Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed, charred, and depopulate—picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear.
At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, “By a day’s ride I might have prevented this.” Or, “By a day’s ride I might have saved this woman.” Or, “By two days’ riding I might have fed this child.”
The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork. Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set afoot; trudging thus among the débris of these wars, she found they had unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked. There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen toiling behind.
“Oh, madame!” he said, in a dry whisper, “this was the home of so many men!”
“I burned it,” Dame Alianora replied. “That man we passed just now I killed. Those other men and women—my folly slew them all. And little children, my Osmund! The hair like flax, blood-dabbled!”
“Oh, madame!” he wailed, in the extremity of his pity.
For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: “Why have they not slain me? Was there no man in England to strangle the proud wanton? Are you all cowards here?”
He said: “I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men and Leicester’s men also ride about the world, and draw sword and slay and die for the right as they see it. And you and Leicester contend for the right as ye see it. But I, madame! I! I, who sat snug at home spilling ink and trimming rose-bushes! God’s world, madame, and I in it afraid to speak a word for Him! God’s world, and a curmudgeon in it grudging God the life He gave!” The man flung out his soft hands and snarled: “We are tempted in divers and insidious ways. But I, who rebuked you! behold, now, with how gross a snare was I entrapped!” “I do not understand, my Osmund.”
“I was afraid, madame,” he returned, dully. “Everywhere men fight, and I am afraid to die.”
So they stood silent in the ruins of Bastling.