The apprentice seemed not to hear, but kept on looking after Guida, a pitiless leer on his face. “Dame, lucky for her the Sieur died before he had chance to change his will. She’d have got ni fiche ni bran from him.”
“Support d’en haut, if you don’t stop that I’ll give you a coffin before your time, keg of nails—you. Sorrow and prayer at the throne of grace that she may have a contrite heart”—he clutched the funeral bill tighter in his fingers—“is what we must feel for her. The day the Sieur died and it all came out, I wept. Bedtime come I had to sop my eyes with elder-water. The day o’ the burial mine eyes were so sore a-draining I had to put a rotten sweet apple on ‘em over-night—me.”
“Ah bah, she doesn’t need rosemary wash for her hair!” said the apprentice admiringly, looking down the street after Guida as she turned into the Rue d’Egypte.
Perhaps it was a momentary sympathy for beauty in distress which made the Master say, as he backed from the doorway with stealthy step:
“Gatd’en’ale, ‘tis well she has enough to live on, and to provide for what’s to come!”
But if it was a note of humanity in the voice it passed quickly, for presently, as he examined the bill for the funeral of the Sieur de Mauprat, he said shrilly:
“Achocre, you’ve left out the extra satin for his pillow—you.”
“There wasn’t any extra satin,” drawled the apprentice.
With a snarl the Master of Burials seized a pen and wrote in the account:
Item: To extra satin for pillow, three livres.