After that short, stabbing flash across his face, he shut down misery in a vice. The rest of his talk with the Count might have been held with a groom. Henry of Champagne, knowing the man, left him the moment he got the word; and King Richard sat down by the table, and for three hours never stirred. He was literally motionless. Straightly rigid, a little grey about the face, white at the cheek-bones; his clenched hand stiff on the board, white also at the knuckles; his eyes fixed on the door—men came in, knelt and said their say, then encountering his blank eyes bent their heads and backed out quietly. If he thought, none may learn his thought; if he felt, none may touch the place; if he prayed, let those who are able imagine his prayers. What Jehane had been to him this book may have shadowed out: this only I say, that he knew, from the very first hint of the fact, why she had gone out with Milo and sent Milo home alone. The Queen knew, because Jehane had told her; but he knew with no telling at all. She had gone away to save him from herself. Needing him not, because she so loved him, it was her beauty which was hungry for his desire. Not daring to mar her beauty, she had sought to hide it. Greater love hath none than this. If he thought of that it should have softened him. He did not think of it: he knew it.
At the end of his grim vigil he got up and went out of his house. He was served with his horse, his esquires came at call to the routine of garrison days and nights. He rode round the walls, out at one of the gates, on a sharp canter of reconnaissance in the hills. Perhaps he spoke more shortly than usual, and more drily; there may have been a dead quality in his voice, usually so salient. There was no other sign. At supper he sat before them all, ate and drank at his wont. Once only he startled the hallful of them. He dropped his great gold cup, and it split.
But as day followed night, all men saw the change in him, Christians and Saracens alike. A spirit of quiet savagery seemed to possess him; the cunning, with the mad interludes, of a devil. He set patient traps for the Saracens in the hills, and slaughtered all he took. One day he fell upon a great caravan of camels coming from Babylon to Jerusalem, and having cut the escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers. He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the Earl of Leicester and the Grand Master, never left his side; Gaston of Béarn used to sleep at the foot of his bed and creep about after him like a cat; but this terrible mood of his wore them out. Then, at last, the Count of Champagne came back with Milo and more bad news. Joppa was in sore straits, again besieged; the Bishop of Sarum was returned from the West, having a branch of dead broom in his hand and stories of a throttled kingdom on his lips.
Before any other Richard had Milo alone. The good abbot is very reticent about the interview in his book. What he omits is more significant than what he says. 'I found my master,' he writes, 'sitting up in his bed in his hauberk of mail. They told me he had eaten nothing for two days, yet vomited continually. He had killed five hundred Saracens meantime. I suppose he knew who I was. "Tell me, my good man," he said (strange address!), "the name of the person to whom Madame d'Anjou took you."
'I said, "Sire, we went to the Lord of the Assassins, whom they call Old Man of Musse."
'"Why did you go, monk?" he asked, and felt about for his sword, but could not find it. Yet it was close by. I said, "Sire, because of a report which had reached the ears of Madame that the Marquess and the Old Man were in league to have you murdered." To this he made no reply, except to call me a fool. Later he asked, "How died the Marquess?"
'"Sire," I answered, "most miserably. He went up Lebanon to see the Old Man, and came presently down again with two of the Assassins in his company, but none of his train. These persons, being near his city of Sidon, at a signal agreed upon stabbed him with their long knives, then cut off his right hand and despatched it to the Old Man by one of them. The other stayed by the corpse, and was so found peacefully sleeping, and burned."
'The King said nothing, but gave me money and a little jewel he used to wear, as if I had done him a service. Then he nodded a dismissal, and I, wondering, left him. He did not speak to me again for many weeks.'
You may collect that Richard was very ill. He was. The disease of his mind fed fat upon the disease of his body, and from the spoils of the feast savagery reared its clotted head. Syrian mothers still quell their children with the name of Melek Richard, a reminiscence of the dreadful time when he was without ruth or rest. He spoke of his purposes to none, listened to none. The Bishop of Sarum had come in with a budget of disastrous news: Count John had England under his heel, Philip of France had entered Normandy in force, the lords of Aquitaine were in revolt. If God had no use for him in the East, here was work to do in the West. But had He none? What of Joppa, shuddering under the sword? What of Acre, where the French army wallowed in sloth, with two queens at its mercy and Saint-Pol in the mercy-seat? What, indeed, of Jehane?