ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
.
Читать онлайн.
Rodrigo dies, and his body is secured in a heroic pose, wearing his armor and cape, to an iron frame fitted to his saddle. With the sounding battle cry of "For God, the Cid and Spain" his body is sent out at the head of his army, with King Alfonso and Emir Al-Mu'tamin riding on either side to guide his horse. When Yusuf's soldiers see El Cid with his eyes still open, they believe that he has risen from the dead. The Cid's horse, Babieca, followed by the column of mounted knights, tramples Ben Yusuf, who is too terrified to fight. The invading North African army is routed and smashed. King Alfonso leads Christians and Moors alike in a prayer for God to receive the soul "of the purest knight of all".
************
Crusades Timeline
First Crusade: 1096 - 1099 - The People's Crusade - Freeing the Holy Lands. 1st Crusaders led by Count Raymond IV of Toulouse and proclaimed by many wandering preachers, notably Peter the Hermit
Second Crusade: 1144 -1155 - Crusaders prepared to attack Damascus. 2nd crusade led by Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III and by King Louis VII of France
Third Crusade: 1187 -1192 - 3rd Crusaders led by Richard the Lionheart of England, Philip II of France, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I. Richard I made a truce with Saladin
Fourth Crusade: 1202 -1204 - 4th Crusaders led by Fulk of Neuil French/Flemish advanced on Constantinople
The Children's Crusade: 1212 - The Children's Crusade led by a French peasant boy, Stephen of Cloyes
Fifth Crusade: 1217 - 1221 - The 5th Crusade led by King Andrew II of Hungary, Duke Leopold VI of Austria, John of Brienne
Sixth Crusade: 1228 - 1229 - The 6th Crusaders led by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II
Seventh Crusade: 1248 - 1254 - The 7th Crusade led by Louis IX of France
Eighth Crusade: 1270 - The 8th Crusade led by Louis IX
Ninth Crusade: 1271 - 1272 - The 9th Crusade led by Prince Edward (later Edward I of England)
The Dream Series
In his dreams Richard was always someplace else and all of those dreams took place around the sea. As far back as he could remember he had listened to the sea; to the sound of it mingling with the wind in the needles of the big trees, the wind which never stopped blowing, even when one left the shore behind and crossed the fields. It is the sound which cradled his childhood. He could hear it now as he listened to the plight of Eleanor, deep inside him; he knew it would come with him wherever he would go: The tireless lingering sound of the waves breaking in the distance on an island, then coming to die on the banks of the sea. As a child he dreamt that a day would not go by that he didn’t go to the sea; not a night when he didn’t wake up with his sheets wet from sweat, sitting up on his small cot stretching to see the tide from the shine of the moon, anxious and full of a desire he didn’t understand. The sea like an old playmate…a girl with windblown hair beckoning to him gleefully and then plunging into the blackness.
Richard thought of the sea as human, and in the dark all senses were alert, the better to hear her arrival, the better to receive her. The giant waves leaping one over another, sending its nutrient filled froth into the sand, like sperm into a womb or tumbling into the lagoon; the noise made the air and the earth vibrate like a boiler. I heard her, she moved and she breathed.
When the moon was full, he slid out of bed without a sound, careful not to make the worm-eaten floor creak. But he knew she wasn’t asleep; he knew her eyes were open in the dark and that she was holding her breath. He nudged Eleanor gently and they scaled the window ledge and pushed at the wooden shutters in the dream, and then they were outside, in the night. The garden was bathed in white moonlight; it shone on the top of the trees, swaying noisily in the wind, and he could make out the dark masses of rhododendrons and hibiscus. With a beating heart the ‘tied-at-the-hip’ pair walked down the lane which went toward the hills, where the fallow land began.
A large tree which Eleanor called the tree of good and evil, stood very close to the crumbling wall; before climbing onto its highest branches so that they could see the sea over the treetops and the expansive waving of the crops back and forth in unison with the wind…its own conductor, Eleanor squatted on one side of the giant tree and Richard watered it from the other side, and then they raced each other up the trunk seeking the highest point and bragging rights as the best man!
This early morning, the moon rolled between the clouds, throwing out splinters of light. Then suddenly over the foliage, they saw it: a giant black slab alight with shining, sparkling dots. Did they really see it, even in the dream, did they really hear it? The sea was inside their heads, and when they closed their eyes, they saw and heard it best, clearly perceiving each wave as it crashed onto the reef and then came together again to unfurl on the shore.
They clung to the branches for a long time until arms grew numb. The wind from the sea blew over the trees and the top of the crops waving to them as if to say, “morning chums, what do you share in this natures dance of symmetry”, and then they watched the moon shine on the leaves. Sometimes in the dreams they stayed there until dawn, listening and wondering of what they might become; Richard told Eleanor he dreamt of being a captain steering the mighty sails, or even a seaman hoisting them. She confided no such unrealistic expectations and that her dream was to marry and have many children.
At the other end of the garden the big house was dark, closed in on itself like an abandoned wreck. The wind made the loose shingles bang and the framework creak. This, too, was the sound and an effect of the sea, as was the groaning of the tree trunk like a giant timber straining against the sails in a never ending or winning battle with the wind. He would not admit it to Eleanor but he was afraid to be alone in the tree, but he still did not wish to return to the room, nor did Eleanor and he resisted the chill, the fear and the fatigue which made heads heavy but the spirit of the devoted pair light in the magic of shared friendship.
It was not really fear of heights Richard felt; it was more like standing on the edge of an abyss or a deep canyon…and staring down, heart beating so hard that it echoed painfully in the nape of his neck. And yet he knew he had to stay…and if he did, at least he would learn something of great worth…and he would have faced his fear. It was impossible for him to go back to the room as long as the tide was rising. He had to stay, clinging to the tree branches, waiting for the moon to glide across the sky. Just before dawn when the sky became gray, they would go back and slide under the sheets. Eleanor would climb into her side and place her cold feet on Richard, laughing as he removed them. But she never questioned him in the dream as she did in reality. She merely looked at Richard, as she did now, with questioning eyes, and then he was sorry they’d gone out to hear the sea.
In the serial dream, Richard went to the beach each morning. Sometimes Eleanor would sleep heavily weary from the previous day, and he wouldn’t wake her. He had to cross the poppy and lavender fields, and the hemp was so high that he ran blindly down the paths cut in it by bandits with wagons following the scythes, swiping through the crop stolen for resale on the black market at Marseille and he sometimes got lost or was injured amid the sharp stalks. At times he could no longer hear the sea…the burning late-winter sun stifling its sound…a sexual conquest in the miracle of nature devouring innocence. Bruster, the chef said it would be harvested soon, and his grandson Wilmore was up ahead of Richard but could not be seen. Wilmore always went barefoot, armed only with his pole but he took longer strides than Richard and therefore outdistanced him. Richard was designed for horses, not for walking. In order to maintain contact with Wilmore, Richard had designed a method whereby he would pluck twice on a grass harp, or he would howl twice: his signal call went like: WHOOP! Whoop!
Richard