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with a sigh. ''Geoffrey FitzWilliam is a fine man." His mouth quivered and his eyes grew bitter. "God's curse and all the ill we are doing each other should fall on the Bishop of Winchester, who has brought us to this pass. May his body bear the pains of all the wounded, and his soul the weight of the sins and hate he has forced upon us all."
"Amen," Simon said, but the pain in Richard's face called to him and he said, "But there is no hate between me and Geoffrey. You must not think that. Where there is love, there is also understanding. We each honor the other that he holds to his principles."
"It is all the fault of the Bishop of Winchester," another man said. "If the king had kept to his natural adviserswe of the old baronyinstead of turning to a man long absent from this realm and steeped in foreign ways"
"Yes, and that is what we must enforce upon Henry," Philip Bassett said hotly.
Because he was thinking of Geoffrey, Simon was inspired to unaccustomed tolerance and understanding. "It would be better to convince the king softly than enforce," he said. "Henry has a long memory." An uncomfortable silence followed this all-too-true remark, but Simon was still thinking of Geoffrey and his last conversation with him. "Yet we may all come scatheless out of this, if it can be shown that what we have been saying a moment ago is truethat the causer of the trouble is Winchester, that on him the blame should fall, and when he is gone all men will be at peace and return to their duty."
Richard could not help smiling at Simon, whose youthful face was so much in contrast to his sage advice. "It is my purpose, he said. "I only wish you could tell me how to bring it about."
Simon nodded. "But I can. Geoffrey gave me the

 
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