"Was not the dove the first that he turned out?" demanded Gallon, with a look of mock simplicity, that called a smile upon even the stern faces of the English barons.
"Ha!" said John. "Thinkest thou thyself a dove? Thou art like it in the face, truly!"
"Not less than thou art like a lion," answered Gallon boldly. "And yet men say you had once such a relation.--Haw, haw! Haw, haw, haw!" and he sprang back a step, as if he expected John to strike him.
But for a moment, leaving the conversation, which John for many reasons continued to carry on with the juggler, though his replies were of a more stinging quality than the monarch greatly relished, we must follow Lord Salisbury to the prison of De Coucy.
It was a little past that early hour at which men dined in those days; and when the earl entered the gloomy vault that contained the young knight, he found him seated by a table groaning under a repast not very usual on the boards of a prison.
De Coucy, however, was not eating, nor had he eaten, "though the viands before him might well have tempted lips which had tasted little but bread and water for many months before.
"Salisbury!" exclaimed the knight, as the earl strode into the chamber, with haste in his aspect, and symptoms of long travel in every part of his dress. "Salisbury! Have you come at length?"
"Hush! hush! De Coucy!" cried the earl, grasping his hand, "Do not condemn me, without having heard. John persuaded me that he wished to win you to his cause; and promised most solemnly that he would not only treat you as a friend, but as a favourite. I am not the only one he has deceived. However, till a fortnight since, I thought he had carried you to England, as he declared he would. Your page, with wonderful perseverance, traced me out amidst all the troubles in Touraine, and offered your instant ransom. I sent to England to find you--my messenger returned with tidings that you were here; and, doubting false play, I set off without delay to release you. At every town of Normandy I heard worse and worse accounts of my bad brother's conduct.--Thank God, I am a bastard!--and when I come here, I learn that that luckless boy, Arthur, is gone, God knows where, or how!"
"I will tell you where you may find him, Salisbury," said De Coucy, grasping the earl's arm, and fixing his eyes steadily on his face: "at the bottom of the Seine. Do you mark me? At the bottom of the Seine!"
"I guessed it," replied the earl, shutting his teeth, and looking up to heaven, as if for patience.--"I guessed it!--Know you who did it:--they say you were confined together."