"Oh, sire!" he panted, "Thanks be that ye have arrived! The hour is well past noonday, and we had begun to fear...."
"Time enough," Jacques growled. He gestured impatiently, and the squire clambered to his feet, bowing again.
"This way, your Lordship!"
The squire led him to the lower room in the north tower. It was the usual room of monastic simplicity—whitewashed stone walls, a single window, two wooden benches and a low couch on which his garments for the occasion had been carefully arrayed. After the execution, he would be moved to his black silk tent in the center of the camping grounds.
While the squire fluttered around him, eager to be of help, Jacques removed his short-sleeved dacron shirt, kicked off his sandals and stepped out of the comfortable shorts he always wore for traveling. The squire gaped with awe at the sight of his muscular body.
"M'Lord, truly thou art a powerful man!"
Jacques looked down at him with mixed contempt and amusement. The squire was a thin, pale little man, with the pinched look of nearsightedness about his eyes. His wig and tunic were much too big for him.
"What do you do, Squire?" Jacques inquired, not unkindly.
The man looked hurt, as if the question reflected somehow on his ability to serve as a squire to the Lord High Executioner.
"Computer development," he muttered. "Resonating pentode circuits." Then he drew himself up defensively, with not a little pride. "But I placed at the top of the list in the Bureau's test for squires!"