‘By Beelzebub, the god of this place,’ said that deep-voiced hairy man, ’you shall see what the Archduke is when you want him.  But I am no murderer.  I am going home.  I know what is due to a prince, and from a prince.’

‘Do as you please, my lord,’ said Saint-Pol; ’but our schemes are like to be endangered by such goings.’

‘I have so little liking for your schemes, to be plain with you,’ replied the Archduke, ’that they may fail and fail again for me.  How I deal with the King of England, who has insulted me beyond hope, is a matter for him and me to determine.’

‘Cousin,’ said Montferrat, ‘you desert me.’

‘Cousin again,’ said the Archduke, ‘do you wonder?’ And so he walked out.

‘Punctilious boar!’ cried Saint-Pol in a fume, ’who can only get his tushes in one way!  Now, Marquess, what are we to do?’

The Marquess smiled darkly, and tapped his nose.  ’I have my business in good train.  I have an ancient friend on Lebanon.  Stand in with me, the pair of you, and I have all done smoothly.’

‘You hire?’ asked Saint-Pol, drily.  Then he shrugged—­’Oh, but we may trust you!’

‘Per la Madonna!’ said the Marquess.

‘What will you do, Gilles?’ Saint-Pol asked the Norman.  ’Will you leave it to the Marquess of Montferrat?’

‘I will not,’ said Gilles.  ’I follow King Richard from point to point.  I hire nobody.’

The Marquess’s hands went up, desperate of such folly.  ’You only with me, my Eustace!’ he said.

Saint-Pol looked up.  ’I differ from either.  I have a finer plan than either.  You are satisfied with a sword-stroke in the back—­’

‘By my soul, it shall not be in the back!’ cried De Gurdun.  Saint-Pol shrugged again.

’That is the Marquess’s way.  But what matter?  You want to see him down.  So do I, by heaven, but in hell, not on the earth.  I will see him tormented.  I will see him ashamed.  I will wreck his hopes.  I will make him a mockery of all kings, drag his high spirit through the mud of disastrousness.  Pouf!  Do you think him all flesh?  He is finer stuff than that.  What he makes others I seek to make him-soiled, defiled, a blown rag.  There is work to be done in that kind here and at home.  King Philip will see to one; I stay with the host.’

‘It is a good plan,’ said the Marquess; ’I admire it exceedingly.  But steel is safer for a common man.  I go to Lebanon, for my part, to my friends there.  But I think we are in agreement.’

Before they went away, they cut their arms with a dagger, and mingled their blood.  The Marquess wrapped his wound deep in his cloak to keep the flies from it.  Across the silence of the night, as they made their way into the city, came the cry of the watchman from a belfry:  ’Save us, Holy Sepulchre!’ It floated from tower to tower, from land far out to sea.  Jehane, dry in her hot bed, heard it; Richard, on his knees in an oratory, heard it, crossed himself, and repeated the words.  Queen Berengere moaned in her sleep; the Duke of Burgundy snored; and the Arabian spat into the lagoon.