He presently said, “You may go, Yeck.”  He had risen, the magisterial attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast aside.  “Oh, God!” he said; “you, madame!” His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking at the air.

Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval before she said, “I do not recognize you, messire.”

“And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago the King-Count Raymond Berenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his court four daughters, each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king.  First, Meregrett, the eldest, now regnant in France; then Alianora, the second and most beautiful of these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as the Unattainable Princess.  She was married a long while ago, madame, to the King of England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these islands.”

Dame Alianora’s eyes were narrowing.  “There is something in your voice,” she said, “which I recall.”

He answered:  “Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for it is a voice which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were younger.  I concede with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated since the reign of Cynara.  Yet have you quite forgotten the Englishman who made so many songs of you?  They called him Osmund Heleigh.”

“He made the Sestina of Spring which won the violet crown at my betrothal,” the Queen said; and then, with eagerness:  “Messire, can it be that you are Osmund Heleigh?” He shrugged assent.  She looked at him for a long time, rather sadly, and demanded if he were the King’s man or of the barons’ party.

The nervous hands were raised in deprecation.  “I have no politics,” Messire Heleigh began, and altered it, gallantly enough, to, “I am the Queen’s man, madame.”

“Then aid me, Osmund,” she said.

He answered with a gravity which singularly became him, “You have reason to understand that to my fullest power I will aid you.”

“You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us.”  He nodded assent.  “Now they hold the King, my husband, captive at Kenilworth.  I am content that he remain there, for he is of all the King’s enemies the most dangerous.  But, at Wallingford, Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince Edward.  The Prince must be freed, my Osmund.  Warren de Basingbourne commands what is left of the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and it is he who must liberate my son.  Get me to Bristol, then.  Afterward we will take Wallingford.”  The Queen issued these orders in cheery, practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, for she was a capable woman.

“But you, madame?” he stammered.  “You came alone?”