’You speak after your kind.  Now, Gurdun, get you home.  Go to my friends in Normandy, to my brother Mortain, to my brother of Rouen; bid them raise a ransom.  I must go back.  You have disturbed me, sickened me of assassination, reminded me of what I intended to forget.  If I get any more assassins I shall break prison and the Archduke’s head, and I should be sorry to do that, as I have no grudge against him.  Find Des Barres, Gurdun, raise all Normandy.  Find above all Mercadet, and set him to work in Poictou.  As for England, my brother Geoffrey will see to it.  Aquitaine I leave to the Lord of Bearn.  Off now, Gurdun, do as I bid you.  But if you speak another word to me of Madame d’Anjou, by God’s death I will wring your neck.  You are not fit to speak of me:  how should you dare speak of her?  You!  A stab-i’-the-dark, a black-entry cutter of throats, a hedgerow knifer!  Foh, you had better speak nothing, but be off.  Stay, I will call the castellan.’  And so he did, roaring through the key-hole.  The gaoler came up flying.

‘Conduct this animal into the fresh air, Dietrich,’ said King Richard; ’send him about his business.  Tell your master he will now do better.  And when that is done, let me go on to the leads that I may walk a little.’

Gurdun followed his guide speechless; but the Archduke was very vexed, and declined to see him.  ’I decide to be a villain, and he makes me a vain villain,’ said the great man.  ‘Bid him go to the devil.’  So then Gilles with head hanging came out of the gate, and Jehane leaped from her angle to confront him.

To say that he dropped like a shot bird is to say wrong; for a bird drops compact, but Gilles went down disjunct.  His jaw dropped, his hands dropped, his knees, last his head.  ‘Ha, Heart of Jesus!’ he said, and covered his eyes.  She began to talk like a hissing snake.

‘What have you done with the King?  What have you done?’ King Richard on the roof peered down and saw her.  He turned quite grey.

‘I could do nothing, Jehane,’ Gilles whimpered; ‘I went to kill him.’

’You fool, I know it.  I saw you go.  I could have stayed you as I do now.  But I would not.’

‘Why not, Jehane?’

She spurned him with a look.  ’Because I love King Richard, and know you, Gilles, what you can do and what not.  Pshutt!  You are a rat.’

‘Rat,’ says Gilles, ’I may be, but a rat may be offended.  This king robbed me of you, and slew my father and brothers.  Therefore I hated him.  Is it not enough reason?’

Her eyes grew cold with scorn.  ‘Your father?  Your brothers?’ she echoed him.  ’Pooh, I have given him more than that.  I have burned my heart quite dry.  I have accepted shame, I have sold my body and counted as nothing my soul.  Robbed you?  Nay, but I robbed myself, and robbed him also, when I cut him out of my own flesh.  From the day when, through my prayers against blood, he was affianced to the Spanish woman, I held him