Levina gave a second and stronger snort, and disappeared down the stairs. In a few minutes she made her reappearance, carrying in one hand a plate of broiled ham, and in the other a piece of extremely dry and rather mouldy bread.
“Here is my gracious damsel’s first course! Fulk le Especer was so good as to tell me that folks of her sort are mighty fond of ham; so I took great care to bring her some. There’ll be sauce with the next.”
That there would be sauce—of one species—with every course served to her in that house, Belasez was beginning to feel no doubt. Yet however Levina chose to behave to her, the young Jewess maintained her own dignity. She quietly put aside the plate of ham, and, cutting off the mouldy pieces, ate the dry bread without complaint Belasez’s kindly and generous nature was determined that the Countess, who had been so much kinder to her than at that time Christians usually were to Jews, should hear no murmuring word from her unless it came to actual starvation.
Levina’s sauce presented itself unmistakably with the second course, which proved to be a piece of apple-pie, swimming in the strongest vinegar. Though it must have set her teeth on edge, Belasez consumed the pie in silence, avoiding the vinegar so far as she could, and entertained while she did so by Levina’s assurances that it delighted her to see how completely Belasez enjoyed it.
The third article, according to Levina, was cheese: but the first mouthful was enough to convince the persecuted Jewess that soft soap would have been a more correct epithet. She quietly let it alone.
“Ha, chétife! I am sadly in fear that my sweetest damsel does not like our Suffolk cheese?” said Levina in a most doleful tone.
“Is it manufactured in this county?” asked Belasez very coolly; for, in 1234, all soaps were of foreign importation. “I thought it tasted more like the French make.”
Levina vanished down the stairs, but her suppressed laughter was quite audible. She came up again with two more plates, and informed Belasez that they constituted the last course. One of them was filled with chicken-bones, picked exceedingly clean: the other with a piece of sweet cake, over which had been poured some very hot saline compound which by no means harmonised with the cake, but set Belasez’s throat on fire. She managed, however, to eat it, thinking that she would get little food of any kind if she did not: and Levina departed with the plates, remarking that it had done her good to see the excellent meal which Belasez had made. It was a relief to the girl to be left alone: for solitude had no terrors for her, and Levina was certainly not an enjoyable companion. After half-an-hour’s quiet, Margaret and Eva entered the ante-chamber.
“Hast thou dined, Belasez?” asked Margaret, kindly.
“I thank my damsel, yes.”