“I 'll torture them!” he cried, gnashing his teeth. “Ingrates—Hounds!—Christ hear me!—I will avenge thy servant,—I will avenge old Simon!”
Now 't was Sudbury he cursed for a fool:—
“Is this to serve a king?—To set his soul in peril of hell?—Not on my head the Archbishop's blood, O God, not on my head! I 'm innocent! How should I know he 'd be tamely taken? Fool that he was!—Weak fool!”
And so he wept, blaspheming Christ, and beating with his hands upon the stones.
“I loved them,—I loved them, good Jesu!—I gave them liberty,—and they have betrayed me. Curse them! They shall be bound with new bonds. I 'll have a bath of their blood,—I 'll drink it!—My people,—mine!—and I loved them! Christ, I was betrayed; 't was not of mine own will Sudbury was slain. I swear it,—O God, hear mine oath!—Poor fool Simon! Pity!—pity!—How might I guess? Ah, Emperor of Heaven, all-wise, I am so little while a king! Pity!”
At the last he lay so still they thought he swooned, and the squire came in a-tiptoe.
“Etienne,” said Richard then, lying all on heap, “bring hither a scourge,—a knotted scourge. And bar the door.”
And when the scourge was brought, and the door barred, and the Queen-Mother weeping without, Richard got to his knees, shaking, sodden, and tore his shirt off his back.
“Lay on!” he said. “The people have set their sins on my shoulders; the Archbishop hath laden me with his trespass. Lay on the scourge!”
Etienne lifted his arm as he would strike, then lowered it.