Then he broke with Richard altogether; and then came Gilles de Gurdun with secret words and offers.

The Archduke drained his beer-horn, and with his big hand wrung his beard dry.  He winked hard at Gilles, whom he thought to be a hired assassin of deplorable address sent, probably, by Count John.

‘Are you angry enough to do what you propose?’ he asked him.  ’I am not, let me tell you.’

‘I have been trying to kill him for four years,’ said Gilles.

‘And are you man enough, my fellow?’ Gilles cast down his eyes.

’I have not been man enough yet, since he still lives.  I think I am now.’  Then there was a pause.

‘What is your price?’ asked Luitpold after this.

Gilles said, ‘I have no price’; and the Archduke, ’You suit my humour exactly.’

* * * * *

Richard, I say, had begun to sing from the day he was sure that the Archduke had given him up.  Physical relief may have had something to do with that, but moral certainty had more.  What made him fume or freeze was doubt.  There was very little room for doubt just now but that his enemies would prove too many for Austria’s scruples.  His friends?  He was not aware that he had any friends.  Des Barres, Gaston, Auvergne, Milo?  What did they amount to?  His sister Joan, his mother, his brothers?  Here he shrugged, knowing his own race too well.  He had never heard of the Angevin who helped any Angevin but himself.  Lastly, Jehane.  He had lost her by his own fault and her extreme nobility.  Let her go, glorious among women!  He was alone.  Odd creature, he began to sing.

Singing like a genius to the broad splash of sunlight on brickwork, Gilles de Gurdun found him.  Richard was sitting on a bench against the wall, one knee clasped in his hands, his head thrown back, his throat rippling with the tide of his music.  He looked as fresh and gallant a figure as ever in his life; his beard trimmed sharply, his strong hair brushed back, his doublet green, his trunks of fine leather, his shoes of yet finer.  The song he was upon was Li Chastel d’ Amors, which runs—­

     Las portas son de parlar
     Al eissir e al entrar: 
     Qui gen non sab razonar,

     Defors li ven a estar. 
     E las claus son de prejar: 
     Ab cel obron li cortes—­

and so on through many verses, made continuous by the fact that the end of each sixth line forms the rhyme of the next five.  Now, Gilles knew nothing of Southern minstrelsy, and if he had, the pitch he was screwed to would have shrilled such knowledge out of him.  At ’Defors li ven a estar,’ he came in, and sturdily forward.  Richard saw him and put up his hand:  on went the hammered rhymes—­

     E las claus son de prejar: 
     Ab cel obron li cortes.

Here was a little break.  Gilles, very dark, took a step; up shot Richard’s warning hand—­