'Yes, sire.'

'Silly company. Leave him with his women. Have you your Abbot Milo?'

'Yes.'

'Sick company.' His head sank into his breast; he found himself suddenly tired, even of reviling, and had to sit down again. Richard felt a tide of pity; looking down at the huddled old man, he held out his hand.

'Let us not quarrel, father,' he said; but that brought up the King's head, like a call to arms.

'A last question, Richard. Have you dared bring here Bertran de Born?'

He was on his feet again for the reply, and the two men faced each other. Everybody knew how serious the question was. It sobered the Count, but drove the pity out of him.

'Dare is not a word for Anjou, sire,' he replied, picking his phrases; 'but Bertran is not with me.' Before the old man could break again into savagery he went on to his main purpose. 'Sire, short speeches are best.

You seek to draw my ill-humours, but you shall not draw them. As son and servant of your Grace I came in, and so will go out. As a son I have knelt to the King my father, as servant I am ready to obey him. Let that marriage, designed in the cradle by the French King and you, go on. I will do my part if Madame Alois will do hers.'

Richard folded his arms; the King sat down again. A queer exchange of glances had pa.s.sed between his father and brother at the mention of that lady's name. Richard, who saw it, got the feeling of some secret between them, the feeling of being in a trap; but he said nothing. The King began his old harping.

'Attend to me now, Richard,' he said, with much work of the eyebrows; 'if that ill-gotten beast Bertran had been of your meinie our last words had been said. Beast! He is a toothed snake, that crawled into my boy's bed and bit pa.s.sion into him. Lord Jesus, if ever again I meet Bertran, help Thou me to redden his face! But as it is, I am content. Rest you here with me, if so rough a lodging may content your n.o.bility. As for Madame Alois, she shall be sent for; but I think I will not meet your bevy of joglars from the south. I have a proud stomach o' these days; I doubt pastry from Languedoc would turn me sour; and liking monks little enough as it is, your throstle-c.o.c.k of Montauban might cause me to blaspheme. See them entertained, Drago; or better, let them entertain each other--with singing games, holy G.o.d! Go you, Bohun'--and he turned--'fetch in Madame Alois.' Bohun went through a curtain behind him, and the King sat in thought, biting his thumbs.

Madame Alois of France came out of the inner tent, a slinking, thin girl, with the white and tragic face of the fool in a comedy set in black hair. Richard thought she was mad by the way she stared about her from one man to another; but he went down on his knee in a moment.

Prince John turned stiff, the old King bent his brows to watch Richard.

The lady, who was dressed in black, and looked to be half fainting, shrank in an odd way towards the wall, as if to avoid a whip. 'Too long in England, poor soul,' Richard thought; 'but why did she come from the King's tent?'

It was not a cheerful meeting, nor did the King show any desire to make it better. When by roundabout and furtive ways Madame Alois at last stood drooping by his chair, he began to talk to her in English, a language unknown to Richard, though familiar enough, he saw, to his father and brother. 'It seems to be his Grace's desire to make me ridiculous,' he went on to say to himself: 'what a dead-level of grim words! In English, it appears, you do not talk. You stab with the tongue.' In truth, there was no conversation. The King or the Prince spoke, and Madame Alois moistened her lips; she looked nowhere but at the old tyrant, not at his eyes, but above them, at his forehead, and with a trepitant gaze, like a watched hare's. 'The King has her in thrall, soul and body,' Richard considered. Then his knee began to ache, and he released it. 'Fair sire,' he began in his own tongue. Madame Alois gave a start, and 'Ha, Richard,' says the King, 'art thou still there, man?'

'Where else, my lord?' asked the son. The father looked at Alois.

'Deign to recognise in this baron, Madame,' he said, 'my son the Count of Poictou. Let him salute, Madame, that which he has sought from so far, and with such humility, pardieu; your white hand, Alois.' The strange girl quivered, then put her hand out. Richard, kissing it, found it horribly cold.

'Lady,' he said, 'I pray we may be better acquainted; but I must tell you that I have no English. Let me hope that in this good land you may recover your French.' He got no answer from the lady, but, by heaven, he made his father angry.

'We hope, Richard, that you will teach Madame better things than that,'

sniffed the old man, nosing about for battle.

'I pray that I may teach her no worse, my lord,' replied the other. 'You will perhaps allow that for a daughter of France the tongue may have its uses.'

'As English, Count, for the son of England!' cried his father; 'or for his wife, by the ma.s.s, if he is fit to have one.'

'Of that, sire, we must talk at your Grace's leisure,' said Richard slowly. 'Jesus!' he asked himself, 'will he put me to a block of ice?

What is the matter with this woman?' The King put an end to his questions by dismissing Madame Alois, breaking up the a.s.sembly, and himself retiring. He was dreadfully fatigued, quite white and breathless. Richard saw him follow the lady through the inner curtain, and again was uncomfortably suspicious. But when his brother John made to slip in also he thought there must be an end of it. He tapped the young man on the shoulder.

'Brother, a word with you,' says he; and John came twittering back. The two were alone in the tent.

This John--Sansterre, Landlos, Lackland, so they variously called him--was a timid copy of his brother, a wry-necked reedy Richard with a sniff. Not so tall, yet more spare, with blue eyes more pallid than his brother's, and protruding where Richard's were inset, the difference lay more in degree than kind. Richard was of heroic build, but a well-knit, well-shaped hero; in John the arms were too long, the head too small, the brow too narrow. Richard's eyes were perhaps too wide apart; no doubt John's were too near together. Richard twitched his fingers when he was moved, John bit his cheek. Richard stooped from the neck, John from the shoulders. When Richard threw up his head you saw the lion; John at bay reminded you of a wolf in a corner. John snarled at such times, Richard breathed through his nose. John showed his teeth when he was crossed, Richard when he was merry. So many thousand points of unlikeness might be named, all small: the Lord knows here are enough.

The Angevin cat-and-dog nature was fairly divided between these two.

Richard had the sufficiency of the cat, John the dependence of a dog; John had the cat's secretiveness, Richard the dog's dash. At heart John was a thief.

He feared and hated his brother; so when Richard said, 'Brother, a word with you,' John tried to disguise apprehension in disgust. The result was a very sick smile.

'Willingly, dear brother, and the more so--' he began; but Richard cut him short.

'What under the light of the sky is the matter with that lady?' he asked him.

John had been preparing for that. He raised his eyebrows and splayed out both his hands. 'Can you ask? Eh, our Lord! Emotion--a stranger in a strange land--an access of the shudders--who knows women? So long from France-dreadful of her brother--dreadful of you--so many things! a silly mind--ah, my brother!'

Richard checked him testily. 'Put a point, put a point, you drown me in phrases; your explanations explain nothing. One more word. What in the devil's name is she doing in there?' He had a short way. John began to stammer.

'A second father--a tender guardian--'

'Pish!' said Count Richard, and turned to leave the pavilion. Prince John slipped through the curtains, and at that moment Richard heard a little fretful cry within, not the cry of mortal lady. 'What under heaven have they got in there, this family?' he asked himself.

Shrugging, he went out into the fresh air.

The abbot notes that his lord and master came running into his quarters, 'and tumbled upon me, like a lover who finds his mistress after many days. "Milo, Milo, Milo," he began to cry, three times over, as if the name helped him, "Thou wilt live to see a puddock upon the throne of England!" Thus he strangely said.'

CHAPTER IV

HOW JEHANE STROKED WHAT ALOIS HAD MADE FIERCE

When the Count of Saint-Pol came to Paris he found the going very delicate. For it is a delicate matter to confer in a king's capital, with a king's allies, how best to throw obstacles in that king's way. As a matter of fact he found that he could do little or nothing in the business. King Philip was in great feather concerning his sister's arrival; the heralds were preparing to go out to meet her. Nicholas d'Eu and the Baron of Quercy were to accompany them; King Philip thought Saint-Pol the very man to make a third, but this did not suit the Count at all. He sought out his kinsman the Marquess of Montferrat, a heavy Italian, who gave him very little comfort. All he could suggest was that his 'good cousin' would do better to help him to the certain throne of Jerusalem. 'What do you want with more than one king in a family?' asked the Marquess. Saint-Pol grew rather dry as he a.s.sured him that one king would suffice, and that Anjou was nearer than Jerusalem. He went on to hint at various strange speculations rife concerning the history of Madame Alois. 'If you want garbage, Eudo,' said Montferrat to this, 'come not to me. But I know a rat who might be of service.'

'The name of your rat, Marquess! It is all I ask.'

'Bertran de Born: who else?' said Montferrat. Now, Bertran de Born was the thorn in the flesh of Anjou, a rankling addition to their state whom they were never without. Saint-Pol knew his value very well, and decided to go down to see the man in his own country. So he would have gone, no doubt, had not his sovereign judged otherwise. Saint-Pol received commands to accompany the heralds to Louviers, so had to content himself with a messenger to the trobador and a letter which announced the extreme happiness of the great Count of Poictou. This, he knew, would draw the poison-bag.

The Frenchmen arrived at Louviers none too soon. As well mix fire and ice as Poictevin with Norman or Angevin with Angevin. The princes stalked about with claws out of velvet, the n.o.bles bickered fiercely, and the men-at-arms did after their kind. There was open fighting.

Gaston of Bearn picked a quarrel with John Botetort, and they fought it out with daggers in the fosse. Then Count Richard took one of his brother's goshawks and would not give it up. Over the long body of that bird half a score n.o.blemen engaged with swords; the Count of Poictou himself accounted for six, and ended by pommelling his brother into a red jelly. There was a week or more of this, during which the old King hunted like a madman all day and revelled in gloomy vices all night.

Richard saw little of him and little of the lady of France. She, a pale shade, flitted dismally out when evoked by the King, dismally in again at a nod from him. Whenever she did appear Prince John hovered about, looking tormented; afterwards the pock-marked Cluniac might be heard lecturing her on theology and the soul's business in pa.s.sionless monologue. It was very far from gay. As for her, Richard believed her melancholy mad; he himself grew fretful, irritable, most quarrelsome.

Thus it was that he first plundered and then punched his brother.

After that Prince John disappeared for a little to nurse his sores, and Richard got within fair speaking distance of Madame Alois. In fact, she sent for him late one night when the King, as he knew, was away, munching the ashes of charred pleasure in some stews or other. He obeyed the summons with a half-shrug.

They received him with consternation. The distracted lady was in a chair, hugging herself; the Cluniac stood by, a mortified emblem; a scared woman or two fled behind the throne. Madame Alois, when she saw who the visitor was, began to shake.

'Oh, oh!' she said in a whisper, 'have you come to murder me, my lord?'

'Why, Madame,' Richard made haste to say, 'I would serve you any other way but that, and supposed I had the right. But I came because you sent for me.'

She pa.s.sed her hand once or twice over her face, as if to brush cobwebs away; one of the women made a piteous appeal of the eyes to Richard, who took no notice of it; the monk said something to himself in a low voice, then to the Count, 'Madame is overwrought, my lord.'

'Yes, you rascal,' thought Richard; 'your work.' Aloud he said, 'I hope her Grace will give you leave to retire, sir.' Madame hereupon waved her people away, and went on waving long after they had gone. Thus she was alone with her future lord. There was the wreck of fine beauty about her drawn race, beauty of the black-and-white, sheeted sort; but she looked as if she walked with ghosts. Richard was very gentle with her. He drew near, saying, 'I grieve to see you thus, Madame'; but she stopped him with a question--

'They seek to have you marry me?'

He smiled: 'Our masters desire it, Madame.'