The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay. Maurice Hewlett

CHAPTER II

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HOW THE FAIR JEHANE BESTOWED HERSELF

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      Betimes is best for an ugly business; your man of spirit will always rush what he loathes but yet must do. Count Richard of Poictou, having made up his mind and confessed himself overnight, must leave with the first cock of the morning, yet must take the sacrament. Before it was grey in the east he did so, fully armed in mail, with his red surcoat of leopards upon him, his sword girt, his spurs strapped on. Outside the chapel in the weeping mirk a squire held his shield, another his helm, a groom walked his horse. Milo the Abbot was celebrant, a snuffling boy served; the Count knelt before the housel-cloth haloed by the light of two thin candles. Hardly had the priest begun his introibo when Jehane Saint-Pol, who had been awake all night, stole in with a hood on her head, and holding herself very stiffly, knelt on the floor. She joined her hands and stuck them up before her, so that the tips of her fingers, pointing upwards as her thoughts would fly, were nearly level with her chin. Thus frozen in prayer she remained throughout the office; nor did she relax when at the elevation of the Host Richard bowed himself to the earth. It seemed as if she too, bearing between her hands her own heart, was lifting it up for sacrifice and for worship.

      The Count was communicated. He was a very religious man, who would sooner have gone without his sword than his Saviour upon any affairs. Jehane saw him fed without a twitch of the lips. She was in a great mood, a rapt and pillared saint; but when mass was over and his thanksgiving to make, she got up and hid herself away from him in the shades. There she lurked darkling, and he, lunging out, swept with his sword's point the very edge of her gown. She did not hear him go, for he trod like a cat; but she felt him touch her with the sword, and shuddered once or twice. He went out of the courtyard at a gallop.

      While the abbot was reciting his own thanksgiving Jehane came out of her corner, minded to speak with him. So much he divined, needing not the beckoning look she sent him from her guarded eyes. He sat himself down by the altar of Saint Remy, and she knelt beside him.

      'Well, my daughter?' says Milo.

      'I think it is well,' she took him up.

      The Abbot Milo, a red-faced, watery-eyed old man, rheumy and weathered well, then opened his mouth and spake such wisdom as he knew. He held up his forefinger like a claw, and used it as if describing signs and wonders in the air.

      'Hearken, Madame Jehane,' he said. 'I say that you have done well, and will maintain it. That great prince, whom I love like my own son, is not for you, nor for another. No, no. He is married already.'

      He hoped to startle her, the old rhetorician; but he failed. Jehane was too dreary.

      'He is married, my daughter,' he repeated; 'and to whom? Why, to himself. That man from the birth has been a lonely soul. He can never wed, as you understand it. You think him your lover! Believe me, he is not. He is his own lover. He is called. He has a destiny. And what is that? you ask me.'

      She did not, but rhetoric bade him suppose it. 'Salem is his destiny; Salem is his bride, the elect lady in bonds. He will not wed Madame Alois of France, nor you, nor any virgin in Christendom until that spiritual wedlock is consummate. I should not love him as I do if I did not believe it. For why? Shall I call my own son apostate? He is signed with the Cross, a married man, by our Saviour!'

      He leaned back in his chair, peering down at her to see how she took it. She took it stilly, and turned him a marble, storm-purged face, a pair of eyes which seemed all black.

      'What shall I do to be safe?' Her voice sounded worn.

      'Safe, my child?' He wondered. 'Bless me, is not the Cross safety?'

      'Not with him, father.'

      This was perfectly true, though tainted with scandal, he thought. The abbot, who was trained to blink all such facts, had to learn that this girl blinked none. True to his guidance, he blinked.

      'Go home to your brother, my daughter; go home to Saint-Pol-la-Marche. At the worst, remember that there are always two arks for a woman in flood-time, a convent and a bed.'

      'I shall never choose a convent,' said Jehane.

      'I think,' said the abbot, 'that you are perfectly wise.'

      I suppose the alternative struck a sudden terror into her; for the abbot abruptly records in his book that 'here her spirit seemed to flit out of her, and she began to tremble very much, and in vain to contend with tears. I had her all dissolved at my feet within a few moments. She was very young, and seemed lost.'

      'Come, come,' he said, 'you have shown yourself a brave girl these two days. It is not every maid can sacrifice herself for a Count of Poictou, the eldest son of a king. Come, come, let us have no more of this.' He hoped, no doubt, to brace her by a roughness which was far from his nature; and it is possible that he succeeded in heading off a mutiny of the nerves. She was not violent under her despair, but went on crying very miserably, saying, 'Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?'

      'God knoweth,' says the abbot, 'this was a bad case; but I had a good thought for it.' He began to speak of Richard, of what he had done and what would live to do. 'They say that the strain of the fiend is in that race, my dear,' he told her. 'They say that Geoffrey Grey-Gown had intercourse with a demon. And certain it is that in Richard, as in all his brothers, that stinging grain lives in the blood. For testimony look at their cognisance of leopards, and advise yourself, whether any house in Christendom ever took that device but had known familiarly the devil in some shape? And look again at the deeds of these princes. What turned the young king to riot and death, and Geoffrey to rapine and death? What else will turn John Sansterre to treachery and death, or our tall Richard to violence and death? Nothing else, nothing else. But before he dies you shall see him glorious—'

      'He is glorious already,' said Jehane, wiping her eyes.

      'Keep him so, then,' said the abbot testily, who did not love to have his periods truncated.

      'If I go back to Saint-Pol,' said Jehane, 'I shall fall in with Gilles de Gurdun, who has sworn to have me.'

      'Well,' replied the abbot, 'why should he not? Does he receive the assurance of your brother the Count?'

      Jehane shook her head. 'No, no. My brother wished me to be my lord Richard's. But Gilles needs no assurance. He will buy my marriage from the King of France. He is very sufficient.'

      'Hath he substance? Hath he lands? Is he noble, then, Jehane?'

      'He hath knighthood, a Church fief—oh, enough!'

      'God forgive me if I did amiss,' writes the abbot here; 'but seeing her in a melting mood, dewy, soft, and adorable, I kissed that beautiful person, and she left the Chapel of Saint Remy somewhat comforted.'

      Not only so, but the same day she left the Dark Tower with her brother Count Eustace, and rode towards Gisors and Saint-Pol-la-Marche. Nothing she could do could be shamefully done, because of her silence, and the high head upon which she carried it; yet the Count of Saint-Pol, when he heard her story, sitting bulky in his chair (like a stalled red bull), did his best to put shame upon her, that so he might cover his own bitterness. It was Eustace, a generous ardent youth in those days, who saved her from most of Eudo's wrath by drawing it upon himself.

      The Count of Saint-Pol swore a great oath.

      'By the teeth of God, Jehane,' he roared, 'I see how it is. He hath made thee a piece of ruin, and now runs wasting elsewhere.'

      'You shall never say that of my sister, my lord,' cries Eustace, very red in the face, 'nor yet of the greatest knight in the world.'

      'Why, you egg,' says the Count, 'what have you to do in this? Tell me the rights of it before