Page:Weird Tales Volume 35 Issue 04 (1940-07).djvu/79

Rh blades sailed for France in 1245 they had lived in constant peril of the Paynim; yet their basalt walls had broken wave on wave of Moslem soldiery — and it was spring. Why worry over rumored wars when the soft breeze played among the branches of the orchards, the soil smelt sweet and warm and the larks and linnets piped their minstrelsy in every coppice?

The men-at-arms on watch at the Gate of Saint George waved friendly greetings to the little company of youths and maidens who clattered through the tunneled entrance and out into the sunlight burnishing the high road to Tiberius. Six of them there were, two noble squires and the young knight Gaussin de Sollies, and with them three maids of the highest blood of Outremer.

They rode without attendants, for the Peace of Jerusalem still held and they had no fear of Paynim raiders, and this was Beyond-the-Sea, not France, and chaperonage was an institution strange to them. Like their cousins overseas they were, yet strangely unlike, for while in France and England maids toiled at the broidering-frame and youths rode forth on raids or hunted in the forests where the sun was cold, and few of them could form the letters of his name, these children weaned in Palestine were born to luxury and reared in ease. Their Western manners warmed and softened by long contact with the East, they had escaped the thrall of crudity, abysmal ignorance and uncleanliness of Europe’s medival thousand years without a bath. Unguents spiced with scents from Cathay and Persia were theirs; the Arabs’ vapor bath was part of their routine; once a week at least skilled masseurs came to tend them; not less than once a month a eunuch barber or deft woman shaved their