Prutt!' he said, 'I am the Emperor. What have I
to do with your kings?' Richard showed him that with one king he had
plenty to do, by assaulting Limasol and putting armies to flight in the
plains about Nikosia. Shall I sing the battle of the fifty against five
thousand; tell how King Richard with precisely half a hundred knights
came cantering against the sun and a host, as gay and debonair as to a
driving of stags? They say that he himself led the charge, covered in a
wonderful silken surcoat, colour of a bullfinch's breast, and wrought
upon in black and white heraldry. They say that at the sight of the
pensils a-flutter, at the sound of the hunting-horns, the Grifons let
fly a shaft a-piece; then threw down their bows and scattered. But the
knights caught them. Isaac was on a hill to watch the battle. 'Who is
that marvellous tall knight who seems to be swimming among my horse?'
'Splendour, it is Rikardos, King of the West,' they told him, 'reputed a
fierce swimmer.' 'He drowns, he drowns!' cried the Emperor, as the red
plumes were whelmed in black. 'Nay, but he dives rather, Majesty.' He
heard the death-shouts, he saw white faces turned his way; then the mass
was cleft asunder, blown off and dispersed like the sparks from a
smithy. The thing was of little moment in a time of much; there was no
fighting left in the Cypriotes after that sunny morning's work. Nikosia
fell, and the Emperor Isaac, in silver chains, heard from his
prison-house the shouts which welcomed the Emperor Richard. These things
were accomplished by the first week in May. Then came Guy of Lusignan
with bad news of Acre and worse of himself. Philip was before the town,
Montferrat with him. Montferrat had the Archduke's of Austria as well as
French support; with these worthies, and the ravished wife of old King
Baldwin for title-deed, he claimed the throne of Jerusalem; and King Guy
of Lusignan (but for the name of the thing) was of no account at all.
Guy said that the siege of Acre was a foppery. King Philip was ill, or
thought he was; Montferrat was treating with Saladin; the French knights
openly visited the Saracen women; and the Duke of Burgundy got drunk.
'What else could he get, poor fool?' asked Richard; then said, 'But I
promise you this: Montferrat shall never be King of Jerusalem while I
live--not because I love you, my friend, but because I love the law. I
shall come as soon as I can to Acre, when I have done here the things
which must be don