CHAPTER I

[Illustration: Ornate lettering/text The MM Co.]

THE LIFE AND DEATH

OF

RICHARD YEA-AND-NAY

BY

MAURICE HEWLETT

AUTHOR OF "THE FOREST LOVERS," "LITTLE NOVELS

OF ITALY," ETC.

Sì che a bene sperar mi era cagione

Di quella fera alla gaietta pelle.

_Inf._ i. 41.

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON; MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1901

Set up and electrotyped October, 1900. Reprinted November,

December, twice, 1900; January, February, twice, 1901

Norwood Press

J.B. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

TO

HIS FRIEND

EDMUND GOSSE

(ALWAYS BENEVOLENT TO HIS INVENTION)

THIS CHRONICLE OF

ANJOU AND A NOBLE LADY

IS DEDICATED

BY

M.H.

CONTENTS

BOOK I--THE BOOK OF YEA

EXORDIUM PAGE

The Abbot Milo _urbi el orbi_, concerning the Nature of

the Leopard 3

CHAPTER I

Of Count Richard, and the Fires by Night 5

CHAPTER II

How the Fair Jehane bestowed herself 18

CHAPTER III

In what Harbour they found the Old Lion 29

CHAPTER IV

How Jehane stroked what Alois had made Fierce 41

CHAPTER V

How Bertran de Born and Count Richard strove in a

_Tenzon_ 56

CHAPTER VI

Fruits of the Tenzon: the Back of Saint-Pol, and the

Front of Montferrat 69

CHAPTER VII

Of the Crackling of Thorns under Pots 84

CHAPTER VIII

How they held Richard off from his Father's Throat 93

CHAPTER IX

Wild Work in the Church of Gisors 102

CHAPTER X

Night-work by the Dark Tower 111

CHAPTER XI

Of Prophecy; and Jehane in the Perilous Bed 123

CHAPTER XII

How they bayed the Old Lion 134

CHAPTER XIII

How they met at Fontevrault 145

CHAPTER XIV

Of what King Richard said to the Bowing Rood; and

what Jehane to King Richard 156

CHAPTER XV

Last _Tenzon_ of Bertran de Born 168

CHAPTER XVI

Conversation in England of Jehane the Fair 179

CHAPTER XVII

Frozen Heart and Red Heart: Cahors 193

* * * * *

BOOK II--THE BOOK OF NAY

CHAPTER I

The Chapter called Mate-Grifon 209

CHAPTER II

Of what Jehane looked for, and what Berengère had 220

CHAPTER III

Who Fought at Acre 235

CHAPTER IV

Concerning the Tower of Flies, Saint-Pol, and the Marquess

of Montferrat 248

CHAPTER V

The Chapter of Forbidding: how De Gurdun looked,

and King Richard hid his Face 262

CHAPTER VI

The Chapter called Clytemnestra 282

CHAPTER VII

The Chapter of the Sacrifice on Lebanon; also called

Cassandra 293

CHAPTER VIII

Of the Going-up and Going-down of the Marquess 302

CHAPTER IX

How King Richard reaped what Jehane had sowed, and

the Soldan was Gleaner 311

CHAPTER X

The Chapter called Bonds 327

CHAPTER XI

The Chapter called _A Latere_ 338

CHAPTER XII

The Chapter of Strife in the Dark 350

CHAPTER XIII

Of the Love of Women 362

CHAPTER XIV

How the Leopard was loosed 369

CHAPTER XV

Oeconomic Reflections of the Old Man of Musse 380

CHAPTER XVI

The Chapter called Chaluz 386

CHAPTER XVII

The Keening 396

EPILOGUE OF THE ABBOT MILO 408

BOOK I

THE BOOK OF YEA

EXORDIUM

THE ABBOT MILO _URBI ET ORBI_, CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THE LEOPARD

I like this good man's account of leopards, and find it more pertinent

to my matter than you might think. Milo was a Carthusian monk, abbot of

the cloister of Saint Mary-of-the-Pine by Poictiers; it was his

distinction to be the life-long friend of a man whose friendships were

few: certainly it may be said of him that he knew as much of leopards as

any one of his time and nation, and that his knowledge was better

grounded.

'Your leopard,' he writes, 'is alleged in the books to be offspring of

the Lioness and the Pard; and his name, if the Realists have any truth

on their side, establishes the fact. But I think he should be called

Leolupé, which is to say, got by lion out of bitch-wolf, since two

essences burn in him as well as two sorts. This is the nature of the

leopard: it is a spotted beast, having two souls, a bright soul and a

dark soul. It is black and golden, slim and strong, cat and dog. Hunger

drives a dog to hunt, so the leopard; passion the cat, so the leopard. A

cat is sufficient unto himself, and a leopard is so; but a dog hangs on

a man's nod, and a leopard can so be beguiled. A leopard is sleek as a

cat and pleased by stroking; like a cat he will scratch his friend on

occasion. Yet again, he has a dog's intrepidity, knows no fear, is

single-purposed, not to be called off, longanimous. But the cat in him

makes him wary, tempts him to treacherous dealing, keeps him apart from

counsels, advises him to keep his own. So the leopard is a lonely

beast.' This is interesting, and may be true. But mark him as he goes

on.

'I knew the man, my dear master and a great king, who brought the

leopards into the shield of England, more proper to do it than his

father, being more the thing he signified. Of him, therefore, torn by

two natures, cast in two moulds, sport of two fates; the hymned and

reviled, the loved and loathed, spendthrift and a miser, king and a

beggar, the bond and the free, god and man; of King Richard Yea-and-Nay,

so made, so called, and by that unmade, I thus prepare my account.'

So far the abbot with much learning and no little verbosity casts his

net. He has the weakness of his age, you observe, and must begin at the

beginning; but this is not our custom. Something of Time is behind us;

we are conscious of a world replete, and may assume that we have

digested part of it. Milo, indeed, like all candid chroniclers, has his

value. He is excellent upon himself, a good relish with your meal.

However, as we are concerned with King Richard, you shall dip into his

bag for refreshment, but must leave the victualling to me.

CHAPTER I

OF COUNT RICHARD, AND THE FIRES BY NIGHT

I choose to record how Richard Count of Poictou rode all through one

smouldering night to see Jehane Saint-Pol a last time. It had so been

named by the lady; but he rode in his hottest mood of Nay to that, yet

careless of first or last so he could see her again. Nominally to remit

his master's sins, though actually (as he thought) to pay for his own,

the Abbot Milo bore him company, if company you can call it which left

the good man, in pitchy dark, some hundred yards behind. The way, which

was long, led over Saint Andrew's Plain, the bleakest stretch of the

Norman march; the pace, being Richard's, was furious, a pounding gallop;

the prize, Richard's again, showed fitfully and afar, a twinkling point

of light. Count Richard knew it for Jehane's torch, and saw no other

spark; but Milo, faintly curious on the lady's account, was more

concerned with the throbbing glow which now and again shuddered in the

northern sky. Nature had no lamps that night, and made no sign by cry of

night-bird or rustle of scared beast: there was no wind, no rain, no

dew; she offered nothing but heat, dark, and dense oppression. Topping

the ridge of sand, where was the Fosse des Noyées, place of shameful

death, the solitary torch showed a steady beam; and there also, ahead,

could be seen on the northern horizon that rim of throbbing light.

'God pity the poor!' said Count Richard, and scourged forward.

'God pity me!' said gasping Milo; 'I believe my stomach is in my head.'

So at last they crossed the pebbly ford and found the pines, then

cantered up the path of light which streamed from the Dark Tower. As

core of this they saw the lady stand with a torch above her head; when

they drew rein she did not move. Her face, moon-shaped, was as pale as a

moon; her loose hair, catching light, framed it with gold. She was all

white against the dark, seemed to loom in it taller than she was or

could have been. She was Jehane Saint-Pol, Jehane 'of the Fair Girdle,'

so called by her lovers and friends, to whom for a matter of two years

this hot-coloured, tallest, and coldest of the Angevins had been light

of the world.

The check upon their greeting was the most curious part of a curious

business, that one should have travelled and the other watched so long,

and neither urge the end of desire. The Count sat still upon his horse,

so for duty's sake did the aching abbot; the girl stood still in the

entry-way, holding up her dripping torch. Then, 'Child, child,' cried

the Count, 'how is it with thee?' His voice trembled, and so did he.

She looked at him, slow to answer, though the hand upon her bosom swayed

up and down.

'Do you see the fires?' she said. 'They have been there six nights.' He

was watching them then through the pine-woods, how they shot into the

sky great ribbons of light, flickered, fainted out, again glowed

steadily as if gathering volume, again leaped, again died, ebbing and

flowing like a tide of fire.

'The King will be at Louviers,' said Richard. He gave a short laugh.

'Well, he shall light us to bed. Heart of a man, I am sick of all this.

Let me in.'

She stood aside, and he rode boldly into the tower, stooping as he

passed her to touch her cheek. She looked up quickly, then let in the

abbot, who, with much ceremony, came bowing, his horse led by the

bridle. She shut the door behind them and drove home the great bolts.

Servants came tumbling out to take the horses and do their duty; Count

Eustace, a brother of Jehane's, got up from the hearth, where he had

been asleep on a bearskin, rubbed his eyes, gulped a yawn, knelt, and

was kissed by Richard. Jehane stood apart, mistress of herself as it

seemed, but conscious, perhaps, that she was being watched. So she was.

In the bustle of salutation the Abbot Milo found eyes to see what manner

of sulky, beautiful girl this was.

He watched shrewdly, and has described her for us with the meticulous

particularity of his time and temper. He runs over her parts like a

virtuoso. The iris of her eyes, for instance, was wet grey, but ringed

with black and shot with yellow, giving so the effect of hot green; her

mouth was of an extraordinary dark red colour, very firm in texture,

close-grained, 'like the darker sort of strawberries,' says he. The

upper lip had the sulky curve; she looked discontented, and had reason

to be, under such a scrutiny of the microscope. Her hair was colour of

raw silk, eyebrows set rather high, face a thinnish oval, complexion

like a pink rose's, neck thinnish again, feet, hands, long and nervous,

'good working members,' etc. etc. None of this helps very much; too

detailed. But he noticed how tall she was and how slim, save for a very

beautiful bosom, too full for Dian's (he tells us), whom else she

resembled; how she was straight as a birch-tree; how in walking it

seemed as if her skirts clung about her knees. There was an air of

mingled surprise and defiance about her; she was a silent girl. 'Fronted

like Juno,' he appears to cry, 'shaped like Hebe, and like Demeter in

stature; sullen with most, but with one most sweetly apt, she looked

watchful but was really timid, looked cold but was secretly afire. I

knew soon enough how her case stood, how hope and doubt strove in her

and choked her to silence. I guessed how within those reticent members

swift love ran like wine; but because of this proud, brave mask of hers

I was slow to understand her worth. God help me, I thought her a thing

of snow!'

He records her dress at this time, remarkable if becoming. It was all

white, and cut wedge-shaped in front, very deep; but an undervest of

crimson crossed the V in the midst and saved her modesty, and his. Her

hair, which was long, was plaited in two plaits with seed-pearls,

brought round her neck like a scarf and the two ends joined between her

breasts, thus defining a great beauty of hers and making a gold collar

to her gown. Round her smooth throat was a little chain with a red

jewel; on her head another jewel (a carbuncle) set in a flower, with

three heron's plumes falling back from it. She had a broad belt of gold

and sapphire stones, and slippers of vair. 'Oh, a fine straight maid,'

says Milo in conclusion, 'golden and delicate, with strangely shaded

eyes. They knew her as Jehane of the Fair Girdle.'

The brother, Count Eustace as they called him (to distinguish him from

an elder brother, Eudo Count of Saint-Pol), was a blunt copy of his

sister, redder than she was, lighter in the hair, much lighter in the

eyes. He seemed an affectionate youth, and clung to the great Count

Richard like ivy to a tree. Richard gave him the sort of scornful

affection one has for a little dog, between patting and slapping; but

clearly wanted to be rid of him. No reference was made to the journey,

much was taken for granted; Eustace talked of his hawks, Richard ate and

drank, Jehane sat up stiffly, looking into the fire; Milo watched her

between his mouthfuls. The moment supper was done, up jumps Richard and

claps hands on the two shoulders of young Eustace. 'To bed, to bed, my

falconer! It grows late,' cries he. Eustace pushed his chair back, rose,

kissed the Count's hand and his sister's forehead, saluted Milo, and

went out humming a tune. Milo withdrew, the servants bowed themselves

away. Richard stood up, a loose-limbed young giant, and narrowed his

eyes.

'Nest thee, nest thee, my bird,' he said low; and Jehane's lips parted.

Slowly she left her stool by the fire, but quickened as she went; and at

last ran tumbling into his arms.

His right hand embraced her, his left at her chin held her face at

discretion. Like a woman, she reproached him for what she dearly loved.

'Lord, lord, how shall I serve the cup and platter if you hold me so

fast?'

'Thou art my cup, thou art my supper.'

'Thin fare, poor soul,' she said; but was glad of his foolishness.

Later, they sat by the hearth, Jehane on Richard's knee, but doubtfully

his, being troubled by many things. He had no retrospects nor

afterthoughts; he tried to coax her into pliancy. It was the fires in

the north that distressed her. Richard made light of them.

'Dear,' he said, 'the King my father is come up with a host to drive the

Count his son to bed. Now the Count his son is master of a good bed, to

which he will presently go; but it is not the bed of the King his

father. That, as you know, is of French make, neither good Norman, nor

good Angevin, nor seethed in the English mists. By Saint Maclou and the

astonishing works he did, I should be bad Norman, and worse Angevin, and

less English than I am, if I loved the French.'

He tried to draw her in; but she, rather, strained away from him,

elbowed her knee, and rested her chin upon her hand. She looked gravely

down to the whitening logs, where the ashes were gaining on the red.

'My lord loves not the French,' she said, 'but he loves honour. He is

the King's son, loving his father.'

'By my soul, I do not,' he assured her, with perfect truth, then he

caught her round the waist and turned her bodily to face him. After he

had kissed her well he began to speak more seriously.

'Jehane,' he said, 'I have thought all this stifling night upon the

heath, Homing to her I am seeking my best. My best? You are all I have

in the world. If honour is in my hand, do I not owe it to you? Or shall

a man use women like dogs, to play with them in idle moods, toss them

bones under the table, afterwards kick them out of doors? Child, you

know me better. What!' he cried out, with his head very high, 'Shall a

man not choose his own wife?'

'No,' said Jehane, ready for him; 'no, Richard, unless the people shall

choose their own king.'

'God chooses the king,' says Richard, 'or so we choose to believe.'

'Then God must appoint the wife,' Jehane said, and tried to get free.

But this could not be allowed, as she knew.

She was gentle with him, reasoning. 'The King your father is an old man,

Richard. Old men love their way.'

'God knows, he is old, and passionate, and indifferent wicked,' said

Richard, and kissed Jehane. 'Look, my girl, there were four of us:

Henry, and me, and Geoffrey, and John, whom he sought to drive in team

by a sop to-day and a stick to-morrow. A good way, done by a judging

hand. What then? I will tell you how the team served the teamster.

Henry gave sop for sop, and it was found well. Might he not give stick

for stick? He thought so: God rest him, he is dead of that. There was

much simplicity in Henry. I got no sop at all. Why should I have stick

then? I saw no reason; but I took what came. If I cried out, it is a

more harmless vent than many. Let me alone. Geoffrey, I think, was a

villain. God help him if He can: he is dead too. He took sop and gave

stick: ungentle in Geoffrey, but he paid for it. He was a cross-bred dog

with much of the devil in him; he bit himself and died barking. Last,

there is John. I desire to speak reasonably of John; but he is too snug,

he gets all sop. This is not fair. He should have some stick, that we

may judge what mettle he has. There, my Jehane, you have the four of us,

a fretful team; whereof one has rushed his hills and broken his heart;

and one, kicking his yoke-fellows, squealing, playing the jade, has

broken his back; and one, poor Richard, does collar-work and gets whip;

and one, young Master John, eases his neck and is cajoled with, "So

then, so then, boy!" Then comes pretty Jehane to the ear of the

collar-horse, whispering, "Good Richard, get thee to stall, but not

here. Stable thee snug with the King of France his sister." 'Hey!'

laughed Richard, 'what a word for a chosen bride!' He pinched her cheek

and looked gaily at her, triumphant in his own eloquence. He was most

dangerous when that devil was awake, so she dared not look at him back.

Eagerly and low she replied.

'Yes, Richard, yes, yes, my king! The king must have the king's sister,

and Jehane go back to the byre. Eagles do not mate with buzzards.'

Hereupon he snatched her up altogether and hid her face in his breast.

'Never, never, never!' he swore to the rafters. 'As God lives and

reigns, so live thou and so reign, queen of me, my Picardy rose.'

She tried no more that night, fearing that his love so keen-edged might

make his will ride rough. The watch-fires at Louviers trembled and

streamed up in the north. There was no need for candles in the Dark

Tower.

They rose up early to a fair dawn. The cloud-wrack was blown off,

leaving the sky a lake of burnt yellow, pure, sweet, and cool. Thus the

world entered upon the summer of Saint Luke, to a new-risen sun, to thin

mists stealing off the moor, to wet flowers hearted anew, to blue air,

and hope left for those who would go gleaning. While Eustace Saint-Pol

was snoring abed and the Abbot Milo at his _Sursum Corda_, Richard had

Jehane by the hand. 'Come forth, my love; we have the broad day before

us and an empty kingdom to roam in. Come, my red rose, let me set you

among the flowers.' What could she do but harbour up her thoughts?

He took her afield, where flowers made the earth still a singing-place,

and gathered of these to deck her bosom and hair. Of the harebells he

made knots, the ground-colour of her eyes; but autumn loves the yellow,

so she was stuck with gold like a princess. She sat enthroned by his

command, this young girl in a high place, with downcast eyes and a face

all fire-colour, while he worshipped her to his fancy. I believe he had

no after-thought; but she saw the dun smoke of the fires at Louviers,

and knew they would make the night shudder again. Yet her sweetness,

patience, staid courtesy, humility, never failed her; out of the deep

wells of her soul she drew them forth in a stream. Richard adored.

'Queen Jehane, Queen Jehane!' he cried out, with his arms straightly

round her--'Was ever man in the world blest so high since God said,

"Behold thy mother"? And so art thou mother to me, O bride. Bride and

queen as thou shalt be.'

This was great invention. She put her hand upon his head. 'My Richard,

my Richard Yea-and-Nay,' she said, as if pitying his wild heart. The

nickname jarred.

'Never call me that,' he told her. 'Leave that to Bertran de Born, a

fool's word to the fool who made it.'

'If I could, if I could!' thought Jehane, and sighed. There were tears

in her eyes, also, as she remembered what generosity in him must be

frozen up, and what glory of her own. But she did not falter in what she

had to do, while he, too exalted to be pitied, began to sing a Southern

song--

Al' entrada del tems clair, eya!

When their hair commingled in their love, when they were close together,

there was little distinguishing between them; he was more her pair than

Eustace her blood-brother, in stature and shape, in hue and tincture of

gold. Jehane you know, but not Richard. Of him, son of a king, heir of a

king, if you wish some bodily sign, I will say shortly that he was a

very tall young man, high-coloured and calm in the face, straight-nosed,

blue-eyed, spare of flesh, lithe, swift in movement. He was at once bold

and sleek, eager and cold as ice--an odd combination, but not more odd

than the blend of Norman dog and Angevin cat which had made him so.

Furtive he was not, yet seeming to crouch for a spring; not savage, yet

primed for savagery; not cruel, yet quick on the affront, and on the

watch for it. He was neither a rogue nor a madman; and yet he was as

cunning as the one and as heedless as the other, if that is a possible

thing. He was arrogant, but his smile veiled the fault; you saw it best

in a sleepy look he had. His blemishes were many, his weaknesses two. He

trusted to his own force too much, and despised everybody else in the

world. Not that he thought them knaves; he was certain they were fools.

And so most of them were, no doubt, but not all. The first flush of him

moved your admiration: great height, great colour, the red and the

yellow; his beard which ran jutting to a point and gave his jaw the

clubbed look of a big cat's; his shut mouth, and cold considering eyes;

the eager set of his head, his soft, padding motions--a leopard, a

hunting leopard, quick to strike, but quick to change purpose. This,

then, was Richard Yea-and-Nay, whom all women loved, and very few men.

These require to be trusted before they love; and full trust Richard

gave to no man, because he could not believe him worth it. Women are

more generous givers, expecting not again.

Here was Jehane Saint-Pol, a girl of two-and-twenty to his

two-and-thirty, well born, well formed, greatly desired among her peers,

who, having let her soul be stolen, was prepared to cut it out of

herself for his sake who took it, and let it die. She was the creature

of his love, in and out by now the work of his hands. God had given her

a magnificent body, but Richard had made it glow. God had made her soul

a fair room; but his love had filled it with light, decked it with

flowers and such artful furniture. He, in fact, as she very well knew,

had given her the grace to deal queenly with herself. She knew that she

would have strength to deny him, having learned the hardihood to give

him her soul. Fate had carried her too young into the arms of the most

glorious prince in the world. Her brother, Eudo the Count, built castles

on that in his head. Now she was to tumble them down. Her younger

brother, Eustace, loved this splendid Richard. Now she was to hurt him.

What was to become of herself? Mercy upon her, I believe she never

thought of that. His honour was her necessity: the watch-fires in the

north told her the hour was at hand. The old King was come up with a

host to drive his son to bed. Richard must go, and she woo him out. Son

of a king, heir of a king, he must go to the king his father; and he

knew he must go. Two days' maddening delight, two nights' biting of

nails, miserable entreaty from Jehane, grown newly pinched and grey in

the face, and he owned it.

He said to her the last night, 'When I saw you first, my Queen of Snows,

in the tribune at Vézelay, when the knights rode by for the melée, the

green light from your eyes shot me, and wounded I cried out, "That maid

or none!"'

She bowed her head; but he went on. 'When they throned you queen of them

all because you were so proud and still, and had such a high untroubled

head; and when your sleeve was in my helm, and my heart in your lap, and

men fallen to my spear were sent to kneel before you--what caused your

cheek to burn and your eyes to shine so bright?'

She hid her face. 'Homage of the knights! The love of me!' he cried; and

then, 'Ah, Jehane of the Fair Girdle, when I took you from the pastures

of Gisors, when I taught you love and learned from your young mouth what

love might be, I was made man. But now you ask me to become dog.' And he

swore yet again he could never leave her. But she smiled proudly, being

in pain. 'Nay, my lord, but the man in you is awake, and not to leave

you. You shall go because you are the king's son, and I shall pray for

the new king.' So she beat him, and had him weeping terribly, his face

in her lap. She wept no more, but dry-eyed kissed him, and dry-lipped

went to bed. 'He said Yea that time,' records the Abbot Milo, 'but I

never knew then what she paid for it. That was later.' He went next

morning, and she saw him go.

CHAPTER II

HOW THE FAIR JEHANE BESTOWED HERSELF

Betimes is best for an ugly business; your man of spirit will always

rush what he loathes but yet must do. Count Richard of Poictou, having

made up his mind and confessed himself overnight, must leave with the

first cock of the morning, yet must take the sacrament. Before it was

grey in the east he did so, fully armed in mail, with his red surcoat of

leopards upon him, his sword girt, his spurs strapped on. Outside the

chapel in the weeping mirk a squire held his shield, another his helm, a

groom walked his horse. Milo the Abbot was celebrant, a snuffling boy

served; the Count knelt before the housel-cloth haloed by the light of

two thin candles. Hardly had the priest begun his _introibo_ when Jehane

Saint-Pol, who had been awake all night, stole in with a hood on her

head, and holding herself very stiffly, knelt on the floor. She joined

her hands and stuck them up before her, so that the tips of her fingers,

pointing upwards as her thoughts would fly, were nearly level with her

chin. Thus frozen in prayer she remained throughout the office; nor did

she relax when at the elevation of the Host Richard bowed himself to the

earth. It seemed as if she too, bearing between her hands her own heart,

was lifting it up for sacrifice and for worship.

The Count was communicated. He was a very religious man, who would

sooner have gone without his sword than his Saviour upon any affairs.

Jehane saw him fed without a twitch of the lips. She was in a great

mood, a rapt and pillared saint; but when mass was over and his

thanksgiving to make, she got up and hid herself away from him in the

shades. There she lurked darkling, and he, lunging out, swept with his

sword's point the very edge of her gown. She did not hear him go, for he

trod like a cat; but she felt him touch her with the sword, and

shuddered once or twice. He went out of the courtyard at a gallop.

While the abbot was reciting his own thanksgiving Jehane came out of her

corner, minded to speak with him. So much he divined, needing not the

beckoning look she sent him from her guarded eyes. He sat himself down

by the altar of Saint Remy, and she knelt beside him.

'Well, my daughter?' says Milo.

'I think it is well,' she took him up.

The Abbot Milo, a red-faced, watery-eyed old man, rheumy and weathered

well, then opened his mouth and spake such wisdom as he knew. He held up

his forefinger like a claw, and used it as if describing signs and

wonders in the air.

'Hearken, Madame Jehane,' he said. 'I say that you have done well, and

will maintain it. That great prince, whom I love like my own son, is not

for you, nor for another. No, no. He is married already.'

He hoped to startle her, the old rhetorician; but he failed. Jehane was

too dreary.

'He is married, my daughter,' he repeated; 'and to whom? Why, to

himself. That man from the birth has been a lonely soul. He can never

wed, as you understand it. You think him your lover! Believe me, he is

not. He is his own lover. He is called. He has a destiny. And what is

that? you ask me.'

She did not, but rhetoric bade him suppose it. 'Salem is his destiny;

Salem is his bride, the elect lady in bonds. He will not wed Madame

Alois of France, nor you, nor any virgin in Christendom until that

spiritual wedlock is consummate. I should not love him as I do if I did

not believe it. For why? Shall I call my own son apostate? He is signed

with the Cross, a married man, by our Saviour!'

He leaned back in his chair, peering down at her to see how she took it.

She took it stilly, and turned him a marble, storm-purged face, a pair

of eyes which seemed all black.

'What shall I do to be safe?' Her voice sounded worn.

'Safe, my child?' He wondered. 'Bless me, is not the Cross safety?'

'Not with him, father.'

This was perfectly true, though tainted with scandal, he thought. The

abbot, who was trained to blink all such facts, had to learn that this

girl blinked none. True to his guidance, he blinked.

'Go home to your brother, my daughter; go home to Saint-Pol-la-Marche.

At the worst, remember that there are always two arks for a woman in

flood-time, a convent and a bed.'

'I shall never choose a convent,' said Jehane.

'I think,' said the abbot, 'that you are perfectly wise.'

I suppose the alternative struck a sudden terror into her; for the abbot

abruptly records in his book that 'here her spirit seemed to flit out of

her, and she began to tremble very much, and in vain to contend with

tears. I had her all dissolved at my feet within a few moments. She was

very young, and seemed lost.'

'Come, come,' he said, 'you have shown yourself a brave girl these two

days. It is not every maid can sacrifice herself for a Count of Poictou,

the eldest son of a king. Come, come, let us have no more of this.' He

hoped, no doubt, to brace her by a roughness which was far from his

nature; and it is possible that he succeeded in heading off a mutiny of

the nerves. She was not violent under her despair, but went on crying

very miserably, saying, 'Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?'

'God knoweth,' says the abbot, 'this was a bad case; but I had a good

thought for it.' He began to speak of Richard, of what he had done and

what would live to do. 'They say that the strain of the fiend is in that

race, my dear,' he told her. 'They say that Geoffrey Grey-Gown had

intercourse with a demon. And certain it is that in Richard, as in all

his brothers, that stinging grain lives in the blood. For testimony look

at their cognisance of leopards, and advise yourself, whether any house

in Christendom ever took that device but had known familiarly the devil

in some shape? And look again at the deeds of these princes. What turned

the young king to riot and death, and Geoffrey to rapine and death? What

else will turn John Sansterre to treachery and death, or our tall

Richard to violence and death? Nothing else, nothing else. But before

he dies you shall see him glorious--'

'He is glorious already,' said Jehane, wiping her eyes.

'Keep him so, then,' said the abbot testily, who did not love to have

his periods truncated.

'If I go back to Saint-Pol,' said Jehane, 'I shall fall in with Gilles

de Gurdun, who has sworn to have me.'

'Well,' replied the abbot, 'why should he not? Does he receive the

assurance of your brother the Count?'

Jehane shook her head. 'No, no. My brother wished me to be my lord

Richard's. But Gilles needs no assurance. He will buy my marriage from

the King of France. He is very sufficient.'

'Hath he substance? Hath he lands? Is he noble, then, Jehane?'

'He hath knighthood, a Church fief--oh, enough!'

'God forgive me if I did amiss,' writes the abbot here; 'but seeing her

in a melting mood, dewy, soft, and adorable, I kissed that beautiful

person, and she left the Chapel of Saint Remy somewhat comforted.'

Not only so, but the same day she left the Dark Tower with her brother

Count Eustace, and rode towards Gisors and Saint-Pol-la-Marche. Nothing

she could do could be shamefully done, because of her silence, and the

high head upon which she carried it; yet the Count of Saint-Pol, when he

heard her story, sitting bulky in his chair (like a stalled red bull),

did his best to put shame upon her, that so he might cover his own

bitterness. It was Eustace, a generous ardent youth in those days, who

saved her from most of Eudo's wrath by drawing it upon himself.

The Count of Saint-Pol swore a great oath.

'By the teeth of God, Jehane,' he roared, 'I see how it is. He hath made

thee a piece of ruin, and now runs wasting elsewhere.'

'You shall never say that of my sister, my lord,' cries Eustace, very

red in the face, 'nor yet of the greatest knight in the world.'

'Why, you egg,' says the Count, 'what have you to do in this? Tell me

the rights of it before you put me in the wrong. Is my house to be the

sport of Anjou? Is that long son of pirates and the devil to batten on

our pastures, tread underfoot, bruise and blacken, rout as he will,

break hedge and away? By my father's soul, Eustace, I shall see her

righted.' He turned to the still girl. 'You tell me that you sent him

away? Where did you send him? Where did he go?'

'He went to the King of England at Louviers, and to the camp,' said

Jehane. 'The King sent for him. I sent him not.'

'Who is there beside the King of England?'

'Madame Alois of France is there.'

The Count of Saint-Pol put his tongue in his cheek.

'Oho!' he said, 'Oho! That is how it stands? So she is to be cuckoo,

hey?' He sat square and intent for a moment or two, working his mouth

like a man who chews a straw. Then he slapped his big hand on his knee,

and rose up. 'If I cannot spike this wheel of vice, trust me never. By

my soul, a plot indeed. Oh, horrible, horrible thief!' He turned

gnashing upon his brother. 'Now, Eustace, what do you say to your

greatest knight in the world? And what now of your sister, hey? Little

fool, do you not catch the measure of it now? Two honey years of Jehane

Saint-Pol, gossamer pledges of mouth and mouth, of stealing fingers,

kiss and clasp; but for the French King's daughter--pish! the thing of

naught they have made her--the sacrament of marriage, the treaty, the

dowry-fee. Oh, heaven and earth, Eustace, answer me if you can.'

All three were moved in their several ways: the Count red and blinking,

Eustace red and trembling, Jehane white as a cloth, trembling also, but

very silent. The word was with the younger man.

'I know nothing of all this, upon my word, my lord,' he said, confused.

'I love Count Richard, I love my sister. There may have been that which,

had I loved but one, I had condemned in the other. I know not, but'--he

saw Jehane's marble face, and lifted his hand up--'by my hope, I will

never believe it. In love they came together, my lord; in love, says

Jehane, they have parted. I have heard little of Madame Alois, but my

thought is, that kings and the sons of kings may marry kings' daughters,

yet not in the way of love.'

The Count fumed. 'You are a fool, I see, and therefore not to my

purpose. I must talk with men. Stay you here, Eustace, and watch over

her till I return. Let none get at her, on your dear life. There are

those who--sniffing rogues, climbers, boilers of their pots--keep them

out, Eustace, keep them out. As for you'--he turned hectoring to the

proud girl--'As for you, mistress, keep the house. You are not in the

market, you are spoilt goods. You shall go where you should be. I am

still lord of these lands; there shall be no rebellion here. Keep the

house, I say. I return ere many days.' He stamped out of the hall; they

heard him next rating the grooms at the gate.

Saint-Pol was a great house, a noble house, no doubt of it. Its counts

drew no limits in the way of pedigree, but built themselves a fair

temple in that kind, with the Twelfth Apostle himself for head of the

corner. So far as estate went, seeing their country was fruitful,

compact, snugly bounded between France and Normandy (owing fealty to the

first), they might have been sovereign counts, like the house of Blois,

like that of Aquitaine, like that even of Anjou, which, from nothing,

had risen to be so high. More: by marriage, by robbery on that great

plan where it ceases to be robbery and is called warfare, by treaty and

nice use of the balances, there was no reason why kingship should not

have been theirs, or in their blood. Kingship, even now, was not far

off. They called the Marquess of Montferrat cousin, and he (it was

understood) intended to be throned at Jerusalem. The Emperor himself

might call, and once (being in liquor) did call Count Eudo of Saint-Pol

'cousin'; for the fact was so. You must understand that in the Gaul of

that day things were in this ticklish state, that a man (as they say)

was worth the scope of his sword: reiver yesterday, warrior to-morrow;

yesterday wearing a hemp collar, to-day a count's belt, and to-morrow,

may be, a king's crown. You climbed in various ways, by the field, by

the board, by the bed. A handsome daughter was nearly worth a stout son.

Count Eudo reckoned himself stout enough, and reckoned Eustace was so;

but the beauty of Jehane, that stately maid who might uphold a cornice,

that still wonder of ivory and gold, was an emblement which he, the

tenant, meant to profit by; and so for an hour (two years by the clock)

he saw his profit fair. The infatuation of the girl for this man or that

man was nothing; but the infatuation of the great Count of Poictou for

her set Eudo's heart ablaze. God willing, Saint Maclou assisting, he

might live to call Jehane 'My Lady Queen.' He shut his ears to report;

there were those who called Richard a rake, and others who called him

'Yea-and-Nay'; that was Bertran de Born's name for him, and all Paris

knew it. He shut his eyes to Richard's galling unconcern with himself

and his dignity. Dignity of Saint-Pol! He would wait for his dignity. He

shut his mind to Jehane's blown fame, to the threatenings of his

dreadful Norman neighbour, Henry the old king, who had had an archbishop

pole-axed like a steer; he dared the anger of his suzerain, in whose

hands lay Jehane's marriage; a heady gambler, he staked the fortunes of

his house upon this clinging of a girl to a wild prince. And now to tell

himself that he deserved what he had got was but to feed his rage. Again

he swore by God's teeth that he would have his way; and when he left his

castle of Saint-Pol-la-Marche it was for Paris.

The head of his house, under the Emperor Henry, was there, Conrad of

Montferrat, trying to negotiate the crown of Jerusalem. There must be a

conference before the house of Saint-Pol could be let to fall. Surely

the Marquess would never allow it! He must spike the wheel. Was not

Alois of France within the degrees? She was sister to the French King:

well, but what was Richard's mother? She had been wife to Louis, wife to

Alois' father. Was this decency? What would the Pope say--an Italian?

Was the Marquess Conrad an Italian for nothing? Was 'our cousin' the

Emperor of no account, King of the Romans? The Pope Italian, the

Marquess Italian, the Emperor on his throne, and God in His heaven--eh,

eh! there should be a conference of these high powers. So, and with such

whirl of question and answer, did the Count of Saint-Pol beat out to

Paris.

But Jehane remained at Saint-Pol-la-Marche, praying much, going little

abroad, seeing few persons. Then came (since rumour is a gadabout) Sir

Gilles de Gurdun, as she knew he would, and knelt before her, and kissed

her hand. Gilles was a square-shouldered, thick-set youth of the black

Norman sort, ruddy, strong-jawed, small-eyed, low in the brow,

bullet-headed. He was no taller than she, looked shorter, and had

nothing to say. He had loved her since the time when she was an

overgrown girl of twelve years, and he a squire about her father's house

learning mannishness. The King of England had dubbed him a knight, but

she had made him a man. She knew him to be a good one; as dull as a

mud-flat, but honest, wholesome, and of decent estate. In a moment,

when he was come again, she saw that he was a long lover who would treat

her well.

'God help me, and him also,' she thought; 'it may be that I shall need

him before long.'

CHAPTER III

IN WHAT HARBOUR THEY FOUND THE OLD LION

At Evreux, across the heath, Count Richard found his company: the

Viscount Adhémar of Limoges (called for the present the Good Viscount),

the Count of Perigord, Sir Gaston of Béarn (who really loved him), the

Bishop of Castres, and the Monk of Montauban (a singing-bird); some

dozen of knights with their esquires, pages, and men-at-arms. He waited

two days there for Abbot Milo to come up with last news of Jehane; then

at the head of sixty spears he rode fleetly over the marshes towards

Louviers. After his first, 'You are well met, my lords,' he had said

very little, showing a cold humour; after a colloquy with Milo, which he

had before he left his bed, he said nothing at all. Alone, as became one

of his race, he rode ahead of his force; not even the chirping Monk (who

remembered his brother Henry and often sighed for him) cared to risk a

shot from his strong eyes. They were like blue stones, full of the cold

glitter of their fire. It was at times like this, when a man stands

naked confronting his purpose, that one saw the hag riding on the back

of Anjou.

He was not thinking of it now, but the truth is that there had hardly

been a time in his short life when he had not been his father's open

enemy. He could have told you that it had not been always his fault,

though he would never have told you. But I say that what he, a youth of

thirty, had made of his inheritance was as nothing to that elder's

wasting of his. In moments of hot rage Richard knew this, and justified

himself; but the melting hour came again when he heaped all reproach

upon himself, believing that but for such and such he might have loved

this rooted, terrible old man who assuredly loved not him. Richard was

neither mule nor jade; he was open to persuasion on two sides.

Compunction was one: you could touch him on the heart and bring him

weeping to his knees; affection was another: if he loved the petitioner

he yielded handsomely. Now, this time it was Jehane and not his

conscience which had sent him to Louviers. First of all Jehane had

pleaded the Sepulchre, his old father, filial obedience, and he had

laughed at the sweet fool. But when she, grown wiser, urged him to

pleasure her by treading on the heart she had given him, he could not

deny her. He was converted, not convinced. So he rode alone, three

hundred yards from his lieges, reasoning out how he could preserve his

honour and yet yield. The more he thought the less he liked it, but all

the more he felt necessity at his throat. And, as always with him, when

he thought he seemed as if turned to stone. 'One way or another,' Milo

tells us, 'every man of the House of Anjou had his unapproachable side,

so accustomed were they to the fortress-life.'

A broad plain, watered by many rivers, showed the towers of Louviers and

red roofs cinctured by the greatest of them; short of the walls were

the ranked white tents, columned smoke, waggons, with men and horses, as

purposeless, little, and busy as a swarm of bees. In the midst of this

array was a red pavilion with a standard at the side, too heavy for the

wind. All was set in the clear sunless air of an autumn day in Normandy;

the hour, one short of noon. Richard reined up for his company, on a

little hill.

'The powers of England, my lords,' he said, pointing with his hand. All

stayed beside him. Gaston of Béarn tweaked his black beard.

'Let us be done with the business, Richard,' said this knight, 'before

the irons can get out.'

'What!' cried the Count, 'shall a father smite his son?' No one

answered: in a moment he was ashamed of himself. 'Before God,' he said,

'I mean no impiety. I will do what I have undertaken as gently as may

be. Come, gentlemen.' He rode on.

The camp was defended by fosse and bridge. At the barbican all the

Aquitanians except Richard dismounted, and all stayed about him while a

herald went forward to tell the King who was come in. The King knew very

well who it was, but chose not to know it; he kept the herald long

enough to make his visitors chafe, then sent word that the Count of

Poictou would be received, but alone. Claiming his right to ride in,

Richard followed the heralds at a foot's pace, alone, ungreeted by any.

At the mount of the standard he got off his horse, found the ushers of

the King's door, and went swiftly to the entry of the pavilion (which

they held open for him), as though, like some forest beast, he saw his

prey. There in the entry he stiffened suddenly, and stiffly went down on

his two knees. Midway of the great tent, square and rugged before him,

with working jaws and restless little fired eyes, sat the old King his

father, hands on knees, between them a long bare sword. Beside him was

his son John, thin and flushed, and about, a circle of peers: two

bishops in purple, a pock-marked monk of Cluny, Bohun, Grantmesnil,

Drago de Merlou, and a few more. On the ground was a secretary biting

his pen.

The King looked his best on a throne, for his upper part was his best.

It was, at least, the mannish part. With scanty red hair much rubbed

into disorder, a seamed red face, blotched and shining; with a square

jaw awry, the neck and shoulders of a bull; with gnarled gross hands at

the end of arms long out of measure, a cruel mouth and a nose like a

bird's beak--his features seemed to have been hacked coarsely out of

wood and as coarsely painted; but what might have passed by such means

for a man was transformed by his burning eyes, with their fuel of pain,

into the similitude of a fallen angel. The devil of Anjou sat eating

King Henry's eyes, and you saw him at his meal. It gave the man the look

of a wild boar easing his tusks against a tree, horrible, yet content to

be abhorred, splendid, because so strong and lonely. But the prospect

was not comfortable. Little as he knew of his father, Richard could make

no mistake here. The old King was in a picksome mood, fretted by rage:

angry that his son should kneel there, more than angry that he had not

knelt before.

The play began, like a farce. The King affected not to see him, let him

kneel on. Richard did kneel on, as stiff as a rod. The King talked with

obscene jocosity, every snap betraying his humour, to Prince John; he

scandalised even his bishops, he abashed even his barons. He infinitely

degraded himself, yet seemed to wallow in disgrace. So Richard's gorge

(a tender organ) rose to hear him. 'God, what wast Thou about, to let

such a hog be made?' he muttered, loud enough for at least three people

to hear. The King heard it and was pleased; the Prince heard it, and

with a scared eye perceived that Bohun had heard it. The King went

grating on, John fidgeted; Bohun, greatly daring, whispered in his

master's ear.

The King replied with a roar which all the camp might have heard. 'Ha!

Sacred Face, let him kneel, Bohun. That is a new custom for him, useful

science for a man of his trade. All men of the sword come to it sooner

or later--sooner or later, by God!'

Hereupon Richard, very deliberately, rose to his feet and stepped

forward to the throne. His great height was a crowning abomination. The

King blinked up at him, showing his tushes.

'What now, sir?' he said.

'Later for me, sire, if kneeling is to be done by soldiers,' said

Richard. The King controlled himself by swallowing.

'And yet, Richard,' he said, dry as dust, 'And yet, Richard, you have

knelt to the French lad soon enough.'

'To my liege-lord, sire? Yes, it is true.'

'He is not your liege-lord, man,' roared the King. 'I am your

liege-lord, by heaven. I gave and I can take away. Heed me now.'

'Fair sire,' says Richard, 'observe that I have knelt to you. I am not

here for any other reason, and least of all to try conclusions of the

voice. I have come out of my lands with my company to give you

obedience. Be sure that they, on their part, will pay you proper honour

(as I do) if you will let them.'

'You come from lands I have given you, as Henry came, as Geoffrey came,

to defy me,' said the old man, trembling in his chair. 'What is your

obedience worth when I have measured theirs: Henry's obedience!

Geoffrey's obedience! Pish, man, what words you use.' He got up and

stamped about the tent like an irritable dwarf, crook-legged and

long-armed, pricked, maddened at every point. 'And you tell me of your

men, your lands, your company! Good men all, a fair company, by the Rood

of Grace! Tell me now, Richard, have you Raimon of Toulouse in that

company? Have you Béziers?'

'No, sire,' said Richard, looking serenely down at the working face.

'Nor ever will have,' snarled the King. 'Have you the Knight of Béarn?'

'I have, sire.'

'Ill company, Richard. It is a white-faced, lying beast, with a most

goatish beard. Have you your singing monk?'

'I have, sire.'

'Shameful company. Have you Adhémar of Limoges?'

'Yes, sire.'

'Silly company. Leave him with his women. Have you your Abbot Milo?'

'Yes.'

'Sick company.' His head sank into his breast; he found himself suddenly

tired, even of reviling, and had to sit down again. Richard felt a tide

of pity; looking down at the huddled old man, he held out his hand.

'Let us not quarrel, father,' he said; but that brought up the King's

head, like a call to arms.

'A last question, Richard. Have you dared bring here Bertran de Born?'

He was on his feet again for the reply, and the two men faced each

other. Everybody knew how serious the question was. It sobered the

Count, but drove the pity out of him.

'Dare is not a word for Anjou, sire,' he replied, picking his phrases;

'but Bertran is not with me.' Before the old man could break again into

savagery he went on to his main purpose. 'Sire, short speeches are best.

You seek to draw my ill-humours, but you shall not draw them. As son and

servant of your Grace I came in, and so will go out. As a son I have

knelt to the King my father, as servant I am ready to obey him. Let that

marriage, designed in the cradle by the French King and you, go on. I

will do my part if Madame Alois will do hers.'

Richard folded his arms; the King sat down again. A queer exchange of

glances had passed between his father and brother at the mention of that

lady's name. Richard, who saw it, got the feeling of some secret between

them, the feeling of being in a trap; but he said nothing. The King

began his old harping.

'Attend to me now, Richard,' he said, with much work of the eyebrows;

'if that ill-gotten beast Bertran had been of your meinie our last words

had been said. Beast! He is a toothed snake, that crawled into my boy's

bed and bit passion into him. Lord Jesus, if ever again I meet Bertran,

help Thou me to redden his face! But as it is, I am content. Rest you

here with me, if so rough a lodging may content your nobility. As for

Madame Alois, she shall be sent for; but I think I will not meet your

bevy of joglars from the south. I have a proud stomach o' these days; I

doubt pastry from Languedoc would turn me sour; and liking monks little

enough as it is, your throstle-cock of Montauban might cause me to

blaspheme. See them entertained, Drago; or better, let them entertain

each other--with singing games, holy God! Go you, Bohun'--and he

turned--'fetch in Madame Alois.' Bohun went through a curtain behind

him, and the King sat in thought, biting his thumbs.

Madame Alois of France came out of the inner tent, a slinking, thin

girl, with the white and tragic face of the fool in a comedy set in

black hair. Richard thought she was mad by the way she stared about her

from one man to another; but he went down on his knee in a moment.

Prince John turned stiff, the old King bent his brows to watch Richard.

The lady, who was dressed in black, and looked to be half fainting,

shrank in an odd way towards the wall, as if to avoid a whip. 'Too long

in England, poor soul,' Richard thought; 'but why did she come from the

King's tent?'

It was not a cheerful meeting, nor did the King show any desire to make

it better. When by roundabout and furtive ways Madame Alois at last

stood drooping by his chair, he began to talk to her in English, a

language unknown to Richard, though familiar enough, he saw, to his

father and brother. 'It seems to be his Grace's desire to make me

ridiculous,' he went on to say to himself: 'what a dead-level of grim

words! In English, it appears, you do not talk. You stab with the

tongue.' In truth, there was no conversation. The King or the Prince

spoke, and Madame Alois moistened her lips; she looked nowhere but at

the old tyrant, not at his eyes, but above them, at his forehead, and

with a trepitant gaze, like a watched hare's. 'The King has her in

thrall, soul and body,' Richard considered. Then his knee began to ache,

and he released it. 'Fair sire,' he began in his own tongue. Madame

Alois gave a start, and 'Ha, Richard,' says the King, 'art thou still

there, man?'

'Where else, my lord?' asked the son. The father looked at Alois.

'Deign to recognise in this baron, Madame,' he said, 'my son the Count

of Poictou. Let him salute, Madame, that which he has sought from so

far, and with such humility, pardieu; your white hand, Alois.' The

strange girl quivered, then put her hand out. Richard, kissing it, found

it horribly cold.

'Lady,' he said, 'I pray we may be better acquainted; but I must tell

you that I have no English. Let me hope that in this good land you may

recover your French.' He got no answer from the lady, but, by heaven, he

made his father angry.

'We hope, Richard, that you will teach Madame better things than that,'

sniffed the old man, nosing about for battle.

'I pray that I may teach her no worse, my lord,' replied the other. 'You

will perhaps allow that for a daughter of France the tongue may have its

uses.'

'As English, Count, for the son of England!' cried his father; 'or for

his wife, by the mass, if he is fit to have one.'

'Of that, sire, we must talk at your Grace's leisure,' said Richard

slowly. 'Jesus!' he asked himself, 'will he put me to a block of ice?

What is the matter with this woman?' The King put an end to his

questions by dismissing Madame Alois, breaking up the assembly, and

himself retiring. He was dreadfully fatigued, quite white and

breathless. Richard saw him follow the lady through the inner curtain,

and again was uncomfortably suspicious. But when his brother John made

to slip in also he thought there must be an end of it. He tapped the

young man on the shoulder.

'Brother, a word with you,' says he; and John came twittering back. The

two were alone in the tent.

This John--Sansterre, Landlos, Lackland, so they variously called

him--was a timid copy of his brother, a wry-necked reedy Richard with a

sniff. Not so tall, yet more spare, with blue eyes more pallid than his

brother's, and protruding where Richard's were inset, the difference lay

more in degree than kind. Richard was of heroic build, but a well-knit,

well-shaped hero; in John the arms were too long, the head too small,

the brow too narrow. Richard's eyes were perhaps too wide apart; no

doubt John's were too near together. Richard twitched his fingers when

he was moved, John bit his cheek. Richard stooped from the neck, John

from the shoulders. When Richard threw up his head you saw the lion;

John at bay reminded you of a wolf in a corner. John snarled at such

times, Richard breathed through his nose. John showed his teeth when he

was crossed, Richard when he was merry. So many thousand points of

unlikeness might be named, all small: the Lord knows here are enough.

The Angevin cat-and-dog nature was fairly divided between these two.

Richard had the sufficiency of the cat, John the dependence of a dog;

John had the cat's secretiveness, Richard the dog's dash. At heart John

was a thief.

He feared and hated his brother; so when Richard said, 'Brother, a word

with you,' John tried to disguise apprehension in disgust. The result

was a very sick smile.

'Willingly, dear brother, and the more so--' he began; but Richard cut

him short.

'What under the light of the sky is the matter with that lady?' he asked

him.

John had been preparing for that. He raised his eyebrows and splayed out

both his hands. 'Can you ask? Eh, our Lord! Emotion--a stranger in a

strange land--an access of the shudders--who knows women? So long from

France-dreadful of her brother--dreadful of you--so many things! a silly

mind--ah, my brother!'

Richard checked him testily. 'Put a point, put a point, you drown me in

phrases; your explanations explain nothing. One more word. What in the

devil's name is she doing in there?' He had a short way. John began to

stammer.

'A second father--a tender guardian--'

'Pish!' said Count Richard, and turned to leave the pavilion. Prince

John slipped through the curtains, and at that moment Richard heard a

little fretful cry within, not the cry of mortal lady. 'What under

heaven have they got in there, this family?' he asked himself.

Shrugging, he went out into the fresh air.

The abbot notes that his lord and master came running into his quarters,

'and tumbled upon me, like a lover who finds his mistress after many

days. "Milo, Milo, Milo," he began to cry, three times over, as if the

name helped him, "Thou wilt live to see a puddock upon the throne of

England!" Thus he strangely said.'

CHAPTER IV

HOW JEHANE STROKED WHAT ALOIS HAD MADE FIERCE

When the Count of Saint-Pol came to Paris he found the going very

delicate. For it is a delicate matter to confer in a king's capital,

with a king's allies, how best to throw obstacles in that king's way. As

a matter of fact he found that he could do little or nothing in the

business. King Philip was in great feather concerning his sister's

arrival; the heralds were preparing to go out to meet her. Nicholas d'Eu

and the Baron of Quercy were to accompany them; King Philip thought

Saint-Pol the very man to make a third, but this did not suit the Count

at all. He sought out his kinsman the Marquess of Montferrat, a heavy

Italian, who gave him very little comfort. All he could suggest was that

his 'good cousin' would do better to help him to the certain throne of

Jerusalem. 'What do you want with more than one king in a family?' asked

the Marquess. Saint-Pol grew rather dry as he assured him that one king

would suffice, and that Anjou was nearer than Jerusalem. He went on to

hint at various strange speculations rife concerning the history of

Madame Alois. 'If you want garbage, Eudo,' said Montferrat to this,

'come not to me. But I know a rat who might be of service.'

'The name of your rat, Marquess! It is all I ask.'

'Bertran de Born: who else?' said Montferrat. Now, Bertran de Born was

the thorn in the flesh of Anjou, a rankling addition to their state whom

they were never without. Saint-Pol knew his value very well, and decided

to go down to see the man in his own country. So he would have gone, no

doubt, had not his sovereign judged otherwise. Saint-Pol received

commands to accompany the heralds to Louviers, so had to content himself

with a messenger to the trobador and a letter which announced the

extreme happiness of the great Count of Poictou. This, he knew, would

draw the poison-bag.

The Frenchmen arrived at Louviers none too soon. As well mix fire and

ice as Poictevin with Norman or Angevin with Angevin. The princes

stalked about with claws out of velvet, the nobles bickered fiercely,

and the men-at-arms did after their kind. There was open fighting.

Gaston of Béarn picked a quarrel with John Botetort, and they fought it

out with daggers in the fosse. Then Count Richard took one of his

brother's goshawks and would not give it up. Over the long body of that

bird half a score noblemen engaged with swords; the Count of Poictou

himself accounted for six, and ended by pommelling his brother into a

red jelly. There was a week or more of this, during which the old King

hunted like a madman all day and revelled in gloomy vices all night.

Richard saw little of him and little of the lady of France. She, a pale

shade, flitted dismally out when evoked by the King, dismally in again

at a nod from him. Whenever she did appear Prince John hovered about,

looking tormented; afterwards the pock-marked Cluniac might be heard

lecturing her on theology and the soul's business in passionless

monologue. It was very far from gay. As for her, Richard believed her

melancholy mad; he himself grew fretful, irritable, most quarrelsome.

Thus it was that he first plundered and then punched his brother.

After that Prince John disappeared for a little to nurse his sores, and

Richard got within fair speaking distance of Madame Alois. In fact, she

sent for him late one night when the King, as he knew, was away,

munching the ashes of charred pleasure in some stews or other. He obeyed

the summons with a half-shrug.

They received him with consternation. The distracted lady was in a

chair, hugging herself; the Cluniac stood by, a mortified emblem; a

scared woman or two fled behind the throne. Madame Alois, when she saw

who the visitor was, began to shake.

'Oh, oh!' she said in a whisper, 'have you come to murder me, my lord?'

'Why, Madame,' Richard made haste to say, 'I would serve you any other

way but that, and supposed I had the right. But I came because you sent

for me.'

She passed her hand once or twice over her face, as if to brush cobwebs

away; one of the women made a piteous appeal of the eyes to Richard, who

took no notice of it; the monk said something to himself in a low voice,

then to the Count, 'Madame is overwrought, my lord.'

'Yes, you rascal,' thought Richard; 'your work.' Aloud he said, 'I hope

her Grace will give you leave to retire, sir.' Madame hereupon waved her

people away, and went on waving long after they had gone. Thus she was

alone with her future lord. There was the wreck of fine beauty about her

drawn race, beauty of the black-and-white, sheeted sort; but she looked

as if she walked with ghosts. Richard was very gentle with her. He drew

near, saying, 'I grieve to see you thus, Madame'; but she stopped him

with a question--

'They seek to have you marry me?'

He smiled: 'Our masters desire it, Madame.'

'Are you very sure of that?'

'I am here,' he explained, 'because I am so sure.'

'And you desire--'

'I, Madame,' he said quickly and shortly, 'desire two things--the good

of my country and your good. If I desire anything else, God knows it is

to keep my promise.'

'What is your promise?'

'Madame,' said Richard, 'I bear the Cross on my shoulder, as you see.'

'Why,' she said, fearfully regarding it, 'that is God's work!'

She began to walk about the room quickly, and to talk to herself. He

could not catch properly what she said. Religion came into it, and a

question of time. 'Now it should be done, now it should be done!' and

then, 'Hear, O thou Shepherd of Israel!' and then with a wild look into

Richard's face--'That was a strange thing to do to a lady. They can

never lay that to me!' Afterwards she began to wring her hands, with a

cry of 'Fie, poison, poison, poison!' looking at Richard all the time.

'This poor lady,' he told himself, 'is possessed by a devil, therefore

no wife for me, who have devil enough and to spare.'

'What ails you, Madame?' he asked her. 'Tell me your grief, and upon my

life I will amend it if I can.'

'You cannot,' she said. 'Nothing can mend it.'

'Then, with leave'--he went to the curtains--'I will call your Grace's

people. Our discussions can be later; there is time enough.'

She would have stopped him had she dared, or had the force; but

literally she was spent. There was just time to get the women in before

she tumbled. Richard, in his perplexity, determined to wrangle out the

matter with the King on the morrow, cost what it might. So he did; and

to his high surprise the King reasoned instead of railing. Madame Alois,

he said, was weakly, un-wholesome indeed. In his opinion she wanted,

what all young women want, a husband. She was too much given to the

cloister, she had visions, she was feared to use the discipline, she ate

nothing, was more often on her knees than on her feet. 'All this, my

son,' said King Henry, 'you shall correct at your discretion. Humours,

vapours, qualms, fantasies--pouf! You can blow them away with a kiss.

Have you tried it? No? Too cold? Nay, but you should.' And so on, and so

on. That day, none too soon, the French ambassadors arrived, and

Richard saw the Count of Saint-Pol among them.

He had never liked the Count of Saint-Pol; or perhaps it would be truer

to say that he disliked him more than ordinary. But he belonged to, had

even a tinge of, Jehane; some of her secret fragrance hung about him, he

walked in some ray of her glory. It seemed to Richard, bothered, sick,

fretted, a little disconcerted as he was now, that the Count of

Saint-Pol had an air which none other of this people had. He greeted him

therefore with more than usual affability, very much to Saint-Pol's

concern. Richard observed this, and suddenly remembered that he was

doing the man what the man must certainly believe to be a cruel wrong.

'_Mort de Dieu!_ What am I about?' his heart cried. 'I ought to be

ashamed to look this fellow in the face, and here I am making a brother

of him.'

'Saint-Pol,' he said immediately, 'I should like to speak with you. I

owe you that.'

'Your Grace's servant,' said Eudo, with a stiff reverence, 'when and

where you will.'

'Follow me,' said Richard, 'as soon as you have done with all this

foppery.'

In about an hour's time he was obeyed. After his fashion he took a

straight plunge.

'Saint-Pol,' he said, 'I think you know where my heart is, whether here

or elsewhere. I desire you to understand that in this case I am acting

against my own will and judgment.'

The frankness of this lordly creature was unmistakable, even to

Saint-Pol.

'Hey, sire--,' he began spluttering, honesty in arms with rage. Richard

took him up.

'If you doubt that, as you have my leave to do, I am ready to convince

you. I will ride with you wherever you choose, and place myself at your

discretion. Subject to this, mind you, that the award is final. Once

more I will do it. Will you abide by that? Will you come with me?'

Saint-Pol cursed his fate. Here he was, tied to the French girl.

'My lord,' he said, 'I cannot obey you. My duty is to take Madame to

Paris. That is my master's command.'

'Well,' said Richard, 'then I shall go alone. Once more I shall go. I am

sick to death of this business.'

'My lord Richard,' cried Saint-Pol, 'I am no man to command you. Yet I

say, Go. I know not what has passed between your Grace and my sister

Jehane; but this I know very well. It will be a strange thing'--he

laughed, not pleasantly--'a strange thing, I say, if you cannot bend

that arbiter to your own way of thinking.' Richard looked at him coldly.

'If I could do that, my friend,' he said, 'I should not suffer

arbitration at all.'

'The proposition was not mine, my lord,' urged Saint-Pol.

'It could not be, sir,' Richard said sharply. 'I proposed it myself,

because I consider that a lady has the right to dispose of her own

person. She loved me once.'

'I believe that she is yours at this hour, sire.'

'That is what I propose to find out,' said Richard. 'Enough. What news

have they in Paris?'

Saint-Pol could not help himself; he was bursting with a budget he had

received from the south. 'They greatly admire a sirvente of Bertran de

Born's, sire.'

'What is the stuff of the sirvente?'

'It is a scandalous subject, sire. He calls it the Sirvente of Kings,

and speaks much evil of your Order.' Richard laughed.

'I will warrant him to do that better than any man alive, and allow him

some reason for it. I think I will go to see Bertran.'

'Ha, sire,' said Saint-Pol with meaning, 'he will tell you many things,

some good, and some not so good.'

'Be sure he will,' said Richard. 'That is Bertran's way.'

He would trust no one with his present reflections, and seek no outside

strength against his present temptations. He had always had his way; it

had seemed to come to him by right, by the _droit de seigneur_, the

natural law which puts the necks of fools under the heels of strong men.

No need to consider of all that: he knew that the thing desired lay to

his hand; he could make Jehane his again if he would, and neither King

of England nor King of France, nor Council of Westminster nor Diet of

the Empire could stop him--if he would. But that, he felt now, was just

what he would not. To beat her down with torrents of love-cries; to have

her trembling, cowed, drummed out of her wits by her own heart-beats; to

compel, to dominate, to tame, when her young pride and young strength

were the things most beautiful in her: never, by the Cross of Christ!

That, I suppose, is as near to true love as a man can get, to reverence

in a girl that which holds her apart. Richard got so near precisely

because he was less lover than poet. You may doubt, if you choose (with

Abbot Milo), whether he had love in him. I doubt. But certainly he was a

poet. He saw Jehane all glorious, and gave thanks for the sight. He felt

to touch heaven when he neared her; but he did not covet her possession,

at the moment. Perhaps he felt that he did possess her: it is a poet's

way. So little, at any rate, did he covet, that, having made up his mind

what he would do, he sent Gaston of Béarn to Saint-Pol-la-Marche with a

letter for Jehane, in which he said: 'In two days I shall see you for

the last or for all time, as you will'--and then possessed himself in

patience the appointed number of hours.

Gaston of Béarn, romantic figure in those grey latitudes, pale,

black-eyed, freakishly bearded, dressed in bright green, rode his way

singing, announced himself to the lady as the Child of Love; and when he

saw her kissed her foot.

'Starry Wonder of the North,' he said, kneeling, 'I bring fuel to your

ineffable fires. Our King of Lovers and Lover among Kings is all at your

feet, sighing in this paper.' He seemed to talk in capitals, with a

flourish handed her the scroll. He had the gratification to see her clap

a hand to her side directly she touched it; but no more. She perused it

with unwavering eyes in a stiff head.

'Farewell, sir,' she said then; 'I will prepare for my lord.'

'And I, lady,' said Gaston, 'in consequence of a vow I have vowed my

saint, will await his coming in the forest, neither sleeping nor eating

until he has his enormous desires. Farewell, lady.'

He went out backwards, to keep his promise. The brown woodland was gay

with him for a day and a night; for he sang nearly all the time with

unflagging spirits. But Jehane spent part of the interval in the chapel,

with her hands crossed upon her fine bosom. The God in her heart fought

with Him on the altar. She said no prayers; but when she left the place

she sent a messenger for Gilles de Gurdun, the blunt-nosed Norman knight

who loved her so much that he said nothing about it.

This Gurdun, pricking through the woods, came upon Gaston of Béarn,

dazzling as a spring tree and singing like an inspired machine. He

pulled up at the wonderful sight, and scowled. It is the proper Norman

greeting. Gaston treated him as part of the landscape, like the rest of

it mournful, but provocative of song.

'Give you good-day, beau sire,' said Gilles; Gaston waved his hand and

went on singing at the top of his voice. Then Gilles, who was pressed,

tried to pass; and Gaston folded his arms.

'Ha, beef,' said he, 'none pass here but the brave.'

'Out, parrot,' quoth Gilles, and plunged through the wood.

Because of Gaston's vow there was no blood shed at the moment, but he

had hopes that he might be released in time. 'There goes a dead man,'

was therefore his comment before he resumed.

But Jehane, when she heard the horse, ran out to meet his rider. Her

face was alight. 'Come in, come in,' she said, and took him by the hand.

He followed her with a beating heart, neither daring nor knowing how to

say anything. She led him into the little dark chapel.

'Gilles, Gilles,' she said panting, 'do you love me, Gilles?'

He was hoarse, could hardly speak for the crack in his throat. 'O God,'

he said under his breath, 'O God, Jehane, how I love you!'

Here, because of a certain flicker in her eyes, he made forward; but she

put out her two hands the length of her arms and fenced him off. 'No,

no, Gilles, not yet.' Pain sharpened her voice. 'Listen first to me. I

do not love you; but I am frightened. Some one is coming; you must be

here to help me. I give myself to you--I will be yours--I must--there is

no other way.'

She stopped; you could have heard the thudding of her heart.

'Give then,' said Gilles with a croak, and took her.

She felt herself engulfed in a sea of fire, but set her teeth and

endured the burning of that death. The poor fellow did but kiss her once

or twice, and kissed no closer than the Angevin; but the grace is one

that goes by favour. Gilles, nevertheless, took primer seisin and was

content. Afterwards, hand in hand, trembling each, the possessed and the

possessing, they stood before the twinkling lamp which hinted at the Son

of God, and waited what must happen.

In about half an hour's time Jehane heard the long padding tread she

knew so well, and took a deep breath. Next Gilles heard something.

'One comes. Who comes?' he said whispering.

'Richard of Anjou. I need you now.'

'Do you want me to--?' Gilles honestly thought he was to kill the Count.

She undeceived him soon.

'To kill Richard, Gilles? Nay, man, he is not for your killing.' She

gave a short laugh, not very pleasant for her lover to hear. But Gilles,

for all that, put hand to hilt. The Count of Poictou stooped at the

entry and saw them together.

It wanted but that to blow the embers. Something tigerish surged in him,

some gust of jealousy, some arrogant tide in the blood not all clean. He

moved forward like a wind and caught the girl up in his arms, lifted her

off her feet, smothered her cry. 'My Jehane, my Jehane, who dares--?'

Gilles touched him on the shoulder, and he turned like lightning with

Jehane held fast. His breath came quick and short through his nose:

Gilles believed his last hour at hand, but made the most of it.

'What now, dog?' thus the lean Richard.

'Set down the lady, my lord,' said doughty Gilles. 'She is promised to

me.'

'Heart of God, what is this?' He held back his head, like a snake, that

he might see what he would strike at. 'Is it true, girl?' Jehane looked

up from his shoulder, where she had been hiding her face. She could not

speak, but she nodded.

'It is true? Thou art promised?'

'I am promised, my lord,' said Jehane. 'Let me go.'

He put her down at once, between himself and Gurdun. Gurdun went to take

up her hand again, but at a look from Richard forbore. The Count went on

with his interrogatories, outwardly as calm as a field of snow.

'In whose name art thou promised to this knight, Jehane? In thy

brother's?'

'No, lord. In my own.'

'Am I nothing?' She began to cry.

'Oh, oh!' she wailed, 'You are everything, everything in the world.'

He turned away from her, and stood facing the altar, with folded arms,

considering. Gilles had the wit to be silent; the girl fought for

breath. Richard, in fact, was touched to the heart, and capable of any

sacrifice which could seem the equivalent of this. He must always lead,

even in magnanimity; but it was a better thing than emulation moved him

now. When he next turned with a calm, true face to Jehane there was not

a shred of the Angevin in him; all was burnt away.

'What is the name of this knight, Jehane?' She told him, Gilles de

Gurdun.

Then he said, 'Come hither, De Gurdun,' and Gilles knelt down before the

son of his overlord. Jehane would have knelt to him too, but that he

held her by the hand and would not suffer it.

'Now, Gilles, listen to what I shall tell you,' said Richard. 'There is

no lady in the world more noble than this one, and no man living who

means more faithfully by her than I. I will do her will this day, and

that speedily, lest the devil be served. Are you a true man, Gilles?'

'Lord,' said Gurdun, 'I try to be so. Your father made me a knight. I

have loved this lady since she was twelve years old.'

'Are you a man of substance, my friend?'

'We have a good fief, my lord. My father holds of the Church of Rouen,

and the Church of the Duke. I serve with a hundred spears where I may, a

_routier_ if nothing better offer.'

'If I give you Jehane, what do you give me?'

'Thanks, my good lord, and faith, and long service.'

'Get up, Gilles,' said Richard.

Gilles kissed his knee, and rose. Richard put Jehane's hand into his and

held the two together.

'God serve me as I shall serve you, Gilles, if any harm come of this,'

he said shrewdly, with words that whistled in the air; and as Gilles

looked him squarely in the face, Richard ran an eye over him. Gilles was

found honest. Richard kissed Jehane on the forehead, and went out

without a look back. At the edge of the wood he found Gaston of Béarn

sucking his fingers.

'There went by here,' said the gay youth, 'a black knight with a face of

a raw meat colour, and the most villainous scowl ever you saw. I

consider him to be dead already.'

'I have given him something which should cure him of the scowl and

justify his colour,' answered him the Count. 'Moreover, I have given him

the chance of eternal life.' Then with a cry--'Oh, Gaston, let us get

to the South, see the sun fleck the roads, smell the oranges! Let us get

to the South, man! It seems I have entertained an angel. And now that I

have given her wings, and now that she is gone, I know how much I love

her. Speed, Gaston! We will go to the South, see Bertran, and make some

songs of good women and men in want!'

'Pardieu,' said Gaston. 'I am with you, Richard, for I am in want. I

have eaten nothing for two days.'

So they rode out of the woods of Saint-Pol-la-Marche, and Richard began

to sing songs of Jehane the Fair-Girdled; never truly her lover until he

might love her no more.

CHAPTER V

HOW BERTRAN DE BORN AND COUNT RICHARD STROVE IN A _TENZON_

Day-long and night-long he sang of her, being now in the poetic mood,

highly exalted, out of himself. The country took tints of Jehane, her

shape, her fine nobility. The thrust hills of the Vexin were her

breasts; the woods, being hot gold, her russet hair; in still green

water he read the secrets of her eyes; in the milk of October dawns her

calm brows had been dipped. The level light of the Beauce, so beneficent

yet so austere, figured her soul. Fair-girdled was Touraine by Vienne

and Loire; fair-girdled Jehane, who wore virgin candour about her loins

and over her heart a shield of blue ice. As far southwards as Tours the

dithyrambic prevailed; Richard was untiring in the hunt for analogues.

Thence on to Poictiers, where the country (being his own) was perhaps

more familiar; indeed, while he was climbing the grey peaks of

Montagrier with his goal almost in sight, he turned scholiast and

glossed his former raptures.

'You are not to tell me, Gaston,' he declared, 'that my Jehane has been

untrue. She was never more wholly mine than when she gave herself to

that other, never loved me more dearly. Such power is given to women to

lead this world. It is the power of the Word, who cut Himself off and

made us His butchers in pure love. I shall do my part. I shall wed the

French girl, who in my transports will never guess that in reality

Jehane will be in my arms.' Tears filled his eyes. 'For we shall be

wedded in the sight of heaven,' he said sighing.

'Deus!' cried Gaston here, 'Such marriages may be more to the taste of

heaven than of men, Richard. Man is a creature of sense.'

'He hath a spiritual part,' said Richard, 'so rarely hidden that only

the thin fingers of a girl may get in to touch it. Then, being touched,

he knows that it is quick. Let me alone; I am not all mud nor all devil.

I shall do my duty, marry the French girl, and love my golden Jehane

until I die.'

'That is the saying of a poet and king at once, said Gaston, and really

believed it.

So they came at dusk to Autafort, a rock castle on the confines of

Perigord, held by Bertran de Born.

It looked, and was, a robber's hold, although it had a poet for

castellan. Its walls merely prolonged the precipices on which they were

founded, its towers but lifted the mountain spurs more sharply to the

sky. It dominated two watersheds, was accessible only on one side, and

then by a ridgeway; from it the valley roads and rockstrewn hillsides

could be seen for many leagues. Long before Richard was at the gate the

Lord of Autafort had had warning, and had peered down upon his suzerain

at his clambering. 'The crows shall have Richard before Richard me,'

said Bertran de Born; so he had his bridge pulled up and portcullis let

down, and Autafort showed a bald face to the newcomers.

Gaston grinned. 'Hospitality of Aquitaine! Hospitality of your duchy,

Richard.'

'By my head,' said the Count, 'if I sleep under the stars I sleep at

Autafort this night. But hear me charm this plotter.' He called at the

top of his voice, 'Ha, Bertran! Come you down, man.' The surrounding

hills echoed his cries, the jackdaws wheeled about the turrets; but

presently came one and put his eye to the grille. Richard saw him.

'Is that you, then, Bertran?' he shouted. There was no answer, but the

spyer was heard breathing hard at his vent.

'Come out of your earth, red fox,' Richard chid him. 'Show your grievous

snout to the hills; do your snuffling abroad to the clear sky. I have

whipped off the hounds; my father is not here. Will you let starve your

liege-lord?'

At this the bolts were drawn, the bridge went down with a clatter, and

Bertran de Born came out--a fine stout man, all in a pother, with a red,

perplexed face, angry eyes, hair and beard cut in blocks, a body too big

for his clothes--a man of hot blood, fumes and rages. Richard at sight

of him, this unquiet sniffer of offences, this whirled about with

stratagems, threw back his head and laughed long and loud.

'O thou plotter of thine own dis-ease! O rider of nightmares, what harm

can I do thee? Not, believe me, a tithe of thy desert. Come thou here

straightly, Master Bertran, and take what I shall give thee.'

'By God, Lord Richard--' said Bertran, and boggled horribly; but the

better man waited, and in the end he came up sideways. Richard swung

from his horse, took his host by the shoulders, shook him well, and

kissed him on both cheeks. 'Spinner of mischief, red robber, singer of

the thoughts of God!' he said, 'I swear I love thee through it all,

Bertran, though I should do better to wring thy neck. Now give us food

and drink and clean beds, for Gaston at least is a dead man without

them. Afterwards we will sing songs.'

'Come in, come in, Richard,' said Bertran de Born.

* * * * *

For a day or two Richard was bathed in golden calm, hugging his darling

thought, full of Jehane, fearful to share her. Often he remembered it in

later life; it held a place and commanded a mood which no hour of his

wildest possession could outvie. The mountain air, still, but latently

nimble, the great mountains themselves dreaming in the sunlight, the

sailing birds, hinted a peace to his soul whither his last conquest of

his baser part assured him he might soar. Now he could guess (thought

he) that quality in love which it borrows from God and shares with the

angels, ministers of God, the steady burning of a flame keen and hard.

So on an afternoon of weather serene beyond all belief of the North,

mild, tired, softly radiant, still as a summer noon; as he sat with

Bertran in a courtyard where were lemon-trees and a fountain, and above

the old white walls, and above the strutting pigeons, a square of blue,

he began to speak of his affairs, of what he had done and of what was to

do.

Bertran's was a grudging spirit: you shall hear the Abbot Milo upon that

matter anon, than whom there are few better qualified to speak. He

grudged Richard everything--his beauty, his knit and graceful body, his

brain like a sword, his past exploits, his present content. What it was

contented him he knew not altogether, though a letter from Saint-Pol had

in part advised him; but he was sure he had wherewithal to discontent

him. 'Foh! a juicy orange indeed,' he said to himself, 'but I can wring

him dry.' If Richard hugged one thought, Bertran hugged another, and

took it to bed with him o' nights. Now, therefore, when Richard spoke of

Jehane, Bertran said nothing, waiting his time; but when he went on to

Madame Alois and his duty (which really coloured all the former thought)

Bertran made a grimace.

'Rascal,' says Richard, shamming rough, 'why do you make faces at me?'

Bertran began jerking about like the lid of a boiling pot, and presently

sends a boy for his viol. At this, when it came, he snatched, and set to

plucking a chord here and a chord there, grinning fearfully all the

time.

'A _tenzon!_ A _tenzon!_ beau sire!' cries he. 'Now a _tenzon_ between

you and me!'

'Let it be so,' says Richard; 'have at you. I sing of the calm day, of

the sweets of true love.'

'Accorded,' says the other. 'And I sing of the sours of false love. Do

you set the mode, prince of blood royal as you are.'

Richard took the viol without after-thought and struck a few chords. A

great tenderness was in his heart; he saw Duty and himself hand in hand

walking a long road by night; two large stars beaconed the way; these

were Jehane's eyes. A watcher or two stole into the upper gallery,

leaned on the parapet and listened, for both men were renowned singers.

Richard began to sing of green-eyed Jehane, who wore the gold girdle,

whose hair was red gold. His song was--

Li dous consire

Quem don' Amors soven--

but I English it thus--

'That gentle thought which love will give sometimes is like a plait of

silk and gold, and so is this song of mine to be; wherein you shall find

a red deep cry which cometh from the heart, and a thin blue cry which is

the cry of what is virgin in my soul, and a golden long cry, the cry of

the King, and a cry clear as crystal and colder than a white moon: and

that is the cry of Jehane.'

Bertran, trembling, snatched at the viol. 'Mine to sing, Richard, mine

to sing! Ha, love me no more!'

Cantar d' Amors non voilh,

he began--

'Your strands are warped and will not accord, for love will warp any

song. It turneth the heart of a man black, and the soul it eateth up. At

fourteen goes the virgin first a-wallowing; and soon the King croaks

like a hog. A plait! Love is a fetter of hot iron; so my song shall be

iron-cruel like the bidding of Jehane. Say now, shall I set the song?

The love-cry is the cry of a man who drags his way with his side torn;

and the colour of it is dry red, like old blood; and the sound thereof

maketh the hearers ache, so it quavers and shrills. For it cries only

two things: sorrow and shame.'

He misconceived his adversary who thought to quell him by such vapours.

Richard took the viol.

'Bertran, it is well seen that thou art pinched and have a torn side;

but ask of thy itching fingers who graved the wound. Dry thou art,

Bertran, for thy trough is dry; the husks prick thy gums, but there is

no other meat. Well may the hearers' ears go aching; for thy cry, man,

proceedeth from thy aching belly. But now I will set the song again, and

tell thee of a lady girdled with fine gold. Beneath the girdle beats a

red heart; but her spirit is like a spire of blue smoke, that comes from

a fire, indeed, but strains up to heaven. Warmed by that fire, like that

smoke I fly up; and so I lie among the stars with Jehane.'

Bertran's jaw was at work, mashing his tongue. 'Ah, Richard, is it so

with thee? Wait now while I strike a blow.' He made the viol scream.

'What if I twist the song awry, and give thee good cause to limp the

sorrowful way? What if for my aching belly I give thee an aching heart?

Eh, if my fingers scratch my side, there are worse talons at thine.

Watch for the Lion's claw, Richard, which tears not flesh but honour,

and gives more pain than any knife. Pain! He is King of Pain! Mend

that, then face sorrow and shame.'

Ending with a snap, he grinned more knowledge out of his red eyes than

he pronounced with his mouth. His terrible excitement, the labour and

sweat of it, set Richard's brows knitting. He stretched out his hand for

the viol slowly; and his eyes were cold on Bertran, and never off him

for a moment as he sang to this enemy, and judged him while he sang. The

note was changed.

'The Lion is a royal beast, a king, whose son am I. We maul not each

other in Anjou, save when the jackal from the South cometh snarling

between. Then, when we see the unclean beast, saith one, "Faugh! is this

your friend?" and the other, "Thou dost ill to say so." Then the blood

may flow and the jackal get a meal. But here there is none to come

licking blood. The prize is the White Roe of France, fed on the French

lilies, and now in safe harbour. She shall lie by the Leopard, and the

Lion rule the forest in peace because of the peace about him; and like a

harvest moon above us, clear of the trees, will be Jehane.'

'Listen, Richard, I will be clearer yet,' came from between Bertran's

teeth. He fairly ground them together. Having the viol, he struck but

one note upon it, with such rudeness that the string broke. He threw the

thing away and sang without it, leaning his hands on his knees, and

craning forward that he might spit the words.

'This is the bite of the song: she is forsworn. Harbour? She kept

harbour too long; she is mangled, she is torn. Touch not the Lion's

prey, Leopard. You go hunting too late--for all but sorrow and shame.'

Richard stretched not his hand again; his jaw dropped and most of the

strong colour died down in his face. Turned to stone, stiff and

immovable, he sat staring at the singer, while Bertran, biting his lip,

still grinning and twitching with his late effort, watched him.

'Give me the truth, thou.' His voice was like an old man's, hollow.

'As God is in heaven that is the truth, Richard,' said Bertran de Born.

The Count's head went up, as when a hound yelps to the sky: laughter

ensued, barking laughter--not mirth, not grief disguised, but mockery,

the worst of all. One on the gallery nudged his fellow; that other

shrugged him off. Richard stretched his long arms, his clenched fists to

the dumb sky. 'Have I bent the knee to good issues or not? Have I abased

my head? O clement prince! O judge in Israel! O father of kings! Hear

now a parable of the Prodigal: Father, I have sinned against heaven and

before thee, and thou art no more worthy to be called my father. O

glutton! O filching dog!'

'By the torch of the Gospel, Count Richard, what I sang is true,' said

Bertran, still tensely grinning, and now also wringing at his

hang-nails. Richard, checked by the voice, turned blazing upon him.

'Why, thou school-boy rhymester, that is the only merit thou hast, and

that not thine own! Thy japes are nought, thy tragics the mewing of

cats; but thy news, fellow, thy news is too rich matter for thy sewer

of a throat. Tragic? No, it is worse: it is comic, O heaven! Heed you

now--' In his bitter shame he began pantomiming with his fingers:--'Here

are two persons, father by the Grace of God, son by the grace of the

father. Saith father, "Son, thou art sprung from kings; take this woman

that is sprung from kings, for I have no further use for her." Anon

cometh a white rag thinly from the inner tent--mark her provenance. Son

kneeleth down. "Wilt thou have my son, cony?" saith father. "Yea, dear

heart," saith she. "'Tis my counterpart, mark you," saith father.

"Better than nothing at all," saith she. Benevolent father, supple-kneed

son, convenient lady. Here is agreement. And thus it ends.' Again he

laughed outright at the steel-blue face of the sky, then jumped in a

flash from his seat to the throat of Bertran. Bertran tumbled backwards

with a strangled cry, and Richard pegged him to the ground.

'Thou yapping cur, Bertran,' he grated, 'thou sick dog of my kennel, if

this snarl of thine goes true thou hast done a service to me and mine

thou knowest not of. There is little to do before I am the richest man

in Christendom. Why, dull rogue, thou hast set me free!' He looked up

exulting from his work at the man's throat to shout this word. 'But if

it is not true, Bertran'--he shook him like a rat--'if it is not true, I

return, O Bertran, and tear this false gullet out of its case, and with

thy speckled heart feed the crows of Périgord.' Bertran had foam on his

lips, but Richard showed him no mercy. 'As it is, Bertran,' he went on

with his teeth on edge, 'I am minded to finish thee. But that I need

something from thee I think I should do it. Tell me now whence came thy

news. Tell me, Bertran, or thou art in hell in a moment.'

He had to let him up to win from him after a time that his informant was

the Count of Saint-Pol. Little matter that this was untrue, the bringing

in of his name set wild alarums clanging in Richard's head. It was only

too likely to have been Saint-Pol's doing; there was obvious reason; but

by the same token Saint-Pol might be a liar. He saw that he must by all

means find Saint-Pol, and find him at once. He began to shout for

Gaston. 'To horse, to horse, Gaston!' The court rang with his voice; to

the clamour he made, which might betoken murder, arson, pillage, or the

sin against the Holy Ghost, out came the vassals in a swarm. 'To horse,

to horse, Béarnais! Where out of hell is Gaston of Béarn?' The devil of

Anjou was loose in Autafort that day.

Gaston came delicately last, drawing his beard through his fist, to see

Bertran de Born lie helpless in a lemon-bush hard by the wall. Richard,

quite beyond himself, exploded with his story, and so was sobered. While

Gaston made his comments, he, instead of listening, made comments of his

own.

'Dear Lord Richard,' said Gaston reasonably, 'if you do not know Bertran

by this time it is a strange thing and a pitiful thing. For it shows you

without any wit. He was appointed, it would seem, to be the thorn in

your rosebed of Anjou. What has he done since he was let be made but

set you all by the ears? What did he do by the young King but

miserably? What by Geoffrey? Is there a man in the world he hates more

than the old King? Yes, there is one: you. Take a token. The last time

they two met was in this very castle; and then the King your father

kissed him, and forgiving him Henry's death, gave him back his Autafort;

and Bertran too gave a kiss, that love might abound. Judas, Judas! And

what did Judas next? Dear Richard, let us think awhile, but not here.

Let us go to Limoges and think with the Viscount. But let us by all

means kill Bertran de Born first.'

During this speech, which had much to recommend it, Richard, as I have

told you, did his thinking by himself. He always cooled as suddenly as

he boiled over; and now, warily regarding the right hand and the left of

this monstrous fable, he saw that, though Saint-Pol might have played

fox in it, another must have played goat. He could not fail to remember

Louviers, and certain horrid mysteries which had offended him then with

only vague disgust, as for matters which were outside his own care. Now

they all took shape satyric, like hideous heads thrust out of the dark

to loll their tongues at him. To the shock of his first dismay succeeded

the onset of rage, white and cold and deadly as a night frost. Eh, but

he would meet his teeth in some throat! But he would go slowly to work,

clear the ground and stalk his prey. The leopard devises creeping death.

He made up his mind. Gaston he sent to the South, to Angoulesme, to

Périgord, to Auvergne, to Cahors. The horn must be heard at the head of

every brown valley, the armed men shadow every white road. He himself

went to his city of Poietiers.

Bertran de Born saw him go, and rubbed his hair till it stood like reeds

shaken by the wind. Whether he loved mischief or not (and some say he

breathed it); whether he had a grudge against Anjou not yet assuaged;

whether he was in league with Prince John, or had indeed thought to do

Prince Richard a service, let philosophers, experts of mankind,

determine. If he had a turn for dramatics he had certainly indulged it

now, and given himself strong meat for a new Sirvente of Kings. At least

he was very busy after Richard's departure, himself preparing for a long

journey to the South.

CHAPTER VI

FRUITS OF _THE TENZON_: THE BACK OF SAINT-POL, AND THE FRONT OF

MONTFERRAT

Count Richard found time, while he was at Poietiers awaiting the

Aquitanian levies, to write six letters to Jehane Saint-Pol. Of these

some, with their bearers, fell by the wayside. As luck would have it,

Jehane received but two, the first and the last. The first said: 'I am

in the way of liberty, but by a red road. Have hopes of me.' Jehane was

long in answering. One may picture the poor soul taking the dear and

wicked thing into the little chapel, laying it on the altar-stone warm

from her vest, restoring it after office done to that haven whence she

must banish its writer. Fortified, she replied with, 'Alas, my lord, the

way of liberty leads not to me; nor can I serve you otherwise than in

bonds. I pray you, make my yoke no heavier.--Your servant, in little

ease, Jehane.' This wistful unhappy letter gave him heartache; he could

scarcely keep himself at home. Yet he must, being as yet sure of

nothing. He replied in a second and third, a fourth and a fifth letter,

which never reached her. The last was sent when he had begun what he

thought fit to do at Tours, saying, 'I make war, but the cause is

righteous. Never misjudge me, Jehane.' There were many reasons why she

should not answer this.

Returning to his deeds at Poietiers, I pick up the story from the Abbot

Milo, whom he found there. The Count, you may judge, kept his own

counsel. Milo was his confessor, but at this time Richard was not in a

confessing humour; therefore Milo had to gather scandal as he could.

There was very little difficulty about this. 'In the city of Tours,' he

writes, 'in those middle days of Advent, it appears that rumour, still

gadding, was adrift with names almost too high for the writing. There

were many there who had no business; the Count of Blois, for instance,

the Baron of Chateaudun, the fighting Bishop of Durham (I fear, a

hireling shepherd), Geoffrey Talebot, Hugh of Saint-Circ. One reason of

this was that King Henry was in England, not yet come to an agreement

with the French King, nor likely to it if what we heard was true, yea,

or a tenth part of it. God forbid that I should write what these ears

heard; but this I will say. It was I who told the shocking tale to my

lord Richard, adding also this hint, that his former friend was involved

in it, Eudo Count of Saint-Pol. If you will believe me, not the tale of

iniquity moved him; but he received it with shut mouth, and eyes fixed

upon mine. But at the name of the Count of Saint-Pol he took a breath,

at the mention of his part in the business he took a deep breath, and

when he heard that this man was yet at Tours, he got up from his chair

and struck the table with his closed fist. Knowing him as I did, I

considered that the weather looked black for Saint-Pol.

'Next day Count Richard moved his hosts out of the fields by Poietiers

to the very borders of his country, and calling a halt at Saint-Gilles

and making snug against alarms, himself, with my lord Gaston of Béarn,

with the Dauphin of Auvergne also, and the Viscount of Béziers, crossed

the march into Touraine, and so came to Tours about a week before

Christmas, the weather being bright and frosty.'

It seems he did not take the abbot with him, for the rest of the good

man's record is full of morality, a certain sign that facts failed him.

There may have been reasons; at any rate the Count went into Tours in a

trenchant humour, with ears keen and wide for all shreds of report. And

he got enough and to spare. In the wet market-place, on the flags of the

great churchyard, by the pillars of the nave, in the hall, in the

chambers, in the inn-galleries; wherever men met or women whispered in

each other's necks, there flew the names of Alois, King Philip's sister,

and of King Henry, Count Richard's father. Richard made short work,

short and dry. It was in mid-hall in the Bishop's palace, one day after

dinner, that he met and stopped the Count of Saint-Pol.

'What now, beau sire?' says the Count, out of breath. Richard's eyes

were alight. 'This,' says he, 'that you lie in your throat.'

Count Eudo looked about him, and everywhere saw the faces of men risen

from the board intent on him. 'Strange words, beau sire,' says he, very

white. Richard raised his voice till the metal rang in it.

'But not strange doing, I think, on your part. This has been going on,

how long?'

Saint-Pol was stung. 'Ah, it becomes you very ill to reproach me, my

lord.'

'I think it becomes me excellently,' said Richard. 'You have lied for a

vile purpose; you have disgraced your name. You seek to drive me by

slander whither I may not go in honour. You lie like a broker. You are a

shameful liar.'

No man could stand this from another, however great that other; and

Saint-Pol was not a coward. He looked up at his adversary, still white,

but steady.

'How then?' he asked him, 'how then if I lie not, Count of Poictou? And

how if you know that I lie not?'

'Then,' said Richard, 'you use insult, which is worse.'

Saint-Pol took off his glove of mail and flung it with a clatter on the

floor.

'Since it has come to this, my lord--' Richard spiked the glove with his

sword, tossed it to the hammer-beams of the roof, and caught it as it

fell.

'It shall come nearer, Count, I take it.' Thus he finished the other's

phrase, then stalked out of the Bishop's house. It was then and there

that he wrote to Jehane that sixth letter, which she received: 'I make

war, but the cause is righteous. Never misjudge me, Jehane.'

The end of it was a combat _à outrance_ in the meads by the Loire, with

all Tours on the walls to behold it. Richard was quite frank about the

part he proposed to himself. 'The man must die,' he told the Dauphin of

Auvergne, 'even though he have spoken the truth. As to that I am not

sure, I am not yet informed. But he is not fit to live on any ground. By

these slanders of his he has disgraced the name and outraged the honour

of the most lovely lady in the world, whose truest misfortune is to be

his sister; by the same token I must punish him for the dignity of the

lady I am (at present) designed to wed. She is always the daughter of

his liege-lord. What!'--he threw his head up--'Is not a daughter of

France worth a broken back?'

'Tu-dieu, yes,' says the Dauphin; 'but it is a stoutish back, Richard.

It is a back which ranks high. Kings clap it familiarly. Conrad of

Montferrat calls it a cousin's back. The Emperor has embraced it at an

Easter fair.'

'I would as soon break Conrad's back as his, Dauphin, believe me,'

Richard replied; 'but Conrad has said nothing. And there is another

reason.'

'I have thought myself of a reason against it,' the Dauphin said

quickly, yet with a flutter of timidity. 'This man's name is Saint-Pol.'

Richard grew bleak in a moment. 'That,' he said, 'is why I shall kill

him. He seeks to drive us to marriage. Injurious beast! His name is

Pandarus.' Then he left the Dauphin and shut himself up until the day of

battle.

They had formed lists in the Loire meads: a red pavilion with leopards

upon it for the Count of Poictou, a blue pavilion streaked with

basilisks in silver for the Count of Saint-Pol. The crowd was very

great, for the city was full of people; in the tribune the King of

England's throne was left empty save for a drawn sword; but one sat

beside it as arbiter for the day of life and death, and that was Prince

John, Richard's brother, by Richard summoned from Paris, and most

unwillingly there. Bishop Hugh of Durham sat next him, and marvelled to

see the sweat glisten on his forehead on a day when all the world else

felt the north wind to their bones. 'Are you suffering, dear lord?' 'Eh,

Bishop Hugh, Bishop Hugh, this is a mad day for me!' 'By God,' thought

Hugh of Durham, 'and so it might prove, my man!'

They blew trumpets; and at the second sounding Saint-Pol, the

challenger, rode out on a big grey horse, himself in a hauberk of chain

mail with a coif of the same, and a casque wherein three grey heron's

feathers. This was the badge of the house: Jehane wore heron's feathers.

He had a blue surcoat and blue housings for his horse. Behind him,

esquire of honour, rode the young Amadeus of Savoy, carrying his banner,

a white basilisk on a blue field. Saint-Pol was a burly man, bearing his

honours squarely on breast and back.

They sounded for the Count of Poictou, who came presently out of his

tent and lightly swung himself into the saddle--a feat open to very few

men armed in mail. As he came cantering down the long lists no man could

fail to mark the size and splendid ease he had; but some said, 'He is

younger by five years than Saint-Pol, and not so stout a man.' He had a

red plume above his leopard crest, a white surcoat over his hauberk,

with three red leopards upon it. His shield was of the same blazon, so

also the housings of his horse. The Dauphin of Auvergne carried his

banner. The two men came together, saluted with ceremony, then turned

with spears uplift to the tribune, the throned sword, the sweating

prince beside it.

This one now rose up and caught at his chair, to give the signal. 'Oh,

Richard of Anjou, do thou on the body of Saint-Pol what thy faith

requires of thee; and do thou, Eudo, uphold the right thou hast, in the

name of God in Trinity and of our Lady.' The Bishop of Tours blessed

them both and the issue, they wheeled apart, and the battle began. It

was short, three careers long. At the first shock Richard unhorsed his

man; at the second he unhelmed him with a deep flesh-furrow in the

cheek; at the third he drove down horse and man together and broke the

Count's back. Saint-Pol never moved again.

The moment it was over, in the silence of all, Prince John came down

from the tribune and fell upon Richard's neck. 'Oh, dearest brother,'

cried he, 'what should I have done if the worst had befallen you? I

cannot bear to think of it.'

'Oh, brother,' Richard said very quietly, 'I think you would have borne

it very well. You would have married Madame Alois, and paid for a mass

or two for me out of the dowry.'

This raking shot was heard by everybody. John grew red as fire. 'Why,

what do you mean, Richard?' he stammered.

And Richard, 'Are my words so encumbered? Think them over, get them by

heart. So doing, be pleased to ride with me to Paris.' At this the

colour left John's face.

'Ah! To Paris?' He looked as if he saw death under a bush.

'That is where we must go,' said Richard, 'so soon as we have prayed for

that poor blind worm on the ground, who now haply sees wherein he has

offended.'

'Conrad of Montferrat, cousin of this dead, is there, Richard,' said the

other with intention; but Richard laughed.

'In a very good hour we shall find him. I have to give him news of his

cousin Saint-Pol. What is he there for?'

'It is in the matter of the kingdom of Jerusalem. He seeks Sibylla and

that crown, and is like to get them.'

'I think not, John, I think not. We will fill his head with other

thoughts; we will set it wanting mine. Your chance is a fair one yet,

brother.'

Prince John laughed, but not comfortably. 'Your tongue bites, Richard.'

'Pooh,' says Richard, 'what else are you worth? I save my teeth'; and

went his ways.

In Paris Richard repaired to the tower of his kinsman the Count of

Angoulesme, but his brother to the Abbey of Saint-Germain. The Poictevin

herald bore word to King Philip-Augustus on Richard's part; Prince John,

as I suppose, bore his own word whither he had most need for it to go.

It is believed that he contrived to see Madame Alois in private; and if

that great purple cape that held him in talk for nearly an hour by a

windy corner of the Prè-aux-Clercs did not cover the back of Montferrat,

then Gossip is a liar, Richard, for his part, took no account of John

and his shifts; a wave of disgust for the creeping youth had filled the

stronger man, and having got him into Paris there seemed nothing better

to do with him than to let him alone. But that sensitive gorge of

Richard's was one of his worst enemies: if he did not mean to hold the

snake in the stick, he had better not have cleft the stick. As for John

and his writhing, I am only half concerned with them; but let me tell

you this. Whatever he did or did not sprang not from hatred of this or

that man, but from fear, or from love of his own belly. Every prince of

the house of Anjou loved inordinately some member of himself, some a

noble member nobly, and others basely a base member. If John loved his

belly, Richard loved his royal head: but enough. To be done with all

this, Richard was summoned to the French King hot-foot, within a day or

two of his coming; went immediately with his chaplain Anselm and other

one or two, and was immediately received. He had, in fact, obeyed in

such haste that he found two in the audience-chamber instead of one.

With Philip of France was Conrad of Montferrat, a large, pale,

ruminating Italian, full of bluster and thick blood. The French King was

a youth, just the age of Jehane, of the thin, sharp, black-and-white

mould into which had run the dregs of Capet. He was smooth-faced like a

girl, and had no need to shave; his lips were very thin, set crooked in

his face. So far as he was boy he loved and admired Richard, so far as

he was Capet he distrusted him with all the rest of the world.

Richard knelt to his suzerain and was by him caught up and kissed.

Philip made him sit at his side on the throne. This put Montferrat, who

was standing, sadly out of countenance, for he considered himself (as

perhaps he was) the superior of any man uncrowned.

It seems that some news had drifted in on the west wind. 'Richard, oh,

Richard!' the King began, half whimsical and half vexed, 'What have you

been doing in Touraine?'

'Fair sire,' answered Richard, 'I have been doing what will, I fear,

give pain to our cousin Montferrat. I have been breaking the back of the

Count of Saint-Pol.' At this the Marquess, suffused with dark blood till

he was colour of lead, broke out, pointing his finger as well as his

words. As the bilge-water jets from a ketch when the hold is surcharged,

so did the Marquess jet his expletives.

'Ha, sire! Ha, King of France! Now give me leave to break this brigand's

back, who robs and reviles in one breath. Touch of the Gospel, is it to

be borne?' Foaming with rage, he lunged forward a step or two, his hand

upon his long sword. Richard slowly got up from the throne and stood his

full height.

'Marquess, you use words I will not hear--'

King Philip broke in--'Fair lords, sweet lords--'; but Richard put his

hand up, having a kingly way with him which even kings observed.

'Dear sire,'--his voice was level and cool--'let me say my whole mind

before the Marquess recovers his. The Count of Saint-Pol, for beastly

reasons, spoke in my hearing either true things or false things

concerning Madame Alois. If they were true I was ready to die; if they

were false I hope he was. Believing them false, I had punished one man

for them before; but he had them from Saint-Pol. Therefore I called

Saint-Pol a liar, and other proper things. This gave him occasion to

save his credit at the risk of his back. He broke the one and I the

other. Now I will hear the Marquess.'

The Marquess tugged at his sword. 'And I, Count of Poictou--'; but King

Philip held out his sceptre, he too very much a king.

'And we, Count of Poictou,' he said, 'command you by your loyalty to

tell us what Saint-Pol dared say of our sister Dame Alois.' Although his

thin boy's voice quavered, he seemed the more royal for the human

weakness. Richard was greatly moved, thawed in a moment.

'God forgive me, Philip, but I cannot tell thee--' Pity broke up his

tones.

The young king almost whimpered: 'Oh, Richard, what is this?' But

Richard turned away his face. It was now the chance of the great

Italian.

'Now listen, King Philip,' he said, grim and square, 'and listen you,

Count of Poictou, whose account is to be quieted presently. Of this

business I happen to know something. If it serve not your honour I

cannot help it. It serves my murdered cousin's honour--therefore

listen.'

Richard's head was up. 'Peace, hound,' he said, and the Marquess snarled

like an old dog; but Philip, with a quivering lip, put out his hand till

it touched Richard's shoulder. 'I must hear it, Richard,' he said.

Richard put his arm round the lad's neck: so the Marquess told his

story. At the end of it Richard dared look down into Philip's marred

eyes. Then he kissed his forehead, and 'Oh, Philip,' says he, 'let him

who is hardy enough to tell this tale believe it, and let us who hear it

do as we must. But now you understand why I made an end of Saint-Pol,

and why, by heaven and earth, I will make an end of this brass pot.' He

turned upon Montferrat with his teeth bare. 'Conrad, Conrad, Conrad!' he

cried terribly, 'mark your goings about this slippery world; for if when

I get you alone I do not send you quick into hell, may I go down myself

beyond redemption of the Church!'

'That you will surely do, my lord,' says the Marquess of Montferrat,

greatly disturbed.

'If I get you there also I shall be reasonably entertained for a short

time,' Richard answered, already cooled and ashamed of his heat. Then

King Philip dismissed the Marquess, and as soon as he was rid of him

jumped into Richard's arms, and cried his heart away.

Richard, who was fond of the youth, comforted him as well as he was

able, but on one point was a rock. He would not hear the word 'marriage'

until he had seen the lady. 'Oh, Richard, marry her quick, marry her

quick! So we can face the world,' the young King had blubbered, thinking

that course the simplest answer to the affront upon his house. It did

not seem so simple to the Count, or (rather) it seemed too simple by

half. In his private mind he knew perfectly well that he could not marry

Madame Alois. So, for that matter, did King Philip by this time. 'I

must see Alois, Philip, I must see her alone,' was all Richard had to

say; and really it could not be gainsaid.

He went to her after proper warning, and saw the truth the moment he had

view of her. Then also he knew that he had really seen it before. That

white, furtive, creeping girl, from whose loose hair peered out a pair

of haunted eyes; that drooped thing backing against the wall, feeling

for it, flat against it, with open shocked mouth, astare but seeing

nothing: the whole truth flared before him monstrously naked. He loathed

the sight of her, but had to speak her smoothly.

'Princess--' he said, and came forward to touch her hand; but she

slipped away from him, crouching to the wall. The torment of breath in

her bosom was bad to see.

'Touch me not, Count of Poictou;' she whispered the words, and then

moaned, 'O God, what will become of me?'

'Madame,' said Richard, rather dry, 'God may answer your question, since

He knows all things, but certainly I cannot, unless you first tell me

what has hitherto become of you.'

She steadied herself by the wall, her palms flat upon it, and leaned her

body forward like one who searches in a dark place. Then, shaking her

head, she let it fall to her breast. 'Is there any sorrow like my

sorrow?' says she to herself, as though he had not been there.

Richard grew stern. 'So asked in His agony the Son of high God,' he

reproved her. 'If you dare ask Him that in His own words your sorrow

must be deep.'

She said, 'It is most deep.'

'But His,' said Richard, 'was bitter shame.' She said, 'And mine is

bitter.'

'But His was undeserved.' He spoke scorn; so then she lifted up her

head, and with eyes most piteous searched his face. 'But mine, Richard,'

she said, 'but mine is deserved.'

'The hearing is pertinent,' said Richard. 'As a son and man affianced it

touches me pretty close.'

Out of the hot and desperate struggle for breath, sounds came from her,

but no words. But she ran forward blindly, and kneeling, caught him by

the knees; he could not but find pity in his heart for the witless poor

wretch, who seemed to be fighting, not with regret nor for need of his

pity, but with some maggot in the brain which drove her deeper into the

fiery centre of the storm. Richard did what he could. A religious man

himself, he pointed her to the Christ on the wall; but she waved it out

of sight, shook her wild hair back, and clung to him still, asking some

unguessed mercy with her eyes and sobbing breath. 'God help this

tormented soul, for I cannot,' he prayed; and said aloud, 'I will call

your women; let me go.' So he tried to undo her hands, but she clenched

her teeth together and held on with frenzy, whining, grunting, like some

pounded animal. Dumbly they strove together for a little panting space

of time.

'Ah, but you shall let me go,' he said then, much distressed, and

forcibly unknotted her mad hands. She fell back upon her heels, and

looked up at him. Such hopeless, grinning misery he had never seen on a

face before. He was certain now that she was out of her wits.

Yet once again she brushed her hands over her face, as he had seen her

do before, like one who sweeps gossamers away on autumn mornings; and

though she was all in a shiver and shake with the fever she had, she

found her voice at last. 'Ah, thanks! Ah, my thanks, O Christ my

Saviour!' she sighed. 'O sweet Saviour Christ, now I will tell him all

the truth.'

If he had listened to her then it had been well for him. But he did not.

The struggle had fretted him likewise; if she was mad he was maddened.

He got angry where he should have been most patient. 'The truth, by

heaven!' he snapped. 'Ah, if I have not had enough of this truth!' And

so he left her shuddering. As he went down the long corridor he heard

shriek after shriek, and then the scurrying of many feet. Turning, he

saw carried lights, women running. The sounds were muffled, they had her

safe. Richard went to his house over the river, and slept for ten hours.

CHAPTER VII

OF THE CRACKLING OF THORNS UNDER POTS

Just as no two pots will boil alike, so with men; they seethe in trouble

with a difference. With one the grief is taken inly: this was Richard's

kind. The French King was feverish, the Marquess explosive, John of

England all eyes and alarms. So Richard's remedy for trouble was action,

Philip's counsel, the Marquess's a glut of hatred, and John's plotting.

The consequence is, that in the present vexed state of things Richard

threw off his discontent with his bedclothes, and at once took the lead

of the others, because it could be done at once. He declared open war

against the King his father, despatching heralds with the cartel the

same day; he gave King Philip to understand that the French power might

be for him or against him as seemed fitting, but that no power in heaven

or on earth would engage him to marry Dame Alois. King Philip, still

clinging to his friend, made a treaty of alliance with him against Henry

of England. That done, sealed and delivered, Richard sent for his

brother John. 'Brother,' he said, 'I have declared war against my

father, and Philip is to be of our party. In his name and my own I am to

tell you that one of two things you must do. You may stay in our lands

or leave them; but if you stay you must sign our treaty of alliance.'

Too definite for John, all this: he asked for time, and Richard gave him

till nightfall. At dusk he sent for him again. John chose to stay in

Paris. Then Richard thought he would go home to Poictou. The moment his

back was turned began various closetings of the magnates left behind,

with which I mean to fatigue the reader as little as possible.

One such chamber-business I must record. To Paris in the black February

weather came pelting the young Count Eustace, now by his brother's death

Count of Saint-Pol. Misfortune, they say, makes of one a man or a saint.

Of Eustace Saint-Pol it had made a man. After his homage done, this

youth still kneeling, his hands still between Philip's hands, looked

fixedly into his sovereign's face, and 'A boon, fair sire!' he said. 'A

boon to your new man!'

'What now, Saint-Pol?' asked King Philip.

'Sire,' he said, 'my sister's marriage is in you. I beg you to give her

to Messire Gilles de Gurdun, a good knight of Normandy.'

'That is a poor marriage for her, Saint-Pol,' said the King,

considering, 'and a poor marriage for me, by Saint Mary. Why should I

enrich the King of England, with whom I am at war? You must give me

reason for that.'

'I will give you this reason,' said young Saint-Pol; 'it is because that

devil who slew my brother will have her else.'

King Philip said, 'Why, I can give her to one who will hold her fast.

Your Gurdun is a Norman, you say? Well, but Count Richard in a little

while will have him under his hand; and how are you served then?'

'I doubt, sire,' replied Saint-Pol. 'Moreover, there is this, if it

please you to hear it. When the Count of Poictou repudiated (as he most

villainously did) my sister, he himself gave her to Gurdun. But I fear

him, lest seeing her any other's he should take her again.'

'What is this, man?' asked King Philip.

'Sire, he writes letters to my sister that he is a free man, and she

keeps them by her and often reads them in secret. So she was caught but

lately by my lady aunt, reading one in bed.'

The King's brow grew very black, for though he knew that Richard would

never marry Madame, he did not choose (but resented) that any other

should know it. At this moment Montferrat came in, and stood by his

kinsman.

'Ah, sire,' said he, in those bloodhound tones of his, 'give us leave to

deal in this business with free hands.'

'What would you do in it, Marquess?' asked the King fretfully.

'Kill him, by God,' said the Marquess; and young Saint-Pol added, 'Give

us his life, O lord King.'

King Philip thought. He was fresh from making a treaty with Richard; but

that was in a war of requital only, and would be ended so soon as the

last drop had been drained from the old King. What would follow the war?

He was by this time cooler towards Richard, very much vexed at what he

had just heard; he could not help remembering that marriage with Alois

would have been the proper reply to scandalous report. Should he be

able, when the war was done, to squeeze Richard into marriage or an

equivalent in lands? He wondered, he doubted greatly. On the other hand,

if he and Richard could crush old Henry, and Saint-Pol afterwards bruise

Richard--why, what was Philip but a gainer?

Chewing the fringe of his mantle as he considered this and that,'If I

give Madame Jehane in marriage to your Gurdun,' he said dubiously, 'what

will Gurdun do?'

Saint-Pol named the sum, a fair one.

'But what part will he take in the quarrel?' asked the King.

'He will take my part, as he is bound, sire.'

'Pest!' cried Philip, 'let us get at it. What is this part of yours?'

'The part of him who has a blood-feud, my lord,' said young Saint-Pol;

and the Marquess said, 'That is my part also.'

'Have it according to your desires, my lords,' then said King Philip. 'I

give you this marriage. Make it as speedily as may be, but let not Count

Richard have news until it is done. There is a fire, I tell you, hidden

in that tall man. Remember this too, Saint-Pol. You shall not make war

on the side of England against Richard, for that will be against me.

Your feud must wait its turn. For this present I have an account to

settle in which Poictou is on my side. Marquess, you likewise are in my

debt. See to it that you give my enemies no advantage.'

The Marquess and his cousin gave their words, holding up the hilts of

their swords before their faces.

Richard, in his city of Poictiers, was calmly forwarding his plans. His

first act, since he now considered himself perfectly free, had been to

send Gaston of Béarn with letters to Saint-Pol-la-Marche; his second,

seeing no reason why he should wait for King Philip or any possible

ally, to cross the frontier of Touraine in force. He took castle after

castle in that rich land, clearing the way for the investiture of Tours,

which was his first great objective.

I leave him at this employment and follow Gaston on his way to the

North. It was early in March when that young man started, squally, dusty

weather; but perfect trobador as he was, the nature of his errand warmed

him; he composed a whole nosegay of scented songs in honour of Richard

and the crocus-haired lady of the March who wore the broad girdle.

Riding as he did through the realm of France, by Chateaudun, Chartres,

and Pontoise, he narrowly missed Eustace of Saint-Pol, who was galloping

the opposite way upon an errand dead opposed to his own. Gaston would

have fought him, of course, but would have been killed to a certainty;

for Saint-Pol rode as became his lordship, with a company, and the other

was alone. He was spared any such mischance, however, and arrived in the

highest spirits, with an _alba_ (song of the dawn) for what he supposed

to be Jehane's window. It shows what an eye he had for a lady's chamber

that he was very nearly right. A lady did put her head out; not Jehane,

but a rock-faced matron of vast proportions with grey hair plastered to

her cheeks.

'Behold, behold the dawn, my tender heart!' breathed Gaston.

'Out, you cockerel,' said the old lady, and Gaston wooed her in vain. It

appeared that she was an aunt, sworn to the service of the Count, and

had Jehane safe in a tower under lock and key. Gaston retired into the

woods to meditate. There he wrote five identic notes to the prisoner.

The first he gave to a boy whom he found birds'-nesting. 'Take a

turtle's nest, sweet boy,' said Gaston, 'to my lady Jehane; say it is

first-fruits of the year, and win a silver piece. Beware of an old lady

with a jaw like a flat-iron.' The second he gave to a woodman tying

billets for the Castle ovens; the third a maid put in her placket, and

he taught her the fourth by heart in a manner quite his own and very

much to her taste. With the fifth he was most adroit. He demanded an

interview with the duenna, whose name was Dame Gudule. She accorded.

Gaston spilled his very soul out before her; he knelt to her, he kissed

her large velvet feet. The lady was touched, I mean literally, for

Gaston as he stooped fitted his fifth note into the braid of her ample

skirt. The only one to arrive was the boy's in the bird's nest. The boy

wanted his silver piece, and got it. So Jehane had another note to

cherish.

But she had to answer it first. It said, '_Vera Copia_. Ma mye, I set on

to the burden you gave me, but it failed of breaking my back. I have

punished some of the wicked, and have some still to punish. When this is

done I shall come to you. Wait for me. I regret your brother's death.

He deserved it. The fight was fair. Learn of me from Gaston.--Richard of

Anjou.' Her answer was leaping in her heart; she led the boy to the

window.

'Look down, boy, and tell me what you can see.'

'_Dame_!' said the boy, 'I see the moat, and ducks on it.'

'Look again, dear, and tell me what you see.'

'I see an old fish on his back. He is dead.'

Jehane laughed quietly. 'He has been there many days. Tell the knight

who sent you to stand thereabout, looking up. Tell him not to be there

at any hour save that of mass, or vespers. Will you do this, dear boy?'

'Certain sure,' said the boy. Jehane gave him money and a kiss, then

fastened herself to the window.

Gaston excelled in pantomime. Every day for a week he saw Jehane at her

window, and enacted many strange plays. He showed her the old King

stormy in his tent, the meagre white unrest of Alois, the outburst at

Autafort and Bertran de Born with his tongue out; the meeting at Tours,

the battle, the death of the Count her brother. He was admirable on

Richard's love-desires. There could be no doubt at all about them.

Pricked by his feats in this sort, Jehane overcame her reserve and

turned her members into marionettes. She puffed her cheeks, hung her

head, scowled upwards: there was Gilles de Gurdun to the life. She

looped finger and thumb of the right hand and pierced them with the ring

finger: ohè! her fate. Gaston in reply to this drew his sword and ran a

cypress-tree through the body. Jehane shook a sorrowful head, but he

waved all such denials away with a hand so expressive that Jehane broke

the window and leaned her body out. Gaston uttered a cheerful cry.

Have no fear, lovely prisoner. If that is his intention he is gone. I

kill him. It is arranged.'

'My brother Eustace is in Paris,' says Jehane in a low but carrying

voice, 'to get my marriage from the King.'

'Again I say, fear nothing,' Gaston cried; but Jehane strained out as

far as she could.

'You must go away from here. The window is broken now, and they will

find me out. Take a message to my lord. If he is free indeed, he knows

me his in life or death. I seek to do him service. Wed or unwed, what is

that to me? I am still Jehane.'

'Your name is Red Heart, and Golden Rose, and Loiale Amye! Farewell,

Star of the North,' said Gaston on his knees. 'I seek this Gurdun of

yours.'

He found him after some days' perilous prowling of the Norman march.

Gilles had received the summons of his Duke to be _vi et armis_ at

Rouen; a little later Gaston might have met him in the field of broad

battle, but such delay was not to his mind. He met him instead in a

woodland glade near Gisors, alone (by a great chance), sword on thigh.

'Beef, thou diest,' said the Béarnais, peaking his beard. Gilles made no

reply that can be written, for what letters can shape a Norman grunt?

Perhaps 'Wauch!' comes nearest. They fought on horseback, with swords,

from noon to sunset, and having hacked one another out of the similitude

of men, there was nothing left them to do but swoon side by side on the

sodden leaves. In the morning Gaston, unclogging one eye, perceived that

his enemy had gone. 'No matter,' said the spent hero to himself. 'I will

wait till he comes back, and have at him again.'

He waited an unconscionable time, a month in fact, during which he

delighted to watch the shy oncoming of a Northern spring, so different

from the sudden flooding of the South. He found the wood-sorrel, he

measured the crosiers of the brake, and saw the blue mist of the

hyacinth carpet the glades. All this charmed him quite, until he

learned, by hazard, that the Sieur de Gurdun was to be married to Dame

Jehane Saint-Pol on Palm Sunday in the church of Saint Sulpice of

Gisors. 'God ha' mercy!' he thought, with a stab at the heart; 'there is

merely time.' He rode South on the wind's wings.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW THEY HELD RICHARD OFF FROM HIS FATHER'S THROAT

Long before the pink flush on the almond announced the earth a bride, on

all Gaulish roads had been heard the tramp of armed men, the ring of

steel on steel. This new war splintered Gaul. Aquitaine held for

Richard, who, though he had quelled and afterwards governed that great

duchy with an iron whip, had made himself respected there. So the Count

of Provence sent him a company, the Count of Toulouse and Dauphin of

Auvergne each brought a company; from Périgord, from Bertram Count of

Roussillon, from Béarn, and (for reasons) from the wise King of Navarre,

came pikemen and slingers, and long-bowmen, and knights with their

esquires and banner-bearers. The Duke of Burgundy and Count of Champagne

came from the east to fill the battles of King Philip; in the west the

Countess of Brittany sent about the war-torch. All the extremes of Gaul

were in arms against the red old Angevin who sat at her heart, who was

now still snarling in England, and sending message after secret message

to his son John. That same John, alone in Paris, headed no spears,

partly because he had none of his own, partly because he dared not

declare himself openly. He had taken a side, driven by his vehement

brother; for the first time in his life he had put pen to parchment.

God knew (he thought) that was committal enough. So he stayed in Paris,

shifting his body about to get comfort as the winds veered. Nobody

inquired of him, least of all his brother Richard, who, beyond requiring

his signature, cared little what he did with his person. This was

characteristic of Richard. He would drive a man into a high place and

then forget him. Reminded of his neglect, he would shrug and say, 'Yes.

But he is a fool.' Insufficient answer: he did not see or did not choose

to see that there are two sorts of fools. Stranded on his peak, one man

might be fool enough to stop there, another to try a descent. Prince

John (no fool either) was of this second quality. How he tried to get

down, and where else he tried to go, will be made clear in time. You and

I must go to the war in the west.

War showed Count Richard entered into his birthright. As a strategist he

was superb, the best of his time. What his eye took in his mind snapped

up--like a steel gin. And his eye was the true soldier's eye,

comprehending by signs, investing with life what was tongueless else.

Over great stretches of barren country--that limitless land of

France--he could see massed men on the move; creeping forward in snaky

columns, spread fanwise from clump to woody clump; here camping snugly

under the hill, there lining the river bluffs with winged death; checked

here, helped there by a moraine--as well as you or I may foresee the

conduct of a chess-board. He omitted nothing, judged times and seasons,

reckoned defences at their worth, knew all the fordable places by the

lie of the land, timed cavalry and infantry to rendezvous, forestalled

communications, provided not only for his own base, but against the

enemy's. All this, of course, without maps, and very much against the

systems of his neighbours. It was thus he had outwitted the heady barons

of Aquitaine when little more than a lad, and had turned the hill forts

into death-traps against their tenants. He had the secret of swift

marching by night, of delivering assault upon assault, so that while you

staggered under one blow you received another full. He could be as

patient as Death, that inchmeal stalker of his prey; he could be as

ruthless as the sea, and incredibly generous upon occasion. To the men

he led he was a father, known and beloved as such; it was as a ruler

they found him too lonely to be loved. In war he was the very footboy's

friend. Personally, when the battles joined, he was rash to a fault; but

so blithe, so ready, and so gracefully strong, that to think of wounds

upon so bright a surface was an impiety. No one did think of them: he

seemed to play with danger as a cat with whirling leaves. 'I have seen

him,' Milo writes somewhere, 'ride into a serry of knights, singing,

throwing up and catching again his great sword Gaynpayn; then, all of a

sudden, stiffen as with a gush of sap in his veins, dart his head

forward, gather his horse together under him, and fling into the midst

of them like a tiger into a herd of bulls. One saw nothing but tossing

steel; yet Richard ever emerged, red but scatheless, on the further

side.

Upon this man the brunt of war fell naturally: having begun, he did not

hold his hand. By the beginning of February he had laid his plans, by

the end of it he had taken Saumur, cut Angers off from Tours, and turned

all the valley of the Loire into a scorched cinder-bed. In the early

days of March he sat down before Tours with his siege-engines,

petraries, mangonels, and towers, and daily battered at the walls, with

intent to reduce it before the war was really afloat. The city of Saint

Martin was doomed; no help from Anjou could save it, for none could come

that way. Meantime the King his father had landed at Honfleur, assembled

his Normans at Rouen, and was working his way warily down through the

duchy, feeling for the French on his left, and for the Bretons on his

right. He never found the French; they were far south of him, pushing

through Orleans to join Richard at Le Mans. But the Countess of

Brittany's men, under Hugh of Dinan, were sacking Avranches when old

Henry heard the bad news from Touraine. That country and Maine were as

the apple of his eye; yet he dared not leave Avranches fated behind him.

All he could do was to send William the Marshal with a small force into

Anjou, while he himself spread out westward to give Hugh of Dinan battle

and save Avranches, if that might be. So it was that King Philip slipped

in between him and Le Mans. By this time Richard was master of Tours,

and himself on the way to Le Mans, nosing the air for William the

Marshal. This was in the beginning of April. Then on one and the same

day he risked all he had won for the sake of a girl's proud face, and

nearly lost his life into the bargain.

He had to cross the river Aune above La Flèche. That river, a sluggish

but deep little stream, moves placidly among osiers on its way to swell

the Loire. On either side the water-meadows stretch for three-quarters

of a mile; low chalk-hills, fringed at the top, are ramparts to the

sleepy valley. Creeping along the eastern spurs at dawn, Richard came in

touch with his enemy, William the Marshal and his force of Normans and

English. These had crossed the bridge at La Flèche, and came pricking

now up the valley to save Le Mans. Heading them boldly, Richard threw

out his archers like a waterspray over the flats, and while these

checked the advance and had the van in confusion, thundered down the

slopes with his knights, caught the Marshal on the flank, smote him hip

and thigh, and swept the core of his army into the river. The Marshal's

battle was thus destroyed; but the wedge had made too clean a cleft.

Front and rear joined up and held; so Richard found himself in danger.

The Viscount of Béziers, who led the rearguard, engaged the enemy, and

pushed them slowly back towards the Aune; Richard wheeled his men and

charged, to take them in the rear. His horse, stumbling on the rotten

ground, fell badly and threw him: there were cries, 'Holà! Count Richard

is down!' and some stayed to rescue and some pushed on. William the

Marshal, on a white horse, came suddenly upon him as he lay. 'Mort de

dieu!' shrilled this good soldier, and threw up his spear arm. 'God's

feet, Marshal, kill one or other of us!' said Richard lightly: he was

pinned down by his struggling beast. 'I leave you to the devil, my lord

Richard,' said the Marshal, and drove his spear into the horse's chest.

The beast's death-plunge freed his master. Richard jumped up: even on

foot his head was level with the rider's shield. 'Have at you now!' he

cried; but the Marshal shook his head, and rode after his flying men.

The day was with Poictou, Le Mans must fall.

It fell, but not yet; nor did Richard see it fall. Gaston of Béarn

joined his master the next day. 'Hasten, hasten, fair lord!' he cried

out as soon as he saw him. Richard looked as if he had never known the

word.

'What news of Normandy, Gaston?'

'The English are through, Richard. The country swarms with them. They

hold Avranches, and now are moving south.'

'They are too late,' said Richard. 'Tell me what message you have from

the Fair-Girdled.'

'Wed or unwed, she is yours. But she is kept in a tower until Palm

Sunday. Then they bring her out and marry her to what remains of a black

Normandy pig. Not very much remains, but (they tell me) enough for the

purpose.'

'Spine of God,' said Richard, examining his finger-nails.

'Swear by His heart, rather, my Count,' Gaston said, 'for you have a red

heart in your keeping. Eh, eh, what a beautiful person is there! She

leaned her body out of the window--what a shape that girdle confines!

Bowered roses! Dian and the Nymphs! Bosomed familiars of old Pan! And

what emerald fires! What molten hair! The words came shortly from her,

and brokenly, as if her carved lips disdained such coarse uses! Richard,

her words were so: "Take a message to my lord," quoth she. "I am his in

life or death. I seek to do him service. Wed or unwed, what is that to

me? I am still Jehane." Thus she--but I? Well, well, my sword spake for

me when I carved that beef-bone bare.' The Béarnais pulled his goatee,

and looked at the ends of it for split hairs. But Richard sat very

still.

'Do you know, Gaston, whom you have seen?' he said presently, in a

trembling whisper.

'Perfectly well,' said the other. 'I have seen a pale flower ripe for

the sun.'

'You have seen the Countess of Poictou, Gaston,' said Richard, and took

to his prayers.

Through these means, for the time, he was held off his father's throat.

But for Jehane and her urgent affairs these two had grappled at Le Mans.

As it was, not Richard's hand was to fire the cradle-city which had seen

King Henry at the breast. Before nightfall he had made his dispositions

for a very risky business. He set aside the Viscount of Béziers, Bertram

Count of Roussillon, Gaston of Béarn, to go with him, not because they

were the best men by any means, but so that he might leave the best men

in charge. These were certainly the Dauphin, the Viscount of Limoges,

and the Count of Angoulesme, each of whom he had proved as an enemy in

his day. 'Gentlemen,' he said to these three, 'I am about to go upon a

journey. Of you I shall require a little attention, certain patience,

exact obedience. It will be necessary that you be before the walls of Le

Mans in three days. Invest them, my lords, keep up your communications,

and wait for the French King. Give no battle, offer no provocation, let

hunger do your affair. I know where the King of England is, and shall be

with you before him.' He went on to be more precise, but I omit the

details. It was difficult for them to go wrong, but if the truth is to

be known, he was in a mood which made him careless about that. He was

free. He was going on insensate adventure; but he saw his road before

him once again, like a long avenue of light, which Jehane made for him

with a torch uplifted. Before it was day, armed from head to foot in

chain mail, with a plain shield, and a double-bladed Norman axe in his

saddle-bucket, he and his three companions set out on their journey.

They rode leisurely, with loose reins and much turning in the saddle to

talk, as if for a meet of the hounds.

Now was that vernal season of the year when winds are boon, the gentle

rain never far off, the stars in heaven (like the flowers on earth)

washed momently to a freshness which urges men to be pure. Riding day

and night through the green breadth of France, though he had been

plucked from the roaring pit of war, Richard (I know) went with a single

aim before him--to see Jehane again. Nothing else in his heart, I say.

Whatever purpose may have lurked in his mind, in heart he went clean,

single in desire, chanting the canticles of Mary and the Virgin Saints.

It was so. He had been seethed in wicked doings from his boyhood--I

give him you no better than he was: wild work in Poictou, the scour of

hot blood; devil's work in Touraine, riotous work in Paris, tyrannous in

Aquitaine. He had been blown upon by every ill report; hatred against

blood, blasphemy against God's appointment, violence, clamour, scandal

against charitable dealing: all these were laid to his name. He had

behind him a file of dead ancestors, cut-throats and worse. He had faced

unnameable sin and not blenched, laughed where he should have wept,

promised and broken his promise; to be short, he had been a creature of

his house and time, too young acquainted with pride and too proud

himself to deny it. But now, with eyes alight like a boy's because his

heart was uplift, he was riding between the new-budded woods, the

melodies of a singing-boy on his lips, and swaying before his heart's

eye the figure of a tall girl with green eyes and a sulky, beautiful

mouth. 'Lord, what is man?' cried the Psalmist in dejection. 'Lord, what

is man not?' cry we, who know more of him.

His traverse took him four days and nights. He rested at La Ferté, at

Nogent-le-Rotrou, outside Dreux, and at Rosny. Here he stayed a day, the

Vigil of the Feast of Palms. He had it in his mind not to see Jehane

again until the very moment when he might lose her.

CHAPTER IX

WILD WORK IN THE CHURCH OF GISORS

When in March the chase is up, and the hunting wind searches out the

fallow places of the earth, love also comes questing, desire is awake;

man seeks maid, and maid seeks to be sought. If man or maid have loved

already the case is worse; we hear love crying, but cannot tell where he

is, how or with what honesty to let him in. All those ranging days

Jehane--whether in bed cuddling her letters, or at the window of her

tower, watching with brimmed eyes the pairing of the birds--showed a

proud front of sufferance, while inly her heart played a wild tune. Not

a crying girl, nor one capable of any easy utterance, she could do no

more than stand still, and wonder why she was most glad when most

wretched. She ought to have felt the taint, to love the man who had

slain her brother; she might have known despair: she did neither. She

sat or stood, or lay in her bed, and pressed to her heart with both

hands the words that said, 'Never doubt me, Jehane,' or 'Ma mye, I shall

come to you.' When he came, as he surely would, he would find her a

wife--ah, let him come, let him come in his time, so only she saw him

again!

March went out in dusty squalls, and April came in to the sound of the

young lamb's bleat. Willow-palm was golden in the hedges when the King

of England's men filled Normandy, and Gilles de Gurdun, having been

healed of his wounds, rode towards Rouen at the head of his levy. He

went not without an understanding with Saint-Pol that he should have his

sister on Palm Sunday in the church of Gisors. They could not marry at

Saint-Pol-la-Marche, because Gilles was on his service and might not win

so far; nor could they have married before he went, because of his

ill-treatment at the hands of the Béarnais. Of this Gilles had made

light. 'He got worse than he gave,' he told Saint-Pol. 'I left him dead

in the wood.'

'Would you see Jehane, Gilles?' Saint-Pol had asked him before he went

out. 'She is in her turret as meek as a mouse.'

'Time enough for that,' said Gilles quietly. 'She loves me not. But I,

Eustace, love her so hot that I have fear of myself. I think I will not

see her.'

'As you will,' said Saint-Pol. 'Farewell.'

In Gisors, then a walled town, trembling like a captive at the knees of

a huge castle, there was a long grey church which called Saint Sulpice

lord. It stood in a little square midway between the South Gate and the

citadel, a narrow oblong place where they held the cattle market on

Tuesdays, flagged and planted with pollard-limes. The west door of Saint

Sulpice, resting on a stepped foundation, formed a solemn end to this

humble space, and the great gable flanked by turrets threatened the

huddled tenements of the craftsmen. On this morning of Palm Sunday the

shaven crowns of the limes were budded gold and pink, the sky a fair

sea-blue over Gisors, with a scurrying fleece of clouds like foam; the

poplars about the meadows were in their first flush, all the quicksets

veiled in green. The town was early afoot, for the wedding party of the

Sieur de Gurdun was to come in; and Gurdun belonged to the Archbishop,

and the Archbishop to the Duke. The bride also was reported unwilling,

which added zest to the public appetite for her known beauty. Some knew

for truth that she was the cast-off mistress of a very great man, driven

into Gurdun's arms to dispose of scandal and of her. 'Eh, the minion!'

said certain sniggering old women to whom this was told, 'she'll not

find so soft a lap at Gurdun!' But others said, 'Gurdun is the Duke's,

and will one day be the Duke's son's. What will Sieur Gilles do then

with his straining wife? You cannot keep your hawk on the cadge for

ever--ah, nor hood her for ever!' And so on.

All this points to some public excitement. The town gate was opened full

early, the booths about it did a great trade; at a quarter before seven

Sir Gilles de Gurdun rode in, with his father on his right hand, the

prior of Rouen on his left, and half a dozen of his kindred, fair and

solid men all. They were lightly armed, clothed in soft leather, without

shields or any heavy war-furniture: old Gurdun a squarely built,

red-faced man like his son, but with a bush of white hair all about his

face, and eyebrows like curved snowdrifts; the prior (old Gurdun's

brother's son) with a big nose, long and pendulous; Gilles' brother

Bartholomew, and others whom it would be tedious to mention. Gilles

himself looked well knit for the business in hand; all the old women

agreed that he would make a masterful husband. They stabled their horses

in the inn-yard, and went into the church porch to await the bride's

party.

A trumpet at the gate announced her coming. She rode on a little ambling

horse beside her brother Saint-Pol. With them were the portentous old

lady, Dame Gudule, William des Barres, a very fine French knight,

Nicholas d'Eu, and a young boy called Eloy de Mont-Luc, a cousin of

Jehane's, to bear her train. The gossips at the gate called her a wooden

bride; others said she was like a doll, a big doll; and others that they

read in her eyes the scorn of death. She took no notice of anything or

anybody, but looked straight before her and followed where she was led.

This was straightway into the church by her brother, who had her by the

hand and seemed in a great hurry. The marriage was to be made in the

Lady Chapel, behind the high altar.

Twenty minutes later yet, or maybe a little less, there was another

surging to the gate about the arrival of four knights, who came posting

in, spattered with mud and the sweat and lather of their horses. They

were quite unknown to the people of Gisors, but seen for great men, as

indeed they were. Richard of Anjou was the first of them, a young man of

inches incredible to Gisors. 'He had a face like King Arthur's of

Britain,' says one: 'A red face, a tawny beard, eyes like stones.'

Behind him were three abreast: Roussillon, a grim, dark, heavy-eyed

man, bearded like a Turk; Béziers, sanguine and loose-limbed, a man with

a sharp tongue; Gaston of Béarn, airy hunter of fine phrases, looking

now like the prince of a fairy-tale, with roving eyes all a-scare for

adventure. The warders of the gate received them with a flourish. They

knew nothing of them, but were certain of their degree.

By preconcerted action they separated there. Roussillon and Béziers sat

like statues within the gate, one on each side of the way, actually upon

the bridge; and so remained, the admired of all the booths. Gaston, like

a yeoman-pricker in this hunting of the roe, went with Richard to the

edge of the covert, that is, to the steps of Saint Sulpice, and stood

there holding his master's horse. What remained to be done was done with

extreme swiftness. Richard alone, craning his head forward, stooping a

little, swaying his scabbarded sword in his hand, went with long soft

strides into the church.

At the entry he kneeled on one knee, and looked about him from under his

brows. Three or four masses were proceeding; out of the semi-darkness

shone the little twinkling lights, and illuminated faintly the kneeling

people, a priest's vestment, a silver chalice. But here was neither

marriage nor Jehane. He got up presently, and padded down the nave,

kneeling to every altar as he went. Many an eye followed him as he

pushed on and past the curtain of the ambulatory. They guessed him for

the wedding, and so (God knows) he was. In the shadow of a great pillar

he stopped short, and again went down on his knee; from here he could

see the business in train.

He saw Jehane at prayer, in green and white, kneeling at her faldstool

like a painted lady on an altar tomb; he just saw the pure curve of her

cheek, the coiled masses of her hair, which seemed to burn it. All the

world with the lords thereof was at his feet, but this treasure which he

had held and put away was denied him. By his own act she was denied. He

had said Yea, when Nay had been the voice of heart and head, of honour

and love and reason at once; and now (close up against her) he knew that

he was to forbid his own grant. He knew it, I say; but until he saw her

there he had not clearly known it. Go on, I will show you the deeps of

the man for good or bad. Not lust of flesh, but of dominion, ravened in

him. This woman, this Jehane Saint-Pol, this hot-haired slip of a girl

was his. The leopard had laid his paw upon her shoulder, the mark was

still there; he could not suffer any other beast of the forest to touch

that which he had printed with his own mark, for himself.

Twi-form is the leopard; twi-natured was Richard of Anjou, dog and cat.

Now here was all cat. Not the wolf's lust, but the lion's jealous rage

spurred him to the act. He could see this beautiful thing of flesh

without any longing to lick or tear; he could have seen the frail soul

of it, but half-born, sink back into the earth out of sight; he could

have killed Jehane or made her as his mother to him. But he could not

see one other get that which was his. His by all heaven she was. When

Gurdun squared himself and puffed his cheeks, and stood up; when

Jehane, touched by Saint-Pol on the shoulder, shivered and left staring,

and stood up in turn, swaying a little, and held out her thin hand; when

the priest had the ring on his book, and the two hands, the red and the

white, trembled to the touch--Richard rose from his knee and stole

forward with his long, soft, crouching stride.

So softly he trod that the priest, old and blear-eyed as he was, saw him

first: the others had heard nothing. With Jehane's hand in his own, the

priest stopped and blinked. Who was this prowler, afoot when all else

were on their knees? His jaw dropped; you saw that he was toothless.

Inarticulate sounds, crackling and dry, came from his throat. Richard

had stopped too, tense, quivering for a spring. The priest gave a

prodigious sniff, turned to his book, looked up again: the crouching man

was still there--but imminent. 'Wine of Jesus!' said the priest, and

dropped Jehane's hand. Then she turned. She gave a short cry; the whole

assembly started and huddled together as the mailed man made his spring.

It was done in a flash. From his crouched attitude he went, as it

seemed, at one bound. That same shock drove Gilles de Gurdun back among

his people, and the same found Jehane caged in a hoop of steel. So he

affronting and she caught up stood together, for a moment. With one

mailed hand he held her fast under the armpit, with the other he held a

fidgety sword. His head was thrown back; through glimmering eyelids he

watched them--as one who says, What next?--breathing short through his

nose. It was the attitude of the snatching lion, sudden, arrogant,

shockingly swift; a gross deed, done in a flash which was its wonderful

beauty. While the company was panting at the shock--for barely a

minute--he stood thus; and Jehane, quiet under so fierce a hold, leaned

not upon him, but stood her own feet fairly, her calm brows upon a level

with his chin. Shameful if it was, at that moment of rude conquest she

had no shame, and he no thought of shame.

Nor was there much time for thought at all. Gurdun cried on the name of

God and started forward; at the same instant Saint-Pol made a rush, and

with him Des Barres. Richard, with Jehane held close, went backwards on

the way he had come in. His long arm and long sword kept his distance;

he worked them like a scythe. None tackled him there, though they

followed him up as dogs a boar in the forest; but old Gurdun, the

father, ran round the other way to hold the west door. Richard, having

gained the nave and open country (as it were), went swiftly down it,

carrying Jehane with ease; he found the strenuous old man before the

door. 'Out of my way, De Gurdun,' he cried in a high singing voice, 'or

I shall do that which I shall be sorry for.'

'Bloody thief,' shouted old Gurdun, 'add murder to the rest!' Richard

stretched his sword arm stiffly and swept him aside. He tumbled back;

the crowd received him--priests, choristers, peasants, knights, all

huddled together, baying like dogs. Count Richard strode down the

steps.

'Alavi! Alavia!' sang Gaston, 'this is a swift marriage!' Richard,

cooler than circumstances warranted, set Jehane on his saddle, vaulted

up behind her, and as his pursuers were tumbling down the steps,

cantered over the flags into the street. Roussillon and Béziers, holding

the bridge, saw him come. 'He has snatched his Sabine woman,' said

Béziers. 'Humph,' said Roussillon; 'now for beastly war.' Richard rode

straight between them at a hand-gallop; Gaston followed close, cheering

his beast like a maniac. Then the iron pair turned inwards and rode out

together, taking the way he led them, the way of the Dark Tower.

The wonder of Gisors was all dismay when it was learned who this tall

stranger was. The Count of Poictou had ridden into his father's country

and robbed his father's man of his wife. We are ruled by devils in

Normandy, then! There was no immediate pursuit. Saint-Pol knew where to

find him; but (as he told William des Barres) it was useless to go there

without some force.

CHAPTER X

NIGHT-WORK BY THE DARK TOWER

I chronicle wild doings in this place, and have no time for the sweets

of love long denied. But strange as the bridal had been, so the nuptials

were strange, one like the other played to a steel undertone. When

Richard had his Jehane, at first he could not enjoy her. He rode away

with her like a storm; the way was long, the pace furious. Not a word

had passed between them, at least not a reasoned word. Once or twice at

first he leaned forward over her shoulder and set his cheek to her

glowing cheek. Then she, as if swayed by a tide, strained back to him,

and felt his kisses hot and eager, his few and pelting words, 'My

bride--at last--my bride!' and the pressure of his hand upon her heart.

That hand knows what tune the heart drummed out. Mostly she sat up

before him stiff as a sapling, with eyes and ears wide for any hint of

pursuit. But he felt her tremble, and knew she would be glad of him yet.

After all, they had six burning days for a honeymoon, days which made

those three who with them held the tower wonder how such a match could

continue. Richard's love rushed through him like a river in flood, that

brims its banks and carries down bridges by its turbid mass; but hers

was like the sea, unresting, ebbing, flowing, without aim or sure

direction. As is usual with reserved persons, Jehane's transports, far

from assuaging, tormented her, or seemed a torment. She loved uneasily,

by hot and cold fits; now melting, now dry, now fierce in demand, next

passionate in refusal. To snatch of love succeeded repulsion of love.

She would fling herself headlong into Richard's arms, and sob there,

feverish; then, as suddenly, struggle for release, as one who longs to

hide herself, and finding that refused, lie motionless like a woman of

wax. Whether embraced or not, out of touch with him she was desperate.

She could not bear that, but sought (unknown to him) to have hold of

some part of him--the edge of his tunic, the tip of his sword, his

glove--something she must have. Without it she sat quivering, throbbing

all over, looking at him from under her brows and biting her dumb lips.

If at such a time as this some other addressed her the word (as, to free

her from her anguish, one would sometimes do), she would perhaps answer

him, Yes or No, but nothing more. Usually she would shake her head

impatiently, as if all the world and its affairs (like a cloud of flies)

were buzzing about her, shutting out sound or sight of her Richard. Love

like this, so deep, outwardly still, inwardly ravening (because

insatiable), is a dreadful thing. No one who saw Jehane with Richard in

those days could hope for the poor girl's happiness. As for him, he was

more expansive, not at all tortured by love, master of that as of

everything else. He teased her after the first day, pinched her ear,

held her by the chin. He used his strange powers against her; stole up

on his noiseless feet, caught her hands behind her, held her fast, and

pulled her back to be kissed. Once he lifted her up, a sure prisoner, to

the top shelf of a cupboard, whence there was no escape but by the way

she had gone. She stayed there quite silent, and when he opened the

cupboard doors was found in the same tremulous, expectant state, her

eyes still fixed upon him. Neither he nor she, publicly at least,

discussed the past, the present or future; but it was known that he

meant to make her his Countess as soon as he could reach Poictiers. To

the onlookers, at any rate to one of them, it seemed that this could

never be, and that she knew very well that the hours of this sharp,

sweet, piercing intercourse were numbered. How could it last? How could

she find either reason or courage to hope it? It seemed to Béziers, on

the watch, that she was awaiting the end already. One is fretted to a

rag by waiting. So Jehane dared not lose a moment of Richard, yet could

enjoy not one, knowing that she must soon lose all.

Those six clear days of theirs had been wiselier spent upon the west

road; but Richard's desire outmastered every thought. Having snatched

Jehane from the very horns of the altar, he must hold her, make her his

irrevocably at the first breathing place. Dealing with any but Normans,

he had never had his six days. But the Norman people, as Abbot Milo

says, 'slime-blooded, slow-bellies, are withal great eaters of beef,

which breeds in them, as well as a heaviness of motion, a certain

slumbrous rage very dangerous to mankind. They crop grief after grief,

chewing the cud of grievance; for when they are full of it they disgorge

and regorge the abhorred sum, and have stuff for their spleens for many

a year.' Even more than this smouldering nursed hate they love a

punctilio; they walk by forms, whether the road is to a lady's heart or

an enemy's throat. And so Saint-Pol found, and so Des Barres, Frenchmen

both and fiery young men, who shook their fists in the faces of the

Gurduns and the dust of such blockish hospitallers off their feet, when

they saw the course affairs were to run. Gilles de Gurdun, if you will

believe it, with the advice of his father and the countenance of his

young brother Bartholomew, would not budge an inch towards the recovery

of his wife or her ravisher's punishment until he had drawn out his

injury fair on parchment. This he then proposed to carry to his Duke,

old King Henry. 'Thus,' said the swart youth, 'I shall be within the law

of my land, and gain the engines of the law on my side.' He seemed to

think this important.

'With your accursed scruples,' cried Saint-Pol, smiting the table, 'you

will gain nothing else. Within your country's law, blockhead! Why, my

sister is within the Count's country by this time!'

'Oh, leave him, leave him, Eustace,' said Des Barres, 'and come with me.

We shall meet him in the fair way yet, you and I together.' So the

Frenchmen rode away, and Gilles, with his father and his parchments and

his square forehead, went to Evreux, where King Henry then was.

Kneeling before their Duke, expounding their gravamens as if they were

suing out a writ of _Mort d'Ancestor_, they very soon found out that he

was no more a Norman than Saint-Pol. The old King made short work of

their '_ut predictum ests_' and '_Quaesumus igiturs_.'

'Good sirs,' says he, knitting his brows, 'where is this lord who has

done you so much injury?'

'My lord,' they report, 'he has her in his strong tower on the plain of

Saint-André, some ten leagues from here.'

Then cries the old King, 'Smoke him out, you fools! What! a badger. Draw

the thief.'

Then Gilles the elder flattened his lips together and afterwards pursed

them. 'Lord,' he said, 'that we dare not do without your express

commandment.'

'Why, why,' snaps the King, 'if I give it you, my solemn fools?'

Young Gilles stood up, a weighty youth. 'Lord Duke,' he said, 'this lord

is the Count of Poictou, your son.' It had been a fine sight for sinful

men to see the eyes of the old King strike fire at this word. His

speech, they tell me, was terrible, glutted with rage.

'Ha, God!' he spluttered, cracking his fingers, 'so my Richard is the

badger, ha? So then I have him, ha? If I do not draw him myself, by the

Face!'

It is said that Longespée (a son of his by Madame Rosamund) and Geoffrey

(another bastard), with Bohun and De Lacy and some more, tried to hinder

him in this design, wherein (said they) he set out to be a second

Thyestes; but they might as well have bandied words with destiny. 'War

is war,' said the foaming old man, 'whether with a son or a grandmother

you make it. Shall my enemy range the field and I sit at home and lap

caudle? That is not the way of my house.' He would by all means go that

night, and called for volunteers. His English barons, to their credit,

flatly refused either to entrap the son of their master or to abandon

the city at a time so critical. 'What, sire!' cried they, 'are private

resentments, like threadworms, to fret the dams of the state? The floods

are out, my lord King, and brimming at the sluices. Be advised

therefore.'

No wearer of the cap of Anjou was ever advised yet. I can hear in fancy

the gnashing of the old lion's fangs, in fancy see the foam he churned

at the corners of his mouth. He went out with such men as he could

gather in his haste, nineteen of them in all. There were old Gilles and

young Gilles with their men; eight of the King's own choosing, namely,

Drago de Merlou, Armand Taillefer, the Count of Ponthieu, Fulk

Perceforest, Fulk D'Oilly, Gilbert FitzReinfrid, Ponce the bastard of

Caen, and a butcher called Rolf, to whom the King, mocking all chivalry,

gave the gilt spurs before he started. He did not wear them long. The

nineteenth was that great king, bad man, and worse father, Henry

Curtmantle himself.

It was a very dark night, without moon or stars, a hot and still night

wherein a man weather-wise might smell the rain. The going upon the moor

was none too good in a good light; yet they tell me that the old King

went spurring over brush and scrub, over tufted roots, through ridge and

hollow, with as much cheer as if the hunt was up in Venvil Wood and

himself a young man. When his followers besought him to take heed, all

he would do was snap his fingers, the reins dangling loose, and cry to

the empty night, 'Hue, Brock, hue!' as if he was baiting a badger. This

badger was the heir to his crown and dignity.

In the Dark Tower they heard him coming three miles away. Roussillon was

on the battlements, and came down to report horsemen on the plain.

'Lights out,' said Richard, and gave Jehane a kiss as he set her down.

They blew out all the lights, and stood two to each door; no one spoke

any more. Jehane sat by the darkened fire with a torch in her hand,

ready to light it when she was bid.

Thus when the Normans drew near they found the tower true to its name,

without a glimmer of light. 'Let alone for that,' said the King, whose

grating voice they heard above all the others; 'very soon we will have a

fire.' He sent some of his men to gather brushwood, ling, and dead

bracken; meantime he began to beat at the door with his axe, crying like

a madman, 'Richard! Richard! Thou graceless wretch, come out of thy

hold.'

Presently a little window-casement opened above him; Gaston of Béarn

poked out his head.

'Beau sire,' he says, 'what entertainment is this for the Count your

son?'

'No son of mine, by the Face!' cried the King. 'Let that woman I have

caged at home answer for him, who defies me for ever. Let me in, thou

sickly dog.'

Gaston said, 'Beau sire, you shall come in if you will, and if you come

in peace.'

Says the King, 'I will come in, by God, and as I will.'

'Foul request, King,' said Gaston, and shut the window.

'Have it as you will; it shall be foul by and by,' the King shouted to

the night. He bid them fire the place.

To be short, they heaped a wood-stack before the door and set it ablaze.

The crackling, the tossed flames, the leaping light, made the King

drunk. He and his companions began capering about the fire with linked

arms, hounding each other on with the cries of countrymen who draw a

badger--'Loo, loo, Vixen! Slip in, lass! Hue, Brock, hue, hue!' and

similar gross noises, until for very shame Gilles and his kindred drew

apart, saying to each other, 'We have let all hell loose, Legion and his

minions.' So the two companies, the grievous and the aggrieved, were

separate; and Richard, seeing this state of the case, took Roussillon

and Béziers out by the other door, got behind the dancers, attacked

suddenly, and drove three of them into the fire. 'There,' says the

chronicler, 'the butcher Sir Rolf got a taste of his everlasting

torments, there FitzReinfrid lay and charred; there Ponce of Caen, ill

born, made a foul smoke as became him.' Turning to go in again, the

three were confronted with the Norman segregates. Great work ensued by

the light of the fire. Gilles the elder was slain with an axe, and if

with an axe, then Richard slew him, for he alone was so armed. Gilles

the younger was wounded in the thigh, but that was Roussillon's work;

his brother Bartholomew was killed by the same terrific hitter; Béziers

lost a finger of his sword hand, and indeed the three barely got in with

their lives. The old King set up howling like a wolf in famine at this

loss; what comforted him was that the fire had eaten up the southern

door and disclosed the entry of the tower--Jehane holding up a torch,

and before her Gaston, Richard, and Bertram of Roussillon, their shields

hiding their breasts.

'Lords,' said Richard, 'we await your leisures.' None cared to attack:

there was the fire to cross, and in that narrow entry three desperate

blades. What could the old King do? He threatened hell and death, he

cursed his son more dreadfully, and (you may take it) with far less

reason, than Almighty God cursed Sodom and Gomorrah, cities of the

plain; but Richard made no answer, and when, quite beside himself, the

old man leaped the fire and came hideously on to the swords, the points

dropped at his son's direction. Almost crying, the King turned to his

followers. 'Taillefer, will you see me dishonoured? Where is Ponthieu?

Where is Drago?' So at last they all attacked together, coming on with

their shields before them, in a phalanx. This was a device that needs

must fail; they could not drive a wedge where they could not get in the

point. The three defending shields were locked in the entry. Two men

fell at the first assault, and Richard's terrible axe crashed into

Perceforest's skull and scattered his brains wide. Red and breathless

work as it was, it was not long adoing. The King was dismayed at the

killing of Perceforest, and dared risk no more lives at such long odds.

'Fire the other door, Drago,' he said grimly. 'We'll have the place down

upon them.' The Normans were set to engage the three while others went

to find fuel.

The Viscount of Béziers had had his hand dressed by Jehane, and was now

able to take his turn. It was by a ruse of his that Richard got away

without a life lost. With Jehane to help him, he got the horses trapped

and housed. 'Now, Richard,' he said, 'listen to my proposals. I am going

to open the north door and make away before they fire it. I shall have

half of them after me as I reckon; but whereas I shall have a good start

on a fresh horse, I doubt not of escape. Do you manage the rest: there

will be three of you.'

Richard approved. 'Go, Raimon,' he said. 'We will join you on the edge

of the plain.'

This was done. Jehane, when Béziers was ready, flung open the door. Out

he shot like a bolt, and she shut it behind him. The old King got wind

of him, spurred off with five or six at his heels, such as happened to

be mounted. Richard fell back from the entry, got out his horse, and

came forward. As he came he stooped and picked up Jehane, who, with a

quick nestling movement, settled into his shield arm. Roussillon and

Gaston in like manner got their horses; then at a signal they drove out

of the tower into the midst of the Normans. There was a wild scuffle.

Richard got a side blow on the knee, but in return he caught Drago de

Merlou under the armpit and well-nigh cut him in half. Taillefer and

Gilles de Gurdun set upon him together, and one of them wounded him in

the shoulder. But Taillefer got more than he gave, for he fell almost as

he delivered his blow, and broke his jaw against a rock. As for Gurdun,

Richard hurtled full into him, bore him backwards, and threw him also.

Jehane safe in arms, he rode over him where he lay. But lastly, pounding

through the tussocks in the faint grey light, he met his father charging

full upon him, intent to cut him off. 'Avoid me, father,' he cried out.

'By God,' said the King, 'I will not. I am for you, traitorous beast.'

They came together, and Richard heard the old man's breath roaring like

a foundered horse's. He held his sword arm out stiffly to parry the

blow. The King's sword shivered and fell harmless as Richard shot by

him. Turning as he rode (to be sure he had done him no more hurt), he

saw the wicked grey face of his father cursing him beyond redemption;

and that was the last living sight of it he had.

They got clean away without the loss of a man of theirs, reached the

lands of the Count of Perche, and there found a company of sixty knights

come out to look for Richard. With them he rode down through Maine to Le

Mans, which had fallen, and now held the French King. Richard's

triumphant humour carried him strange lengths. As they came near to the

gates of Le Mans, 'Now,' he said, 'they shall see me, like a pious

knight, bear my holy banner before me.' He made Jehane stand up in the

saddle in front of him; he held her there firmly by one long arm. So he

rode in the midst of his knights through the thronged streets to the

church of Saint-Julien, Jehane Saint-Pol pillared before him like a

saint. The French king made much of him, and to Jehane was respectful.

Prince John was there, the Duke of Burgundy, the Dauphin of Auvergne,

all the great men. To Richard was given the Bishop's house; Jehane

stayed with the Canonesses of Prémonstre. But he saw her every day.

CHAPTER XI

OF PROPHECY; AND JEHANE IN THE PERILOUS BED

Well may the respectable Abbot Milo despond over this affair. Hear him,

and conceive how he shook his head. 'O too great power of princes,' he

writes, 'lodged in a room too frail! O wagging bladder that serves as

cushion for a crown! O swayed by idle breath, seeming god that yet is a

man, man driven by windy passion, that has yet to ape the god's estate!

Because Richard craved this French girl, therefore he must take her, as

it were, from the lap of her mother. Because he taught her his nobility,

which is the mere wind in a prince's nose, she taught him nobility

again. Then because a prince must not be less noble than his nobles (but

always _primus inter pares_), he, seeing her nobly disposed, gave her

over to a man of her own choosing; and immediately after, unable to bear

it that a common person should have what he had touched, took her away

again, doing slaughter to get her, to say nothing of outrage in the

church. Last of all, as you are now to hear, thinking that too much

handling was dishonour to the thin vessel of her body, touched on the

generous spot, he made bad worse; he added folly to force; he made a

marriage where none could be; he made immortal enmities, blocked up

appointed roads, and set himself to walk others with a clog on his leg.

Better far had she been a wanton of no account, a piece of dalliance, a

pastime, a common delight! She was very much other than that. Dame

Jehane was a good girl, a noble girl, a handsome girl of inches and

bright blood; but by the Lord God of Israel (Who died on the Tree),

these virtues cost her dear.'

All this, we may take it, is true; the pity is that the thing promised

so fair. Those who had not known Jehane before were astonished at her

capacity, discretion, and dignity. She had a part to play at Le Mans,

where Richard kept his Easter, which would have taxed a wiser head. She

moved warily, a poor thing of gauze, amid those great lights. King

Philip had a tender nose; a very whiff of offence might have drawn

blood. Prince John had a shrewd eye and an evil way of using it; he

stroked women, but they seldom liked it, and never found good come of

it. The Duke of Burgundy ate and drank too much. He resembled a sponge,

when empty too rough a customer, when full too juicy. It was on one of

the days when he was very full that, tilting at the ring, he won, or

said he won, forty pounds of Richard. Empty, he claimed them, but

Richard discerned a rasp in his manner of asking, and laughed at him.

The Duke of Burgundy took this ill. He was never quite the same to

Richard again; but he made great friends with Prince John.

With all these, and with their courtiers, who took complexion from their

masters, Jehane had to hold the fair way. As a mistress who was to be a

wife, the veiled familiarity with which she was treated was always

preaching to her. How dare she be a Countess who was of so little

account already? The poor girl felt herself doomed beforehand. What

king's mistress had ever been his wife? And how could she be Richard's

wife, betrothed to Gilles de Gurdun? Richard was much afield in these

days, making military dispositions against his coming absence in

Poictou. She saw him rarely; but in return she saw his peers, and had to

keep her head high among the women of the French court. And so she did

until one day, as she was walking back from mass with her ladies, she

saw her brother Saint-Pol on horseback, him and William des Barres.

Timidly she would have slipped by; but Saint-Pol saw her, reined up his

horse in the middle of the street, and stared at her as if she had been

less than nothing to him. She felt her knees fail her, she grew vividly

red, but she kept her way. After this terrible meeting she dared not

leave the convent.

Of course she was quite safe. Saint-Pol could not do anything against

the conqueror of Touraine, the ally of his master; but she felt tainted,

and had thoughts (not for the first time) of taking the veil. One woman

had already taken it; she heard much concerning Madame Alois from the

Canonesses, how she had a little cell at Fontevrault among the nuns

there, how she shivered with cold in the hottest sun, how she shrieked

o' nights, how chattered to herself, and how she used a cruel

discipline. All these things working upon Jehane's mind made her love an

agony. Many and many a time when her royal lover came to visit her she

clung to him with tears, imploring him to cast her off again; but the

more she bewailed the more he pursued his end. In truth he was master by

this time, and utterly misconceived her. Nothing she might say or do

could stay him from his intent, which was to wed and afterwards crown

her Countess of Poictou. This was to be done at Pentecost, as the only

reparation he could make her.

Not even what befell on the way to Poictiers for this very thing could

alter him. Again he misread her, or was too full of what he read in

himself to read her at all. They left Le Mans a fortnight before

Pentecost with a great train of lords and ladies, Richard looking like a

young god, with the light of easy mastery shining in his eyes. She, poor

girl, might have been going to the gallows--and before the end of the

journey would thankfully have gone there; and no wonder. Listen to this.

Midway between Châtelherault and Poictiers is a sandy waste covered with

scrub of juniper and wild plum, which contrives a living by some means

between great bare rocks. It is a disconsolate place, believed to be the

abode of devils and other damned spirits. Now, as they were riding over

this desert, picking their way among the boulders at the discretion of

their animals, it so happened that Richard and Jehane were in front by

some forty paces. Riding so, presently Jehane gave a short gasping cry,

and almost fell off her horse. She pointed with her hand, and 'Look,

look, look!' she said in a dry whisper. There at a little distance from

them was a leper, who sat scratching himself on a rock.

'Ride on, ride on, my heart,' said Richard; but she, 'No, no, he is

coming. We must wait.' Her voice was full of despair.

The leper came jumping from rock to rock, a horrible thing of rags and

sores, with a loose lower jaw, which his disease had fretted to

dislocation. He stood in their mid path, in full sun, and plucking at

his disastrous eyes, peered upon the gay company. By this time all the

riders were clustered together before him, and he fingered them out one

after another--Richard, whom he called the Red Count, Gaston, Béziers,

Auvergne, Limoges, Mercadet; but at Jehane he pointed long, and in a

voice between a croak and a clatter (he had no palate), said thrice,

'Hail thou!'

She replied faintly, 'God be good to thee, brother.' He kept his finger

still upon her as he spoke again: every one heard his words.

'Beware (he said) the Count's cap and the Count's bed; for so sure as

thou liest in either thou art wife of a dead man, and of his killer.'

Jehane reeled, and Richard held her up.

'Begone, thou miserable,' he cried in his high voice, 'lest I pity thee

no more.' But the leper was capering away over the rocks, hopping and

flapping his arms like an old raven. At a safe distance he squatted down

and watched them, his chin on his bare knees.

This frightened Jehane so much that in the refectory of a convent, where

they stayed the night, she could hardly see her victual for tears, nor

eat it for choking grief. She exhausted herself by entreaties. Milo says

that she was heard crying out at Richard night after night, conjur ing

him by Christ on the Cross, and Mary at the foot of the Cross, not to

turn love into a stabbing blade; but all to no purpose. He soothed and

petted her, he redoubled her honours, he compelled her to love him; and

the more she agonised the more he was confident he would right her.

Very definitely and with unexampled profusion he provided for her

household and estate as soon as he was at home. Kings' daughters were

among her honourable women, at least, counts' daughters, daughters of

viscounts and castellans. She had Lady Saill of Ventadorn, Lady Elis of

Montfort, Lady Tibors, Lady Maent, Lady Beatrix, all fully as noble, and

two of them certainly more beautiful than she. Lady Saill and Lady Elis

were the most lovely women of Aquitaine, Saill with a face like a flame,

Elis clear and cold as spring water in the high rocks. He gave her a

chancellor of her seal, a steward of the household, a bishop for

chaplain. Viscount Ebles of Ventadorn was her champion, and Bertran de

Born (who had been doing secret mischief in the south, as you will learn

by and by), if you will believe it, Bertran de Born was forgiven and

made her trobador. It was at a great Court of Love which Richard caused

to be held in the orchards outside Poictiers, with pavilions and a

Chastel d'Amors, that Bertran came in and was forgiven for the sake of

his great singing. On a white silk tribune before the castle sat Jehane,

in a red gown, upon her golden head a circlet of dull silver, with the

leaves and thorns which made up the coronet of a countess. Richard bade

sound the silver trumpets, and his herald proclaim her three times, to

the north, to the east, and to the south, as 'the most puissant and

peerless princess, Madame Jehane, by the grace of God Countess of

Poictou, Duchess of Aquitaine, consort of our illustrious dread lord

Monsire Richard, Count and Duke of the same.' Himself, gloriously

attired in a bliaut of white velvet and gold, with a purple cloak over

his shoulder, sustained in a _tenzon_ with the chief trobadors of

Languedoc, that she was 'the most pleasant lovely lady now on earth, or

ever known there since the days of Madame Dido, Queen of Carthage, and

Madame Cleopatra, Empress of Babylon'--unfortunate examples both, as

some thought.

Minstrels and poets of the greatest contended with him; Saill had her

champion in Guillem of Cabestaing, Elis in Girault of Borneilh; the

Dauphin of Auvergne sang of Tibors, and Peire Vidal of Lady Maent.

Towards the end came sideways in that dishevelled red fox (whom nothing

shamed), Bertran de Born himself, looked askance at the Count, puffed

out his cheeks to give himself assurance, and began to sing of Jehane in

a way that brought tears to Richard's eyes. It was Bertran who dubbed

her with the name she ever afterwards went by throughout Poictou and the

south, the name of Bel Vezer. Richard at the end clipped him in his

arms, and with one arm still round his wicked neck led him to the

tribune where Jehane sat blushing. 'Take him into your favour, Lady Bel

Vezer,' he said to her. 'Whatever his heart may be, he hath a golden

tongue.' Jehane, stooping, lent him her cheek, and Bertran fairly kissed

her whom he had sought to undo. Then turning, fired with her favour, he

let his shrill voice go spiring to heaven in her praise.

For these feats Bertran was appointed to her household, as I have said.

He made no secret of his love for her, but sang of her night and day,

and delighted Richard's generous heart. But indeed Jehane won the favour

of most. If she was not so beautiful as Saill, she was more courteous,

if not so pious as Elis, more the woman for that. There were many,

misled by her petulant lips and watchful eyes, to call her sulky: these

did not judge her silence favourably. They thought her cold, and so she

was to all but one; their eyes might have told them what she was to him,

and how when they met in love, to kiss or cling, their two souls burned

together. And if she made a sweet lover, she promised to be a rare

Countess. Her judgment was never at fault; she was noble, and her sedate

gravity showed her to be so. She was no talker, and had great command

over herself; but she was more pale than by ordinary, and her eyes were

burning bright. The truth was, she was in a fever of apprehension,

restless, doomed, miserable; devouringly in love, yet dreading to be

loved. So, more and more evidently in pain, she walked her part through

the blare of festival as Pentecost drew nigh.

'Upon that day,' to quote the mellifluous abbot, 'Upon that day when in

leaping tongues the Spirit of God sat upon the heads of the Holy

Apostles, and gave letters to the unlettered and to the speechless Its

own nature, Count Richard wedded Dame Jehane, and afterwards crowned her

Countess with his own hands.

'They put her, crying bitterly, into the Count's bed in the Castle of

Poictiers on the evening of the same feast. Weeping also, but at a later

day, I saw her crowned again at Angers with the Count's cap of Anjou. So

to right her and himself Count Richard did both the greatest wrong of

all.'

Much more pageantry followed the marriage. I admire Milo's account. 'He

held a tournament after this, when the Count and the party of the castle

maintained the field against all corners. There was great jousting for

six days, I assure you; for I saw the whole of it. No English knights

were there, nor any from Anjou; but a few French (without King Philip's

goodwill), many Gascons and men of Toulouse and the Limousin; some from

over the mountains, from Navarre, and Santiago, and Castile; there also

came the Count of Champagne with his friends. King Sancho of Navarre was

excessively friendly, with a gift of six white stallions, all housed,

for Dame Jehane; nobody knew why or wherefore at the time, except

Bertran de Born (O thief unrepentant!).

'Countess Jehane, with her ladies, being set in a great balcony of red

and white roses, herself all in rose-coloured silk with a chaplet of

purple flowers, the first day came Count Richard in green armour and a

surcoat of the same embroidered with a naked man, a branch of yellow

broom in his helm. None held up against him that day; the Duke of

Burgundy fell and brake his collar-bone. The second day he drove into

the mêlée suddenly, when there was a great press of spears, all in red

with a flaming sun on his breast. He sat a blood-horse of Spain, bright

chestnut colour and housed in red. Then, I tell you, we saw horses and

men sunder their loves. The third day Pedro de Vaqueiras, a knight from

Santiago, encountered him in his silver armour, when he rode a horse

white as the Holy Ghost. By a chance blow the Spaniard bore him back on

to the crupper. There was a great shout, "The Count is down! Look to the

castle, Poictou!" Dame Jehane turned colour of ash, for she remembered

the leper's prophecy, and knew that De Vaqueiras loved her. But Richard

recovered himself quickly, crying, "Have at you again, Don Pedro." So

they brought fresh spears, and down went De Vaqueiras on his back, his

horse upon him. To be plain, not Hector raging over the field with

shouts for Achilles, nor flamboyant Achilles spying after Hector, nor

Hannibal at Cannae, Roland in the woody pass of Roncesvalles, nor the

admired Lancelot, nor Tristram dreadful in the Cornish isle--not one of

these heroes was more gloriously mighty than Count Richard. Like the

war-horse of Job (the prophet and afflicted man) he stamped with his

foot and said among the captains "ha ha!" His nostrils scented the

battle from very far off; he set on like the quarrell of a bow, and

gathering force as he went, came rocking into his adversary like galley

against galley. With all this he was gentle, had a pleasant laugh. It

was good to be struck down by such a man, if it ever can be good. He

bore away opposition as he bore away the knights.'

If one half of this were true, and no man in steel could withstand him,

how could circumstance, how could she, this slim and frightened girl?

Mad indeed with love and pride, quite beside herself, she forgot for

once her tremors and qualms. On the last day she fell panting upon his

breast; and he, a great lover, kissed her before them all, and lifted

her high in his hands. 'Oyez, my lords!' he cried with a mighty voice,

'Is this a lovely wife I have won, or not?' They answered him with a

shout.

He took her a progress about his country afterwards. From Poictiers they

went to Limoges, thence westward to Angoulesme, and south to Périgueux,

to Bazas, to Cahors, Agen, even to Dax, which is close to the country of

the King of Navarre. Wherever he led her she was hailed with joy. Young

girls met her with flowers in their hands, wise men came kneeling,

offering the keys of their towns; the youth sang songs below her

balcony, the matrons made much of her and asked her searching questions.

They saw in her a very superb and handsome Duchess, Jehane of the Fair

Girdle, now acclaimed in the soft syllables of Aquitaine as Bel Vezer.

When they were at Dax the wise King of Navarre sent ambassadors

beseeching from them a visit to his city of Pampluna; but Richard would

not go. Then they came back to Poictiers and shocking news. This was of

the death of King Henry of England, the old lion, 'dead (Milo is bold to

say) in his sin.'

CHAPTER XII

HOW THEY BAYED THE OLD LION

I must report what happened to the King of England when (like a falcon

foiled in his stoop) he found himself outpaced and outgeneralled on the

moor. Shaken off by those he sought to entrap, baited by the badger he

hoped to draw, he took on something not to be shaken off, namely death,

and had drawn from him what he would ill spare, namely the breath of his

nostrils. To have done with all this eloquence, he caught a chill,

which, working on a body shattered by rages and bad living, smouldered

in him--a slow-eating fever which bit him to the bones, charred and

shrivelled him up. In the clutches of this crawling disease he joined

his forces with those of his Marshal, and marched to the relief of Le

Mans, where the French King was taking his ease. Philip fired the place

when he heard of his approach; so Henry got near enough to see the sky

throbbing with red light, and over all a cloud of smoke blacker than his

own despair. It is said that he had a fit of hard sobbing when he saw

this dreadful sight. He would not suffer the host to approach the

burning city, but took to his bed, turned his face to the tent-wall, and

refused alike housel and meat. News, and of the worst, came fast. The

French were at Châteaudun, the Countess of Brittany's men were

threatening Anjou from the north; all Touraine with Saumur and a chain

of border castles were subject to Richard his son. These things he heard

without moving from his bed or opening his eyes.

After a week of this misery two of his lords, the Marshal, namely, and

Bishop Hugh of Durham, came to his bedside and told him, 'Sire, here are

come ambassadors from France speaking of a peace. How shall it be?'

'As you will,' said the King; 'only let me sleep.' He spoke drowsily, as

if not really awake, but it is thought that he was more watchful than he

chose to appear.

They held a hasty conference, Geoffrey his bastard, the Marshal, the

Bishop: these and the French ambassadors. On the King's part they made

but one request; and Geoffrey made that. The King was dying: let him be

taken down to his castle of Chinon, not die in the fields like an old

hunting dog. This was allowed. He took no sort of notice, let them do

what they would with him, slept incessantly all the way to Chinon.

They brought him the parchments, sealed with his great seal; and he,

quite broken, set his hand to them without so much as a curse on the

robbery done his kingdom. But as the bearers were going out on tiptoe he

suddenly sat up in bed. 'Hugh,' he grumbled, 'Bishop Hugh, come thou

here.' The Bishop turned back eagerly, for those two had loved each

other in their way, and knelt by his bed.

'Read me the signatures to these damned things,' said the King; and

Hugh rejoiced that he was better, yet feared to make him worse.

'Ah, dear sire,' he began to say; but 'Read, man,' said the old King,

jerking his foot under the bedclothes. So Hugh the Bishop began to read

them over, and the sick man listened with a shaky head, for by now the

fever was running high.

'Philip the August, King of the Franks,' says the Bishop; and 'A dog's

name,' the old King muttered in his throat. 'Sanchez, Catholic King of

Navarre,' says Hugh; and 'Name of an owl,' King Henry. To the same

ground-bass he treated the themes of the illustrious Duke of Burgundy,

Henry Count of Champagne, and others of the French party. With these the

Bishop would have stopped, but the King would have the whole. 'Nay,

Hugh,' he said--and his teeth chattered as if it had been bitter

cold--'out with the name of my beloved son. So you shall see what joyful

agreement there is in my house.' The Bishop read the name of Richard

Count of Poictou, and the King grunted his 'Traitor from the womb,' as

he had often done before.

'Who follows Richard?' he asked.

'Oh, our Lady, is he not enough, sire?' said the Bishop in fear. The old

King sat bolt upright and steadied his head on his knees. 'Read,' he

said again.

'I cannot read!' cried Hugh with a groan. The King said, 'You are a

fool. Give me the parchment.'

He pored over it, with dim eyes almost out of his keeping, searching for

the names at the top. So he found what he had dreaded--'John Count of

Mortain.' Shaking fearfully, he began to point at the wall as if he saw

the man before him. 'Jesu! Count by me, King by me, and Judas by me!

Now, God, let me serve Thee as Thou deservest. Thou hast taken away all

my sons. Now then the devil may have my soul, for Thou shalt never have

it.' The death-rattle was heard in his throat, and Hugh sprang forward

to help him: he was still stiffly upright, still looking (though with

filmy eyes) at the wall, still trying to shape in words his wicked

vaunts. No words came from him; his jaw dropped before his strong old

body. They brought him the Sacrament; his soul rejected it--too clean

food. Hugh and others about him, all in a sweat, got him down at last.

They anointed him and said a few prayers, for they were in a desperate

hurry when it came to the end. It was near midnight when he died, and at

that hour, they terribly report, the wind sprang up and howled about the

turrets of Chinon, as if all hell was out hunting for that which he had

promised them. But, if the truth must be told, he had never kept his

promises, and there is no reason to suppose that he kept that one

either. Milo adds, So died this great, puissant, and terrible king,

cursing his children, cursed in them, as they in him. All power was

given over to him from his birth, save one only, power over himself. He

was indeed a slave more wretched than those hinds, _glebæ ascriptitii_,

whom at a distance he ruled in his lands: he was slave of his baser

parts. With God he was always at war, and with God's elect. What of

blessed Thomas? Let Thomas answer on the Last Day. I deny him none of

his properties; he was open-handed, open-minded, as bold as a lion. But

his vices ate him up. Peace be with the man; he was a mighty king. He

left a wife in prison, two sons in arms against him, and many bastards.'

As soon as he was dead his people came about like flies and despoiled

the Castle of Chinon, the bed where he lay (smiling grimly, as if death

had made him a cynic), his very body of the rings on its fingers, the

gold circlet, the Christ round his neck. Such flagrancy was the penalty

of death, who had made himself too cheap in those days; nor were there

any left with him who might have said, Honour my dead father, or dead

master. William the Marshal had gone to Rouen, afraid of Richard;

Geoffrey was half way to Angers after treasure; the Bishop of Durham

(for purposes) had hastened off to Poictiers to be the first to hail the

new King. All that remained faithful in that den of thieves were a

couple of poor girls with whom the old sinner had lately had to do.

Seeing he was left naked on his bed, one of these--Nicolete her name

was, from Harfleur--touched the other on the shoulder--Kentish Mall they

called her--and said, 'They have robbed our master of so much as a shirt

to be buried in. What shall we do?'

Mall said, 'If we are found with him we shall be hanged, sure enough.

Yet the old man was kind to me.'

'And to me he was kind,' said Nicolete, 'God wot.'

Then they looked at each other. 'Well?' said Nicolete. And Mall, 'What

you do I will do.' So they kissed together, knowing it was a gallows

matter, and went in to the dead body of the King. They washed it

tenderly, and anointed it, composed the hands and shut down the horrible

sightless eyes, then put upon it the only shirt they could find, which

(being a boy's) was a very short one. Afterwards came the Chancellor,

Stephen of Turon, called up in a great hurry from a merry-making, with

one or two others, and took some order in the affair.

The Chancellor knew perfectly well that King Henry had desired to be

buried in the church of the nuns at Fontevrault. There had been an old

prophecy that he should lie veiled among the veiled women which had

pleased him very much, though it had often been his way to scoff at it.

But no one dared move him without the order of the new King, whoever

that might happen to be. Who could tell when Anjou was claiming a crown?

Messengers therefore were sent out hot-foot to Count Richard at

Poictiers, and to Count John, who was supposed to be in Paris. He,

however, was at Tours with the French King, and got the news first.

It caught him in the wind, so to put it. Alain, a Canon of Tours, came

before him kneeling, and told him. 'Lord Christ, Alain, what shall we

do?' says he, as white as a cheese-cloth. They fell talking of this or

that, that might or might never be done, when in burst King Philip,

Saint-Pol, Des Barres, and the purple-faced Duke of Burgundy. King

Philip ran up to John and clapped him on the back.

'King John! King John of England!' screamed the young man, like a witch

in the air; then Burgundy began his grumble of thunder.

'I stand for you, by God. I am for you, man.' But Saint-Pol knelt and

touched his knee.

'Sire, do me right, and I become your man!' So said Des Barres also.

Count John looked about him and wrung his hands.

'Heh, my lords! Heh, sirs! What shall I do now?' He was liquid; fear and

desire frittered his heart to water.

They held a great debate, all talking at once, except the subject of the

bother. He could only bite his nails and look out of the window. To

them, then, came creeping Alois of France, deadly pale, habited in the

grey weeds of a nun. How she got in, I know not; but they parted this

way and that before her, and so she came very close to John in his

chair, and touched him on the shoulder. 'What now, traitor?' she said

hoarsely. 'Whom next? The sister betrayed; the father; and now the

brother and king?'

John shook. 'No, no, Alois, no no!' he said in a whisper. 'Go to bed. We

think not of it.' But she still stood looking at him, with a wry smile

on that face of hers, pinched with grief and old before its time.

Saint-Pol stamped his foot. 'Whom shall we trust in Anjou?' he said to

Des Barres. Des Barres shrugged. The Duke of Burgundy grumbled something

about 'd----d women,' and King Philip ordered his sister to bed. They

got her out of the room after a painful scene, and fell to wrangling

again, trying to screw some resolution into the white prince whom they

all intended to use as a cat's-paw. About eight o'clock in the

morning--they still at it--came a shatter of hoofs in the courtyard,

which made Count John jump in his skin. A herald was announced.

Reeking he stood, and stood covered, in the presence of so much majesty.

'Speak, sir,' said King Philip; and 'Uncover before France, you dog,'

said young Saint-Pol. The herald kept his cap where it was.

'I speak from England to the English. This is the command of my master,

Richard King of the English, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou. Bid our

brother, the illustrious Count of Mortain, attend us at Fontevrault with

all speed for the obsequies of the King our father. And those who owe

him obedience, let them come also.'

There was low murmuring in the chamber, which grew in volume, until at

last Burgundy thundered out, 'England is here! Cut down that man.' But

the herald stood his ground, and no one drew a sword. John dismissed him

with a few smooth words; but he could not get rid of his friends so

easily. Nor could they succeed with him. If Montferrat had been there

they might have screwed him to the pitch. Montferrat had a clear course:

any king of England who would help him to the throne of Jerusalem was

the king of England he would serve. But Philip would not commit himself,

and Burgundy waited on Philip. As for Saint-Pol, he was nothing but a

sword or two and an unquenchable grudge. And forbidding in the

background stood Alois, with reproach in her sunken eyes. The end of it

was that Count John, after a while, rode out towards Fontevrault with

all the pomp he could muster. Thither also, it is clear, went Madame

Alois.

'I was with my master,' says Milo in his book, 'when they brought him

the news. He was not long home from the South, had been hawking in the

meadows all day, and was now in great fettle, sitting familiarly among

his intimates, Jehane on his knee. Bertran de Born was in there singing

some free song, and the gentle Viscount of Béziers, and Lady Elis of

Montfort (who sat on a cushion and played with Dame Jehane's hand), and

Gaston of Béarn, and (I think) Lady Tibors of Vézelay. Then came the

usher suddenly into the room with his wand, and by the door fell upon

one knee, a sort of state which Count Richard had always disliked. It

made him testy.

'"Well, Gaucelm, well," he said; "on your two legs, my man, if you are

to please me."

'"Lord King--" Gaucelm began, then stopped. My lord bayed at him.

'"Oy Deus!" he said in our tongue, below his breath; and Jehane slid off

his knee and on to her own. So fell kneeling the whole company, till

Gaston of Béarn, more mad than most, sprang up, shouting, "Hail, King of

the English!" and better, "Hail, Count of Anjou!" We all began on that

cry; but he stopped us with a poignant look.

'"God have mercy on me: I am very wicked," he said, and covered up his

face. No one spoke. Jehane bent herself far down and kissed his foot.

'Then he sent for the heralds, and in burst Hugh Puiset, Bishop of

Durham, with his flaming face, outstripping all the others and decency

at once. By this time King Richard had recovered himself. He heard the

tale without moving a feature, and gave a few short commands. The first

was that the body of the dead King should be carried splendidly to

Fontevrault; and the next that a pall should be set up in his private

chapel here at Poictiers, and tall candles set lighted about it. So soon

as this was done he left the chamber, all standing, and went alone to

the chapel. He spent the night there on his knees, himself only with a

few priests. He neither sent for Countess Jehane, nor did she presume to

seek him. Her women tell me that she prayed all night before a Christ in

her bed-chamber; and well she might, with a queen's crown in fair view.

In two or three days' time King Richard pressed out, very early, for

Fontevrault. I went with him, and so did Hugh of Durham, the Bishop of

Poictiers, and the Dauphin of Auvergne. These, with the Chancellor of

Poictou, the household servants and guards, were all we had with us. The

Countess was to be ready upon word from him to go with her ladies and

the court whithersoever he should appoint. Bertran de Born went away in

the night, and King Richard never saw him again; but I shall have to

speak of his last _tenzon_, and his last Sirvente of Kings, by heaven!

'Before he went King Richard kissed the Countess Jehane twice in the

great hall. "Farewell, my queen," he said plainly, and, as some think,

but not I, deliberately. "God be thy good friend. I shall see thee

before many days." If the man was changed already, she was not at all

changed. She was very grave, but not crying, and put up her face for

his kisses as meek as any baby. She said nothing at all, but stood

palely at the door with her women as King Richard rode over the bridge.

'For my part,' he concludes, 'when I consider the youth and fierce

untutored blood of this noblest of his race; or when I remember their

terrible names, Tortulf Forester, and Ingelger, Fulke the Black and

Fulke the Red, and Geoffrey Greygown and Geoffrey the Fair, and that old

Henry, the wickedest of all; their deeds also, how father warred upon

his sons, and sons conspired against their fathers; how they hated

righteousness and loved iniquity, and spurned monks and priests, and

revelled in the shambles they had made: then I say to myself, Good Milo,

how wouldst thou have received thy calling to be king and sovereign

count? Wouldst thou have said, as Count John said, "Lord Christ, Alain,

what shall we do?" Or rather, "God have mercy, I am very wicked." It is

true that Count John was not called to those estates, and that King

Richard was. But I choose sooner to think that each was confronted with

his dead father, and not the emptied throne. In which case Count John

thought of his safety and King Richard of his sin. Such musing is a

windy business, suitable to old men. But I suppose that you who read are

very young.'

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW THEY MET AT FONTEVRAULT

Communing with himself as he rode alone over the broomy downs, King

Richard reined up shortly and sent back a messenger for Milo the Abbot;

so Milo flogged his old mule. Directly he was level with his master,

that master spoke in a quiet voice, like one who is prepared for the

worst: 'Milo, what should a man do who has slain his own father? Is

repentance possible for such a one?'

Milo looked up first at the blue sky, then about at the earth, all green

and gold. He wrinkled close his eyes and let the sun play upon his face.

The air was soft, the turf springy underfoot. He found it good to be

there. 'Sire,' he said, 'it is a hard matter; yet there have been worse

griefs than that in the world.'

'Name one, my friend,' says the King, whose eyes were fixed on the edge

of the hill.

Milo said, 'There was a Father, my lord King Richard, who slew His own

Son that the world might be the better. That was a terrible grief, I

suppose.' The King was silent for a few paces; then he asked--

'And was the world much the better?'

'Beau sire,' replied Milo, 'not very much. But that was not God's fault;

for it had, and still has, the chance of being the better for it.'

'And do you dare, Milo,' said the King, turning him a stern face, 'set

my horrible offence beside the Divine Sacrifice?'

'Not so, my lord King,' said Milo at large; 'but I draw this

distinction. You are not so guilty as you suppose; for in this world the

father maketh the son, both in the way of nature and of precept. In

heaven it is otherwise. There the Son was from the beginning, co-eternal

with the Father, begotten but not made. In the divine case there was

pure sacrifice, and no guilt at all. In the earthly case there was much

guilt, but as yet no sacrifice.'

'That guilt was mine, Milo,' said Richard with a sob.

'Lord, I think not,' answered the old priest. 'You are what your fathers

have made you. But now mark me well: in doing sacrifice you can be very

greatly otherwise. Then if no more guilt be upon you than hangs by the

misfortunes of tainted man, you can please Almighty God by doing what

you only among men can do, wholesome sacrifice.'

'Why, what sacrifice shall I do?' says the King.

Milo stood up in his stirrups, greatly exalted in the spirit.

'My lord,' he said, 'behold, it is for two years that you have borne the

sign of that sacrifice upon you, but yet have done nothing of it. During

these years God's chosen seat hath lain dishonoured, become the wash-pot

of the heathen. The Holy Tree, stock beyond price, Rod of Grace, figure

of freedom, is in bonds. The Sepulchre is ensepulchred; Antichrist

reigns. Lord, Lord,'--here the Abbot shook his lifted finger,--'how long

shall this be? You ask me of sin and sacrifice. Behold the way.'

King Richard jerked his head, then his horse's. Get back, Milo, and

leave me,' he said curtly, struck in the spurs, and galloped away over

the grey down.

The cavalcade halted at Thouars, and lay the night in a convent of the

Order of Savigny. King Richard kept himself to himself, ate little,

spoke less. He prayed out the night, or most of it, kneeling in his

shirt in the sanctuary, with his bare sword held before him like a

cross. Next morning he called up his household by the first cock, had

them out on the road before the sun, and pushed forward with such haste

that it was one hour short of noon when they saw the great church of the

nuns of Fontevrault like a pile of dim rock in their way.

At a mile's distance from the walls the King got off his horse, and bid

his squires strip him. He ungirt his sword, took off helm and circlet,

cloak, blazoned surcoat, the girdle of his county. Beggared so of all

emblems of his grace, clad only in hauberk of steel, bareheaded, without

weapon, and on foot, he walked among his mounted men into the little

town of Fontevrault. That which he could not do off, his sovereign

inches, sovereign eye, gait of mastery, prevailed over all other robbery

of his estate. The people bent their knees as he passed; not a

few--women with babies in their shawls, lads and girls--caught at his

hand or hauberk's edge, to kiss it and get the virtue out of him that

is known to reside in a king. When he came within sight of the church he

knelt and let his head sink down to his breast. But his grief seemed to

strike inwards like a frost; he stiffened and got up, and went forward.

No one would have guessed him a penitent then, who saw him mount the

broad steps to meet his brother. Before the shut doors of the abbey was

Count John, very splendid in a purple cloak, his crown of a count upon

his yellow hair. He stood like a king among his peers, but flushed and

restless, twiddling his fingers as kings do not twiddle theirs.

Irresolution kept him where he was until Richard had topped the first

flight of steps. But then he came down to meet him in too much of a

hurry, tripping, blundering the degrees, nodding and poking his head,

with hands stretched out and body bent, like his who supplicates what he

does not deserve.

'Hail, King of England, O hail!' he said, wheedling, royally vested,

royally above, yet grovelling there to the prince below him. King

Richard stopped with his foot on the next step, and let the Count come

down.

'How lies he?' were his first words; the other's face grew fearful.

'Eh, I know not,' he said, shuddering. 'I have not seen him.' Now, he

must have been in Fontevrault for a day or more.

'Why not?' asked Richard; and John stretched out his arms again.

'Oh, brother, I waited for you!' he cried, then added lower, 'I could

not face him alone.' This was perfectly evident, or he would never have

said it.

'Pish!' said King Richard, that is no way to mend matters. But it is

written, "They shall look on him whom they pierced." Come you in.' He

mounted the steps to his brother's level; and men saw that he was nearly

a hand taller, though John was a fine tall man.

'With you, Richard, with you--but never without you!' said John, in a

hush, rolling his eyes about. Richard, taking no notice, bid them set

open the doors. This was done: the chill taint of the dark, of wax and

damp and death came out. John shivered, but King Richard left him to

shiver, and passed out of the sun into the echoing nave. Lightly and

fiercely he went in, like a brave man who is fretful until he meets his

danger's face; and John caught at his wrist, and went tiptoe after him.

All the rest, Poictevins and Frenchmen together, followed in a pack;

then the two bishops vested.

At the far end of the church, beyond the great Rood, they saw the

candles flare about a bier. Before that was a little white altar with a

priest saying his mass in a whisper. The high altar was all dark, and

behind a screen in the north transept the nuns were singing the Office

for the Dead. King Richard pushed on quickly, the others trooping

behind. There in the midst of all this chilly state, grim and

sour-faced, as he had always been, but now as unconcerned as all the

dead are, lay the empty majesty of England, careless (as it seemed) of

the full majesty; and dead Anjou a stranger to the living.

It was not so altogether, if we are to believe those who saw it. The

hatred of the dead is a fearful thing: of that which followed be God the

only judge, and I not even the reporter. Milo saw it, and Milo (who got

some comfort out of it at last) shall tell you the tale; 'for I know,'

says he, 'that in the end the hidden things are to be made plain, and

even so, things which then I guessed darkly have since been opened out

to my understanding. Behold!' he goes on, 'I tell you a mystery. Lightly

and adventuring came King Richard to his dead father, and Count John

dragging behind him like a load of care. Reverently he knelt him down

beside the bier, prayed for a little, then, looking up, touched the grey

old face. Before God, I say, it was the act of a boy. But slowly,

slowly, we who watched quaking saw a black stream well at the nostril of

the dead, and slowly drag a snake's way down the jaw: a sight to shake

those fraught with God--and what to men in their trespasses? But while

all the others fell back gasping, or whispering their prayers, scarce

knowing what I was or did (save that I loved King Richard), I whipt

forward with a handkerchief to cover the horror out of sight. This I

would have done, though all had seen it; the King had seen it, and that

white-hearted traitor Count had seen it, and sprung away with a wail, "O

Christ! O Christ!" The King stood up, and with his lifted hand stopped

me in the pious act. All held their breaths. I saw the priest at the

altar peer round the corner, his mouth making a ring. King Richard was

very pale and serious. He began to talk to his father, while the Count

lay cowering on the pavement.

'"Thou thinkest me thy slayer, father," he said, "pointing at me the

murder-sign. Well, I am content to take it; for be thou sure of this,

that if that last war between us was rightfully begun it was rightfully

ended. And of righteousness I think I am as good a judge as ever thou

wert. Thy work is done, and mine is to do. If I may be as kingly as thou

wert, I shall please thee yet; and if I fail in that I shall never blame

thee, father. Now, Abbot Milo," he concluded, "cover the face." So I

did, and Count John got up to his knees again, and looked at his

brother.

'This was not the end. Madame Alois of France came into the church

through the nuns' door, dressed all in grey, with a great grey hood on

her head, and after her women in the same habit. She came hastily, with

a quick shuffling motion of the feet, as if she was gliding; and by the

bier she stood still, questing with her eyes from side to side, like a

hunted thing. King Richard she saw, for he was standing up; but still

she looked about and about. Now Count John was kneeling in the shadow,

so she saw him last; but once meeting his deplorable eyes with her own

she never left go again. Whatever she did (and it was much), or whatever

said (and her mouth was pregnant), was with a fixed gaze on him.

'Being on the other side of the bier from him she watched, she put her

arms over the dead body, as a priest at mass broods upon the Host he is

making. And looking shrewdly at the Count, "If the dead could speak,

John," she said, "if the dead could speak, how think you it would report

concerning you and me?"

'"Ha, Madame!" says Count John, shaking like a leafy tree, "what is

this?" Madame Alois removed my handkerchief. The horror was still there.

'"He did me kindness," she said, looking wistfully at the empty face;

"he tried to serve me this way and that way." She stroked it, then

looked again at the Count. "But then you came, John; and you he loved

above all. How have you served him, John, my bonny lad? Eh, Saviour!"

She looked up on high--"Eh, Saviour, if the dead could speak!"

'No more than the dead could John speak; but King Richard answered her.

'"Madame," he said, "the dead hath spoken, and I have answered it. That

is the kingly office, I think, to stand before God for the people. Let

no other speak. All is said."

'"No, no, Richard," said Madame Alois, "all is not nearly said. So sure

as I live in torment, you will rue it if you do not listen to me now."

'"Madame," replied the King, "I shall not listen. I require your

silence. If I have it in me, I command it. I know what I have done."

'"You know nothing," said the lady, beginning to tremble. "You are a

fool."

'"May be," said King Richard, with a little shrug, "but I am a king in

Fontevrault."

'The Count of Mortain began to wag his head about and pluck at the morse

of his cope. "Air, air!" he gasped; "I strangle! I suffocate!" They

carried him out of church to his, lodging, and there bled him.

'"Once more, King Richard," said Madame, "will you hear the truth from

me?"

'The king turned fiercely, saying, "Madame, I will hear nothing from

you. My purpose is to take the Cross here in this church, and to set

about our Lord's business as soon as may be. I urge you, therefore, to

depart and, if you have time, to consider your soul's health--as I

consider mine and my kingdom's."

'She began to cry, being overwrought with this terrible affair. "O

Richard," she said, "forgive me my trespasses. I am most wretched."

'He stepped forward, and across the dead man kissed her on the forehead.

"God knows, I forgive thee, Alois," he said.

'So then she went away with her people, and no long time afterwards took

(as I believe) the whole vow in the convent of Fontevrault.' Thus Milo

records a scene too high for me.

When they had buried the old King, Richard sent letters to his brother

of France, reminding him of what they had both undertaken to do, namely,

to redeem the Sepulchre and set up again in Jerusalem the True Cross.

'As for me,' he wrote, 'I do most earnestly purpose to set about that

business as soon as I may; and I require of you, sire and my brother, to

witness my resumption of the Cross in this church of Fontevrault upon

the feast of Monsire Saint John Baptist next coming. Let them also who

are in your allegiance, the illustrious Duke of Burgundy, Conrad

Marquess of Montferrat, and my cousin Count Henry, be of your party and

sharers with you in the new vow.' This done, he went to Chinon to secure

his father's treasure, and then made preparations for his coronation as

Count of Anjou, and for Jehane's coronation.

When she got his word that she was to meet him at Angers by a certain

day there was no thought of disobedience; the pouting mouth meant no

mutiny. It meant sickening fear. In Angers they crown the Count of Anjou

with the red cap, and put upon his feet the red shoes. That would make

Richard the Red Count indeed, whose cap and bed the leper had bid her

beware. Beware she might, but how avoid? She knew Richard by this time

for master. A year ago she had subjugated him in the Dark Tower; but

since then he had handled her, moulded her, had but to nod and she

served his will. With what heart of lead she came, come she did to await

him in black Angers, steep and hardy little city of slate; and the

meeting of the two brought tears to many eyes. She fell at his feet,

clasped his knees, could not speak nor cease from looking up; and he,

tall and kingly, stoops, lifts her, holds her upon his breast, strokes

her face, kisses her eyes and sorrowful mouth. 'Child,' he says, 'art

thou glad of me?' asking, as lovers love best to do, the things they

know best already. 'O Richard! O Richard!' was all she could say, poor

fond wretch; however, we go not by the sense of a bride's language, but

by the passion that breaks it up. Every agony of self-reproach, of fear

of him, of mistrust, of lurking fate, lay in those sobbed words, 'O

Richard! O Richard!'

When he had her alone at night, and she had found her voice, she began

to woo him and softly to beguile him with a hand to his chin, judging it

a propitious time, while one of his held her head. All the arts of woman

were hers that night, but his were the new purposes of a man. He had had

a rude shock, was full of the sense of his sin; that grim old mocking

face, grey among the candle-flames, was plain across the bed-chamber

where they lay. To himself he made oath that he would sin no more. No,

no: a king, he would do kingly. To her, clasped close in his arms, he

gave kisses and sweet words. Alas, she wanted not the sugar of his

tongue; she would have had him bitter, though it cost her dear. Lying

there, lulled but not convinced, her sobs grew weaker. She cried herself

to sleep, and he kissed her sleeping.

In the cathedral church of his fathers he did on, by the hands of the

Archbishop, the red cap and girdle and shoes of Anjou; there he held up

the leopard shield for all to see. There also upon the bent head of

Jehane--she kneeling before him--he laid for a little while the same

cap, then in its room a circlet of golden leaves. If he was sovereign

Count, girt with the sword, then she was Countess of Anjou before her

grudging world. What more was she? Wife of a dead man and his killer!

The words stayed by her, and tinged the whole of her life.

CHAPTER XIV

OF WHAT KING RICHARD SAID TO THE BOWING ROOD; AND WHAT JEHANE TO KING

RICHARD

Miracles, as a plain man, I hold to be the peculiar of the Church. This

chapter must be Milo's on that ground, if there were no other. But there

is one strong other. Milo set the tune which caused King Richard to

dance. And a very good tune it is--according to Milo. Therefore let him

speak.

'The office of Abbot,' he writes, 'is a solemn, great office, being no

less than that of spiritual father to a family of men consecrate (as it

is written, _Abba_, father); yet not on that account should vainglory

puff the cheeks of a pious man. God knows that I am no boaster. He,

therefore, will not misjudge me, as certain others have done, when I

record in this place (for positive cause and reason good) the exorbitant

honours I received on the day of my lord Saint John Baptist in this year

of thankful redemption eleven hundred and eighty-nine. Forsooth, I

myself, this Milo of Saint Mary-of-the-Pine, was chosen to preach in the

church of the nuns of Fontevrault before a congregation thus

composed:--Two kings (one crowned), one legate _a latere_, a reigning

duke (him of Burgundy, I mean), five cinctured counts, twice three

bishops, abbots without number; Jehane Countess of Anjou and wife to

the King of England, the Countess of Roussillon, the two Countesses of

Angoulesme (the old and the young), Lady Elis of Montfort (reputed the

most witty lady in Languedoc), thirteen pronounced poets, and the

hairdresser of the King of France--to name no more. That sermon of

mine--I shame not to report it-was found worthy the inscription in the

Register of Fontevrault; and in the initial letter thereof, garlanded in

gold work very beautiful to be seen, is the likeness of myself vested,

with a mitre on my head, all done by that ingenious craftsman and

faithful Christian man, Aristarchus of Byzantium, _suspirante deo_.

There the curious may consult it, as indeed they do. I hope I know the

demands of history upon proportion better than to write it all here.

Briefly then, a second Peter, I stood up before that crowned assembly

and was bold.

'What, I said, is Pharaoh but a noise? How else is Father Abraham but

dusty in his cave? Duke Lot hath a monument less durable than his wicked

wife's; and as for Noë, that great admiral, the waters of oblivion have

him whom the waters of God might not drown. Conquered lies unconquered

Agamemnon; how else lies Julius Cæsar? Nabuchodonosor, eater of grass,

what is he? Kings pass, and their royal seat gathereth a little dust.

Anon with a besom of feathers cometh. Time the chamberlain, and scareth

to his hiding-place the lizard on the wall. Think soberly, O ye kings!

how your crowns are but yellow metal, and your purple robes the food of

moths, and the sceptres of your power no better than hedge-twigs for the

driving of rats. Round about your crystal orbs scurry the fleas at play

in the night-time; in a little while the joints of your legs will

grapple the degrees of your thrones with no more zest than an old

bargeman's his greasy poop.

'At this King Philip said Tush, and fidgeted in his chair. He might have

put me out of countenance, but that I saw King Richard clasp his knee

and smile into the rafters, and knew by the peaking of his beard that I

had pleased him.

'Thus by precept, by trope and flower of speech, I gaufred the edges of

my discourse; then turning eastward with a cry, I grasped the pulpit

firmly with one hand, the while I raised the other. Sorrow, I said, is

more enduring than the pride of life, my lords, and to renounce than to

heap riches. Behold the King of Sorrows! Behold the Man beggared! Ai,

ai, my lords! is there to be no end to His sorrows, or shall He be

stripped for ever? Yesterday He put off life itself, and to-day ye bid

Him do away with the price of life. Yesterday He hung upon the Tree; and

to-day ye hear it said, Down with the Tree; let Mahomet kindle his

hearth with it. Let us be done, say you, with dead Lords and wooden

stocks: we are kings, and our stocks golden. It is well said, my lords,

after the fashion this world holds honourable. But I ask, did Job fear

God for nought? But I say, consider the Maccabees. All your broad lands

are not worth the rent of that little garden enclosed, where among

ranked lilies sat Mary singing, God rest Thee, babe, I am Thy mother and

daughter. You wag the head and an enemy dieth. You say, Come up, and

some wretch getteth title to make others wretched. But no power of life

and member, no fountain of earthly honour, no great breath nor

acclamation of trumpets, nor bearing of swords naked, nor chrism, nor

broad seal, nor homage, nor fealty done, is worth that doom of the Lord

to a man; saying, I was naked (Christ is naked!) and ye clothed Me; I

was anhungered (Christ is hungry!) and ye gave Me meat; I was in prison

(so is Christ!) and ye visited Me. Therefore again I say unto you,

Kings, by the spirit of the Lord which is in me, Let us now go even unto

Bethlehem. Awake, do on your panoplies, shake your sceptres over the

armied earth! So Hierusalem, that bride among brides, that exalted

virgin, that elect lady crowned with stars, shall sit no longer wasted

in the brothel of the heathen: Amen!

'I said; and a great silence fell on all the length and breadth of the

church. King Richard sat up stiff as a tree, staring at the Holy Rood as

though he had a vision of something at work. King Philip of France,

moody, was watching his greater brother. Count John of Mortain had his

head sunk to his breast-bone, his thin hands not at rest, but one finger

picking ever at another. Even the Duke of Burgundy, the burly eater, was

moved, as could be seen by the working of his cheek-bones. Two nuns were

carried out for dead. All this I saw between my hands as I knelt in

prayer. But much more I saw: it seems that I had called down testimony

from on high. I saw Countess Jehane, half-risen from her seat, white in

the face, open-mouthed, gaping at the Cross. "Saviour, the Rood! the

Rood!" she cried out, choking, then fell back and lay quite still. Many

rose to their feet, some dropped to their knees; all looked.

'We saw the great painted Christ on the Rood stoop His head forward

thrice. At the first and second times, amid cries of wonder, men looked

to see whither He bent His head. But at the third time all with one

consent fell upon their faces, except only Richard King of England. He,

indeed, rose up and stood to his full height. I saw his blue eyes shine

like sapphires as he began to speak to the Christ. Though he spoke

measuredly and low, you could mark the exultation singing behind his

tones.

'"Ah, now, my Lord God," said he, "I perceive that Thou hast singled me

out of all these peers for a work of Thine; which is a thing so glorious

for me that, if I glory in it, I am justified, since the work is

glorious. I take it upon me, my Lord, and shall not falter in it nor be

slow. Enough said: Thou askest not words of me. Now let me go, that the

work may begin." After which, very devoutly kneeling, he signed to the

Archbishop of Tours, who sat in the sedilia of the sanctuary, to affix

the Cross to his shoulder. Which was done, and afterwards to most of the

company then present--to King Philip, to the Duke of Burgundy, to Henry

Count of Champagne, Bertram Count of Roussillon, and Raymond Count of

Toulouse; to many bishops; also to James d'Avesnes, William des Barres,

and to Eustace Count of Saint-Pol, the brother of Countess Jehane. But

Count John took no Cross, nor did Geoffrey the bastard of Anjou.

Afterwards, I believe, these two worked the French King into a fury

because Richard should have taken upon him the chief place in this

miraculous adventure. The Duke of Burgundy was not at all pleased

either. But everybody else knew that it was to King Richard the Holy

Rood had pointed; and he knew it himself, and events proved it so.

'But that night after supper he and King Philip kissed each other, and

swore brotherhood on their sword-hilts before all the peers. I am not

one to deny generous moments to that politic prince; this I consider to

have been one, evoked certainly by the nobility of King Richard. That

appointed champion's exaltation still burned in him; he was fiercely

excited, his eyes were bright with fever of fire. "Hey, Philip," he

laughed, "now you and I must cross the sea! And you a bad sailor,

Philip!"

'"'Tis so, indeed, Richard," says King Philip, looking rather foolish.

King Richard clapped him on the shoulder. "A stout heart, my Philip," he

says, "is betokened by your high stomach. That shall stand us in a good

stead in Palestine." Then it was that King Philip kissed him, and him

King Richard again.

'He was in great heart that day, full to the neck with hope and

adventure. I would like to see the man or woman to have denied him

anything. At times like these he was (I do not seek to disguise it) a

frank lover, _Non omnia possumus omnes_; if any man think he must have

been Galahad the Bloodless Knight because he had been singled out by the

questing Rood, he knows little how high ventures foment rich blood.

Lancelot he never was, to love broadcast; but Tristram, rather, lover

of one woman. Hope, pride, knowledge of his force, ran tingling in him;

perhaps he saw her fairer than any woman could have been; perhaps he saw

her rosy through his sanguine eyes. He clipped her in his arms in full

hall that night in a way that made her rosy enough. Not that she denied

him: good heaven, who was she to do that? There as he had her close upon

his breast he kissed her a dozen times, and "Jehane, wilt thou fare with

me to England?" he asked her fondly, "or must I leave thee peaking here,

my Countess of Anjou?"

'She would have had her own answer ready to that, good soul, but that

the leper gave her another. In a low, urgent voice she answered, "Ah,

sweet lord, I must never leave thee now"--as if to ask, Was there need?

So he went on talking to her, lover talk, teasing talk, to see what she

would say; and all the while Jehane stood very near him, with her face

held between his two hands as closely as wine is held by a cup. To

whatever he chose to say, and in whatever fashion, whether strokingly

(as to a beloved child), or gruffly (in sport) as one speaks to a pet

dog, she replied in very meek manner, eyeing him intently, "Yea,

Richard," or "Nay, Richard," agreeing with him always. This he observed.

"They call me Yea-and-Nay, dear girl," he said, "and thou hast learned

it of them. But I warn thee, Jehane, _ma mie_, I am in a mood of Yea

this night. Therefore deny me not."

'"Lord, I shall never deny thee," says Jehane, red as a rose. And reason

enough! I remembered the words; for while she said them, it is certain

she was praying how best she might make herself a liar, like Saint

Peter.

'Pretty matters! on the faith I profess. And if a man, who is king of

men, may not play with his young wife, I know not who may play with her.

That is my answer to King Philip Augustus, who fretted and chafed at

this harmless performance. As for Saint-Pol, who ground his teeth over

it, I would have a different answer for him.'

I have given Milo his full tether; but there are things to say which he

knew nothing about. Richard was changed, for all his wild mood of that

night; nor was Jehane slow to perceive it. Perhaps, indeed, she was too

quick, with her wit oversharpened by her uneasy conscience. But that

night she saw, or thought she saw this in Richard: that whereas the

righting of her had been his only concern before the day of the bowing

Rood, now he had another concern. And the next day, when at dawn he left

her and was with his Council until dinner, she knew it for sure. After

dinner (which he scarcely ate) he rose and visited King Philip. With

him, the Legate and the Archbishops, he remained till late at night. Day

succeeded day in this manner. The French King, the Duke, and their

trains went to Paris. Then came Guy of Lusignan, King (and no king) of

Jerusalem, for help. Richard promised him his, not because he liked him

any better than the Marquess (who kept him out), but because Guy's title

seemed to him a good one. At bottom Richard was as deliberate as a pair

of scales; and just now was acting the perfect king, the very

touchstone of justice. Through all this time of great doings Jehane

stayed quaking at home, sitting strangely among her women--a countess

who knew she was none, a queen by nature who dreaded to be queen by law.

Yet one thing she dreaded more. She was in a horrible pass. Wife of a

dead man and his killer! Why, what should she do? She dared not go on

playing wife to the champion of heaven, and yet she dared not leave him

lest she should be snatched into the arms of his assassin. On which horn

should she impale her poor heart? She tried to wring prayers out of it,

she tried to moisten her aching eyes with the dew of tears. Slowly, by

agony of effort, she approached her bosom to the steel. One night

Richard came to her, and she drove herself to speak. He came, and she

fenced him off.

'Richard, O Richard, touch me not!'

'God on the Cross, what is this?'

'Touch me not, touch me never; but never leave me!'

'O my pale rose! O fair-girdled!' She stood up, white as her gown,

transfigured, very serious.

'I am not thy wife, Richard; I am no man's wife. No, but I am thy slave,

bound to thee by a curse, held from thee by thy high calling. I dare not

leave thee, my Richard, nor dare stay by thee so close, lest ruin come

of it.'

Richard watched her, frowning. He was much moved, but thought of what

she said.

'Ruin, Jehane, ruin?'

'Ruin of thy venture, my knight of God! Ah, chosen, elect, comrade of

the Rood, gossip of Jesus Christ, duke dedicate!' She was hued like

flame as the great thoughts leaped in her. 'Ah, my Christian King, it is

so little a thing I ask of thee, to set me apart! What am I to thee,

whose bride is the virgin city, the holy place? What is Jehane, a poor

thing handed about, to vex heaven, or be a stumbling-block in the way of

the Cross? Put me away, Richard, let me go; have done with me, sweet

lord.' And then swiftly she ran and clasped his knees: 'But ask me not

to leave thee--no, but I dare not indeed!' Her tears streamed freely

now. When Richard with a cry snatched her up, she lay weeping like a

lost child in his arms.

He laid her on the bed, worn frail by the strife she had endured; she

had no strength to open her eyes, but moved her lips to thank him for

his pains. At first she turned her head from side to side, seeking a

cool place on the pillow; later she fell into a heavy, drugged sleep. He

watched her till it was nearly light, brooding over her unconscious

face. No thoughts of a king were his, I think; but once more he lapped

them in that young girl's bosom, and let them sway, ebb and flow, with

it.

On the flow, great with her theme, he saw her inspired, standing with

her torch of flame to point his road. A splintry way leads to the Cross,

where even kings consecrate must tear their feet. If he knew himself, as

at such naked hours he must, he knew whither his heart was set. He was

to lead the armies of Christendom, because no other man could do it. Had

he any other pure and stern desire but that? None. If he could win back

the Sepulchre, new plant the Holy Cross, set a Christian king on the

throne below Golgotha, keep word with God Who had bowed to him from the

Rood, give the heathen sword for sword, and hold the armed world like a

spear in his hand, to shake as he shook--God of all power and might, was

this not worthy his heart?

His heart and Jehane's! The flowing bosom ebbed, and drained him of all

but pity. He saw her like a dead flower, wan, bruised, thrown away.

Robbery! He had stolen her by force. He clenched his two hands about his

knee and shook himself to and fro. Thief! Damned thief! Had he made her

amends? He groaned. Not yet. Should she not be crowned? She prayed that

she might not be. She meant that; all her soul came sobbing to her lips

as she prayed him. He could not deny her that prayer. If she would not

mount his throne, she should not--he was King. But that other bidding:

Touch me not, she said. He looked at her sleeping; her bosom filled and

lifted his hand. God have no mercy on him if he denied her that either.

'So take Thou, God, my heart's desire, if I give her not hers.' Then he

stooped and kissed her forehead; she opened her eyes and smiled feebly,

half awake.

He was not a man, I say it again, at the mercy of women's lure. Milo was

right; he was Tristram, not Galahad nor Lancelot; a man of cold

appetite, a man whose head was master, touched rarely, and then stirred

only to certain deeps. So far as he could love woman born he loved

Jehane, saw her exceedingly lovely, loved her proud remote spirit, her

nobility, her sobriety. He saw her bodily perfections too, how splendid

a person, how sumptuous in hue and light. Admiring, taking glory in

these, yet he required the sting of another man's hand upon her to seize

her for himself. For purposes of policy, for ends which seemed to him

good, he could have lived with Jehane as a brother with a sister: one

thing provided, Let no other man touch.

Now this policy was imperative, this end God said was good. Jehane

implored with tears, Christ called from the Cross; so King Richard fell

upon his knees and kissed the girl's forehead. When he left her that

morning he sought out Milo and confessed his sins. Shriven he arose, to

do what remained in the west before he could be crowned in Rouen, and

crowned in Westminster.

CHAPTER XV

LAST _TENZON_ OF BERTRAN DE BORN

I wish to be done with Bertran de Born, that lagging fox; but the dogs

of my art must make a backward cast if they are to kill him in the open.

I beg the reader, then, to remember that when Richard left him

half-throttled in his own house, and when he had recovered wind enough

to stir his gall, he made preparations for a long journey to the South.

In that scandal concerning Alois of France he believed he had stuff

which might wreck Count Richard more disastrously than Count Richard

could wreck him. He hoped to raise the South, and thither he went, his

own dung-fly, buzzing over the offal he had blown; and the first point

he headed for was Pampluna across the Pyrenees. It is folly to dig into

the mind of a man diseased by malice; better treat such like sour

ground, burn with lime (or let God burn) and abide the event in faith.

If of all men in the world Bertran hated Richard of Anjou, it was not

because Richard had misused him, but because he had used him too

lightly. Richard, offended with Bertran, gave him a flick on the ear and

sent him to the devil with his japes. He did no more because he valued

him no more. He thought him a perverse rascal, glorious poet,

ill-conditioned vassal, untimely parasite of his father's realm. He

knew he had caused endless mischief, but he could not hate such a cork

on a waterspray. Now, it fretted Bertran to white heat that he should be

despised by a great man. It seemed that at last he could do him

considerable harm. He could embroil him with two kings, France and

England, and induce a third to harass him from the South. So he crossed

the mountains and went into Navarre.

Over those stony ridges and bare fields Don Sancho was king, the seventh

of his name; and he kept his state in the city of Pampluna. Reputed the

wisest prince of his day, it is certain that he had need to be so, such

neighbours as he had. West of him was Santiago, south of him Castile.

These two urgent kings, edging (as it were) on the same bench with him,

made his seat a shifty comfort. No sooner had he warmed himself a place

than he was hoist to a cold one. In front of him, over against the sun,

he saw Philip of France pinched to the same degree between England and

Burgundy, eager to stretch his extremities since he could not broaden

his sides. Don Sancho had no call to love France; but he feared England

greatly--the horrible old brindled Lion, and Richard, offspring of the

Lion and the Pard, Richard the Leopard, who made more songs and fought

more quarrels out than any Christian prince. Here were quodlibets for

Don Sancho's logic. In appearance he was a pale vexed man, with anxious

eyes and a thin beard, at which (in his troubles) he plucked as often as

he could afford the hairs. Next to his bleached lands he loved minstrels

and physicians. Averrhoes was often at his court; so were Guillem of

Cabestaing and Peire Vidal. He knew and went so far as to love Bertran

de Born. Perhaps he was not too good a Christian, certainly he was a

very hungry one; and kings, with the rest of the world, are to be judged

by their necessities, not their professions. So much will suffice, I

hope, concerning Don Sancho the Wise.

In those days which saw Count Richard's back turned on Autafort, and

Saint-Pol's broken at Tours, Bertran de Born came to Pampluna, asking to

be received by the King of Navarre. Don Sancho was glad to see him.

'Now, Bertran,' says he, 'you shall give me news of poets and the food

of poets. All the talk here is of bad debts.'

'Oy, sire,' says Bertran, 'what can I tell you? The land is in flames,

the women have streaked faces, far and wide travels the torch of war.'

'I am sorry to hear it,' says King Sancho, 'and trust that you have not

brought one of those torches with you.'

Bertran shook his head; interruptions worried him, for he lived

maddeningly, like a man that has a drumming in his ear.

'Sire,' he said, 'there is a new strife between the Count of Poictou,

"Yea-and-Nay," and the French King on this account: the Count repudiates

Madame Alois.'

'Now, why does he do that, Bertran?' cried King Sancho, opening his eyes

wide.

'Sire, it is because he pretends that his father, the old King, has done

him dishonour. Says the Count, Madame Alois might be my stepmother,

never my wife.'

'Deus!' said the King. 'Bertran, is this the truth?'

That was a question for which Bertran was fully prepared. He always had

it put, and always gave the same answer. 'As I am a Christian, sire,' he

said, 'the Gospel is no truer.'

To which King Sancho replied, 'I do most devoutly believe in the Holy

Gospel, whatever any Arabian may say to the contrary. But is it for

this, pray, that you propose to light candles of war in Navarre?'

'Ah,' said Bertran, with his hand scratching in his vest, 'I light no

candles, my lord; but I counsel you to light them.'

'Phew!' said King Sancho, and stuck his arms out; 'on whose account,

Bertran, on whose account?'

Bertran replied savagely, 'On account of Dame Alois slandered, of her

brother France deceived in his hope, of the English King strangely

accused, of his son John (a hopeful prince, Benjamin of a second

Israel), and of Queen Eleanor of England, of whose kindred your Grace

is.'

'Deus! Oy, Deus!' cried King Sancho, pale with amazement, 'and are all

these thrones in arms, lighting candles against Count Richard?'

'It is so indeed, sire,' says Bertran; and King Sancho frowned, with

this comment--'There seems little chivalry here, take it as you will.'

Next he inquired, where was the Count of Poictou?

Bertran was ready. 'He rages his lands, sire, like a leopard caged. Now

and again he raids the marches, harries France or Anjou, and

withdraws.'

'And the King his father, Bertran, where is he? Far off, I hope.'

'He,' said Bertran, 'is in Normandy with a host, seeking the head of his

son Richard on a charger.'

'The great man that he is!' cried Don Sancho. Bertran could not contain

himself.

'Great or not, he is to pay his debts! The old rascal stag is rotten

with fever.'

I suppose Don Sancho was not called Wise for nothing. At any rate he sat

for a while considering the man before him. Then he asked, where was

King Philip?

'Sire,' replied Bertran, 'he is in his city of Paris, comforting Dame

Alois, and assembling his estates for Count Richard's flank.'

'And Prince John?'

'Oh, sire, he has friends. He waits. Watch for him presently.'

King Sancho frowned his forehead into furrows, and allowed himself a

hair or two of his beard. 'We will think of it, Bertran,' he said

presently. 'Yes, we will think of it, after our own fashion. God rest

you, Bertran, pray go refresh yourself.' So he dismissed him.

When he was alone he went on frowning, and between whiles tapped his

teeth with his beard-comb. He knew that Bertran had not come lying for

nothing to Pampluna; he must find out on whose account he was lying, and

upon what rock of truth (if any at all) he had built up his lies. Was it

because he hated the father, or because he hated the son? Or because he

served Prince John? Let that alone for a moment. This story of Alois: it

must be, he thought, either true or false, but was no invention of

Bertran's. Whichever it was, King Philip would make war upon King Henry,

not upon Richard; since, wanting timber, you cut at the trunk, not at

the branches. He believed Bertran so far, that the Count of Poictou was

in his country, and King Henry with a host in his. War between Philip

and the Count was a foolishness. Peace between the Count and King Henry

was another. Don Sancho believed (since he believed in God) that old

King Henry was at death's door; and he saw above all things that, if the

scandal was reasonably founded, there would be a bachelor prince

spoiling for wedlock. On all grounds, therefore, he decided to write

privily to his kinswoman, Queen Eleanor of England.

And so he did, to a very different tune from that imagined by Bertran,

the letter which follows:--

'Madame (Sister and Aunt),' he wrote, 'this day has brought tidings to

my private ear whereat in part I mourn with you, and rejoice in part, as

a wise physician who, hearing of some great lover in the article of

death, knows that he has both the wit and the remedy to work his cure.

Madame, with a hand upon my heart I may certify the flow of my blood for

the causes, serious and horrific, which have led to strife between your

exalted lord and most dear consort in Christ Jesus, my lord Henry the

pious King of England (whom God assoil) and his august neighbour of

France. But, Madame (Sister and Aunt), it is no less my comfort to

affirm that the estate of your noble son, the Count of Poictou, no less

moves my anguish. What, Madame! So fierce a youth and so strenuous,

widowed of his hopeful bed! The face of Paris with the fate of Menelaus!

The sweet accomplishments of King David (chief of trobadors) and the

ignominy of the husband of Bathsheba! You see that my eloquence burns me

up; and verily, Madame (Sister and Aunt), the hot coal of the wrath of

your son has touched my mouth, so that at the last I speak with my

tongue.

'I ask myself, Madame, why do not the virgins of Christendom arise and

offer their unrifled zones to his noble fingers? Sister and Aunt, there

is one at least, in Navarre, who so arises. I offer my child Berengère,

called by trobadors (because of her chaste seclusion) Frozen Heart, to

be thawed in the sun of your son. I offer, moreover, my great fiefs of

Oliocastro, Cingovilas, Monte Negro, and Sierra Alba as far as Agreda;

and a dowry also of 60,000 marks in gold of Byzance, to be numbered by

three bishops, one each of our choosing, and the third to be chosen by

Our lord and ghostly father the Pope. And I offer to you, Madame (Sister

and Aunt), the devotion of a brother and nephew, the right hand of

concord, and the kiss of peace. I pray God daily to preserve your

Celsitude.--From our court of Pampluna, etc. Under the Privy Signet of

the King himself--Sanchius Navarrensium Rex, Sapiens, Pater Patriæ,

Pius, Catholicus.'

This done, and means taken for sure despatch, he sends for the virgin

in question, and embracing her with one arm, holds her close to his

knee.

'My child,' he says, 'you are to be wedded to the greatest prince now on

life, the pattern of chivalry, the mirror of manly beauty, heir to a

great throne. What do you say to this?'

The virgin kept her eyes down; a very faint flush of rose troubled her

cheek.

'I am in your hands, sire,' she said, whereupon Don Sancho enfolded her.

'You are in my arms, dear child,' he testified. 'Your lord will be King

of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, Poictou, and

Maine, and lord of some island in the western sea whose name I have

forgotten. He is also the subject of prophecy, which (as the Arabians

know very well) declares that he will rule such an empire as Alexander

never saw, nor the mighty Charles dreamed of. Does this please you, my

child?'

'He is a very great lord,' said Berengère, 'and will be a great king. I

hope to serve him faithfully.'

'By Saint James, and so you shall!' cried the happy Don Sancho. 'Go, my

child, and say your prayers. You will have something to pray about at

last.'

She was the only daughter he had left, exorbitantly loved; a little

creature too much brocaded to move, cold as snow, pious as a virgin

enclosed, with small regular features like a fairy queen's. She had a

narrow mind, and small heart for meeting tribulation, which, indeed, she

seemed never likely to know. Sometimes, being in her robes of state,

crusted with gems, crowned, coifed, ringed, she looked like nothing so

much as a stiff doll-goddess set in glass over an altar. It was thus she

showed her best, when with fixed eyes and a frigid smile she stood above

the court, an unapproachable glittering star set in the clear sky of a

night to give men hopes of an ordered heaven. It was thus Bertran de

Born had seen her, when for a time his hot and wrong heart was at rest,

and he could look on a creature of this world without desire to mar it.

Half in mockery, half in love, he called her Frozen Heart. Later on, you

remember, he called Jehane Bel Vezer. He was the nicknamer of Europe in

his day.

So now, or almost so, he saw her new come from her father's side--a

little flushed, but very much the great small lady, ma dame Berengère of

Navarre.

'The sun shines upon my Frozen Heart,' said Bertran. She gave him her

hand to kiss.

'No heart of yours am I, Bertran,' she said; 'but chosen for a king.'

'A king, lady! Whom then?'

She answered, 'A king to be. My lord Richard of Poictou.'

He clacked his tongue on his palate, and bolted this pill as best he

could. Bad was best. He saw himself made newly so great a fool that he

dared not think of it. If he had known at that time of Richard's dealing

with Jehane Saint-Pol, you may be sure he would have squirted some

venom. But he knew nothing at all about it; and as to the other affair,

even he dared not speak.

'A great lord, a hot lord, a very strenuous lord!' he said in jerks. It

was all there was to say.

'He is a prince who might claim a lady's love, I suppose,' said

Berengère, with considering looks.

'Ho ho! And so he has!' cried Bertran. 'I assure your Grace he is no

novice. Many he has claimed, and many have claimed him. Shall I number

them?'

'I beg that you will not,' she said, stiffening herself. So Bertran

grinned his rage. But he had one thing to say.

'This much I will tell you, Princess. The name I give him is

Yea-and-Nay: beware of it. He is ever of two minds: hot head and cold

heart, flaming heart and chilled head. He will be for God and the enemy

of God; will expect heaven and tamper with hell. With rage he will go

up, laughing come down. Ho! He will be for you and against you; eager,

slow; a wooer, a scorner; a singer of madrigals, ah, and a croaker

afterwards. There is no stability in him, neither length of love nor of

hate, no bottom, little faith.' Berengère rose.

'You vex yourself, Bertran, and me also,' she said. 'It is ill talking

between a prince and his friend.'

'Am I not your friend then, my lady?' he asked her with bitterness.

'You cannot be the friend of a prince, Bertran,' said Berengère calmly.

His muttered 'O God, the true word!' sufficed him for thought all his

road from Navarre. He went, as you know already, to Poictiers, where

Richard was making festival with Jehane.

But when, unhappy liar, he found out the truth, it came too late to be

of service to his designs. Don Sancho, he learned, was beforehand with

him even there, fully informed of the outrage at Gisors and the marriage

at Poictiers, with very clear views of the worth of each performance.

Bertran, gnashing his teeth, took up the service of the man he loathed;

gnashing his teeth, he let Richard kiss him in the lists and shower

favours upon him. When presents of stallions came from Navarre he began

to see what Don Sancho was about. Any meeting of Richard and that

profound schemer would have been Bertran's ruin. So when Richard was

King, he judged it time to be off.

'Now here,' says Abbot Milo, dealing with the same topics, 'I make an

end of Bertran de Born, who did enough mischief in his life to give

three kings wretchedness--the young King Henry, and the old King Henry,

and the new King Richard. If he was not the thorn of Anjou, whose thorn

was he? Some time afterwards he died alone and miserable, having seen

(as he thought) all his plots miscarry, the object of his hatred do the

better for his evil designs, and the object of his love the better

without them. He was cast off. His peers were at the Holy War, his enemy

on a throne. There had arisen a generation which shrugged at his eld,

and remained one which still thought him a misgoverned youth. Great poet

he was, great thief, and a silly fool. So there's an end of him: let him

be.'

CHAPTER XVI

CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND OF JEHANE THE FAIR

It was in the gules of August, we read, that King Richard set out for

his duchy and kingdom, on horseback, riding alone, splendid in red and

gold; Countess Jehane in a litter; his true brother and his

half-brother, his bishops, his chancellor, and his friends with him,

each according to his degree. They went by Alençon, Lisieux, and Pont

l'Evèque to Rouen; and there they found the Queen-Mother, an

unquenchable spirit. One of Richard's first acts had been to free her

from the fortress in which, for ten years or more, the old King had kept

her. There were no prison-traces upon her when she met her son, and

fixed her son's mistress with a calculating eye. A low-browed, swarthy

woman, heavily built, with the wreck of great beauty upon her, having

fingers like the talons of a bird and a trap-mouth; it was not hard to

see that into the rocky mortice where Richard had been cast there went

some grains of flint from her. She had slow, deliberate movements of the

body, but a darting mind; she was a most passionate woman, but frugal of

her passion, eking it out to cover long designs. Whether she loved or

hated--and she could glow with either lust until she seemed

incandescent--she went slowly to work. The quicker she saw, the slower

she was reducing sight into possession. With all this, like her son

Richard, she was capable of strong revulsions. Thus she had loved, then

hated King Henry; thus she was to spurn, then to cling to Jehane.

At Rouen she did her best to crush the young girl to the pavement with

her intolerable flat-lidded eyes. When Jehane saw her stand on the steps

of the church amidst the pomp of Normandy and England--three archbishops

by her, William Marshal, William Longchamp, the earls, the baronage, the

knights, heralds, blowers of trumpets; when at her example all this

glory of Church and State bent the knee to Richard of Anjou, and he,

kneeling in turn, kissed his mother's hand, then rose and to the others

gave his to be kissed; when he, vowed to her, pledged to her, known of

her more secretly than of any, passed through the blare of horns alone

into the soaring nave--Jehane shivered and crossed herself, faltered a

little, and might have fallen. Her King was doing by her as she had

prayed him; but the scrutiny of the Queen-Mother had been a dry gloss to

the text. She had been able to bear her forsaking with a purer heart,

but for the narrow eyes that witnessed it and gleamed. One of her

ladies, Magdalène Coucy, put an arm about her; so Countess Jehane

stiffened and jerked up her head, and after that walked with no more

faltering. If she had seen, as Milo saw, Gilles de Gurdun glowering at

her from a corner, it might have gone hard with her. But she did not.

They crowned Richard Duke of Normandy, and to him came all the barons of

the duchy one by one, to do him homage. And first the Archbishop of

Rouen, in whose allegiance was that same Sir Gilles. But Gilles knew

very well that there could be no fealty from him to this robber of a

duke. Gilles had seen Jehane; and when he could bear the sight no more

for fear his eyes should bleed, he went and walked about the streets to

cool his head. He swore by all the saints in the calendar of Rouen--and

these are many--that he would close this account. Let him be torn apart

by horses, he would kill the man who had stolen his wife and killed his

father and brother, were he duke, king, or Emperor of the West.

Meantime, in the church that golden-haired duke, set high on the throne

of Normandy, received between his hands the hands of the Normans; and in

a stall of the choir Jehane prayed fervently for him, with her arms

enfolding her bosom.

Gilles was seen again at Harfleur, when the King embarked for England.

He had a hood over his head; but Milo knew him by the little steady eyes

and bar of black above. When the great painted sails bellied to the

off-shore wind and the dragon-standard of England pointed the sea-way

northward into the haze, Milo saw Gilles standing on the mole, a little

apart from his friends, watching the galley which took Jehane out of

reach.

* * * * *

If Milo found the Normans like ginger in the mouth, it is not to be

supposed that the English suited him any better. He calls them

'fog-stewed,' says that they ate too much, and were as proud of that as

of everything else they did. Luckily, he had very little to do with

them, though not much less, perhaps, than his master. Dry facts content

him: how the King disembarked at Southampton and took horse; how he rode

through forests to Winchester; how there he was met by the bishop, heard

mass in the minster, and departed for Guildford; thence again, how

through wood and heath they came to Westminster 'and a fair church set

in meadows by a broad stream'--to tell this rapidly contents him. But

once in London the story begins to concentrate. It is clear there was

danger for Jehane. King Richard, it seems, caused her to be lodged 'in a

place of nuns over the river, in a place which is called in English

Lamehithe.'

This was quite true; danger there was, as Richard saw, who knew his

mother. But he did not then know how quick with danger the times were.

The Queen-Mother had upon her the letter of Don Sancho the Wise, and to

her the politics of Europe were an open book. One holy war succeeded

another, and one king; but what king that might be depended neither upon

holiness nor war so much as on the way each was used. Marriage with

Navarre might push Anjou across the mountains; the holy war might lift

it across the sea. Who was the 'yellow-haired King of the West' whom

they of the East foretold, if not her goodly son? Should God be thwarted

by a ----? She hesitated not for a word, but I hesitate.

If the Queen-Mother was afraid of anything in the world, it was of the

devil in the race she had mothered. It had thwarted her in their father,

but it cowed her in her sons. Most of all, I think, in Richard she

feared it, because Richard could be so cold. A flamy devil as in young

Henry, or a brimstone devil as in Geoffrey of Brittany, or a spitfire

devil as was John's--with these she could cope, her lord had had them

all. But in Richard she was shy of the bleak isolation, the

self-sufficing, the hard, chill core. She dreaded it, yet it drew her;

she was tempted to beat vainly at it for the passion's sake; and so in

this case she dared to do. She would cheerfully have killed the minion,

but she dared the King first.

When she opened to him the matter of Don Sancho's letter, none knew

better than Richard that the matter might have been good. Yet he would

have nothing to say to it. 'Madame,' his words were, 'this is an idle

letter, if not impertinent. Don Sancho knows very well that I am married

already.'

'Eh, sire! Eh, Richard!' said the Queen-Mother, 'then he knows more than

I.'

'I think not, Madame,' the King replied, 'since I have this moment

informed you.'

The Queen swallowed this; then said, 'This wife of yours, Richard, who

is not Duchess of Normandy, will not be Queen, I doubt?'

Richard's face grew haggard; for the moment he looked old. 'Such again

is the fact, Madame.'

'But--' the Queen began. Richard looked at her, so she ended there.

Afterwards she talked with the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the

Marshal, with Longchamp of Ely, and her son John. All these worthies

were pulling different ways, each trying to get the rope to himself.

With that rope John hoped to hang his brother yet. 'Dearest Madame,' he

said, 'Richard cannot marry in Navarre even if he were willing. Once he

has been betrothed, and has broken plight; once he saw his mistress

betrothed, and broke her plight. Now he is wedded, or says that he is.

Suppose that you get him to break this wedlock, will you give him

another woman to deceive? There is no more faithless beast in the world

than Richard.'

'Your words prove that there is one at least,' said the Queen-Mother

with heat. 'You speak very ill, my son.'

Said John, 'And he does very ill, by the Bread!'

William Marshal interposed. 'I have seen much of the Countess of Anjou,

Madame,' said this honest gentleman. 'Let me tell your Grace that she is

a most exalted lady.' He would have said more had the Queen-Mother

endured it, but she cried out upon him.

'Anjou! Who dares put her up there?'

'Madame,' said William, 'it was my lord the King.' The Queen fumed.

Then the Archbishop said, 'She is nobly born, of the house of Saint-Pol.

I understand that she has a clear mind.'

'More,' cried the Marshal, 'she has a clear heart!'

'If she had nothing clear about her I have that which would bleach her

white enough,' said the Queen-Mother; and Longchamp, who had said

nothing at all, grinned.

In the event, the Queen one day took to her barge, crossed the river,

and confronted the girl who stood between England and Navarre.

Jehane, who was sitting with her ladies at needlework, was not so scared

as they were. Like the nymphs of the hunting Maid they all clustered

about her, showing the Queen-Mother how tall she was and how nobly

figured. She flushed a little and breathed a little faster; but making

her reverence she recovered herself, and stood with that curious look on

her face, half surprise, half discontent, which made men call her the

sulky fair. So the Queen-Mother read the look.

'No pouting with me, mistress,' she said. 'Send these women away. It is

with you I have to deal.'

'Do we deal singly, Madame?' said Jehane. 'Then my ladies shall seek for

yours the comforts of a discomfortable lodging. I am sorry I have no

better.' The Queen-Mother nodded her people out of the room; so she and

Jehane were left alone together.

'Mistress,' said the Queen-Mother, 'what is this between you and my son?

Playing and kissing are to be left below the degrees of a throne. Let

there be no more of it. Do you dare, are you so hardy in the eyes, as to

look up to a kingly seat, or measure your head for a king's crown?'

Jehane had plenty of spirit, which a very little of this sort of talk

would have fanned into a flame; but she had irony too.

'Madame, alas!' she said, with a hint of shrugging; 'if I have worn the

Count's cap I know the measure of my head.'

The Queen-Mother took her by the wrist 'My girl,' said she, 'you know

very well that you are no Countess at all in my son's right, but are

what one of your nurture should not be. And you shall understand that I

am a plain-dealer in such affairs when they concern this realm, and have

bled little heifers like you whiter than veal and as cold as most of the

dead; and will do it again if need be.'

Jehane did not flinch nor turn her eyes from considering her whitening

wrist.

'Oh, Madame,' she says, 'you will never bleed me; I am quite sure of

that. Alas, it would be well if you could, without offence.'

'Why, whom should I offend then?' the Queen said, sniffing--'your

ladyship?'

'A greater,' said Jehane.

'You think the King would be offended?'

'Madame,' Jehane said, 'he could be offended; but so would you be.'

The Queen-Mother tightened hold. 'I am not easily offended, mistress,'

she said, and smiled rather bleakly.

Jehane also smiled, but with patience, not trying to get free her wrist.

'My blood would offend you. You dare not bleed me.'

'Death in life!' the Queen cried, 'is there any but the King to stop me

now?'

'Madame,' Jehane answered, 'there is the spoken word against you, the

spirit of prophecy.'

Then her jailer saw that Jehane's eyes were green, and very steady. This

checked her.

'Who speaks? Who prophesies?'

Jehane told her, 'The leper in a desert place, saying, "Beware the

Count's cap and the Count's bed; for so sure as thou liest in either

thou art wife of a dead man and of his killer."'

The Queen-Mother, a very religious woman, took this saying soberly. She

dropped Jehane's wrist, stared at and about her, looked up, looked down;

then said, 'Tell me more of this, my girl.'

'Hey, Madame,' said Jehane, 'I will gladly tell you the whole. The

saying of the leper was very dreadful to me, for I thought, here is a

man punished by God indeed, but so near death as to be likely familiar

with the secrets of death. Such a one cannot be a liar, nor would he

speak idly who has so little time left to pray in. Therefore I urged my

lord Richard by his good love for me to forgo his purpose of wedding me

in Poictiers. But he would not listen, but said that, as he had stolen

me from my betrothed, it comported not with his honour to dishonour me.

So he wedded me, and fulfilled both terms of the leper's prophecy. Then

I saw myself in peril, and was not at all comforted by the advice of

certain nuns, which was that, although I had lain in the Count's bed, I

had not lain, but had knelt, in the Count's cap; and that therefore the

terms were not fulfilled. I thought that foolishness, and still think

so. But this is my own thought. I have never rightly been in either as

the leper intended, for I do not think the marriage a good one. If I am

no wife, then, God pity me, I have done a great sin; but I am no

Countess of Anjou. So I give the prophet the lie. On the other hand, if

I am put away by my lord the King that he may make a good marriage, I

shall be claimed again by the man to whom I was betrothed before, and so

the doom be in danger of fulfilment. For, look now, Madame, the leper

said, "Wife of a dead man and his killer"; and there is none so sure to

kill the King as Sir Gilles de Gurdun. Alas, alas, Madame, to what a

strait am I come, who sought no one's hurt! I have considered night and

day what it were best to do since the King, at my prayer, left me; and

now my judgment is this. I must be with the King, though not the King's

_mie_; because so surely as he sends me away, so surely will Gilles de

Gurdun have me.'

She stopped, out of breath, feeling some shame to have spoken so much.

The Queen-Mother came to her at once, with her hands out. 'By my soul,

Jehane,' she said, 'you are a good woman. Never leave my son.'

'I never mean to leave him,' said Jehane. 'That is my punishment, and (I

think) his also.'

'His punishment, my child?'

'Why, Madame,' said Jehane, 'you think that the King must wed.'

'Yes, yes.'

'And to wed, he must put me away.'

'Yes, yes, child.'

'Therefore, although he loves me, he may never have his dear desire; and

although I love him, I may give him no comfort. Yet we can never leave

each other for fear of the leper's prophecy; but he must always long and

I grieve. That, I think, is punishment for a man and woman.'

The Queen-Mother sobbed. Terrible punishment for a little pleasant sin!

Yet I doubt'--she said, politic through all--'yet I doubt my son, being

a fierce lover, will have his way with thee.'

Jehane shook her head. 'No means,' she said, drawing in her breath, 'no

means, Madame. I have his life to think of.' Here, pitying herself, she

turned away her face. The Queen-Mother came suddenly and kissed her.

They cried together, Jehane and the flinty old shrew of Aquitaine.

A pact was made, and sealed with kisses, between these two women who

loved King Richard, that Jehane should do her best to further the

Navarrese match. Circumstance was her friend in this pious robbery of

herself: Richard, who stood so deep engaged in honour to God Almighty,

could get no money.

Busy as he was with one shift after another to redeem his credit, busy

also pushing on his coronation, he yet continued to see his mistress

most days, either walking with her in the garden of the nuns' house

where she lodged, or sitting by her within doors. At these snatched

moments there was a beautiful equality between them; the girl no longer

subject to the man, the man more master of himself for being less master

of her. As often as not he sat on the floor at her feet while she worked

at those age-long tapestries which her generation loved; leaning his

head back to her knee, he would so lie and search her face, and wonder

to himself what the world to come could have more fair to show than this

calm treasurer of lovely flesh. This was, at the time, her chief glory,

that with all her riches--fragrant allure, soft warmth, the delicacy,

nice luxury of her every part, the glow, the tincture, the throbbing

fire--she could keep a strong hand upon herself; sway herself modestly;

have so much and give so little; be so apt for a bridal, and yet without

a sigh play the nun! 'If she, being devirginate through me, can cry

herself virgin again--then cannot I, by the King of Heaven?' This was

Richard's day-thought, a very mannish thought; for women do not consider

their own beauties so closely, see no divinity in themselves, and find a

man to be a glorious fool to think one of them more desirable than

another. He never spoke this thought, but worshipped her silently for

the most part; and she, reading the homage of his upturned face, steeled

herself against the sweet flattery, held her peace, and in her fierce

proud mind made endless plots against his.

In silence their souls conversed upon a theme never mentioned between

them. His restless quest of her face taught him much, disposed him; she,

with all the good guile of women to her hand, waited, judging the time.

Then one day as they sat together in a window she suddenly slipped away

from his hand, dropped to her knees, and began to pray.

For a while he let her alone, finding the act as lovely as she. But

presently he stooped his face till it almost touched her cheek, and

'Tell me thy prayer, dear heart! Let me pray also!' he whispered.

'I pray for my lord the King,' she said. 'Let me pray.' But as he

insisted, urging, leaning to her, she drew her head back and lifted to

his view her face, blanched with pure patience.

'O King Christ,' she prayed, 'take from my soiled hand this sacrifice!'

She prayed to Christ, but looked at Richard. He dared speak for Christ.

'What sacrifice, my child?'

'I give Thee the hero who has lain upon my breast; I give Thee the

marriage-bed, the cap of the Count. I give Thee the kisses, the clinging

together, the vows, the long bliss where none may speak. I give Thee the

language of love, the strife, the after-calm, the assurance, the hope

and the promise. But I keep, Lord, the memory of love as a hostage of

Thine.'

King Richard, breathless now, looked in her face. It was that of a mild

angel, steadfast, grave, hued like fire, acquainted with grief. 'O

God-fraught! O saint in the battle! O dipped in the flame! Jehane,

Jehane, Jehane! Quicken me!' So he cried in anguish of spirit.

'Quicken thee, Richard?' she said. 'Nay, but thou art quick, my King.

The Cross hath made thee quick; thou hast given more than I.'

'I will give all by thy direction,' he said, 'for I know that thou wilt

save my honour.'

'Trust me there,' said Jehane, and let him kiss her cheek.

She got a great hold upon him by these means. Quick with the Holy Ghost

or not, there was no doubting the quickness of his mind. Here Jehane's

wit had not played her false; he read her whole meaning; she never let

go the footing she had gained, but in all her commerce with him walked a

saint, a maid ravished only by a great thought. Visibly to him she stood

symbol of belief, sacramental, the fire on the altar, the fine shy

spirit of love lurking (like a rock-flower) at the Cross's foot. And so

this fire with which she led him, like the torch she had held up to show

him his earlier way, lifted her; and so she became indeed what she

signified.

She stood very near the Queen-Mother when Richard was crowned and

anointed King of the English, unearthly pure, with eyes like stars,

robed in dull red, crowned herself with silver. All those about her,

marking the respect which the old Queen paid her, scarce dared lift

their eyes to her face. The tall King, stripped to the shirt, was

anointed, then robed, then crowned; afterwards sat with orb and sceptre

to receive homage. Jehane came in her turn to kneel before him. But her

work had been done. That icy stream in the blood, which is cause and

proof at once of the kingly isolation, was doubly in Richard, first of

that name. He beheld her kneeling at his knee, knew her and knew her

not. She with her cold lips kissed his cold hand. That day had love, by

her own desire, been frozen; and that which was to awaken it was itself

numb in sleep.

On the third of September they crowned him King, and found that he was

to be King indeed. On the same day the citizens of London killed all the

Jews they could find; and Richard banished his brother John from his

dominions in England and France for three years and three days.

CHAPTER XVII

FROZEN HEART AND RED HEART: CAHORS

I suppose that the present relations of King Richard and the Countess of

Poictou (as she chose to call herself now) were as singular as could

subsist between a strong man and beautiful woman, both in love. I am not

to extenuate or explain, but say once for all to the curious that she

was never again to him (nor had been since that day at Fontevrault) what

a sister might not have been. Yet, with all that, it was evident to the

world at large that he was a lover, and she mistress of his mind. Not

only implicitly so, as witnessed their long intercourse of the eyes,

their quick glances, stealthy watching of each other, the little tender

acts (as the giving or receiving of a flower), the brooding silences,

the praying at the same time or place; but explicitly he pronounced

himself her knight. All his songs were of her; he wrote to her many

times a day, and she answered his letters by her page, and kept the

latest of them always within her vest, over against her heart. She

allowed herself more scope than he, trusting herself further: it is

known that she treasured discarded things of his, and went so far as to

wear (she, the Fair-Girdled!) a studded belt of his made to fit her. She

was never without this rude monument of her former grace. But this was

the sum-total of their bodily intercourse, apart from speech. Of their

spiritual ecstasies I have no warrant to speak, though I believe these

were very innocent. She would not dare, nor he care, to indulge in so

laxative a joy.

He conversed with her freely upon all affairs of moment; there was no

constraint on either side. He was even merry in her company, and

astonishingly frank. Singular man! the Navarrese marriage was a common

subject of their talk; she spoke of it with serious mockery and he with

mock seriousness. From Richard it was, 'Countess Jehane, when the

chalk-faced Spaniard reigns you must mend your manners.' And she might

say, 'Beau sire, Madame Berengère will never like your songs unless you

sing of her.' All this served the girl's private ends. Gradually and

gradually she led him to see that thing as fixed. She did it, as it

were, on tiptoe, for she knew what a shyer he was; but luckily for her

schemes, the Queen-Mother trusted her to the bottom, said nothing and

allowed nothing to be said.

Meantime the affairs of the Crusade conspired with Jehane to drive

Richard once more to church. If he got little money in England, where

abbeys were rich in corn but poor in pelf, and the barons had been so

prompt to rob each other that they could not be robbed by the King,--he

got less in Gaul, eaten up by war for a hundred years. You cannot bleed

a stuck pig, as King Richard found. England was empty of money. He got

men enough; from one motive or another every English knight was willing

to rifle the East. He had ships enough. But of what use ships and men

if there was no food for them nor money to buy it? He tried to borrow,

he tried to beg, he tried what in a less glorious cause a plain man

would call stealing. King Richard came not of a squeamish race, and

would have sold anything to any buyer, pawned his crown or taken another

man's to get the worth of a company's pay out of it. Fines, escheats,

reliefs, forfeitures, wardships, marriages--he heaped exaction on

exaction, with mighty little result. When his mind was set he was

inexorable, insatiable, without scruple. What he got only sharpened his

appetite for more. King Tancred of Sicily owed the dowry of Richard's

sister Joan. He swore he would wring that out of him to the last doit.

He offered the city of London to the highest bidder, and lamented the

slaughter of the Jews when the tenders were few. Here was a position to

be in! His Englishmen lay rotting in Southampton town, his ships in

Southampton water. His Normans and Poictevins were over-ripe; he as dry

as an unpinched pear. He saw, to his infinite vexation, his honour again

in pawn, and no means of redeeming it. Jehane, with tears in her voice,

plied the Navarrese marriage with more passion than she would ever have

allowed herself to urge her own. Richard said he would think of it. 'Now

I have him half-way,' Jehane told the Queen-Mother. He was driven the

other half by his banished brother John.

Prince John, bundled out of the country within a week of the coronation,

went to Paris and a pocketful of mischief in which to put his hand.

King Philip, who should have been preparing for the East, was listening

to counsels much more to his liking. Conrad of Montferrat was there,

with large white fingers explaining on the table, and a large white face

set as lightly as a mouse-trap. His Italian mind, with that strange

capacity for subserving business with passion, had a task of election

here. The Marquess knew that Richard would sooner help the devil than

him to Jerusalem; not only on this account, but on every conceivable

account did he hate Richard. If he could embroil the two leaders of the

Crusade, there was his affair: Philip would need him. In Paris also was

Saint-Pol, fizzling with mischief, and behind him, where-ever he went,

stalked Gilles de Gurdun, murder in his heart. The massive Norman was a

fine foil to the Count: they were the two poles of hatred. The Duke of

Burgundy was not there, but Conrad knew that he could be counted.

Richard owed him (so he said) forty pounds; besides, Richard had called

him a sponge--and it was true. There, lastly, was Des Barres, that fine

Frenchman, ready to hate anybody who was not French, and most ready to

hate Richard, who had broken up the Gisors wedding and put,

single-handed, all the guests to shame. Now, this was a company after

Prince John's own heart. Standing next to the English throne, he was an

excellent footstool; he felt the delicate position, he was flattered at

every turn. The Marquess found him most useful, not only because he was

on better terms with Philip than himself could hope to be, but because

he understood him better. John knew that there were two tender spots in

that moody King, and he knew which was the tenderer, pardieu! So

Conrad's gross finger, guided by John's, probed the raw of Philip's

self-esteem, and found a rankling wound, very proud flesh. Oh,

intolerable affront to the House of Capet, that a tall Angevin robber

should take up and throw away a daughter of France, and then whistle you

to a war in the East! Prince John, you perceive, knew where to rub in

the salt.

The storm broke when King Richard was again at Chinon. King Philip sent

messengers--William des Barres, the Bishop of Beauvais, and Stephen of

Meaux--about the homage due to him for Normandy and all the French

fiefs. So far well; King Richard was very urbane, as bland as such an

incisive dealer could be. He would do homage for Normandy, Anjou, and

the rest on such and such a day. 'But,' he added quietly, 'I attach the

condition that it be done at Vézelay, when I am there with my army for

the East, and he with his army.'

The ambassadors demurred, talking among themselves: Richard sat on

immovable, his hands on his knees. Presently the Bishop of Beauvais,

better soldier than priest, stood out from his fellows and made this

remarkable speech:--

'Beau sire, our lord the august King takes it very ill that you have so

long delayed the marriage agreed upon solemnly between your Grace and

Madame Alois his sister. Therefore--' Milo (who was present) says that

he saw his master narrow his eyes so much that he seemed to have none at

all, but 'sockets and blank balls in them, like statues.' The Bishop of

Beauvais, apparently, did not observe it. 'Therefore,' he went on,

orotund, 'our lord the King desires that the marriage may be celebrated

before he sets out for Acre and the blessed work in those parts. Other

matters there are for settlement, such as the title of the most

illustrious Marquess of Montferrat to the holy throne, in which my

master is persuaded your Grace will conform to his desires. This and

other matters a many.'

The King got up. 'Too many matters, Bishop of Beauvais,' he said, 'for

my appetite, which is poor just now. There is no debate. Say this to

your master, I pay homage where it is due. If by his own act he prove

that it is not due, I will not be blamed. As to the Marquess, I will

never get a kingdom for him, and I marvel that King Philip can make no

better choice than of a man whose only title is rape, and can get no

better ally than the slanderer of his sister. And upon the subject of

that unhappy lady, I tell you this upon the Holy Gospels, that I will

marry King Philip himself before I will marry her; and so much he very

well knows. I am upon the point to depart in the fulfilment of my vows.

Let your master please himself. He is a bad sailor, he tells me. Am I to

think him a bad soldier? And if so, in such a cause, what sort of a

Christian, what sort of a king, am I to think him?'

The Bishop, his diplomacy at an end, grew very red. He had nothing to

say. Des Barres must needs put in his word.

'Bethink you, fair sire,' he says: 'the Marquess is of my kindred.'

'Oh, I do think, Des Barres,' the King answered him; 'and I am very

sorry for you. But I am not answerable for the trespasses of your

ancestry.'

Des Barres glared about him, as if he hoped to find a reply among the

joists.

'My lord,' he began again, 'it is laid in charge upon us to speak the

mind of France. Our master is greatly put about in his sister's affair,

and not he only, but his allies with him. Among whom, sire, you must be

pleased to reckon my lord John of Mortain.'

He had done better to leave John out; Richard's eyes burnt him, and his

voice cut. 'Let my brother John have her, who knows her rights and

wrongs. As for you, Des Barres, take back to your master your windy

conversation, and this also, that I allow no man to dictate marriages to

me.' So said, he broke up the audience, and would see no more of the

ambassadors. They, in two or three days, departed with what grace they

had in them.

The immediate effect of this, you may perhaps expect, was to drive

Richard all the road to Navarre. He was profoundly offended, so much so

that not Jehane herself dared speak to him. As he always did when his

heart mastered his head, he acted now alone and at once. In the heart we

choose to seat rage of all sorts, the purest and the most base, the most

fervent and the most cold. It so happened that there was business for

our King in Gascony, congenial business. Guillem de Chisi, a vassal of

his, had been robbing pilgrims, so Guillem was to be hanged. Richard

went swift-foot to Cahors, hanged Guillem in front of his own

gatehouse, then wrote letters to Pampluna inviting King Sancho to a

conference 'upon many affairs touching Almighty God and ourselves.' Thus

he put it, and King Sancho needed no accents to the vowels. The wise man

set out with a great train, his virgin with him.

* * * * *

The day of his expectation, King Richard heard mass in a most

unchristian frame of mind. There was no _Sursum Corda_ for him; but he

knelt like a stone image, inert and cold from breast to backbone; said

nothing, moved not. How differently do men and women stand at the gate

of sorrows! Not far off him knelt Countess Jehane, who in her hands

again (it may be said) held up her bleeding heart. The luxury of this

strange sacrifice made the girl glow like a fire opal; she was in a

fierce ecstasy, her lips parted, eyes half-shut; she breathed short, she

panted. There is no moralising over these things: love is a hearty

feeder, and thrives on a fast-day as well as on a gaudy. By fasting come

visions, tremors, swoonings and such like, dainty perversions of sense.

But part of Jehane's exaltation, you must know, came of another spur.

She had a sure and certain hope; she knew what she knew, though no other

even guessed it. With that to carry she could lift up her head. No woman

in the world need grudge the usurper of place while she may go on,

carrying her title below the heart. More of this presently. Two hours

before noon, in that clear October weather, over the brown hills came a

company of knights on white destriers, with their pennons flying and

white cloaks over their mail, the outriders of Navarre. They were met

in the meadow of the Charterhouse and escorted to their quarters, which

were on the right of the King's pavilion. That same pavilion was of

purple silk, worked over with gold leopards the size of life. It had two

standards beside it, the dragon of the English, the leopards of Anjou.

The pavilion of King Sancho was of green silk with silver emblems--a

heart, a castle, a stag; Saint George, Saint Michael, Saint James the

Great, and Saint Martin with his split cloak--a shining place before

whose door stood twenty ladies in white, their hair let loose, to

receive Madame Berengère and minister to her. Chief among these was

Countess Jehane. King Richard was not in his own pavilion, but would

greet his brother king in the hail of the citadel.

So in due time, after three soundings on the silver trumpets and much

curious ceremony of bread and salt, came Don Sancho the Wise in a meinie

of his peers, very noble on a roan horse; and Dame Berengère his

daughter in a wine-coloured litter, with her ladies about her on ambling

palfreys, the colour of burnt grass. When they took this little princess

out of her silken cage the first face she looked for and the first she

saw was that of Jehane Saint-Pol, who received her courteously.

Jehane always wore sumptuous clothing, being aware, no doubt, that her

person justified the display. For this time she had dressed herself in

silver brocade, let her bosom go bare, and brought the strong golden

plaits round about in her favourite fashion. Upon her head she had a

coronet of silver flowers, in her neck a blue jewel. All the colour she

had lay in her hue of faint rose, in her hair like corn in the sun, in

her eyes of green, in her deep red lips. But her height, free build, and

liberal curves marked her out of a bevy that glowed in a more Southern

fashion. She had to stoop overmuch to kiss Berengère's hand; and this

made the little Spaniard bite her lip.

Berengère herself was like a bell, in a stiff dress of crimson sewn with

great pearls in leaf and scroll-work. From the waist upwards she was the

handle of the bell. This immoderation of her clothes, the fright she was

in--so nervous at first that she could hardly stand--became her very

ill. She was quite white in the face, with solemn black eyes, glazed and

expressionless; her little hands stuck out from her sides like a

puppet's. Handsome as no doubt she was, she looked a doll beside the

tall Jehane, who could have dandled her comfortably on her knee. She

spoke no language but her own, and that not the _langue d'oc_, but a

blurred dialect of it, rougher even than Gascon. Conversation was very

difficult on these terms. At first the Princess was shy; then (when she

grew curious and forgot her qualms) Jehane was shy. Berengère fingered

the jewel in the other's neck, turned it about, wanted to know whence it

had come, whose gift it was, etc., etc. Jehane blushed to report it the

gift of a friend; whereupon the Princess looked her up and down in a way

that made her hot all over.

But when it came to the time of meeting King Richard, Berengère's

nervous fears came crowding back; the poor little creature began to

shake, clung to Jehane. 'How tall is the king, how tall is he? Taller

than you?' she asked, looking up at the Picard girl.

'Oh, yes, Madame, he is taller than I.'

'They say he is cruel. Did you--do you think him cruel?'

'Madame, no, no.'

'He is a poet, they say. Has he made many songs of me?'

Jehane murmured her doubts, exquisitely confused.

'Fifty poets,' continued nestling Berengère, 'have made songs of me.

There is a wreath of songs. They call me Frozen Heart: do you know why?

They say I am too proud to love a poet. But if the poet is a king! I

have a certain fear just now. I think I will--' She took Jehane's

arm--'No! no!' She drew away. 'You are too tall--I will never take your

arm--I am ashamed. I beg you to go before me. Lead the way.'

So Jehane went first of all the ladies who led the Queen to the King.

King Richard, who himself loved to go splendidly, sat upon his throne in

the citadel looking like a statue of gold and ivory. Upon his head was a

crown of gold, he had a long tunic of white velvet, round his shoulders

a great cope of figured gold brocade, work of Genoa, and very curious.

His face and hands were paler than their wont was, his eyes frosty blue,

like a winter sea that is made bright, not warm, by the sun. He sat up

stiffly, hands on knees; and all about him stood the lords and prelates

of the most sumptuous court in the West. King Sancho the Wise was ready

to stoop all his wisdom and burden of years before such superb state as

this; but the moment his procession entered the hall Richard went down

from his daïs to meet it, kissed him on the cheek, asked how he did, and

set the careworn man at his ease. As for Berengère, he took from her of

both cheeks, held her small hand, spoke in her own language honourable

and cheerful words, drove a little colour into her face, screwed a word

or two out of her. Afterwards there was high mass, sung by the

Archbishop of Auch, and a great banquet, served in the cloister-garth of

the Charterhouse under a red canopy, because the hail of the citadel was

too small.

At this feast King Richard played a great part--cheerful, easy of

approach, making phrases like swords, giving and taking the talk without

any advantage of his rank. His jokes had a bite in them, as when he said

of Bertran that the best proof of the excellence of his verses was that

he had undoubtedly made them himself; or of Averrhoes, the Arabian

physician and infidel philosopher, that the man equalised his harms by

poisoning with his drugs the bodies of those whose minds had been

tainted by his heresies. But he was the first to set the laugh against

himself, and had a flash of Dame Berengère's fine teeth before he had

been ten minutes at table.

After dinner the Kings and their ministers went into debate; and then it

seemed that Richard had got up from his meat perverse. He would only

talk of one thing, namely, sixty thousand gold besants. On this he

harped maddeningly, with calculations of how much victual the sum would

buy, of the weight in ounces, of its content in sacks in a barn, of the

mileage of the coins set edge to edge, and so on, and so on. Don Sancho

sat winking and fidgeting in his chair, and talked of his illustrious

daughter.

'Milled edges they should have, these besants,' says King Richard,

'whereof, allowing (say) three hundred and fifty to a piece, we have a

surprising total of'--here he figured on the table, and King Sancho

pursued his drift until Richard brought his hand slamming down--'of

one-and-twenty million ridges of gold upon the treasure!' he concluded

with a waggish look. Agreement was as hard as to prolong parallels to a

point. Yet this went on for some two hours, until, worn frail by such

futilities, the Navarrese chancellor plumply asked his brother of

England if King Richard would marry. 'Marry!' cried he, when they

brought him down the question, 'yes, I am all for marrying. I will marry

one-and-twenty million milled edges, our Saviour!' They reported to King

Sancho the substance of these words, and asked him if such and such

would be the dowry of his lady daughter.

'Ask King Richard if he will have her with that in hand and the

territories demarked,' said Don Sancho.

This was done. Richard grew grave, made no more jokes. He turned to

Milo, who happened to be near him.

'Where is the little lady?' he asked him. Milo looked out of the

window.

'My lord,' he said, 'she is in the orchard at this moment; and I think

the Countess is with her.' Richard blenched, as if he had been struck

with a whip. Collecting himself, he turned and looked down through the

window to the leafy orchard below. He looked long, and saw (as Milo had

seen) the two girls, the tall and the little, the crimson and the white,

standing near together in the shade. Jehane had her head bent, for

Berengère had hold of the jewel in her bosom. Then Berengère put her

arms round the other's neck and leaned her head where the jewel lay.

Jehane stooped her head lower and lower, cheek touched cheek. At this

King Richard turned about; despair set hard was on his face. He said in

a dry voice, 'Tell the King I will do it.'

In the tedious negotiations of the next few days it was arranged that

the Princess should await the Queen-Mother at Bayonne, and sail with her

and the fleet to Sicily. There King Richard would meet and marry her.

What had passed between her and Jehane in the orchard, who knows? They

kissed at parting; but Jehane neither told Richard, nor did he ask her,

why Berengère had lain her cheek upon her bosom, or why herself had

stooped so low her head. Women's ways!

So Red Heart made her sacrifice, and Frozen Heart suffered the Sun; and

he they called later Lion-Heart went out to fight Saladin, and less open

foes than he.

BOOK II

THE BOOK OF NAY

CHAPTER I

THE CHAFFER CALLED MATE-GRIFON

Differing from the Mantuan as much in sort as degree, I sing less the

arms than the man, less the panoply of some Christian king offended than

the heart of one in its urgent private transports; less treaties than

the agony of treating, less personages than persons, the actors rather

than the scene. Arms pass like the fashion of them, to-day or to-morrow

they will be gone; but men live, their secret springs what they have

always been. How the two Kings, then, smeared over their strifes at

Vézelay; how John of Mortain was left biting his nails, and Alois

weeping at the foot of a cross; how Christian armies like dusty snakes

dragged their lengths down the white shores of Rhone, and how some took

ship at Marseilles, and some saved their stomachs at the cost of their

shoes; of King Richard's royal galley _Trenchemer_, a red ship with a

red bridge, and the dragon at the mast; of the shields that made her

bulwarks terrible; of who went adventurous and who remained; of a fleet

that lay upon the waters like a flock of sea-gulls--countless, now at

rest, now beating the sea into spumy wrath; of what way they made,

qualms they suffered, prayers they said in their extremity, vows they

made and afterwards broke, thoughts they had and afterwards were ashamed

of--of these and all such things I must be silent if I am to make a

good end to my history. It shall be enough for you that the red ship

held King Richard, and King Richard his own thoughts, and that never far

from him, in a ship called _Li Chastel Orgoilous_, sat Jehane with

certain women of hers, nursing her hope and a new and fearful wonder she

had. Prayer sits well in women, and age-long watching: one imagines that

Jehane never left the poop through those long white days, those burning

nights; but could always be seen or felt, a still figure sitting apart,

elbow on knee, chin in hand-like a Norn reading fate in the starred web

of the night. In the dark watches, when the ships lay drifting under the

stars, or lurched forward as the surges drove them on, and the tinkling

of the water against the side was all the sound, some woman's voice (not

Jehane's) would be heard singing faint and far off, some little shrill

and winding prayer.

Saincte Catherine,

Vélà la nuict qui gagne!

they would hear, and hang upon the cadence. At such times Richard,

stretched upon his lion-skin, would raise himself, and lift up his face

to the immense, and with his noble voice make the darkness tremble as he

sang--

Domna, dels angels regina,

Domna, roza ses espina,

Domna, joves enfantina,

Domna, estela marina,

De las autras plus luzens!

But so soon as his voice filled the night, the woman's faltered and

died; and he, holding on for a stave or more, would stop on a note that

had a wailing fall, and the lapping of the waves or cry of hidden birds

take up the rule again. This did not often obtain. Mostly he watched out

the night, sleeping little, talking none, but revolving in his mind the

great deeds to do. By day he was master of the fleet, an admirable

seaman who, knowing nothing of ships' business before he embarked, dared

not confess so much to himself. Richard must be leader if he was to be

undertaker at all. So he led his fleet from his first hour with it, and

brought it safely into the roadstead.

* * * * *

They made Messina prosperously, a white city cooped within walls, with

turrets and belfries and shining domes, stooping sharply to the violet

sea. King Philip with his legions was to have come by land as far as

Genoa, and was not expected yet awhile. Nor was there any sign of the

Queen-Mother, of Berengère, or of the convoy from Navarre.

A landing was made in the early morning. Before the Sicilians were well

awake Richard's army was in camp, the camp entrenched, and a most

salutary gallows set up just outside it, with a thief upon it as a

warning to his brothers of Sicily. So far good. The next thing was an

embassy to King Tancred, the Sicilian King, which demanded (1) the

person of Queen Joan (Richard's sister), (2) her dowry, (3) a golden

table twelve foot long, (4) a silk tent, and (5) a hundred galleys

fitted out for two years. This despatched, Richard entertained himself

with his hawks and dogs, and with short excursions into Calabria. On one

of these he went to visit the saintly Abbot Joachim, at once prophet and

philosopher and man of cool sense; and on another to kill wild boars.

When he came back in October from the second of these, he found matters

going rather ill.

King Tancred avoided seeing him, sent no tables, nor ships, nor dowry.

He did send Queen Joan, and Queen Joan's bed; moreover, because she had

been Queen of Sicily, he sent a sack of gold coins for her

entertainment; but he did not propose to go any further. Richard, seeing

what sort of courses his plans were likely to take, crossed once more

into Calabria, attacked a fortified town which the Sicilians had

settled, turned the settlers out, and established his sister there with

Jehane, her shipload of ladies, and a strong garrison. Then he returned

to Messina.

Certainly, he saw, his camp there could be of no long tenure. The

Grifons, as they called the inhabitants, were about it like hornets; not

a day passed without the murder of some man of his, or an ambush which

cost him a score. Thieving was a courtesy, raiding an amenity in a

Grifon, it appeared. Richard, hoping yet for the dowry and a peaceful

departing, had laid a strict command that no harm should be done to any

one of them unless he should be caught bloody-handed. 'Well and good!'

writes Milo; 'but this meant to say that no man might scratch himself

for fear he should kill a louse.' Nature could not endure such a

direction, so Richard then (whose own temper was none of the longest)

let himself go, fell upon a party of these brigands, put half to the

sword and hanged the other half in rows before the landward gate of

Messina. You will say that this did not advance his treaty with King

Tancred; but in a sense it did. When the Messenians came out of their

gates to attack him in open field, it was found and reported by Gaston

of Béarn, who drove them in with loss, that William des Barres and the

Count of Saint-Pol had been with them, each heading a company of

knights. Richard flew into a royal, and an Angevin, rage. He swore by

God's back that he would bring the walls flat; and so he did. 'This is

the work of that little pale devil of France, then,' he said. 'A likely

beginning, by my soul! Now let me see if I can bring two kings to reason

at once.'

He used the argument of the long arm. Bringing up his engines from the

ships, he pounded the walls of Messina to such purpose that he could

have walked in barefoot in two or three places. King Tancred came in

person to sue for peace; but Richard wanted more than dowry by this

time. 'The peace you shall have,' he said, 'is the peace of God which

passeth understanding, and for which, I take it, you are not yet ready,

unless you bring hither with you Philip of France.' This the unfortunate

Tancred really could not do; but he did bring proxies of Philip's.

Saint-Pol came, Des Barres, and the Bishop of Beauvais with his russet,

soldier's face. King Richard sat considering these worthy men.

'Ah, now, Saint-Pol, you are playing a good part in this Christian

adventure, I think!' he broke out after a time. Saint-Pol squared his

jaw. 'If I had caught you in your late sally, my friend,' Richard went

on, 'I should have hanged you on a tree, knight or no knight. Why, fool,

do you think your shameful brother worth so much treachery? With him

before your eyes can you do no better? I hope so. Get you back, and tell

King Philip this: He and I are vowed to honesty; but if he breaks faith

again, I have that in me which shall break him. As for you, Bishop of

Beauvais'--one saw the old war-priest blink--'I know nothing of your

part in this business, and am willing to think charitably. If you, an

old man, have any of the grace of God left in you, bestow some of it on

your master. Teach him to serve God as you serve Him, Beauvais. I will

try to be content with that.' He turned to Des Barres, the finest

soldier of the three. 'William,' he said more gently, for he really

liked the man, 'I hope to meet you in a better field, and side by side.

But if face to face again, William,' and he lifted his hand, 'beware of

me.'

None of them had a word to say, but with troubled faces left the

presence; which shows (to some men's thinking) that Richard's strength

lay in his cause. That was not the opinion of Des Barres, nor is it

mine. Meeting them afterwards, when he made a pact of friendship and

alliance with Tancred, and renewed that which he had had with Philip, he

showed them a perfectly open countenance. Nevertheless, he took

possession of Messina, as he had said he would, and built a great tower

upon the wall, which he called Mate-Grifon. Then he sent for his sister

and Jehane, and kept a royal Christmas in the conquered city.

Trouble was not over. There were constant strifes between nation and

nation, man and man. Winter storms delayed the Queen-Mother; Richard

fretted and fumed at the wasting of his force, but saw not the worst of

the matter. If vice was eating his army, jealousy was eating Philip's

sour little heart, and rage that of Saint-Pol. Saint-Pol, with Gurdun to

back him, had determined to kill the English King; with them went, or

was ready to go, Des Barres. He was not such a steady hater by any

means. Some men seek temptation, others fall under it; Des Barres was of

this kind.

Of temptation there was a plenty, since Richard was the most fearless of

men. When he had forgiven an injury it did not exist for him any more.

He was glad to see Des Barres, glad to play, talk, grumble, or swear

with him--a most excellent enemy. One day, idling home from a hawking

match, he got tilting with the Frenchman, with reeds for lances. Neither

seemed in earnest until Richard's horse slipped on a loose stone and

threw him. This was near the gate. You should have seen the change in

Des Barres. 'Hue! Hue! Passavant!' he yelled, possessed with the devil

of destruction; and came pounding at Richard as if he would ride over

him. At the battle-cry a swarm of fellows--Frenchmen and

Brabanters--came out and about with pikes. Richard was on his feet by

that time, perfectly advised what was astir. He was alone, but he had a

sword. This he drew, and took a stride or two towards Des Barres, who

had pulled up short of him, and was panting. The pikemen, who might have

hacked him to pieces, paused for another word. A second of time passed

without it, and Richard knew he was safe. He went up to Des Barres.

'Learn, Des Barres,' he said, 'that I allow no cries about my head save

those for Saint George.'

'Sire,' said Des Barres, 'I am no man of yours.'

'It is truly said,' replied Richard, 'but I will dub you one'; and he

smote him with the flat of his sword across the cheek. The blood leapt

after the sword.

'Soul of a virgin!' cried Des Barres, white as cloth, except for the

broad weal on his face.

'Your soul against mine, graceless dog,' said the King. 'Another word

and I pull you down.' Just then who should come riding out of the gate

but Gilles de Gurdun, armed cap-a-pie?

'Here, my lord,' said Des Barres, clearing his throat, 'comes a

gentleman who has sought your Grace with better cause than mine.'

'Who is your gentleman?' Richard asked him.

'It is De Gurdun, sire, a Norman knight whose name should be familiar.'

'I know him perfectly,' said Richard. He turned to one of the

bystanders, saying, 'Fetch that gentleman to me.' The man ran nimbly to

meet De Gurdun.

Des Barres, watching narrowly, saw Gilles start, saw him look, almost

saw the bracing of his nerves. What exactly followed was curious. Gilles

moved his horse forward slowly. King Richard, standing in leather

doublet and plumed cap, waited for him, his arms folded. Des Barres on

horseback, an enemy; the bystanders, tattered, savage, high-fed men,

enemies also; in front the most implacable enemy of all.

When De Gurdun was within spear-reach he stopped his horse and sat

looking at the King. Richard returned the look; it was an eyeing match,

soon over. Gurdun swung off the horse, threw the rein to a soldier, and

tried footing it. The steady duel of the eyes continued until Gilles was

actually within sword's distance. Here he stopped once more; finally

gave a queer little grunt, and went down on one knee. Des Barres sighed

as he eased his heart. The tension had been terrible.

Richard said, 'De Gurdun, stand up and answer me. You seek my life, as I

understand. Is it so?'

Sir Gilles began to stammer. 'No man has loved the law--no knight ever

loved lady--' and so on; but Richard cut him short.

'Answer me, man,' he said, in a voice which was nearly as dry as his

father's, 'do you wish for my life?'

'King,' said Gilles, his great emotion lending him dignity, 'if I do, is

it a strange matter? You have had my father's and brother's. You have

mine in your hand. You corrupted and then stole my beloved. Are these no

griefs?'

Richard grew impatient; he could never bear waiting.

'Do you wish my life?' he asked again. Gilles was overwrought. 'By God

on high, but I do wish it!' he cried out, almost whimpering.

King Richard threw down his sword. 'Take it then, you fool,' he said.

'You talk too much.'

A silence fell upon the party, so profound that the cicala in the dry

hedge shrilled to pierce the ear. Richard stood like a stock, with Des

Barres gaping at him. Gurdun was all of a tremble, but swung his sword

about in his sword-hand. After a while he took a deep breath, a fumbling

step forward; and Des Barres, leaning out over the saddle, caught him by

the surcoat.

'Drop that man, Des Barres,' said Richard, without moving his eyes from

the Norman. Des Barres obeyed; and as the silence resumed Gilles began

twitching his sword again. When a lizard rustled in the grass a man

started as if shot.

Gilles gave over first, threw his sword away with a sob. 'God ha' mercy,

I cannot! I cannot!' he fretted, and stood blinking the tears from his

eyes. Richard picked up his weapon and returned it to him. 'You are

brave enough, my friend,' he said, 'for better work. Go and do better in

Syria.'

'There is no better work for me, sir,' said Gurdun, 'unless you can

justify yourself.'

'I never justify myself,' said Richard. 'Give me my sword.' De Gurdun

gave it him. Richard sheathed it, went to his horse, mounted, rode away

at walking pace. Nobody moved till he was out of sight. Then said Des

Barres with a high oath, 'I could serve that King if he would let me.'

'God damn him,' said Gilles de Gurdun for his part.

It was near the end of January when they sighted over sea the painted

sails of the Queen. Mother's galley. Her fleet anchored in the roads,

and the lady came ashore. She had two interviews, one with her son, one

with Jehane. But she did not choose to see her daughter, Queen Joan, a

very handsome, free lady.

'Marriage!' cried King Richard, when this was broached. 'This is no time

to talk of marriage. I have waited six months, and now the lady must

wait a while, other six if needs be. We leave this accursed island in

two days. Between my friends and my enemies I have fought the length and

breadth of it twice over. Am I to spend my whole host killing

Christians? A little more inactivity, good mother, and I shall be in

league with the Soldan against Philip. Bring the lady to Acre, and I

will marry her there.'

'No, no, Richard,' said the Queen-Mother; 'I am needed in England. I

cannot come.'

'Then let Joan take her,' said the King.

The Queen-Mother, knowing him very well, tried him no further. She sent

for Jehane, and held her close in talk for nearly an hour.

'Never leave my son, Jehane,' was the string she harped on. 'Never leave

him for good or ill weather. Mated or unmated, never leave him.'

'Never in life, Madame,' said Jehane, then bit her lip lest she should

utter what her mind was full of. But the Queen-Mother had no eyes.

'Pray for him,' she said; and Jehane, 'I pray hourly, Madame.' Then the

Queen kissed her on both cheeks, and in such kindness they parted.