'They are too late,' said Richard. 'Tell me what message you have from the Fair-Girdled.'
'Wed or unwed, she is yours. But she is kept in a tower until Palm Sunday. Then they bring her out and marry her to what remains of a black Normandy pig. Not very much remains, but (they tell me) enough for the purpose.'
'Spine of God,' said Richard, examining his finger-nails.
'Swear by His heart, rather, my Count,' Gaston said, 'for you have a red heart in your keeping. Eh, eh, what a beautiful person is there! She leaned her body out of the window—what a shape that girdle confines! Bowered roses! Dian and the Nymphs! Bosomed familiars of old Pan! And what emerald fires! What molten hair! The words came shortly from her, and brokenly, as if her carved lips disdained such coarse uses! Richard, her words were so: "Take a message to my lord," quoth she. "I am his in life or death. I seek to do him service. Wed or unwed, what is that to me? I am still Jehane." Thus she—but I? Well, well, my sword spake for me when I carved that beef-bone bare.' The Béarnais pulled his goatee, and looked at the ends of it for split hairs. But Richard sat very still.
'Do you know, Gaston, whom you have seen?' he said presently, in a trembling whisper.
'Perfectly well,' said the other. 'I have seen a pale flower ripe for the sun.'
'You have seen the Countess of Poictou, Gaston,' said Richard, and took to his prayers.
Through these means, for the time, he was held off his father's throat. But for Jehane and her urgent affairs these two had grappled at Le Mans. As it was, not Richard's hand was to fire the cradle-city which had seen King Henry at the breast. Before nightfall he had made his dispositions for a very risky business. He set aside the Viscount of Béziers, Bertram Count of Roussillon, Gaston of Béarn, to go with him, not because they were the best men by any means, but so that he might leave the best men in charge. These were certainly the Dauphin, the Viscount of Limoges, and the Count of Angoulesme, each of whom he had proved as an enemy in his day. 'Gentlemen,' he said to these three, 'I am about to go upon a journey. Of you I shall require a little attention, certain patience, exact obedience. It will be necessary that you be before the walls of Le Mans in three days. Invest them, my lords, keep up your communications, and wait for the French King. Give no battle, offer no provocation, let hunger do your affair. I know where the King of England is, and shall be with you before him.' He went on to be more precise, but I omit the details. It was difficult for them to go wrong, but if the truth is to be known, he was in a mood which made him careless about that. He was free. He was going on insensate adventure; but he saw his road before him once again, like a long avenue of light, which Jehane made for him with a torch uplifted. Before it was day, armed from head to foot in chain mail, with a plain shield, and a double-bladed Norman axe in his saddle-bucket, he and his three companions set out on their journey. They rode leisurely, with loose reins and much turning in the saddle to talk, as if for a meet of the hounds.
Now was that vernal season of the year when winds are boon, the gentle rain never far off, the stars in heaven (like the flowers on earth) washed momently to a freshness which urges men to be pure. Riding day and night through the green breadth of France, though he had been plucked from the roaring pit of war, Richard (I know) went with a single aim before him—to see Jehane again. Nothing else in his heart, I say. Whatever purpose may have lurked in his mind, in heart he went clean, single in desire, chanting the canticles of Mary and the Virgin Saints. It was so. He had been seethed in wicked doings from his boyhood—I give him you no better than he was: wild work in Poictou, the scour of hot blood; devil's work in Touraine, riotous work in Paris, tyrannous in Aquitaine. He had been blown upon by every ill report; hatred against blood, blasphemy against God's appointment, violence, clamour, scandal against charitable dealing: all these were laid to his name. He had behind him a file of dead ancestors, cut-throats and worse. He had faced unnameable sin and not blenched, laughed where he should have wept, promised and broken his promise; to be short, he had been a creature of his house and time, too young acquainted with pride and too proud himself to deny it. But now, with eyes alight like a boy's because his heart was uplift, he was riding between the new-budded woods, the melodies of a singing-boy on his lips, and swaying before his heart's eye the figure of a tall girl with green eyes and a sulky, beautiful mouth. 'Lord, what is man?' cried the Psalmist in dejection. 'Lord, what is man not?' cry we, who know more of him.
His traverse took him four days and nights. He rested at La Ferté, at Nogent-le-Rotrou, outside Dreux, and at Rosny. Here he stayed a day, the Vigil of the Feast of Palms. He had it in his mind not to see Jehane again until the very moment when he might lose her.