"I fear me," said the jester, when they had put a goodly distance between themselves and the solitary figure, "yonder brother craves almsgiving with his voice, and enforces the bounty with his staff. Woe betide the good Samaritan who falls within reach of his pilgrim's prop."
"You knew him?" she asked.
"I had the doubtful pleasure," he answered. "He was hired to kill me."
"Why?" in surprise.
"Because the—duke wanted me out of the way."
She asked no further questions, although he could see by her brow she was thinking deeply. Was the duke then no better than a common assassin? She frowned, then gave an impatient exclamation.
"It is inexplicable," she said, and rode the faster.
The jester, too, was silent, but his mind dwelt upon the future and its hazards. He little liked their meeting with the false monk. Why was the Franciscan traveling in their direction? Had others of that band of pillagers, street-fools and knave-minstrels, formerly infesting the neighborhood of the palace, gone that way? He did not believe the monk would long pursue a solitary pilgrimage, for varlets of that kind have common haunts and byways. The encounter suggested hazard ahead as well as the danger of pursuit from the palace. But this apprehension of a new source of peril he kept from his companion; since go on they must, there was no need to disquiet her further.
The mystic silver light of the day had now become golden; the sky, brilliant, many-colored, overdomed the vast, sullen earth; between two roseate streamers a whitish crescent unobtrusively was set. Seemingly misplaced in a sanguinary sea, passionless it lay, but as the ocean of light grew dull the crescent kindled. Over a thick patch of pine trees in the distance myriads of dark birds hovered and screamed in chorus. Now they circled restlessly above that shaded spot; then darted off, a cloud against the sky, and returned with renewed cawing and discord. As the riders approached the din abruptly ceased, the creatures mysteriously and suddenly vanishing into the depths of the thicket below.
In the fading light, fool and jestress drew rein, and, moved by the same purpose, looked about them. On the one hand was the deserted, desolate plain over which lay a sullen, gathering mist; on the other, the sombrous obscurity of the wood. Everywhere, an ominous silence, and overhead the crescent growing in luster.