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
When he had her alone at night, and she had found her voice, she began
to woo him and softly to beguile him with a hand to his chin, judging it
a propitious time, while one of his held her head. All the arts of woman
were hers that night, but his were the new purposes of a man. He had had
a rude shock, was full of the sense of his sin; that grim old mocking
face, grey among the candle-flames, was plain across the bed-chamber
where they lay. To himself he made oath that he would sin no more. No,
no: a king, he would do kingly. To her, clasped close in his arms, he
gave kisses and sweet words. Alas, she wanted not the sugar of his
tongue; she would have had him bitter, though it cost her dear. Lying
there, lulled but not convinced, her sobs grew weaker. She cried herself
to sleep, and he kissed her sleeping.
In the cathedral church of his fathers he did on, by the hands of the
Archbishop, the red cap and girdle and shoes of Anjou; there he held up
the leopard shield for all to see. There also upon the bent head of
Jehane--she kneeling before him--he laid for a little while the same
cap, then in its room a circlet of golden leaves. If he was sovereign
Count, girt with the sword, then she was Countess of Anjou before her
grudging world. What more was she? Wife of a dead man and his killer!
The words stayed by her, and tinged the whole of her life.
CHAPTER XIV
OF WHAT KING RICHARD SAID TO THE BOWING ROOD; AND WHAT JEHANE TO KING
RICHARD
Miracles, as a plain man, I hold to be the peculiar of the Church. This
chapter must be Milo's on that ground, if there were no other. But there
is one strong other. Milo set the tune which caused King Richard to
dance. And a very good tune it is--according to Milo. Therefore let him
speak.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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