ntecost drew nigh.

'Upon that day,' to quote the mellifluous abbot, 'Upon that day when in
leaping tongues the Spirit of God sat upon the heads of the Holy
Apostles, and gave letters to the unlettered and to the speechless Its
own nature, Count Richard wedded Dame Jehane, and afterwards crowned her
Countess with his own hands.

'They put her, crying bitterly, into the Count's bed in the Castle of
Poictiers on the evening of the same feast. Weeping also, but at a later
day, I saw her crowned again at Angers with the Count's cap of Anjou. So
to right her and himself Count Richard did both the greatest wrong of
all.'

Much more pageantry followed the marriage. I admire Milo's account. 'He
held a tournament after this, when the Count and the party of the castle
maintained the field against all corners. There was great jousting for
six days, I assure you; for I saw the whole of it. No English knights
were there, nor any from Anjou; but a few French (without King Philip's
goodwill), many Gascons and men of Toulouse and the Limousin; some from
over the mountains, from Navarre, and Santiago, and Castile; there also
came the Count of Champagne with his friends. King Sancho of Navarre was
excessively friendly, with a gift of six white stallions, all housed,
for Dame Jehane; nobody knew why or wherefore at the time, except
Bertran de Born (O thief unrepentant!).

'Countess Jehane, with her ladies, being set in a great balcony of red
and white roses, herself all in rose-coloured silk with a chaplet of
purple flowers, the first day came Count Richard in green armour and a
surcoat of the same embroidered with a naked man, a branch of yellow
broom in his helm. None held up against him that day; the Duke of
Burgundy fell and brake his collar-bone. The second day he drove into
the melee suddenly, when there was a great press of spears, all in red
with a flaming sun on his breast. He sat a blood-horse of Spain, bright
chestnut colour and housed in red. Then, I tell you, we saw horses and
men sunder their loves. The third day Pedro de Vaqueiras, a knight from
Santiago, encountered him in his silver armour, when he rode a horse
white as the Holy Ghost. By a chance blow the Spaniard bore him back on
to the crupper. There was a great shout, "The Count is down! Look to the
castle, Poictou!" Dame Jehane turned colour of ash, for she remembered
the leper's prophecy, and knew that De Vaqueiras loved her. But Richard
recovered himself quickl