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 heard Wilmore far ahead of him, slashing his way with the help of the pole. Whoop! Whoop! Richard answered with his grass harp. There was no other sound. The sea was at her lowest ebb and wouldn’t come in before noon. The two boys were moving as fast as possible toward the tidal pools where the shrimp and octopus hid.
Richard noticed among the crop in front of him there lay a heap of lava stone. He climbed to the top in order to see the green sweep of the fields, and far behind him now, lost in the jumble of trees and thickets, the shipwrecked house with its odd sky-colored roof and the “Sea Captains” little shanty; and farther still, Seamen’s chimney and the high red mountains going straight up toward the sky. Richard spun around at the summit of the stone pyramid he had mounted and he could see the whole countryside from his perch: smoke funneled from the chimney where crops were being refined, the river meandering through the trees, the hills, and at last, the dark, glittering sea which had receded from the other side of the reefs.
This was what Richard loved. There was so much freedom and air to breath unlike that which captured all the foulness of a closed castle. He believed he could stay at the top of the heap for hours, even days, doing nothing but looking, feeling, breathing and he and Eleanor held each other like chimps, cuddling for the warmth from a sibling.
Whoop! Whoop! Wilmore was calling from the other end of the field. He, too, was standing at the pinnacle of a pyramid of black stones. A castaway on an islet in the middle of the sea. Wilmore was so far away Richard could barely see him, but Eleanor had eyes like an eagle and she saw him down to his bare black feet with the white soles. But Richard could only see his long, insect like silhouette at the top of the pile. Richard cupped his hands and called in response: Whoop! Whoop! They both climbed down the stone and once more began the journey to the sea.
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The next morning, in the dream, the sea was black and unfathomable due to the lava dust, strange as it may seem if one went North or South, the sea became clear again. From the shelter of the reefs, Wilmore fished for octopus in the lagoon. Richard
