Now Denise was very miserable that day because of something in herself that she had begun to fear, and she needed her own heart healing before she might dream of healing others. The world remained with her, though she was shut up as a saint, and the solitude and the loneliness had preyed the more upon her mind. At Goldspur the wild woodland life and the life of the people had been hers. Here she had only her own haunting thoughts, and a voice that whispered that the virtue had gone out of her, and that she no longer had the power to help and to heal. It was with a kind of anguish that she watched over the child, taking him to her bed, and praying that the devil of epilepsy might go forth. All that day she watched and prayed, the boy lying in a stupor with wide eyes and open mouth. So the night came, and Denise lit her taper, and knelt down again beside the child. All that night she pleaded and strove with God, beseeching Him to show His grace to her for her own sake and the child’s. Just before dawn the boy was taken with a strong seizure, crying out at first, and then lying stiff and straight and silent as a stone image. Denise took him into her lap, put her mouth to his mouth, and held him against her bosom. As the dawn came, so the truth dawned also that the boy was dead, dead in her lap despite her prayers. And a great horror came upon her, as though God had deserted her, nor had the saints listened to her prayers. A new shame chilled her heart. The virtue had gone out of her, she felt alone with her own thoughts, and the dead. When Dom Silvius and the women came some two hours after dawn they found Denise seated upon the bed with the dead child in her lap. A kind of stupor seemed upon her. She did not so much as move, but sat there with vacant face. “He is dead. Take him.” That was all she said to Dom Silvius. The almoner took the boy, not able to hide the mortification on his face as he carried the dead child to his mother. Denise heard the woman’s cry, though the cry seemed far away like a voice in a dream. Dom Silvius sought to comfort her, but comfort her he could not, because she had hoped so much from Denise’s prayers. And as is the way so often with the human heart, the woman went home in bitterness and anger, holding the dead child to her breast, and murmuring against Denise. If Denise felt herself deserted of God, there was one Sussex man who did not lack for inspiration, and whose heart was possessed by both God and the devil. Aymery of Goldspur had ridden from the Thames to the Severn, to join Earl Simon’s army that was on the march from the Welsh borders. The great Earl was like a rock in a troubled sea, or a beacon that drew all those who loved their land, and who strove for better things. The King might call him a “turbulent schemer”; sneers never killed a man like De Montfort. For the heart of England was full of turbulence, and it seemed that England’s heart beat in Earl Simon’s breast.