“By Saint Paul!” answered Sir Nigel, “I should be a sorry knight if I ask pay for standing by a countryman in a strange land. You may ride with me and welcome, Master Micheldene, and your varlet may follow with my archers.”
“God's benison upon thy bounty!” cried the stranger. “Should you come to Norwich you may have cause to remember that you have been of service to Alderman Micheldene. It is not very far to Cahors, for surely I see the cathedral towers against the sky-line; but I have heard much of this Roger Clubfoot, and the more I hear the less do I wish to look upon his face. Oh, but I am sick and weary of it all, and I would give half that I am worth to see my good dame sitting in peace beside me, and to hear the bells of Norwich town.”
“Your words are strange to me,” quoth Sir Nigel, “for you have the appearance of a stout man, and I see that you wear a sword by your side.”
“Yet it is not my trade,” answered the merchant. “I doubt not that if I set you down in my shop at Norwich you might scarce tell fustian from falding, and know little difference between the velvet of Genoa and the three-piled cloth of Bruges. There you might well turn to me for help. But here on a lone roadside, with thick woods and robber-knights, I turn to you, for it is the business to which you have been reared.”
“There is sooth in what you say, Master Micheldene,” said Sir Nigel, “and I trust that we may come upon this Roger Clubfoot, for I have heard that he is a very stout and skilful soldier, and a man from whom much honor is to be gained.”
“He is a bloody robber,” said the trader, curtly, “and I wish I saw him kicking at the end of a halter.”
“It is such men as he,” Sir Nigel remarked, “who give the true knight honorable deeds to do, whereby he may advance himself.”
“It is such men as he,” retorted Micheldene, “who are like rats in a wheat-rick or moths in a woolfels, a harm and a hindrance to all peaceful and honest men.”
“Yet, if the dangers of the road weigh so heavily upon you, master alderman, it is a great marvel to me that you should venture so far from home.”
“And sometimes, sir knight, it is a marvel to myself. But I am a man who may grutch and grumble, but when I have set my face to do a thing I will not turn my back upon it until it be done. There is one, Francois Villet, at Cahors, who will send me wine-casks for my cloth-bales, so to Cahors I will go, though all the robber-knights of Christendom were to line the roads like yonder poplars.”