The printer heaved an immense sigh:
'God be praised!'
Udal snickered, still over his shoulder:
'You see, neither have the men of the Old Faith put venom in her food, nor have the Emperor's galleys taken her between Calais and Sandwich.'
'Yet she comes ten days late.'
'Oh moody and suspicious artificer. Afflavit deus! The wind hath blown dead against Calais shore this ten days.'
The old man pulled his long white nose:
'In my day we could pray to St Leonard for a fair wind.'
He was too old to care whether the magister reported his words to Thomas Cromwell, the terrible Lord Privy Seal, and too sardonic to keep silence for long about the inferiority of his present day.
'When shall I teach the fair Margot the learned tongue?' Udal asked again.