Yet I, madame, if you so elect, will see you safe to Bristol."

"You? singly?" the Queen demanded.

"My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they will. We will
go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the viol, I dare
affirm. And you must pass as my wife."

He said this with a very curious simplicity. The plan seemed
unreasonable, and at first Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the
question! But reflection suggested nothing better; it was impossible to
remain at Longaville, and the man spoke sober truth when he declared any
escort other than himself to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar madness
of the scheme was its strength; that the Queen would venture to cross
half England unprotected--and Messire Heleigh on the face of him was a
paste-board buckler,--was an event which Leicester would neither
anticipate nor on report credit. There you were! these English had no
imagination. The Queen snapped her fingers and said: "Very willingly
will I be your wife, my Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you?
Leicester would give a deal for me,--any price in reason for the
Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I suspect."

"You may trust me, mon bel esper"--his eyes here were those of a beaten
child,--"since my memory is better than yours." Messire Osmund Heleigh
gathered his papers into a neat pile. "This room is mine. To-night I
keep guard in the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn."

When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. "Mon bel esper! my
fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses--thirty years ago!
Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund."

So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured a viol and a long falchion
for himself, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; and in
their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the
similitude of what they desired to be esteemed. In the courtyard a knot
of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire
Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of gallantry
before the countryside; and they appeared to consider his casual
observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common
exceedingly diverting.

When the Queen asked him the same morning: "And what will you sing, my
Osmund? Shall we begin with the Sestina of Spring"? Osmund Heleigh
grunted.

"I have forgotten that rubbish long ago. _Omnis amans, amens_, saith the