At length the idea occurred at once to him that the whole might
be a conspiracy against King Richard, formed within the camp of
the allies, and to which the bishop, who was by some represented
as a politic and unscrupulous person, was not unlikely to have
been accessory. It was true that, in his own opinion, there
existed no character so perfect as that of his master; for
Richard being the flower of chivalry, and the chief of Christian
leaders, and obeying in all points the commands of Holy Church,
De Vaux's ideas of perfection went no further. Still, he knew
that, however unworthily, it had been always his master's fate to
draw as much reproach and dislike as honour and attachment from
the display of his great qualities; and that in the very camp,
and amongst those princes bound by oath to the Crusade, were many
who would have sacrificed all hope of victory over the Saracens
to the pleasure of ruining, or at least of humbling, Richard of
England.
"Wherefore," said the baron to himself, "it is in no sense
impossible that this El Hakim, with this his cure, or seeming
cure, wrought on the body of the Scottish squire, may mean
nothing but a trick, to which he of the Leopard may be accessory,
and wherein the Bishop of Tyre, prelate as he is, may have some
share.
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