eeds undone! Pardon and grace, O King of kings!"

Thus he prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the tattered,
yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on that song made
by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning _Signor, saciez, ki or ne s'en ira_,
and this he sang with a lilt gayer than the matter of it countenanced.
Faintly there now came to them the sound of his singing, and they found
it, in the circumstances, ominously adapt.

Sang Camoys:

"_Et vos, par qui je n'oi onques aie,
Descendez tuit en infer le par font._"

Dame Alianora shivered. "No, no!" she cried. "Is He less pitiful than
we?"

They slept that night in Ousley Meadow, and the next afternoon came
safely to Bristol. You may learn elsewhere with what rejoicing the royal
army welcomed the Queen's arrival, how courage quickened at sight of the
generous virago. In the ebullition Messire Heleigh was submerged, and
Dame Alianora saw nothing more of him that day. Friday there were
counsels, requisitions, orders signed, a memorial despatched to Pope
Urban, chief of all a letter (this in the Queen's hand throughout)
privily conveyed to the Lady Maude de Mortemer--much sowing of a seed, in
fine, that eventually flowered victory. There was, however, no sign of
Osmund Heleigh, though by Dame Alianora's order he was sought.

On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging in complete
armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like a wizened
nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings.

"I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen."

Dame Alianora wrung her hands. "You go to your death."

He answered: "That is very likely. Therefore I am come to bid you
farewell."

The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into a curious
fit of deep but tearless sobbing.

"Mon bel esper," said Osmund Heleigh, very gently, "what is there in all
this worthy of your sorrow? The man will kill me; granted, for he is my
junior by some fifteen years, and in addition a skilled swordsman. I
fail to see that this is lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go
after recent happenings; there a rope's end awaits me. Here I must in
any event shortly take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very
little need of ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish,
dug under the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I
prefer a clean death at a gentleman's hands."

"It is I who bring about