Then she ducked under the curtain and ran as fast as she could back to where she belonged.  Terror winged her feet.  She had spoken a forbidden word.

All sleep was gone from Charles the Fair.  He lay on his elbow in his bed and thought of things that he wished to forget:  of the wife he had put away because in eight years she had borne him no son; of his great lands that would go to his cousin, Philip of the Black Beard, whom he hated; of girls in the plain who wooed him with soft eyes and whom he passed by; of a Jew who lay in a dungeon beneath the Castle because of usury and other things.

After a time he slept again, but lightly, for the sun came in through the deep, unshaded window and fell on his face and on the rushes that covered the floor.  And in his sleep the grimness was gone, and the pride.  And his mouth, which was sad, contended with the firmness of his chin.

Clotilde went back to her bed and tucked her feet under her to warm them.  In the next room her nurse lay on a bed asleep, with her mouth open; outside in the stone corridor a page slept on a skin, with a corner over him against the draught.

She thought things over while she warmed her feet.  It was clear that singing did not soften all hearts.  Perhaps she did not sing very well.  But the Bishop had said that after one had done a good act one might pray with hope.  She decided to do a good act and then to pray to see her mother; she would pray also to become a boy so that her father might care for her.  But the Bishop considered it a little late for such a prayer.

She made terms with the Almighty, sitting on her bed.

“I shall do a good act,” she said, “on this the birthday of Thy Son, and after that I shall ask for the thing Thou knowest of.”

After much thinking, she decided to free the Jew.  And being, after all, her father’s own child, she acted at once.

It was a matter of many cold stone steps and much fumbling with bars.  But Guillem the gaoler had crept up to the hall and lay sleeping by the fire, with a dozen dogs about him.  It was the time of the Truce of God, and vigilance was relaxed.  Also Guillem was in love with a girl of the village and there was talk that the seigneur, in his loneliness, had seen that she was beautiful.  So Guillem slept to forget, and the Jew lay awake because of rats and anxiety.

The Jew rose from the floor when Clotilde threw the grating open, and blinked at her with weary and gentle eyes.

“It is the birthday of our Lord,” said Clotilde, “and I am doing a good deed so that I may see my mother again.  But go quickly.”  Then she remembered something the Bishop had said to her, and eyed him thoughtfully as he stared at her.

“But you do not love our Lord!”

The Jew put out his foot quietly so that she could not close the grating again.  But he smiled into her eyes.

“Your Lord was a Jew,” he said.