XIV

Master Blytchett told me that Master Richard was still asleep.  He had blooded him last night, and reduced the fever, but God only could save his life.  For himself, he thought that the young man would die before night, and he did not know whether he would speak again.

I was drawn towards Master Blytchett; he seemed a sour fellow with sweetness beneath; and I love such souls as that.  I loved him more than I did the King either at that time or afterward.  The King appeared to me at that time a foolish fellow—­God forgive me!—­for I had not then heard what Master Richard had to say of him; nor that such opinion was to be all part of his passion.

I thanked Master Blytchett for what he had done for my lad; but he burst out upon me.

“I was all against him,” he said, “at the beginning.  I thought him a crack-brained fool, and a meddler.  But now—­” And he would say no more.

It seemed that many were like that at the Court.  They were near all against him at first; but when they knew that he was wounded to death; and had heard what the King had said of him; and seen my lord cardinal’s rosy face running with tears of pity and anger as he tore the lad out of their hands; and gossipped a little with the porter of the monastery; and listened to the holy ankret roaring out in his cell against Hierusalem that slew the prophets;—­and, most of all, remembered, or told one another of Master Richard’s face as he came out from the privy staircase before he was struck down—­like the Melitenses—­convertentes se dicebant eum esse deum. ["Changing their minds, they said he was a god” (Acts xxviii. 6.)]

* * * * *

I talked with many that morning (for I could do nothing for my lad), who came in to see one who knew him so well, and had been his friend in the country.

And after dinner my lord cardinal came in to see me, and I was brought back to the parlour.

His ruddy face was all blotched and lined with sorrow or age, and for a while he could say nothing.  He went up and down with his sanguine robes flying behind him, and stayed to look out of the window at the boats that went by until I thought that he had forgotten me.  And at the last he spoke.

“I do not know what to say to you, Sir John, or what to say to God Almighty on this matter.  It appears to me that we have all been blind and deaf adders, and with the venom of adders, too, beneath our tongues—­except one or two rude fellows, and my lord King who knew him for a prophet, and the ankret, who tells us we shall all be damned for what we have done, and yourself.  There be so many of these wild asses that bray and kick, that when he came we did not distinguish him to be the colt on which our Lord came to town—­and now, as it was then, Dominus eum necessarium habet.” ["The Lord hath need of him” (Luke xix. 34.)]