to tell him. Or dared to tell me that he had.
    ‘God strike me blind if I would leave Sir Garry – an’ to tell the truth Sir, I’d as soon split Sarsen skulls in Pallystine as fleas at home in bed.’ Which said, he sketched a bow and loped off to the river crossing.
    From where I stood dripping in the grass, I saw his foxy mop bob down the further bank toward the bridge at Cliffe. A long way round for my poor Jos.
    And yet an all too short route to disaster.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Westminster: September 1189
    CORONATION
    If you’d been present five days later on the north bank of a much larger river a mile outside the walls of London town, you would have seen a long procession move between two structures built of stone; its slippered feet protected from plain earth by a long ribbon of red fustian, four hundred ells of it, to join the Palace of Westminster to the monastic church from which it takes its name.
    Inside the Abbey in a gallery erected for her special use, the Queen of England awaits the ritual she’s ordered to confirm her son a King; a thing she’s planned and plotted for almost two decades.
    Her most puissant majesty, Queen Eléonore of Aquitaine, is not only the most cultured woman in all Europe, but the vainest, toughest and most self-willed princess of her generation; as ruthless in pursuit of her own ends as any of her ruthless sons.
    Queens in every age contrive reputations for beauty by maintaining good health and posture – by constantly achieving splendour; and Queen Eléonore has never in her life looked less than splendid. A big handsome woman still, despite her three score years and seven, she wears a crimson gown and surcoat of an imperial style which flatters her big frame. Her wrinkled cheeks are subtly rouged, her pale brows plucked and darkened, her hooded eyes extended with a narrow line of khol. She knows the power of artifice, of colour and of polished surfaces to catch the light, adores jewels and collects them. Her arms are ringed with bracelets. Her veil is held in its place with a Byzantine diadem, its gems repeated on the hanger of her girdle. Her braided, brindled hair is wound with strings of lapis beads and river pearls. The pulses of her neck