Des Barres looked troubled.  ‘Ah, sire, must I answer you?’

Considering him, King Richard said, ’No, Des Barres, you need not.  For now I know who it was.  Well, he has lost me my game, and won a part of his, I doubt.’  Then he rode off, bidding Des Barres sound the recall.

‘Of the pagans that day,’ writes Milo by hearsay, ’we made hecatombs two score five:  yet the King my master took no pleasure of that, as I gather, deeming that he should have had Saladin’s head in a bag.  Also we gained a clear road to Joppa.’  So they did; but Joppa was a heap of stones.

* * * * *

They held a great council there.  Richard put out his views.  There were two things to be done:  repair Joppa and march at once on Jerusalem, there to find and have again at Saladin; or pursue the coast road to Ascalon and raise the siege of that city.  ‘I, my lords, am for Ascalon,’ Richard said.  ’It is the key of Egypt.  While the Soldan holds us cooped up in Ascalon he can get his pack-mules through.  If we relieve it, after the battery we have done him we can hold Jerusalem at our whim.  What do you say to this, Duke of Burgundy?’

In the natural order of things the Duke would have said nothing.  But he had been filled to the neck by Saint-Pol.  Richard being for Ascalon, the key of Egypt, the Duke declared himself for Jerusalem, ‘the key,’ as he rather flatly said, ‘of the world.’  To this Richard contented himself with replying, that a key was little worth unless you could open the door with it.  All the French stood by their leader, except Des Barres.  He, with Richard’s party, leaned to the King’s side.  But the Duke of Burgundy would not budge, sat like a lump.  He would not go to Ascalon, and none of his battle should go.  Richard cursed all Frenchmen, but gave in.  The truth was, he dared not leave Saint-Pol behind him.

They repaired the walls and towers of Joppa, garrisoned the place.  Then late in the autumn (truthfully, too late) they struck inland over a rolling grass country towards Blanchegarde, a white castle on a green hill.  Moving slowly and cautiously, they pushed on to Ramleh, thence to Betenoble, which is actually within two days’ march of Jerusalem.  The month was October, mellow autumn weather.  King Richard, moved by the sacred influences, the level peace of the fair land, filled day and night with the thought that he was on the threshold of that soil which bore the very footmarks of our blessed Saviour—­King Richard, I say, was in great heart.  He had been against the enterprise thus to do; he would have approached from Ascalon; the enterprise was folly.  But it was glorious folly, for which a man might well die.  He was ready to die, though he hoped and believed that he should not.  Saladin, once bitten, would be shy:  he had been badly bitten at Arsuf.  Then came the Bishop of Beauvais with Burgundy to his tent—­Saint-Pol stayed behind—­with speeches, saying that the winter season was at hand; that it would be more prudent to withdraw to Joppa, or even to go down to Ascalon.  Ascalon needed succours, it seemed.  Richard’s heart stood still at this treachery; then he blazed out in fury.  ’Are we hare or hounds, by heaven?  Do you presume—?’ He mastered himself.  ’What part, pray, does Almighty God take in these pastimes of yours?’