‘I see an old fish on his back.  He is dead.’

Jehane laughed quietly.  ’He has been there many days.  Tell the knight who sent you to stand thereabout, looking up.  Tell him not to be there at any hour save that of mass, or vespers.  Will you do this, dear boy?’

‘Certain sure,’ said the boy.  Jehane gave him money and a kiss, then fastened herself to the window.

Gaston excelled in pantomime.  Every day for a week he saw Jehane at her window, and enacted many strange plays.  He showed her the old King stormy in his tent, the meagre white unrest of Alois, the outburst at Autafort and Bertran de Born with his tongue out; the meeting at Tours, the battle, the death of the Count her brother.  He was admirable on Richard’s love-desires.  There could be no doubt at all about them.  Pricked by his feats in this sort, Jehane overcame her reserve and turned her members into marionettes.  She puffed her cheeks, hung her head, scowled upwards:  there was Gilles de Gurdun to the life.  She looped finger and thumb of the right hand and pierced them with the ring finger:  ohe! her fate.  Gaston in reply to this drew his sword and ran a cypress-tree through the body.  Jehane shook a sorrowful head, but he waved all such denials away with a hand so expressive that Jehane broke the window and leaned her body out.  Gaston uttered a cheerful cry.

Have no fear, lovely prisoner.  If that is his intention he is gone.  I kill him.  It is arranged.’

‘My brother Eustace is in Paris,’ says Jehane in a low but carrying voice, ‘to get my marriage from the King.’

‘Again I say, fear nothing,’ Gaston cried; but Jehane strained out as far as she could.

’You must go away from here.  The window is broken now, and they will find me out.  Take a message to my lord.  If he is free indeed, he knows me his in life or death.  I seek to do him service.  Wed or unwed, what is that to me?  I am still Jehane.’

’Your name is Red Heart, and Golden Rose, and Loiale Amye!  Farewell, Star of the North,’ said Gaston on his knees.  ’I seek this Gurdun of yours.’

He found him after some days’ perilous prowling of the Norman march.  Gilles had received the summons of his Duke to be vi et armis at Rouen; a little later Gaston might have met him in the field of broad battle, but such delay was not to his mind.  He met him instead in a woodland glade near Gisors, alone (by a great chance), sword on thigh.

‘Beef, thou diest,’ said the Bearnais, peaking his beard.  Gilles made no reply that can be written, for what letters can shape a Norman grunt?  Perhaps ‘Wauch!’ comes nearest.  They fought on horseback, with swords, from noon to sunset, and having hacked one another out of the similitude of men, there was nothing left them to do but swoon side by side on the sodden leaves.  In the morning Gaston, unclogging one eye, perceived that his enemy had gone.  ‘No matter,’ said the spent hero to himself.  ’I will wait till he comes back, and have at him again.’