The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-NayHewlett, Maurice
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The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay
Hewlett, Maurice
Richard I, King of England, 1157-1199 -- Fiction
'Evil light upon him,' cried Saint-Pol, 'he is in my sister's house.
Between them they give me a nephew.'
'Oho!' Montferrat said. 'Is that it? Why, then, we know where to strike
him quickest. We should make Navarre of our party.'
'He has done that himself, by all accounts: said the Duke of Burgundy,
wide-awake.
The Archduke, returning to his new lodgings in the Bishop's house, sent
for his astrologers and asked them, Could he kill the King of England?
'My lord,' said they, 'you cannot.'
'How is that?' he asked.
'Lord,' they told him, 'by our arts we discover that he will live for a
hundred years.'
'It is very remarkable,' said the Archduke. 'What sort of years will
they be?'
'Lord,' said the astrologers, 'they are divers in complexion; but many
of them are red.'
'I will provide that they be,' said the Archduke. 'Go away.'
The Marquess sought no astrologers, but instead the Street of the Camel
and Jehane's house. He observed this with great care, watching from an
entry to see how King Richard would come out, whether attended or not.
He observed more than the house, for much more was forced upon him.
Human garbage filled the close ways of Acre, men and women marred by
themselves or a hideous begetting, hairless persons and snug little
chamberers, botch-faces, scald-heads, minions of many sorts,
silent-footed Arabians as shameless as dogs, Greeks, pimps and panders,
abominable women. Murder was swiftly and secretly done. Montferrat from
his entry saw the manner of it. A Norman knight called Hamon le Rotrou
came out of an infamous house in the dusk, and stepped into the Street
of the Camel with his cloak delicately round him. Fine as he was, he was
insanely a lover of the vile thing he had left; for he knelt down in the
street to kiss her well-worn doorstep. He knelt under the light of a
small lamp, and out of the shadow behind him stepped catfoot a tall
thin man, white from head to foot, who, saying 'All hail, master,'
stabbed Hamon deep in the side. Hamon jerked up his head, tottered, fell
without more than a tired man's sigh sideways into the arms of his
killer. This one eased his fall as tenderly as if he was upholding a
girl, let him down into the kennel, drew him thence by the shoulders
into the dark, and himself vanished. Montferrat swore softly to himself,
'That was neatly done. I must find out who this expert may be.' He went
away full of it, having forgotten his housed enemy.
There was a Sheik Moffadin in the jail, one of the Soldan's hostages for
the return of the True Cross. The Marquess went to see him.
'Who of your people,' he asked, 'is very tall and light-footed, robes
him from head to foot in white linen, and kills quietly, as if he loved
the dead, with an "All hail, master"?'
'We call him an Assassin in our language,' the Sheik replied; 'but he is
not of our people by any means. He is a servant of the Old Man who
dwells on Lebanon.'
'What old man is this, Moffadin?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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