"
The countenance of King Richard was, indeed, more flushed, and
his action became more feverishly vehement, as, with clenched
hand, extended arm, and flashing eyes, he seemed at once to
suffer under bodily pain, and at the same time under vexation of
mind, while his high spirit led him to speak on, as if in
contempt of both.
"You can flatter, Sir Knight," he said, "but you escape me not.
I must know more from you than you have yet told me. Saw you my
royal consort when at Engaddi?"
"To my knowledge--no, my lord," replied Sir Kenneth, with
considerable perturbation, for he remembered the midnight
procession in the chapel of the rocks.
"I ask you," said the King, in a sterner voice," whether you were
not in the chapel of the Carmelite nuns at Engaddi, and there saw
Berengaria, Queen of England, and the ladies of her Court, who
went thither on pilgrimage?"
"My lord," said Sir Kenneth, "I will speak the truth as in the
confessional. In a subterranean chapel, to which the anchorite
conducted me, I beheld a choir of ladies do homage to a relic of
the highest sanctity; but as I saw not their faces, nor heard
their voices, unless in the hymns which they chanted, I cannot
tell whether the Queen of England was of the bevy.
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