Then Calote opened her eyes upon her father and mother, and she was dreaming.
“O red rose!” said she, and shut her eyes again.
And Will Langland and Kitte his wife went down on their knees to pray.
CHAPTER V
A Disciple
HE second time Calote saw the squire he bore a hooded falcon on his wrist and he rode a little white horse, in the fields beyond Westminster. He sang a pensive lyric in the French tongue; and when he saw Calote he lighted down from his horse and held his cap in his hand. She was gathering herbs.
He told her he had got him a copy of her father's poems, and he kept it in a little chest of carven ivory and jade that his mother gave him afore she died. And Calote, being persuaded, went and sat with him beneath a yew tree. He said that she might call him Stephen, if she would, or Etienne; men spoke to him by the one or the other indifferently, but they were the same name. It was his mother that was cousin german to the Earl of March; his father being a gentleman of Derbyshire, Sir Gualtier Fitzwarine, of a lesser branch of that name. And both his father and his mother were dead, but the Earl of March was his godfather.
But when Calote questioned him of the poem, he could say little, excepting that his man had bought it of a cook's knave in the palace, that was loath to part with it; and it smelled frightful of sour broth, but Etienne had sprinkled it with flower of lavender. Moreover, he had searched therein for Calote and her golden hair and her gray eyes; he marvelled that her father had not made mention of these things.
Then Calote took up her knotted kerchief with the herbs, and gave him good day. And whether she were displeased or no she could not determine, nor could he. But he went immediately to his chamber and read diligently, with a rose of sweet odour held beneath his nose.