Experiencing no further inconvenience than the ordinary vicissitudes of traveling without litter or cavalcade, several days of wandering slowly passed. Few people they met, and those, for the most part, various types of vagabonds and nomads; some wild and savage, roaming like beasts from place to place; others, harmless, mere bedraggled birds of passage. In this latter class were the vagrant-entertainers, with dancing rooster or singing dog, who stopped at every peasant's door. To the shrill piping of the flageolet, these merry stragglers added a step of their own, and won a crust for themselves, a bone for the dog or a handful of grain for the performing fowl.
In those days when court ladies rode in carved and gilded coaches, and their escorts on horses covered with silken, jeweled nets, the modest appearance of the jestress and her companion was not calculated to attract especial attention from the yokels and honest peasantry; although their steeds, notwithstanding their unpretentious housings, might still excite the cupidity of highway rogues. As it minimized their risk from this latter class, the young girl was content to wear the cap of the jestress, piquantly perched upon her dark curls, thereby suggesting an indefinable affinity with vagrancy and the itinerant fraternity.
Not only had she donned the symbol of her office, but she endeavored to act up to it, accepting the sweet with the sour, with ever a jest at discomfort and concealing weariness with a smile. Often the fool wondered at her endurance and her calm courage in the face of peril, for although they met with no misadventures, each day seemed fraught with jeopardy. Perhaps it was fortunate their attire, somewhat travel-stained, appeared better suited to the character of poor, migratory wearers of the cap and bells than to the more magnificent roles of fou du roi or folle de la reine. But although they had gone far, the jester knew they had not yet traveled beyond the reach of Francis' arm, and that, while the king might reconcile himself to the escape of the plaisant, he would not so easily tire in seeking the maid.
Once they slept in the fields; again, beside an old ruined shrine, in the shadow of an ancient cross; the third night, on the bank of a stream, when it rained, and she shivered until dawn with no word of complaint. Fortunately the sun arose, bright and warm, drying the garments that clung to her slender figure, At the peasants' houses they paused no longer than necessary to procure food and drink, and, not to awaken suspicion, she preferred paying them with a song of the people rather than from the well-filled purse she had brought with her.
And as the fool listened to a sprightly, contagious carol and noted its effect on clod and hind, he wondered if this could be the same voice he had heard, uplifted in one of Master Calvin's psalms in the solitude of the forest. She had the gift of music, and, sometimes on the journey, would break out with a catch or madrigal by Marot, Caillette, or herself. It appeared a brave effort to bear up under continued hardship—insufficient rest and sharp riding—and the jester reproached himself for thus taxing her strength; but often, when he suggested a pause, she would shake her head wilfully, assert she was not tired, and ride but the faster.
"No, no!" she would say; "if we would escape, we must keep on. We can rest afterward."
"Where do you wish to go?" he asked her once.
"There is time enough yet to speak of that," she returned, evasively.
"You have some plan, mistress?"
"Perhaps."