“He is to teach me to go ‘leding,’ as the Norsemen call it, like you.”
Robert laughed. A hint at his piratical attempts pleased his vanity, all the more because they had been signal failures.
“Lend him me, then, my pretty nephew, for a month or two, till he has conquered these Friesland frogs for me; and then, if thou wilt go leding with him—”
“I hope you may never come back,” thought Robert to himself; but he did not say it,
“Let the knight go,” quoth Baldwin.
“Let me go with him, then.”
“No, by all saints! I cannot have thee poked through with a Friesland pike, or rotted with a Friesland ague.”
Arnulf pouted still.
“Abbot, what hast thou been at with the boy? He thinks of naught but blood and wounds, instead of books and prayers.”
“He is gone mad after this—this knight.”