Mall said, ’If we are found with him we shall be hanged, sure enough.  Yet the old man was kind to me.’

‘And to me he was kind,’ said Nicolete, ‘God wot.’

Then they looked at each other.  ‘Well?’ said Nicolete.  And Mall, ’What you do I will do.’  So they kissed together, knowing it was a gallows matter, and went in to the dead body of the King.  They washed it tenderly, and anointed it, composed the hands and shut down the horrible sightless eyes, then put upon it the only shirt they could find, which (being a boy’s) was a very short one.  Afterwards came the Chancellor, Stephen of Turon, called up in a great hurry from a merry-making, with one or two others, and took some order in the affair.

The Chancellor knew perfectly well that King Henry had desired to be buried in the church of the nuns at Fontevrault.  There had been an old prophecy that he should lie veiled among the veiled women which had pleased him very much, though it had often been his way to scoff at it.  But no one dared move him without the order of the new King, whoever that might happen to be.  Who could tell when Anjou was claiming a crown?  Messengers therefore were sent out hot-foot to Count Richard at Poictiers, and to Count John, who was supposed to be in Paris.  He, however, was at Tours with the French King, and got the news first.

It caught him in the wind, so to put it.  Alain, a Canon of Tours, came before him kneeling, and told him.  ’Lord Christ, Alain, what shall we do?’ says he, as white as a cheese-cloth.  They fell talking of this or that, that might or might never be done, when in burst King Philip, Saint-Pol, Des Barres, and the purple-faced Duke of Burgundy.  King Philip ran up to John and clapped him on the back.

‘King John!  King John of England!’ screamed the young man, like a witch in the air; then Burgundy began his grumble of thunder.

‘I stand for you, by God.  I am for you, man.’  But Saint-Pol knelt and touched his knee.

‘Sire, do me right, and I become your man!’ So said Des Barres also.  Count John looked about him and wrung his hands.

‘Heh, my lords!  Heh, sirs!  What shall I do now?’ He was liquid; fear and desire frittered his heart to water.

They held a great debate, all talking at once, except the subject of the bother.  He could only bite his nails and look out of the window.  To them, then, came creeping Alois of France, deadly pale, habited in the grey weeds of a nun.  How she got in, I know not; but they parted this way and that before her, and so she came very close to John in his chair, and touched him on the shoulder.  ‘What now, traitor?’ she said hoarsely.  ’Whom next?  The sister betrayed; the father; and now the brother and king?’