“Quite,” he answered; then he blew out his lips with an explosive shiver. “Ow, it was cold! But I was in great luck.”
“Luck, Pierre, to be ducked?”
“No, not to be nibbled. There are great fish in the bay.” He leaned forward and continued in a low confidential voice. “Lady Marmaduke gave me such a dinner. You cannot imagine it. There was wine right out of France. Do you think if I should happen to be ducked again she would happen to come along?”
I could not forbear to laugh and Pierre smiled too. His face, however, soon changed, and his jovial expression was replaced by the hard look that I had seen in his face when he walked to the place of his punishment.
“I came here for a purpose, Monsieur Le Bourse, but—” He stopped and looked about him as if fearful of being overheard. His lips almost touched my ear as he said, “I don’t mind the ducking. I have been ducked before. It was the man who did it. I shall have my revenge. Are we together on that?”
He put out his hand and I clasped it.
“I thought so,” he continued. “But you do not know the half.”
Again he manifested some fear of being overheard. He said that the patroon was too great a man to be talked about in a public place like this. Would I walk a short distance into the country, beyond the Wall? He had news that should be heard only by me. I was indeed glad to go with him. We left the city by the Land-Gate, and soon came to a little bridge over a narrow creek.
“This is the Kissing Bridge,” he said with a forlorn sigh. “Annetje will never cross the bridge with me. She always makes me walk in front.”
Annetje Dorn, he told me, was his sweetheart. She was a bond servant at Van Volkenberg manor-house and maid to the patroon’s daughter Miriam.