She gave him the sum, adding in her quiet voice: “Go; and if you love life, keep better watch over your words.”
Then the porter went, and now so humble was his mien that in his dirty turban and long, tattered robe he looked, Wulf thought, more like a bundle of rags than a man mounted on the donkey’s back. Also it came into his mind that their strange hostess had powers not possessed by innkeepers in England. When she had watched him through the gate, Masouda turned to them and said in French:
“Forgive me, but here in Beirut these Saracen porters are extortionate, especially towards us Christians. He was deceived by your appearance. He thought that you were knights, not simple pilgrims as you avow yourselves, who happen to be dressed and armed like knights beneath your gambesons; and,” she added, fixing her eyes upon the line of white hair on Godwin’s head where the sword had struck him in the fray on Death Creek quay, “show the wounds of knights, though it is true that a man might come by such in any brawl in a tavern. Well, you are to pay me a good price, and you shall have my best room while it pleases you to honour me with your company. Ah! your baggage. You do not wish to leave it. Slave, come here.”
With startling suddenness the Nubian who had led away the mule appeared, and took up some of the packages. Then she led them down a passage into a large, sparsely-furnished room with high windows, in which were two beds laid on the cement floor, and asked them if it pleased them.
They said: “Yes; it will serve.” Reading what passed in their minds, she added: “Have no fear for your baggage. Were you as rich as you say you are poor, and as noble as you say you are humble, both it and you are safe in the inn of the widow Masouda, O my guests—but how are you named?”
“Peter and John.”
“O, my guests, Peter and John, who have come to visit the land of Peter and John and other holy founders of our faith—”
“And have been so fortunate as to be captured on its shore by the widow Masouda,” answered Godwin, bowing again.
“Wait to speak of the fortune until you have done with her, Sir—is it Peter, or John?” she replied, with something like a smile upon her handsome face.
“Peter,” answered Godwin. “Remember the pilgrim with the line of white hair is Peter.”