"Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund Heleigh rides
forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. Reign wisely, my
Queen, so that hereafter men may not say I was slain in an evil cause.
Do not, I pray you, shame my maiden venture at a man's work."
"I will not shame you," the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change
of voice: "O my Osmund! My Osmund, you have a folly that is divine, and
I lack it."
He caught her by each wrist, and stood crushing both her hands to his
lips, with fierce staring. "Wife of my King! wife of my King!" he
babbled; and then put her from him, crying, "I have not failed you!
Praise God, I have not failed you!"
From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter and
color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean pedant sat
conspicuously erect; and as he went he sang defiantly, taunting the
weakness of his flesh.
Sang Osmund Heleigh:
"Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see
The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling
Never again when in the grave ye be
Incurious of your happiness in spring,
And get no grace of Love, there, whither he
That bartered life for love no love may bring."
So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui
Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a
litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh's body.
"For this man was frank and courteous," Camoys said to the Queen, "and
in the matter of the reparation he owed me acted very handsomely. It is
fitting that he should have honorable interment."
"That he shall not lack," the Queen said, and gently unclasped from
Osmund's wrinkled neck the thin gold chain, now locketless. "There was a
portrait here," she said; "the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his
youth, Messire Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart."
Camoys answered stiffly: "I imagine this same locket to have been the
object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, shortly before we
began our combat. I do not rob the dead, madame."
"Well," the Queen said, "he always did queer things, and so, I shall
always wonder what sort of lady he picked out to love, but it is none of
my affair."
Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King's name. But Osmund
Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding it to be written on
his tomb that he died in the Queen's cause.
How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently Dame
Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how in the
end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England wept
therefor--this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to record six days
of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh might have done) I
say modestly with him of old, _Majores majora sonent._ Nevertheless, I
assert that many a forest was once a pocketful of acorns.