But King Richard of the high head mounted his horse in the churchyard, and rode among the people before Jehane’s bearers to the Street of the Camel.  Squires of his threw silver coins among the crowds who filled the ways.

Within the house, he laid her on her bed, and held up the child before her, high in the air.  He was in that great mood where nothing could resist him.  She, faint and fragrant on the bed, so frail as to seem transparent, a disembodied sprite, smiled because she felt at ease, as the feeble do when they first lie down.

‘Lo, Fulke of Anjou!’ sang Richard—­’Fulke, son of Richard, the son of Henry, the son of Geoffrey, the son of Fulke!  Fulke, my son Fulke, I will make thee a knight even now!’ He held the babe in one hand, with the free hand drew his long sword.  The flat blade touched the nodding little head.

’Rise up, Sir Fulke of Anjou, true knight of thine house, Sieur de Cuigny when I have thee home again.  By the Face!’ he cried shortly, as if remembering something, ’we must get him the badge:  a switch of wild broom!’

‘Dear lord, sweet lord,’ murmured Jehane, faint in bed, nearly gone:  but he raved on.

’When I lay, even as thou, Fulke, naked by my mother, my father sent for a branch of the broom, and stuck it in the pillow against I could carry it.  And shalt thou go without it, boy?  Art not thou of the broom-bearers?’ He put the child into the nurse’s arm and went to the door.  He called for Gaston of Bearn, for the Dauphin of Auvergne, for Mercadet, for the devil.  The Bishop of Salisbury came running in.  ‘Bishop,’ said King Richard, ’you must serve me to-day.  You must take ship, my friend, with speed; you must go to Bordeaux, thence a-horseback to the moor above Angers.  Pluck me a branch of the wild broom and return.  I must have it, I tell you; so go.  Haste, Bishop.  God be with you.’

The Bishop began to splutter.  ‘Hey, sire—!’

’Never call me that again, Bishop, if your ship is within sight by sunset,’ he said.  ’Call me rather the Prince of the Devils.  See my chancellor, take my ring to him, omit nothing.  Off with you, and back with all speed.’

‘Ha, sire, look you now,’ cried the desperate bishop, ’there will be no broom before next Easter.  Here we are at Lammas.’

‘There will be a miracle,’ said Richard; ‘I am sure of it.  Go.’  Fairly pushing him from the door, he returned to find Jehane in a dead faint.  This set him raving a new tune.  He fell upon his knees incontinent, raised her in his arms, carried her about, kissed her all over, cried upon the saints and God, did every extravagance under the sun, omitted the one wise thing of letting in the physicians.  Abbot Milo at last, coming in, saved Jehane from him for the deeper purposes of God.

The Count of Saint-Pol, going to the Castle, to the Queen’s side, found the Marquess with her.  She also lay white and twisting on a couch, crisping and uncrisping her little hands.  Montferrat stood at her head; three of her ladies knelt about her, whispering in her own tongue, proffering orange water, sweetmeats, a feather whisk.  Saint-Pol knelt in her view.