"Ay, you may say so! but I would we had more knights," said another. "There's none now in the island who are skilled in the joust."
"There'll have to be some overrunners[*] asked over," said a third.
[*] The local name for newcomers or "foreigners" from the mainland to the Isle of Wight.
"If only that right hardy knight Sir George Lisle of Briddlesford, old Sir William's son, were in these parts now," said the first speaker.
"I never heard tell of him," replied the other.
"Why should you, comrade? 'Tis many years since he's been heard of. There's some as said he were lately come over with the Lord Lincoln to Stoke field, and died there in harness, fighting with his face to the foe, by the side of the Lord Geraldine, Captain Martin Swartz, Sir Thomas Broughton, and all those lusty Allemaynes who gave us such hard knocks ere we made them give in. But I were with the Herald when we searched the field, and never saw him there; and I should have known him alive or dead anywhere. We were boys together down Briddlesford way."
"Now you've named Sir George Lisle, that minds me," said the second soldier, "that when King Edward was alive, he was in rare favour with the king, who gave him in marriage a right lovely lady. But there was some talk of his lady, how, when he was away in France with old Bear and Ragged Staff, she went off with some one, I don't rightly remember who."
"Silence, man, an you value your tongue!" said his comrade. "That's a tale you'd best not call to mind hereabouts," he added significantly.
Ralph, full of the news, was going off to the pages' room, when he noticed the shields.
"What are they for?" he asked of the old man-at-arms who had just spoken so pointedly to his more garrulous comrade.