The abbot, as one thunderstruck, raised his hands on high.  ’O sack of sin!’ he groaned, ’O dross for the melting-pot!  O unspeakable sacrifice!’ But Jehane, gravely smiling, checked him.  ’Why, Lord Abbot, is any sacrifice too great for King Richard?’ she asked, gently reproving him.  ’Nay, go, my father; I shall do very well.  I am not at all afraid.  Now do what I shall tell you.  Kiss the hand of my lord Richard from me when you see him, bidding him remember the vows we made to each other on the day at Fontevrault when he took up the Cross, and again before the lifted Host at Cahors.  And to my lady Queen Berengere say this, that from this day forth I am wife of a man, and stand not between her bed and the King, as God knows I have never meant to stand.  Kiss me now, my father, and pray diligently for me.’  He tells us that he did, and records the day long ago when he had first kissed the poor girl in the chapel of the Dark Tower, the day when, as she hoped, she had taught her great lover to tread upon her heart.

At this time a great black, the chief of the eunuchs, came and touched her on the shoulder.  ‘Whither now, friend?’ said Jehane.  He pointed the way, being a deaf-mute.  ‘Lead,’ said she; ‘I will follow.’  And so she did.

She turned no more her head, nor did she go with it lowered, but carried it cheerfully, as if her business was good.  The black led her by many winding ways to a garden filled with orange-trees, and across this to a bronze door.  There stood two more blacks on guard, with naked swords in their hands.  The eunuch struck twice on the lintel.  The door was opened from within, and they entered.  An old lady dressed in black came to meet them; to her the eunuch handed Jehane, made a reverence, and retired.  They shut the bronze doors.  What more?  After the bath, and putting on of habits more sumptuous than she had ever heard tell of, she was taken by slaves into the Hall of Felicity.  There, among the heavy-eyed languid women, Jehane sat herself staidly down, and suckled her child.

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE GOING-UP AND GOING-DOWN OF THE MARQUESS

The Marquess of Montferrat travelled splendidly from Acre to Sidon with six galleys in his convoy.  So many, indeed, did not suffice him; for at Sidon he took off his favourite wife with her women, eunuchs and janissaries, and thus with twelve ships came to Tripolis.  Thence by the Aleppo road he went to Karak of the Knights, thence again, after a rest of two days, he started—­he, the knights and esquires of his body in cloth of gold, with scarlet housings for the mules, litters for his womenkind; with his poets, his jongleurs, his priest, his Turcopoles and favourites; all this gaudy company, for the great ascent of Mont-Ferrand.