'Therefore you would have him welcome to forty feet of my garden?' the old man drawled. 'He pulls down other folks' crucifixes and sets up his own walls with other folks' blood for mortar.'
The printer said darkly:
'Papists' blood.'
The old man pulled his nose and glanced down.
'We were all Papists in my day. I have made the pilgrimage to Compostella, for all you mock me now.'
He turned his head to see Magister Udal entering the door furtively and with eyes that leered round the room. Both the Badges fell into sudden, and as if guilty, silence.
'Domus parva, quies magna,' the magister tittered, and swept across the rushes in his furs to rub his hands before the fire. 'When shall I teach your Margot the learned tongues?'
'When the sun sets in the East,' the printer muttered.
Udal sent to him over his shoulder, as words of consolation:
'The new Queen is come to Rochester.'