Returning to his deeds at Poietiers, I pick up the story from the Abbot Milo, whom he found there.  The Count, you may judge, kept his own counsel.  Milo was his confessor, but at this time Richard was not in a confessing humour; therefore Milo had to gather scandal as he could.  There was very little difficulty about this.  ‘In the city of Tours,’ he writes, ’in those middle days of Advent, it appears that rumour, still gadding, was adrift with names almost too high for the writing.  There were many there who had no business; the Count of Blois, for instance, the Baron of Chateaudun, the fighting Bishop of Durham (I fear, a hireling shepherd), Geoffrey Talebot, Hugh of Saint-Circ.  One reason of this was that King Henry was in England, not yet come to an agreement with the French King, nor likely to it if what we heard was true, yea, or a tenth part of it.  God forbid that I should write what these ears heard; but this I will say.  It was I who told the shocking tale to my lord Richard, adding also this hint, that his former friend was involved in it, Eudo Count of Saint-Pol.  If you will believe me, not the tale of iniquity moved him; but he received it with shut mouth, and eyes fixed upon mine.  But at the name of the Count of Saint-Pol he took a breath, at the mention of his part in the business he took a deep breath, and when he heard that this man was yet at Tours, he got up from his chair and struck the table with his closed fist.  Knowing him as I did, I considered that the weather looked black for Saint-Pol.

’Next day Count Richard moved his hosts out of the fields by Poietiers to the very borders of his country, and calling a halt at Saint-Gilles and making snug against alarms, himself, with my lord Gaston of Bearn, with the Dauphin of Auvergne also, and the Viscount of Beziers, crossed the march into Touraine, and so came to Tours about a week before Christmas, the weather being bright and frosty.’

It seems he did not take the abbot with him, for the rest of the good man’s record is full of morality, a certain sign that facts failed him.  There may have been reasons; at any rate the Count went into Tours in a trenchant humour, with ears keen and wide for all shreds of report.  And he got enough and to spare.  In the wet market-place, on the flags of the great churchyard, by the pillars of the nave, in the hall, in the chambers, in the inn-galleries; wherever men met or women whispered in each other’s necks, there flew the names of Alois, King Philip’s sister, and of King Henry, Count Richard’s father.  Richard made short work, short and dry.  It was in mid-hall in the Bishop’s palace, one day after dinner, that he met and stopped the Count of Saint-Pol.

‘What now, beau sire?’ says the Count, out of breath.  Richard’s eyes were alight.  ‘This,’ says he, ‘that you lie in your throat.’

Count Eudo looked about him, and everywhere saw the faces of men risen from the board intent on him.  ‘Strange words, beau sire,’ says he, very white.  Richard raised his voice till the metal rang in it.