The Frenchman went steadily on, scarce a flicker of disgust on his narrow, pale face.—If high-born disdain was safe to keep the plague at a distance, certes the Vidame de Joncelles—King Charles’s new favourite page at Whitehall—was proof against it.
There was silence between the comrades, until the worn, muddy steps of the Temple-Gate brought them up from the unwholesome precincts of Whitefriars into the green and airy spaces of the King’s Bench Walk. There, shaking out his kerchief, Sir Paul resumed his interrupted complaint:—
“If you will come to Alsatia.…”
“If your misunderstanding townsfolk will drive the best fence master within your shores to take sanctuary in yonder pit—for the merest peccadillo—”
“Peccadillo, Vidame!—Why, the man drew on our host of the Three Tuns in Westminster, and slit both his ears, for refusing to serve him with a flagon of claret on trust…!”
“Perdi, a wretched innkeeper! It was an insolence that deserved worse—The hog is not dead!—Meanwhile, instead of suiting my convenience and practising my sword-play in Westminster, I must now come seek him in this pestilent lane!”
“Why, Master Enguerrand,” said Farrant, standing still on the wet sod to stare, half in amazement, half in admiration, at the Vidame, “the fellow owed him a reckoning as long as his sword.”
“And what of it? Is not such a master as Laperrière, whose lot in life it is to deal with us nobles, one of those whom gentles daily cross sword with and condescend to take instruction from, is not such an one to be privileged? A reckoning, forsooth! A master of fence, with us in France, Sir Paul, is held a gentleman. Our King has even ennobled many. And those others there, the rabble—are they not made and born for our service? As for the rest, as for this Plague that is about, speak no more of it. If you are so frightened of a little smell, what brings you day by day to the fencing room with me?—It is your own doing.”
“Aye,” said Farrant. “But think you,” he went on in hurt tones, “I would let you alone to such dangerous grounds as Whitefriars—you a stranger and my friend, Vidame?”
They were strolling slowly down across the gardens toward the river stairs. The Vidame, as if tired by his exertions in the fencer’s room, let himself drop on a stone bench in the central alley.