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
Jehane, who had much ado to walk without falling, saw not Gilles; but
Gilles saw her, and the red in his face took a tinge of black. While she
was before him he gaped at her, with a dry tongue clacking in his mouth,
consumed by a dreadful despair; but when she had passed by, swaying in
her weakness, barely able to hold up her lovely head, he lifted his face
to the white sky, and looked unwinking at the sun, wondering where else
an equal cruelty could abide. In this golden king, as cruel as the sun,
and as swift, and as splendid! Ah, dastard, dastard! At the minute
Gilles could have leapt at him and mauled the great shoulders with a
dog's weapons. There was no solace for him but to bite. So he dashed his
forearm into his face, and sluiced his teeth in that.
But King Richard of the high head mounted his horse in the churchyard,
and rode among the people before Jehane's bearers to the Street of the
Camel. Squires of his threw silver coins among the crowds who filled the
ways.
Within the house, he laid her on her bed, and held up the child before
her, high in the air. He was in that great mood where nothing could
resist him. She, faint and fragrant on the bed, so frail as to seem
transparent, a disembodied sprite, smiled because she felt at ease, as
the feeble do when they first lie down.
'Lo, Fulke of Anjou!' sang Richard--'Fulke, son of Richard, the son of
Henry, the son of Geoffrey, the son of Fulke! Fulke, my son Fulke, I
will make thee a knight even now!' He held the babe in one hand, with
the free hand drew his long sword. The flat blade touched the nodding
little head.
'Rise up, Sir Fulke of Anjou, true knight of thine house, Sieur de
Cuigny when I have thee home again. By the Face!' he cried shortly, as
if remembering something, 'we must get him the badge: a switch of wild
broom!'
'Dear lord, sweet lord,' murmured Jehane, faint in bed, nearly gone: but
he raved on.
'When I lay, even as thou, Fulke, naked by my mother, my father sent for
a branch of the broom, and stuck it in the pillow against I could carry
it. And shalt thou go without it, boy? Art not thou of the
broom-bearers?' He put the child into the nurse's arm and went to the
door. He called for Gaston of Béarn, for the Dauphin of Auvergne, for
Mercadet, for the devil. The Bishop of Salisbury came running in.
'Bishop,' said King Richard, 'you must serve me to-day. You must take
ship, my friend, with speed; you must go to Bordeaux, thence a-horseback
to the moor above Angers. Pluck me a branch of the wild broom and
return. I must have it, I tell you; so go. Haste, Bishop. God be with
you.'
The Bishop began to splutter. 'Hey, sire--!'
'Never call me that again, Bishop, if your ship is within sight by
sunset,' he said. 'Call me rather the Prince of the Devils. See my
chancellor, take my ring to him, omit nothing. Off with you, and back
with all speed.'
'Ha, sire, look you now,' cried the desperate bishop, 'there will be no
broom before next Easter. Here we are at Lammas.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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