off me, though I drained more blood to do it.  Then, that not sufficing to save him, I gave myself to the Old Man of Musse; to be his wife, one of his women, do you understand?  His wife, I say.  And you talk now of father and brothers and your robbery, to me who am become an old man’s toy, one of many?  What are they to my soul, and my heart’s blood, to my life and light, and the glory that I had from Richard?  Oh, you fool, you fool, what do you know of love?  You think it is embracing, clipping, playing with a chin:  you fool, it is scorching your heart black, it is welling blood by drops, it is fasting in sight of food, death where sweet life offers, shame held more honourable than honour.  Oh, Saint Mary, star of women, what do men know of love?’ Dry-eyed and pinched, she looked about her as if to find an answer in the sullen moors.  If she had looked up to the heavy skies she might have had one; for on the tower’s top stood King Richard like a ghost.

‘Listen now to me, Jehane,’ said Gilles, red as fire.  ’I have hated your King for four years, and three times sought his life.  But now he has beaten me altogether.  Too strong, too much king, for a man to dare anything singly against him.  What! he slept, and I could not do it; and then I slept, and he awoke and let me lie.  Then once again I woke and thought him still sleeping, and stabbed the bed; and he came behind me, stealthy as a cat, and trounced me over his knee like a child.  Oh, oh, Jehane, he is more than man, and I by so much less.  And now, and now, he sends me out to win his ransom as if I were an old lover of his, and I am going to do it!  Why, God in glory look down upon us, what is the force that he hath?’

Gilles now shivered and looked about him; but Jehane, having mastered her breath, smiled.

‘He is King,’ she said.  ’Come, Gilles, I will go with you.  You shall find the Abbot Milo, and I the Queen-Mother.  I have the ear of her.’

‘I will do as I am bid, Jehane,’ said the cowed man, ’because I needs must.’

As they went away together, King Richard on the roof threw up his arms to the sky, howling like a night wolf.  ’Now, God, Thou hast stricken me enough.  Now listen Thou, I shall strike if I can.’

* * * * *

After a while came Cogia the Assassin; to whom Jehane said, ’Cogia, I must take a journey with this man.  You shall put us on the way, and wait for me until I come again.’

‘Mistress,’ replied Cogia, ‘I am your slave.  Do as you will.’

She put on the dress of a religious, Gilles the weeds of a pilgrim from Jerusalem.  Then Cogia bought them asses in Gratz and led them down to Trieste.  They found a ship going to Bordeaux, went on board, had a fair passage, passed the Pillars of Hercules on their tenth day out, and were in the Gironde in five more.  At Bordeaux they separated.  Gilles went to Poictiers in a company of pilgrims; Jehane, having learned that Queen Berengere was at Cahors, turned her face to the Gascon hills.  But she had left behind her a prisoner to whom death could bring the only ransom worth a thought.