Sang Jehan Kuypelant:
"Hearken and heed, Melaenis!
For all that the litany ceased
When Time had taken the victim,
And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,
And set astir in the temple
Where burned the fire of thy shrine
The owls and wolves of the desert—
Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
"For I have followed, nor faltered—
Adrift in a land of dreams
Where laughter and loving and wonder
Contend as a clamor of streams,
I have seen and adored the Sidonian,
Implacable, fair and divine—
And bending low, have implored thee
To hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!"
It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland—as men now called the Brabant page, now secretary to the Queen of England—brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found the Queen in company with the kingdom's arbitress—Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.
This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from the French prison of the Chatelet. You may appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint George's day.
These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King David.
The Countess presently exclaimed: "Let me pass, sir! My place is not here."
Philippa said, half hopefully, "Do you forsake Sire Edward, Catherine?"
