‘Who speaks?  Who prophesies?’

Jehane told her, ’The leper in a desert place, saying, “Beware the Count’s cap and the Count’s bed; for so sure as thou liest in either thou art wife of a dead man and of his killer."’

The Queen-Mother, a very religious woman, took this saying soberly.  She dropped Jehane’s wrist, stared at and about her, looked up, looked down; then said, ‘Tell me more of this, my girl.’

‘Hey, Madame,’ said Jehane, ’I will gladly tell you the whole.  The saying of the leper was very dreadful to me, for I thought, here is a man punished by God indeed, but so near death as to be likely familiar with the secrets of death.  Such a one cannot be a liar, nor would he speak idly who has so little time left to pray in.  Therefore I urged my lord Richard by his good love for me to forgo his purpose of wedding me in Poictiers.  But he would not listen, but said that, as he had stolen me from my betrothed, it comported not with his honour to dishonour me.  So he wedded me, and fulfilled both terms of the leper’s prophecy.  Then I saw myself in peril, and was not at all comforted by the advice of certain nuns, which was that, although I had lain in the Count’s bed, I had not lain, but had knelt, in the Count’s cap; and that therefore the terms were not fulfilled.  I thought that foolishness, and still think so.  But this is my own thought.  I have never rightly been in either as the leper intended, for I do not think the marriage a good one.  If I am no wife, then, God pity me, I have done a great sin; but I am no Countess of Anjou.  So I give the prophet the lie.  On the other hand, if I am put away by my lord the King that he may make a good marriage, I shall be claimed again by the man to whom I was betrothed before, and so the doom be in danger of fulfilment.  For, look now, Madame, the leper said, “Wife of a dead man and his killer”; and there is none so sure to kill the King as Sir Gilles de Gurdun.  Alas, alas, Madame, to what a strait am I come, who sought no one’s hurt!  I have considered night and day what it were best to do since the King, at my prayer, left me; and now my judgment is this.  I must be with the King, though not the King’s mie; because so surely as he sends me away, so surely will Gilles de Gurdun have me.’

She stopped, out of breath, feeling some shame to have spoken so much.  The Queen-Mother came to her at once, with her hands out.  ’By my soul, Jehane,’ she said, ‘you are a good woman.  Never leave my son.’

‘I never mean to leave him,’ said Jehane.  ’That is my punishment, and (I think) his also.’

‘His punishment, my child?’

‘Why, Madame,’ said Jehane, ‘you think that the King must wed.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘And to wed, he must put me away.’

‘Yes, yes, child.’

’Therefore, although he loves me, he may never have his dear desire; and although I love him, I may give him no comfort.  Yet we can never leave each other for fear of the leper’s prophecy; but he must always long and I grieve.  That, I think, is punishment for a man and woman.’