Camoys answered stiffly: "I imagine this same locket to have been the object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, shortly before we began our combat. I do not rob the dead, madame."
"Well," the Queen said, "he always did queer things, and so, I shall always wonder what sort of lady he picked out to love, but it is none of my affair."
Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King's name. But Osmund Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding it to be written on his tomb that he died in the Queen's cause.
How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently Dame Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how in the end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England wept therefor--this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to record six days of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh might have done) I say modestly with him of old, _Majores majora sonent._ Nevertheless, I assert that many a forest was once a pocketful of acorns.
"Plagues à Dieu ja la nueitz non falhis, Ni'l mieus amicx lone de mi nos partis, Ni la gayta jorn ni alba ne vis. Oy Dieus! oy Dieus! de l'alba tan tost we!"
THE SECOND NOVEL.--ELLINOR OF CASTILE, BEING ENAMORED OF A HANDSOME PERSON, IS IN HER FLIGHT FROM MARITAL OBLIGATIONS ASSISTED BY HER HUSBAND, AND IS IN THE END BY HIM CONVINCED OF THE RATIONALITY OF ALL ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES.
In the year of grace 1265 (Nicolas begins), about the festival of Saint Peter _ad Vincula_, the Prince de Gâtinais came to Burgos. Before this he had lodged for three months in the district of Ponthieu; and the object of his southern journey was to assure the tenth Alphonso, then ruling in Castile, that the latter's sister Ellinor, now resident at Entréchat, was beyond any reasonable doubt the transcendent lady whose existence old romancers had anticipated, however cloudily, when they fabled in remote time concerning Queen Heleine of Sparta.
There was a postscript to this news. The world knew that the King of Leon and Castile desired to be King of Germany as well, and that at present a single vote in the Diet would decide between his claims and those of his competitor, Earl Richard of Cornwall. De Gâtinais chaffered fairly; he had a vote, Alphonso had a sister. So that, in effect--ohé, in effect, he made no question that his Majesty understood!