‘Why, what sacrifice shall I do?’ says the King.

Milo stood up in his stirrups, greatly exalted in the spirit.

‘My lord,’ he said, ’behold, it is for two years that you have borne the sign of that sacrifice upon you, but yet have done nothing of it.  During these years God’s chosen seat hath lain dishonoured, become the wash-pot of the heathen.  The Holy Tree, stock beyond price, Rod of Grace, figure of freedom, is in bonds.  The Sepulchre is ensepulchred; Antichrist reigns.  Lord, Lord,’—­here the Abbot shook his lifted finger,—­’how long shall this be?  You ask me of sin and sacrifice.  Behold the way.’

King Richard jerked his head, then his horse’s.  Get back, Milo, and leave me,’ he said curtly, struck in the spurs, and galloped away over the grey down.

The cavalcade halted at Thouars, and lay the night in a convent of the Order of Savigny.  King Richard kept himself to himself, ate little, spoke less.  He prayed out the night, or most of it, kneeling in his shirt in the sanctuary, with his bare sword held before him like a cross.  Next morning he called up his household by the first cock, had them out on the road before the sun, and pushed forward with such haste that it was one hour short of noon when they saw the great church of the nuns of Fontevrault like a pile of dim rock in their way.

At a mile’s distance from the walls the King got off his horse, and bid his squires strip him.  He ungirt his sword, took off helm and circlet, cloak, blazoned surcoat, the girdle of his county.  Beggared so of all emblems of his grace, clad only in hauberk of steel, bareheaded, without weapon, and on foot, he walked among his mounted men into the little town of Fontevrault.  That which he could not do off, his sovereign inches, sovereign eye, gait of mastery, prevailed over all other robbery of his estate.  The people bent their knees as he passed; not a few—­women with babies in their shawls, lads and girls—­caught at his hand or hauberk’s edge, to kiss it and get the virtue out of him that is known to reside in a king.  When he came within sight of the church he knelt and let his head sink down to his breast.  But his grief seemed to strike inwards like a frost; he stiffened and got up, and went forward.  No one would have guessed him a penitent then, who saw him mount the broad steps to meet his brother.  Before the shut doors of the abbey was Count John, very splendid in a purple cloak, his crown of a count upon his yellow hair.  He stood like a king among his peers, but flushed and restless, twiddling his fingers as kings do not twiddle theirs.

Irresolution kept him where he was until Richard had topped the first flight of steps.  But then he came down to meet him in too much of a hurry, tripping, blundering the degrees, nodding and poking his head, with hands stretched out and body bent, like his who supplicates what he does not deserve.

‘Hail, King of England, O hail!’ he said, wheedling, royally vested, royally above, yet grovelling there to the prince below him.  King Richard stopped with his foot on the next step, and let the Count come down.