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On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging in complete armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like a wizened nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings.

“I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen.”

Dame Alianora wrung her hands. “You go to your death.”

He answered: “That is very likely. Therefore I am come to bid you farewell.”

The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into a curious fit of deep but tearless sobbing.

“Mon bel esper,” said Osmund Heleigh, very gently, “what is there in all this worthy of your sorrow? The man will kill me; granted, for he is my junior by some fifteen years, and in addition a skilled swordsman. I fail to see that this is lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go after recent happenings; there a rope’s end awaits me. Here I must in any event shortly take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very little need of ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish, dug under the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I prefer a clean death at a gentleman’s hands.”

“It is I who bring about your death!” she wailed. “You gave me gallant service, and I have requited you with death!”

“Indeed the debt is on the other side. The trivial services I rendered you were such as any gentleman must render a woman in distress. Naught else have I afforded you, madame, save very anciently a Sestina. Ho, a Sestina! And in return you have given me a Sestina of fairer make–a Sestina of days, six days of life.” His eyes were fervent now.

She kissed him on either cheek. “Farewell, my champion!”

“Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund Heleigh rides forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. Reign wisely, my Queen, that hereafter men may not say I was slain in an evil cause. Do not shame my maiden venture.”

“I will not shame you,” the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change of voice: “O my Osmund! My Osmund!”

He caught her by each wrist. “Hush!” he bade her, roughly; and stood crushing both her hands to his lips, with fierce staring. “Wife of my King! wife of my King!” he babbled; and then flung her from him, crying, with a great lift of speech: “I have not failed you! Praise God, I have not failed you!”

From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter and color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean pedant sat conspicuously erect, though by this the fear of death had gripped him to the marrow; and as he went he sang defiantly, taunting the weakness of his flesh.

Sang Osmund Heleigh:

“Love sows, and lovers reap; and ye will see
The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling
Never again when in the grave ye be
Incurious of your happiness in spring,
And get no grace of Love there, whither he
That bartered life for love no love may bring.”

So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh’s body.

“For the man was a brave one,” Camoys said to the Queen, “and in the matter of the reparation he owed me acted very handsomely. It is fitting that he should have honorable interment.”

“That he shall not lack,” the Queen said, and gently unclasped from Osmund’s neck the thin gold chain, now locketless. “There was a portrait here,” she said; “the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his youth, Messire Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart.”

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.”

“The act was very like him,” the Queen said. “Messire Camoys, I think that this day is a festival in heaven.”

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.