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“I will take it were its walls of iron,” he declared.

“I would hold it were the walls of butter,” Richard defiantly replied.

It was church land, and the archbishop placed Normandy under an interdict. Richard laughed at his wrath, and persuaded the pope to withdraw the curse. A “rain of blood” fell, which scared his courtiers, but Richard laughed at it as he had at the bishop’s wrath.

“Had an angel from heaven bid him abandon his work, he would have answered with a curse,” says one writer.

“How pretty a child is mine, this child of but a year old!” said Richard, gladly, as he saw the walls proudly rise.

He needed money to finish it. His kingdom had been drained to pay his ransom. But a rumor reached him that a treasure had been found at Limousin,–twelve knights of gold seated round a golden table, said the story. Richard claimed it. The lord of Limoges refused to surrender it. Richard assailed his castle. It was stubbornly defended. In savage wrath he swore he would hang every soul within its walls.

There was an old song which said that an arrow would be made in Limoges by which King Richard would die. The song proved a true prediction. One night, as the king surveyed the walls, a young soldier, Bertrand de Gourdon by name, drew an arrow to its head, and saying, “Now I pray God speed thee well!” let fly.

The shaft struck the king in the left shoulder. The wound might have been healed, but unskilful treatment made it mortal. The castle was taken while Richard lay dying, and every soul in it hanged, as the king had sworn, except Bertrand de Gourdon. He was brought into the king’s tent, heavily chained.

“Knave!” cried Richard, “what have I done to you that you should take my life?”

“You have killed my father and my two brothers,” answered the youth. “You would have hanged me. Let me die now, by any torture you will. My comfort is that no torture to me can save you. You, too, must die; and through me the world is quit of you.”

The king looked at him steadily, and with a gleam of clemency in his eyes.

“Youth,” he said, “I forgive you. Go unhurt.”

Then turning to his chief captain, he said,–

“Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him depart.”

He fell back on his couch, and in a few minutes was dead, having signalized his last moments with an act of clemency which had had few counterparts in his life. His clemency was not matched by his piety. The priests who were present at his dying bed exhorted him to repentance and restitution, but he drove them away with bitter mockery, and died as hardened a sinner as he had lived. It should, however, be said that this statement of the character of Richard’s death, given by the historian Green, does not accord with that of Lingard, who says that Richard sent for his confessor and received the sacraments with sentiments of compunction.

As for Bertrand, the chronicles say that he failed to profit by the kindness of the king. A dead monarch’s voice has no weight in the land. The pardoned youth was put to death.