Now, this time it was Jehane and not his conscience which had sent him to Louviers.  First of all Jehane had pleaded the Sepulchre, his old father, filial obedience, and he had laughed at the sweet fool.  But when she, grown wiser, urged him to pleasure her by treading on the heart she had given him, he could not deny her.  He was converted, not convinced.  So he rode alone, three hundred yards from his lieges, reasoning out how he could preserve his honour and yet yield.  The more he thought the less he liked it, but all the more he felt necessity at his throat.  And, as always with him, when he thought he seemed as if turned to stone.  ‘One way or another,’ Milo tells us, ’every man of the House of Anjou had his unapproachable side, so accustomed were they to the fortress-life.’

A broad plain, watered by many rivers, showed the towers of Louviers and red roofs cinctured by the greatest of them; short of the walls were the ranked white tents, columned smoke, waggons, with men and horses, as purposeless, little, and busy as a swarm of bees.  In the midst of this array was a red pavilion with a standard at the side, too heavy for the wind.  All was set in the clear sunless air of an autumn day in Normandy; the hour, one short of noon.  Richard reined up for his company, on a little hill.

‘The powers of England, my lords,’ he said, pointing with his hand.  All stayed beside him.  Gaston of Bearn tweaked his black beard.

‘Let us be done with the business, Richard,’ said this knight, ’before the irons can get out.’

‘What!’ cried the Count, ‘shall a father smite his son?’ No one answered:  in a moment he was ashamed of himself.  ‘Before God,’ he said, ’I mean no impiety.  I will do what I have undertaken as gently as may be.  Come, gentlemen.’  He rode on.

The camp was defended by fosse and bridge.  At the barbican all the Aquitanians except Richard dismounted, and all stayed about him while a herald went forward to tell the King who was come in.  The King knew very well who it was, but chose not to know it; he kept the herald long enough to make his visitors chafe, then sent word that the Count of Poictou would be received, but alone.  Claiming his right to ride in, Richard followed the heralds at a foot’s pace, alone, ungreeted by any.  At the mount of the standard he got off his horse, found the ushers of the King’s door, and went swiftly to the entry of the pavilion (which they held open for him), as though, like some forest beast, he saw his prey.  There in the entry he stiffened suddenly, and stiffly went down on his two knees.  Midway of the great tent, square and rugged before him, with working jaws and restless little fired eyes, sat the old King his father, hands on knees, between them a long bare sword.  Beside him was his son John, thin and flushed, and about, a circle of peers:  two bishops in purple, a pock-marked monk of Cluny, Bohun, Grantmesnil, Drago de Merlou, and a few more.  On the ground was a secretary biting his pen.