Even in Whitefriars—that strange, knavish demesne lying at the very gates of the great legal college; that debatable land of crime, of statutory or at least traditional immunities—every dark lane had been swept as with besoms, if not clean, at least less foul. The stale airs of Alsatia (as the cant word went to express that sanctuary of tricksters and cheats and huffing bullies, of skulking debtors, rejected clergymen, and disbarred lawyers, of gaudy courtesans in enforced retreat) were driven forth before the fresh and mighty breath of the gale. The gutters ran gurgling, overflowing where they would. Here and there a choked conduit sent mock waterfalls from overhanging eaves, darting and splashing even to the opposite walls. All Alsatia, which had scuttled to its burrows, was beginning to pop its head out again; but, as the denizens in the ’Friars have, as a rule, rare change of garment, few ventured as yet into the slop and drip.
Thus the two youthful gallants who now emerged from the Half Moon Tavern, in Priory Lane, had the length of the street to themselves.
“Quelle peste—!” said the slighter and darker of the two.
Stepping gingerly aside to give wide berth to the dismal carcase of a cat, he received the spray from an odorous gutter-spout full in the neck—and again exclaimed in French against the pestilential offence of the place.
His companion nipped him by the elbow, as he himself, less fastidiously, strode over the carcase.
“Fie, Vidame,” he cried, “’tis well we’re not at Whitehall! Never forget ’tis a forbidden word, just now.”
The Vidame Enguerrand de Joncelles tossed his black curls with a somewhat scornful look at the speaker.
“In verity, Sir Paul,” he retorted, in his precise, quaintly emphasized yet fluent English, “I believe that, eating, drinking or sleeping, Court rules and Court favour are never out of your head! As for the—” his long dark eyes glinted mischievously—“as for the ugly distemper which begins with a letter P. in both our tongues, what have people of quality to do with it? Bah! it is to kill the canaille—useful, like rat-bane.”
“Yet … if you will come into Alsatia—” grumbled Sir Paul Farrant; and just then, a gush of intolerable stench striking across them from an open cellar door, he drew his laced kerchief from his breast and buried nose and mouth in its folds.