answered: in a moment he was ashamed of himself. 'Before God,' he said,
'I mean no impiety. I will do what I have undertaken as gently as may
be. Come, gentlemen.' He rode on.

The camp was defended by fosse and bridge. At the barbican all the
Aquitanians except Richard dismounted, and all stayed about him while a
herald went forward to tell the King who was come in. The King knew very
well who it was, but chose not to know it; he kept the herald long
enough to make his visitors chafe, then sent word that the Count of
Poictou would be received, but alone. Claiming his right to ride in,
Richard followed the heralds at a foot's pace, alone, ungreeted by any.
At the mount of the standard he got off his horse, found the ushers of
the King's door, and went swiftly to the entry of the pavilion (which
they held open for him), as though, like some forest beast, he saw his
prey. There in the entry he stiffened suddenly, and stiffly went down on
his two knees. Midway of the great tent, square and rugged before him,
with working jaws and restless little fired eyes, sat the old King his
father, hands on knees, between them a long bare sword. Beside him was
his son John, thin and flushed, and about, a circle of peers: two
bishops in purple, a pock-marked monk of Cluny, Bohun, Grantmesnil,
Drago de Merlou, and a few more. On the ground was a secretary biting
his pen.

The King looked his best on a throne, for his upper part was his best.
It was, at least, the mannish part. With scanty red hair much rubbed
into disorder, a seamed red face, blotched and shining; with a square
jaw awry, the neck and shoulders of a bull; with gnarled gross hands at
the end of arms long out of measure, a cruel mouth and a nose like a
bird's beak--his features seemed to have been hacked coarsely out of
wood and as coarsely painted; but what might have passed by such means