’I will never look upon the city, though I have risked all for the sake of it,’ said Richard; ’for now I know that it was no design of God’s to allow me to take it, although it was certainly His desire that I should come into this country.  Perhaps He thought me other than now I am.  I will not look.  For if I look upon it I shall lead my men up against it; and then they will be cut off and destroyed, since we are too few.  I will never see what I cannot save.’

Said Gilles between his teeth, ’You robber, you have seen my wife, and cannot save her now’ Richard laughed softly.

‘God bless her,’ he said, ’she is my true wife, and will be saved sure enough.  Yet I will tell you this, Gurdun.  If she was not mine she should be yours; and what is more, she may be so yet.’

‘You speak idly,’ said Gurdun, ‘of things which no man knows.’

‘Ah,’ said the King, ‘but I do know them.  Leave me:  I wish to pray.’

Gilles moved off, and sat himself on the edge of the hill looking towards Jerusalem.  If Richard prayed, it was with the heart, for his lips never opened.  But I believe that his heart, in this hour of clear defeat, was turned to stone.  He took his joys with riot, his triumphs calmly; his griefs he shut in a trap.  Such a nature as his, I suppose, respects no persons.  Whether God beat him, or his enemy, he would take it the same way.  All that Gilles heard him say aloud was this:  ’What I have done I have done:  deliver us from evil.’  He bade no farewell to his hope, he asked no greeting for his altered way.  When he had turned his back upon the sacred places he lowered his shield; and then rode down the hill into the cold shadow of the valley.

If he was changed, or if his soul, naked of hope, was stricken bleak, so was the road he had to go.  That day he broke up his camp and fared for Ascalon and the sea.  Stormy weather set in, the rains overtook him; he was quagged, blighted with fever, lost his way, his men, his men’s love.  Camp-sickness came and spread like a fungus.  Men, rotten through to the brain, died shrieking, and as they shrieked they cursed his name.  One, a Poictevin named Rolf, whom he knew well, turned away his blackened face when Richard came to visit him.

‘Ah, Rolf,’ said the King, ‘dost thou turn away from me, man?’

‘I do that, by our Lord,’ said Rolf, ’since by these deeds of thine my wife and children will starve, or she become a whore.’

‘As God lives,’ said Richard, ‘I will see to it.’

‘I do not think He can be living any more,’ said Rolf, ’if He lets thee live, King Richard.’  Richard went away.  The time dragged, the rain fell pitilessly, without end.  He found rivers in floods, fords roaring torrents, all ways choked.  At every turn the Duke of Burgundy and Saint-Pol worked against him.

Also he found Ascalon in ruins, but grimly set about rebuilding it.  This took him all the winter, because the French (judging, perhaps, that they had done their affair) took to the ships and sailed back to Acre.  There they heard, what came more slowly to King Richard, strange news of the Marquess of Montferrat, and terrible news of Jehane Saint-Pol.