They had paused on the brow of a hill, commanding the view of road and tavern. Dazed, the young girl had listened to the greeting between the two men. This ragged, beard-begrown troubadour, the graceful, elegant Caillette of Francis' court? It seemed incredible. At the same time, through her mind passed the memory of the plaisant's reiterated exclamation in prison: "Caillette—in Spain!"—words she had attributed to fever, not imagining they had any foundation in fact.
But now this unexpected encounter abruptly dispelled her first supposition and opened a new field for speculation. Certainly had he been on a mission of some kind, somewhere, but what his errand she could not divine. A diplomat in tatters, serving a fellow-jester. Fools had oft intruded themselves in great events ere this, but not those who wore the motley; heretofore had the latter been content with the posts of entertainers, leaving to others the more precarious offices of intrigant.
But if she was surprised at Caillette's unexpected presence and disguise, that counterfeit troubadour had been no less amazed to see her, the joculatrix of the princess, in the mean garb of a wayside ministralissa, wandering over the country like one born to the nomadic existence. That she had a nature as free as air and the spirit of a gipsy he well believed, but that she would forego the security of the royal household for the discomforts and dangers of a vagrant life he could not reconcile to that other part of her character which he knew must shrink from the actualities of the straggler's lot. He had watched her at the inn; how she held herself; how she was a part of, and yet apart from, that migratory company; and what he had seen had but added to his curiosity.
"Have you left the court, mistress?" he now asked abruptly.
"Yes," she answered, curtly.
Caillette gazed at her and her eyes fell. Then put out with herself and him, she looked up boldly.
"Why not?" she demanded.
"Why not, indeed?" he repeated, gently, although obviously wondering.
The constraint that ensued between them was broken by a new aspect of the distant conflagration. Fanned by the breeze, the flames had ignited the thatched roof of the hostelry and fiery forks shot up into the sky, casting a fierce glow over the surrounding scene. Through the glare, many birds, unceremoniously routed from their nests beneath the eaves, flew distractedly. Before the tavern, now burning on all sides, could be distinguished a number of figures, frantically running hither and thither, while above the crackling of the flames and the clamorous cries of the birds was heard the voice of the proprietor, alternately pleading with the knaves to save the tavern and execrating him who had applied the torch.
"Cap de Dieu! the landlord will snare no more travelers," said Caillette. "My horse had become road-worn and perforce I had tarried there sufficient while to know the company and the host. When you walked in with this fair maid, I could hardly believe my eyes. 'Twas a nice trap, and the landlord an unctuous fellow for a villain. Assured that you could not go out as you came, I e'en prepared a less conventional means of exit."