The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-NayHewlett, Maurice
General
The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay
Hewlett, Maurice
Richard I, King of England, 1157-1199 -- Fiction
Not all of King Richard was buried there, where the great effigy still
marks the place of great dust. Jehane had his heart in a casket, and
with Fulke her son, Des Barres, her brother Saint-Pol, Gaston of Béarn,
and the Abbot Milo, took it to the church of Rouen and saw it laid among
the dead Dukes of Normandy; fitting sepulture for a heart as bold as any
of theirs, and capable of more gentle music when the fine hand plucked
the chords. After this Jehane kissed Fulke and left him with the Queen,
his uncle, and Guilhem des Barres. Then she went back to her ship.
* * * * *
In the white palace in the green valley of Lebanon the Old Man of Musse
embraced his wife. 'Moon of my soul, my Garden, my Treasure-house!' he
called her, and kissed her all over.
'The King died in peace, my lord,' she said, 'and I have peace because
of that.'
'Thy children shall call thee blessed, my beloved, as I call thee.'
'The prophecy of the leper was not fulfilled, sir,' says Jehane.
Ah,' replied the Old Man of Musse, all these things are in the hands of
the Supreme Disposer, Who with His forefinger points us the determined
road.'
Then Jehane went in to her children, and other duties which her station
required of her.
EPILOGUE OF THE ABBOT MILO
'When I consider,' writes the Abbot Milo on his last page, 'that I have
lived to see the deaths of three Kings of England, wearers of the
broom-switch, and of the manner of those deaths, I am led to admire the
wonderful ordering of Almighty God, Who accorded to each of them an end
illustrative of his doings in the world, and so wrote, as it were, in
blood for our learning. King Henry produced strife, King Richard induced
strife, and King John deduced it. King Henry died cursing and accursed;
King Richard forgiving and forgiven; King John blaspheming, and not held
worthy of reproof. The first did evil, meaning evilly; the second evil,
meaning well; the third was evil. So the first was wretched in death,
the second pitiful, the third shameful. The first loved a few, the
second loved one, the third none. So the death of the first was gain to
a few, that of the second to one, that of the third to none; for he that
loves not, neither can he hate: he is negligible in the end. But observe
now, the chief woe of these kings of the House of Anjou was that they
hurt whom they loved more than whom they hated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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