But day after day went on, and no bolt fell. Richard continued to ride hard, hunt hard, drink hard. Musa began to feel, however, that the shadow was beginning to lift. Louis had been unable to induce Toulouse and Aquitaine to compose their feud; there was little to fear from his quarter. Then one afternoon came the stroke from heaven.
A fair sunny afternoon it was, in the late summer. Richard had been up with the dawn, following a great boar over the mountains. The dogs had brought the beast to bay, and his white tusks had killed three hounds, before Longsword had ended all with a stroke of his Danish hunting-axe. The boar was a giant of his kind. They brought him on a packhorse, that staggered beneath the weight. The carcass was laid out before the huge fireplace of the hall, and all the castle girls and women stood round pinching his shaggy sides, feeling of his white teeth, laughing, chattering, and screaming. Richard, having put off his hunting-boots, was calling to a serving-boy for water, when the bronze slab at the gate began to clang, proclaiming a stranger.
"_Héh_, porter, open to me!" was the cry without, and there was a scurry of many feet on stairways, for few visitors made their way to St. Julien.
Presently they led into the hall a wandering pedler. He had a weighty pack of Paris pins, of ribbons, of Eastern silks, and fifty kinds of petty gewgaws that set the women oh-ing and ah-ing. But when he undid his bundles, he dragged forth a letter, a roll of parchment, carefully sealed.
"This, fair lord," said he to Richard, "I was bidden to bring you from Marseilles, where a shipmaster put it in my hands."
"From Sicily--from Cefalu, then." Richard had not expected a letter so early, but so much the merrier. Only he was puzzled when he saw that the superscription was not in the hand of his brother Stephen, the usual scribe for his father. Richard broke the seal, which he did not recognize, unrolled, and read; while the girls swarmed round the pedler, ransacked his wares, and pleaded with the men to be generous with the spoils of Valmont, and buy.
But Musa, as he looked at Richard reading, saw sudden sweat-beads standing on his forehead. The letter ran thus:
"Robert of Evroult, Bishop of Messina, to his very dear spiritual son, the valiant and most Christian knight, Sir Richard Longsword, sends his greeting and episcopal blessing.