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Updated: May 25, 2025
Richard, in his city of Poictiers, was calmly forwarding his plans. His first act, since he now considered himself perfectly free, had been to send Gaston of Béarn with letters to Saint-Pol-la-Marche; his second, seeing no reason why he should wait for King Philip or any possible ally, to cross the frontier of Touraine in force.
But Jehane remained at Saint-Pol-la-Marche, praying much, going little abroad, seeing few persons. Gilles was a square-shouldered, thick-set youth of the black Norman sort, ruddy, strong-jawed, small-eyed, low in the brow, bullet-headed. He was no taller than she, looked shorter, and had nothing to say.
So they rode out of the woods of Saint-Pol-la-Marche, and Richard began to sing songs of Jehane the Fair-Girdled; never truly her lover until he might love her no more. Day-long and night-long he sang of her, being now in the poetic mood, highly exalted, out of himself. The country took tints of Jehane, her shape, her fine nobility.
'God forgive me if I did amiss, writes the abbot here; 'but seeing her in a melting mood, dewy, soft, and adorable, I kissed that beautiful person, and she left the Chapel of Saint Remy somewhat comforted. Not only so, but the same day she left the Dark Tower with her brother Count Eustace, and rode towards Gisors and Saint-Pol-la-Marche.
The abbot, who was trained to blink all such facts, had to learn that this girl blinked none. True to his guidance, he blinked. 'Go home to your brother, my daughter; go home to Saint-Pol-la-Marche. At the worst, remember that there are always two arks for a woman in flood-time, a convent and a bed. 'I shall never choose a convent, said Jehane.
And now to tell himself that he deserved what he had got was but to feed his rage. Again he swore by God's teeth that he would have his way; and when he left his castle of Saint-Pol-la-Marche it was for Paris. The head of his house, under the Emperor Henry, was there, Conrad of Montferrat, trying to negotiate the crown of Jerusalem.
They could not marry at Saint-Pol-la-Marche, because Gilles was on his service and might not win so far; nor could they have married before he went, because of his ill-treatment at the hands of the Béarnais. Of this Gilles had made light. 'He got worse than he gave, he told Saint-Pol. 'I left him dead in the wood. 'Would you see Jehane, Gilles? Saint-Pol had asked him before he went out.
So little, at any rate, did he covet, that, having made up his mind what he would do, he sent Gaston of Béarn to Saint-Pol-la-Marche with a letter for Jehane, in which he said: 'In two days I shall see you for the last or for all time, as you will' and then possessed himself in patience the appointed number of hours.
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