CHAPTER XVII

FROZEN HEART AND RED HEART:  CAHORS

I suppose that the present relations of King Richard and the Countess of Poictou (as she chose to call herself now) were as singular as could subsist between a strong man and beautiful woman, both in love.  I am not to extenuate or explain, but say once for all to the curious that she was never again to him (nor had been since that day at Fontevrault) what a sister might not have been.  Yet, with all that, it was evident to the world at large that he was a lover, and she mistress of his mind.  Not only implicitly so, as witnessed their long intercourse of the eyes, their quick glances, stealthy watching of each other, the little tender acts (as the giving or receiving of a flower), the brooding silences, the praying at the same time or place; but explicitly he pronounced himself her knight.  All his songs were of her; he wrote to her many times a day, and she answered his letters by her page, and kept the latest of them always within her vest, over against her heart.  She allowed herself more scope than he, trusting herself further:  it is known that she treasured discarded things of his, and went so far as to wear (she, the Fair-Girdled!) a studded belt of his made to fit her.  She was never without this rude monument of her former grace.  But this was the sum-total of their bodily intercourse, apart from speech.  Of their spiritual ecstasies I have no warrant to speak, though I believe these were very innocent.  She would not dare, nor he care, to indulge in so laxative a joy.

He conversed with her freely upon all affairs of moment; there was no constraint on either side.  He was even merry in her company, and astonishingly frank.  Singular man! the Navarrese marriage was a common subject of their talk; she spoke of it with serious mockery and he with mock seriousness.  From Richard it was, ’Countess Jehane, when the chalk-faced Spaniard reigns you must mend your manners.’  And she might say, ’Beau sire, Madame Berengere will never like your songs unless you sing of her.’  All this served the girl’s private ends.  Gradually and gradually she led him to see that thing as fixed.  She did it, as it were, on tiptoe, for she knew what a shyer he was; but luckily for her schemes, the Queen-Mother trusted her to the bottom, said nothing and allowed nothing to be said.

Meantime the affairs of the Crusade conspired with Jehane to drive Richard once more to church.  If he got little money in England, where abbeys were rich in corn but poor in pelf, and the barons had been so prompt to rob each other that they could not be robbed by the King,—­he got less in Gaul, eaten up by war for a hundred years.  You cannot bleed a stuck pig, as King Richard found.  England was empty of money.  He got men enough; from one motive or another every English knight was willing to rifle the East.  He had ships enough.  But