I shall sleep now and dream of that good
and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these
two slept in Chantrell Wood.
Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed
Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that
which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed,
charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute
ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh
and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had
journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear.
At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By
a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might
have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this
child."
The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In
their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for
inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork.
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