The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay by Maurice Hewlett (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

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