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John shivered, but King Richard left him to shiver, and passed out of the sun into the echoing nave. Lightly and fiercely he went in, like a brave man who is fretful until he meets his danger's face; and John caught at his wrist, and went tiptoe after him. All the rest, Poictevins and Frenchmen together, followed in a pack; then the two bishops vested.
'Sound trumpets! he shouted, 'we must let go. They sounded; they ran forward: the English first, then the Normans, Poictevins, men of Anjou and Pisa, black Genoese but the left had moved before them, and made doubtful Richard's échelon. They knelt, pulled bowstrings to the ear.
His Normans and Poictevins were over-ripe; he as dry as an unpinched pear. He saw, to his infinite vexation, his honour again in pawn, and no means of redeeming it. Jehane, with tears in her voice, plied the Navarrese marriage with more passion than she would ever have allowed herself to urge her own. Richard said he would think of it. 'Now I have him half-way, Jehane told the Queen-Mother.
By this time King Philip lay heaped in his bed, and had had his distempered brain wrought upon by Montferrat and his kind, Saint-Pol, Des Barres, and their kind. Richard had with him Poictevins and Angevins, men of Provence and Languedoc, Normans and English, Scots and Welshry, black Genoese, Sicilians, Pisans, and Grifons from Cyprus.
The Gascons and Poictevins alone, who were still John's subjects, adhered to his cause; but they were too weak to maintain that superiority in the field which they had hitherto supported against the confederated barons. Many considerable noblemen deserted John's party the earls of Salisbury, Arundel, Warrenne, Oxford, Albemarle, and William Mareschal the Younger.
Which in itself is to him so grievous, for the cordial affection wherewith he hath always cherished his subjects, that more it cannot be to any mortal man; yet in this, above human apprehension, is it to him the more grievous that these wrongs and sad offences have been committed by thee and thine, who, time out of mind, from all antiquity, thou and thy predecessors have been in a continual league and amity with him and all his ancestors; which, even until this time, you have as sacred together inviolably preserved, kept, and entertained, so well, that not he and his only, but the very barbarous nations of the Poictevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those that dwell beyond the isles of the Canaries, and that of Isabella, have thought it as easy to pull down the firmament, and to set up the depths above the clouds, as to make a breach in your alliance; and have been so afraid of it in their enterprises that they have never dared to provoke, incense, or endamage the one for fear of the other.
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