But Jehane remained at Saint-Pol-la-Marche, praying much, going little abroad, seeing few persons.  Then came (since rumour is a gadabout) Sir Gilles de Gurdun, as she knew he would, and knelt before her, and kissed her hand.  Gilles was a square-shouldered, thick-set youth of the black Norman sort, ruddy, strong-jawed, small-eyed, low in the brow, bullet-headed.  He was no taller than she, looked shorter, and had nothing to say.  He had loved her since the time when she was an overgrown girl of twelve years, and he a squire about her father’s house learning mannishness.  The King of England had dubbed him a knight, but she had made him a man.  She knew him to be a good one; as dull as a mud-flat, but honest, wholesome, and of decent estate.  In a moment, when he was come again, she saw that he was a long lover who would treat her well.

‘God help me, and him also,’ she thought; ’it may be that I shall need him before long.’

CHAPTER III

IN WHAT HARBOUR THEY FOUND THE OLD LION

At Evreux, across the heath, Count Richard found his company:  the Viscount Adhemar of Limoges (called for the present the Good Viscount), the Count of Perigord, Sir Gaston of Bearn (who really loved him), the Bishop of Castres, and the Monk of Montauban (a singing-bird); some dozen of knights with their esquires, pages, and men-at-arms.  He waited two days there for Abbot Milo to come up with last news of Jehane; then at the head of sixty spears he rode fleetly over the marshes towards Louviers.  After his first, ‘You are well met, my lords,’ he had said very little, showing a cold humour; after a colloquy with Milo, which he had before he left his bed, he said nothing at all.  Alone, as became one of his race, he rode ahead of his force; not even the chirping Monk (who remembered his brother Henry and often sighed for him) cared to risk a shot from his strong eyes.  They were like blue stones, full of the cold glitter of their fire.  It was at times like this, when a man stands naked confronting his purpose, that one saw the hag riding on the back of Anjou.

He was not thinking of it now, but the truth is that there had hardly been a time in his short life when he had not been his father’s open enemy.  He could have told you that it had not been always his fault, though he would never have told you.  But I say that what he, a youth of thirty, had made of his inheritance was as nothing to that elder’s wasting of his.  In moments of hot rage Richard knew this, and justified himself; but the melting hour came again when he heaped all reproach upon himself, believing that but for such and such he might have loved this rooted, terrible old man who assuredly loved not him.  Richard was neither mule nor jade; he was open to persuasion on two sides.  Compunction was one:  you could touch him on the heart and bring him weeping to his knees; affection was another:  if he loved the petitioner he yielded handsomely.