"Even what the cards showed. The fool seeking the duke!" A puzzled look crossed her face. "But the duke is here?" she continued to herself. "A strange riddle! All the signs show devilment, but what it is--"
"Good Nanette," interrupted the jester, satirically, "I have no time for spells or incantation."
"How dared you come here," she said, hoa.r.s.ely, "after--"
"After your mate proved but an indifferent servant of yours?" he concluded, meeting her sullen gaze with one so stern and inflexible that before it her eyes fell.
"Do you not know," she said, endeavoring to maintain a hardened front, "I have but to say the word, and all these friends of mine would tear you to pieces? What would you do, my pretty fellows, an I ask you?"
she cried out, her voice rising audaciously. "Would you suffer this duke"s jester to stand against me?"
Glances of suspicion and animosity shot from a score of eyes; fists were half-clenched; knives appeared in a trice from the concealment of rags, and a low murmur arose from the gathering. Even the imbecile morio, nature"s trembling coward, became suddenly valiant, and, with huge frame uplifted, seemed about to spring savagely upon the fool. An expression of disgust replaced all other feeling on the features of the duke"s _plaisant_.
"Spare me your threats, Nanette," he replied, coldly. "Had you intended to set them on me, you would have done it long ere this."
The woman hesitated. His calm, almost contemptuous, confidence was not without its effect upon her. Had he trembled, she would have spoken, but before his disdain, and the gay splendor of his attire, conspicuous amid rags from rubbish heaps, she felt a sudden consciousness of her own unclean environment; at the same time unusual warnings in her conjurations recurred to her. Something about him--was it dignity or pride or a nameless fear she herself experienced but could not understand?--beat down her eyes and she turned them doggedly away.
Abruptly she moved to the fire and again began to stir the mess, while the suppressed excitement in the room at once subsided. A minstrel lightly touched his battered dulcimer; a poet hummed a song in the dialect of thieves; a juggler began practising some deft work for hand and eye, and he of the hare lip sank quietly into a corner and patiently watched the simmering pot. The dwarf, with some misgiving, as a dog that is beaten crawls cautiously out of its kennel, crept from beneath the table.
"Oh, mistress," he whimpered, "some of it has boiled over!"
"Boiled over!" echoed the morio, mournfully.
At the same time the woman grasped the handle of the heavy kettle, lifted it from the jack, displaying in her bared arms the muscles of a man, and, staggering beneath the load, bore it steaming to the table.
Amid the subsequent confusion, the gipsy held aloof from the demolition of the rabbit, and, seating herself at the foot of the table, began moodily once more to turn the cards.
A merry droll acted as host and dipped freely for all with the long spoon, commenting the while he dispensed the mess according to the wants of the miscellaneous gathering: "Pot-luck! "Tis luck, and they"re no field mice in it! There"s everything else!" or "A bit of rabbit, my masters! I"ll warrant he"ll hop down your throats as fast as e"er he jumped a hillock." And, when one ate too greedily, slap went a spoonful of gravy o"er him with: "I thought you would catch it, knave!"
"Are they not blithe devils "round the caldron?" muttered the woman.
"There it is again!"--Bending over the bits of pasteboard on the table.
"The duke here! And the fool on horseback! What do the cards mean?"
"That I must have the horse, Nanette," said the duke"s jester, standing motionless and firm before the fireplace.
"Are you the fool?" she asked, more to herself than him. "Why does he wish to ride away?"
"Will you sell me the horse?" he demanded.
She hesitated. Around them danced the shadows of the kettle-gourmands:
"A kern and a drole, a varlet and a blade A drab and a rep, a skit and a jade--"
sang the street poet; the dwarf and the morio (a lilliputian and Gulliver) fought a mimic combat; the juggler and the clown, who could eat no more, were keeping time to a chorus by beating with their empty trenchers on the table.
"Sell you the horse? For what?" asked the gipsy.
"For five gold pieces."
"A fool with five gold pieces!" she exclaimed, incredulously.
"Here! You may see them." And he opened a purse he carried at his girdle.
"Do not let them know," she said, hurriedly. "They would kill you and--"
"You would not get the money," he added, significantly. "If you act quickly, find me a horse and let me go; it is you, not they, who will profit."
Abruptly she rose. "It is fate," she remarked, her eyes greedy.
His glance, as he stood there, proud and stern, cut her sharply. "Say cupidity, Nanette!" he laughed softly. "It is more profitable not to betray me. In the one case you get much; in the other, little."
"Stay here," she replied, hastily. "I"ll fetch the horse." And vanished.
A moment he remained, then resolutely turning to the door through which she had disappeared, opened it, and found himself in a combined sleeping-room and stable; a dark apartment, with floor of hardened earth and a single window, open to wind and weather. The atmosphere in this chamber for man and beast was impregnated with the smell of mold and dry-rot, mingled with the livelier effluvium of dirt and grime of years; but amid the malodor and mustiness, on a couch under the window, slumbered and snored the false Franciscan monk. By his side was a tankard, half-filled with stale sack, and in his hand he clutched a gold piece as though he had had an intimation it would be safer there than elsewhere on his person during the pot-valiant sleep he had deliberately courted. His hood had fallen back, displaying a bullet head, red cheeks and purple nose, while the wooden beads of this sottish counterfeit of a friar trailed from his girdle on the ground.
From a stall in a far corner a large, bony-looking nag turned its head reproachfully, as if mentally protesting against such foul quarters and the poor company they offered. Its melancholy whinny upon the appearance of the woman was a sigh for freedom; a sad suspiration to the memory of radiant clover fields or poppy-starred meadows.
"Why, here"s a holy man worn out by too many paternosters," commented the duke"s fool, standing on the threshold; and then gazed from the gold piece in the monk"s hand to the woman. "I need not ask where you got the silver, Nanette. "Tis a chain of evidence leading--where?"
The gipsy replied only with dark looks, regarding his intrusion in this inner sanctuary as a fresh provocation for her just displeasure. The jester, however, paid no attention to these signs of new acerbity on her face.
Crossing to the couch, he shook the monk vigorously, but the latter only held his piece of money tighter like a miser whose treasure is threatened, and snored the louder. Again the fool essayed to waken him, and this time he opened his eyes, felt for his beads and commenced to mutter a prayer in Latin words, strung together in meaningless phrases.
"Why," commented the jester, "his learning is as false as his cloak.
Wake up, sirrah! Would you approach Heaven"s gate with a feigned prayer on your lips and a toss-pot in your hand?"
"_Christe tuum_--I absolve you! I absolve you!" muttered the friar.
"Go your way in peace."
"Hear me, thou trumped-up monk; do you want another piece of gold?"
"Gold!" repeated the other, tipsily. "What--what for? To--to help some fool to paradise--or purgatory? "Tis for the Church I beg, good people. The holy Church--Church I say!"
Winking and blinking, seeing nothing before him, he held out a trembling hand. "The piece of gold--give it to me!" he mumbled.
"Yes; in exchange for your cloak," answered the jester.
"My cloak, thou horse-leech! Sell my skin for--piece of gold! Want my cloak? Take it!" And the dissembler rolled over, extending his arms.
The jester grasped the garment by the sleeves and with some difficulty whipped it from him.
"Now hand me--the money and--cover me with rags that--I may sleep,"
continued the beer-bibber. "So"--as he grasped the money the fool gave him and stretched himself luxuriously beneath a noisome litter of cast-off clothes and rubbish--"I languish in ecstasies! The angels--are singing around me."
With growing surprise and ill-humor had the woman observed this novel proceeding, and now, when the jester had himself donned the false friar"s gown, she said grudgingly:
"You did not give him one of the five pieces?"
"No; there are still five left."
"A bit of gold for a cloak!" she grumbled. "It is overmuch. But there!" Unfastening a door that looked out upon the field. "Give me the money and be gone."
He grasped the bridle of the horse, handed her the promised reward, and, drawing the hood of the monk"s garment over his head, led the nag out into the open air. The door closed quickly behind him and he heard the wooden bolt as it shot into place. Above the dark outlines of the forest, the moon, full-orbed, now shone in the sky, with a myriad attendant stars, its silver beams flooding the open s.p.a.ces and revealing every detail, soft, dreamy, yet distinct. A languorous, redolent air just stirred the waving grain, on which rested a glossy shimmer.