a lodging may content your nobility.  As for Madame Alois, she shall be sent for; but I think I will not meet your bevy of joglars from the south.  I have a proud stomach o’ these days; I doubt pastry from Languedoc would turn me sour; and liking monks little enough as it is, your throstle-cock of Montauban might cause me to blaspheme.  See them entertained, Drago; or better, let them entertain each other—­with singing games, holy God!  Go you, Bohun’—­and he turned—­’fetch in Madame Alois.’  Bohun went through a curtain behind him, and the King sat in thought, biting his thumbs.

Madame Alois of France came out of the inner tent, a slinking, thin girl, with the white and tragic face of the fool in a comedy set in black hair.  Richard thought she was mad by the way she stared about her from one man to another; but he went down on his knee in a moment.  Prince John turned stiff, the old King bent his brows to watch Richard.  The lady, who was dressed in black, and looked to be half fainting, shrank in an odd way towards the wall, as if to avoid a whip.  ’Too long in England, poor soul,’ Richard thought; ’but why did she come from the King’s tent?’

It was not a cheerful meeting, nor did the King show any desire to make it better.  When by roundabout and furtive ways Madame Alois at last stood drooping by his chair, he began to talk to her in English, a language unknown to Richard, though familiar enough, he saw, to his father and brother.  ’It seems to be his Grace’s desire to make me ridiculous,’ he went on to say to himself:  ’what a dead-level of grim words!  In English, it appears, you do not talk.  You stab with the tongue.’  In truth, there was no conversation.  The King or the Prince spoke, and Madame Alois moistened her lips; she looked nowhere but at the old tyrant, not at his eyes, but above them, at his forehead, and with a trepitant gaze, like a watched hare’s.  ’The King has her in thrall, soul and body,’ Richard considered.  Then his knee began to ache, and he released it.  ‘Fair sire,’ he began in his own tongue.  Madame Alois gave a start, and ‘Ha, Richard,’ says the King, ’art thou still there, man?’

‘Where else, my lord?’ asked the son.  The father looked at Alois.

‘Deign to recognise in this baron, Madame,’ he said, ’my son the Count of Poictou.  Let him salute, Madame, that which he has sought from so far, and with such humility, pardieu; your white hand, Alois.’  The strange girl quivered, then put her hand out.  Richard, kissing it, found it horribly cold.

‘Lady,’ he said, ’I pray we may be better acquainted; but I must tell you that I have no English.  Let me hope that in this good land you may recover your French.’  He got no answer from the lady, but, by heaven, he made his father angry.

‘We hope, Richard, that you will teach Madame better things than that,’ sniffed the old man, nosing about for battle.

‘I pray that I may teach her no worse, my lord,’ replied the other.  ’You will perhaps allow that for a daughter of France the tongue may have its uses.’