"Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund Heleigh rides
forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. Reign wisely, my
Queen, that hereafter men may not say I was slain in an evil cause. Do
not shame my maiden venture."
"I will not shame you," the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change
of voice: "O my Osmund! My Osmund!"
He caught her by each wrist. "Hush!" he bade her, roughly; and stood
crushing both her hands to his lips, with fierce staring. "Wife of my
King! wife of my King!" he babbled; and then flung her from him, crying,
with a great lift of speech: "I have not failed you! Praise God, I have
not failed you!"
From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter and color.
In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean pedant sat
conspicuously erect, though by this the fear of death had gripped him to
the marrow; and as he went he sang defiantly, taunting the weakness of
his flesh.
Sang Osmund Heleigh:
"_Love sows, and lovers reap; and ye will see
The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling
Never again when in the grave ye be
Incurious of your happiness in spring,
And get no grace of Love there, whither he
That bartered life for love no love may bring._"
So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui
Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a
litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh's body.
"For the man was a brave one," Camoys said to the Queen, "and in the
matter of the reparation he owed me acted very handsomely. It is fitting
that he should have honorable interment."
"That he shall not lack," the Queen said, and gently unclasped from
Osmund's neck the thin gold chain, now locketless. "There was a portrait
here," she said; "the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his youth,
Messire Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart."
Camoys answered stiffly: "I imagine this same locket to have been the
object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, shortly before we
began our combat. I do not rob the dead, madame."
"The act was very like him," the Queen said. "Messire Camoys, I think
that this day is a festival in heaven."
Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King's name. But Osmund
Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding it to be written on
his tomb that he died in the Queen's cause.
How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently Dame
Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how in the
end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England wept
therefor--this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to record six days
of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh might have done) I
say modestly with him of old, _Majores majora sonent_. Nevertheless, I
assert that many a forest was once a pocketful of acorns.