He drove Philip into a truce of years, pushed down into Touraine, and thence went to Anjou, but not to sit still.  He was never still, never seemed to sleep, or get any of the solace of a man.  He ate voraciously, but was not nourished, drank long, but was never drunken, revelled without mirth, hunted, fought, but got no joy.  He utterly refused to see the Queen, who was at Cahors in the south.  ‘She is no wife of mine,’ he said; ‘let her go home.’  Tentative messages were brought by very tentative messengers from his brother John.  Good service, such and such, had been done in Languedoc; so and so had been hanged, or gibbeted, so and so rewarded:  what had our dear and royal brother to say?  To each he said the same thing:  ‘Let my good brother come.’  But John never came.

No one knew what to make of him; he spoke to none of his affairs, none dared speak to him.  Milo writes in his book, ’The King came back from Styria as one who should arise from the grave with all the secrets of the chattering ghosts to brood upon.  Some worm gnawed his vitals, some maggot had drilled a hole in his brain.  I know not what possessed him or what could possess him beside a devil.  This I know, he never sent to me for direction in spiritual affairs, nor (so far as I could learn) to any other religious man.  He never took the Sacrament, nor seemed to want it.  But be sure he wanted it most grievously.’  So, insanely ridden, he lived for three years, one of which would have worn a common man to the bones.  But the fire still crackled, freely fed; his eyes were burning bright, his mind (when he gave it) was keen, his head (when he lent it) seemed cool.  What was he living for?  Did Death himself look askance at such a man?  Or find him a good customer who sent him so many souls?  Two things only were clear:  he sent messenger after messenger to Rome, and he returned his wife’s dowry.  Those must mean divorce or repudiation of marriage.  Certainly the Queen’s party took it so, though the Queen herself clung pitifully to her throne; and the Queen’s party grew the larger for the belief.

Such as it was, the Queen’s party nested in Aquitaine and the Limousin, with all the turbulent lords of that duchy under its flag.  Prince John himself was with Berengere at Cahors, biting his nails as was usual with him, one eye watching for Richard’s vengeance, one eye wide for any peace-offering from the French King.  He dared not act overtly against Richard, nor dared to take up arms for him.  So he waited.  The end was not very far off.

Count Eustace of Saint-Pol was the moving spirit in these parts, grown to be an astute, unscrupulous man of near thirty years.  His spies kept him well informed of Richard’s intolerable state; he knew of the embassies to Rome, of the fierce murdering moods, of the black moods, of the cheerless revelry and fruitless energy of this great stricken Angevin.  ’In some such hag-ridden day my enemy may be led to overtax himself,’ he considered.