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"Tell me the whole," he said to Simon. |
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By the time the story had been related, including Henry's reaction to Bassett's attempt to obtain justice and the demand for hostages, Richard was dressed and seated beside the empty hearth reflectively sipping a cup of wine. Simon had remembered Geoffrey's oft-repeated advice that too much passion made the. most solid fact sound suspect, so he had described the situation more calmly than those who knew him would have expected. It was clear that his temperate manner had convinced Pembroke. |
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"I am caught in a cleft stick," Richard said bitterly, his fine eyes bleak. "If I do not cry out against the king's action and uphold Bassett, I will not only violate what I believe to be right, but I will seem to break faith with a long-time friend of our family. And if I do protest, I will be playing into Henry's hand, offering him an excuse to" |
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"If you will give me leave, my lord, to say what I thinkand what Sir Adam, my brother, thinksit is that it does not matter what you do unless it be to yield entirely. Even then I am not sure the king will be content. What he did to de Burgh seems to have given him an appetite for subduing to utter helplessness every man in the land." |
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"I told you, Richard" Isabella interrupted. |
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"Hush, Isabella, Richard said absently, his eyes fixed on Simon. "What do Lord Ian and Lord Geoffrey say?" he asked slowly. |
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"My father says nothing, except that Henry does not mean evil. He remembers a golden-haired child bereft of a father and with a mother who had no soul. Lord Geoffrey says nothing also, butbut he looks like death. What can he say, my lord? Henry is his cousin andand I cannot deny has always behaved most lovingly to him. Even this spring when he dismissed all his castellans and put his castles into the hands of those two" |
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