honour. Will you trust me? So far as I
have gone along with you I have done reasonably well. Did I scatter the
heathen at Arsuf? No thanks to you, Burgundy, but I did. Did I hold a
safe course to Joppa? Have I then brought you so near, and myself so
near, for nothing at all? If I have been a fool in my day, I am not a
fool now. I speak what I know. With this host I can save the city.
Without the best of it, I can do nothing. What do you say, my lord? Will
you let Beauvais take his Frenchmen to dishonour, and you and your
Burgundians play for honour with me? The prize is great, the reward
sure, here or in heaven. What do you say, Duke of Burgundy?'

His voice shook by now, and all the bystanders watched without breath
the heavy, brooding, mottled man over against him. He, faithful to his
nature, looked at the Bishop of Beauvais. But Beauvais was looking at
his ring.

'What do you say, my lord?' again asked King Richard.

The Duke of Burgundy was troubled: he blinked, looking at Saint-Pol. But
Saint-Pol was looking at the tent-roof.

'Be pleased to look at me,' said Richard; and the man did look, working
under his wrongs.

'By God, Richard,' said the Duke of Burgundy, 'you owe me forty pound!'

King Richard laughed till he was helpless.

'It may be, it may well be,' he gasped between the throes of his mirth.
'O lump of clay! O wonderful half-man! O most expressive river-horse!
You shall be paid and sent about your business. Archbishop, be pleased
to pay this man his bill. I will content you, Burgundy, with money; but
I will be damned before I take you to Jerusalem. My lords,' he said,
altering voice and look in a moment, 'I will conduct you to the ships.
Since I am not strong enough for Jerusalem I will go to Ascalon. But
you! By the living God, you shall go back to France.' He dismissed them
all, and next day broke up his camp.

But before that, very early in the morning, after a night spent with his
head in his hands, he rode out with Gaston and Des Barres to a hill
which they call Montjoy, because from there the pilgrims, tending south,
see first among the folded hills Jerusalem itself lie like a dove in a
nest. The moon was low and cold, the sun not up; but the heavens and
earth were full of shadowless light; every hill-top, every black rock
upon it stood sharply cut out, as with a knife. King Richard rode
silently, his face covered in a great hood; neither man with him dared
speak, but kept the distance due