Judge, then, of our concern when upon coming into Toledo, Sir Richard Pendragon stayed his horse at that fonda we had come to know so well. He declared that, “Castilian or no Castilian, he must break his fast,” and acquire a store of victual to bear with him during the day. “For,” as he declared, “Spain was a most cursed country, and unless you had been bred to eat sand and brown dust, you were like to go short at your meals in the course of a long excursion.”
The Englishman declined to be moved by our prayers to hurry his campaign at the inn table. “The belly is a proud jade,” he said, “and apt to take affront at a small thing. It was through an intemperate haste at his meals that one of the foremost among my ancestors was fain to renounce the eating of roast pig, that most delectable of cates, at the age of one-and-thirty.”
Sir Richard Pendragon having at last, as he expressed it, “coaxed the rude jade into a humour of some civility,” made to mount his tall horse, which stood solemnly munching corn before the inn door. But as he did so there arose an altercation with the innkeeper, for, following his usual practice, the Englishman showed no disposition to pay his score. However, as we moved off, the Count of Nullepart threw a piece of money to the astonished and complaining host.
Nevertheless we had scarcely gone the distance of a single street when Sir Richard Pendragon again dismounted. In one of the bazaars which abound in this city he purchased a handsome cloak edged with fur, which put the tattered garment he was wearing to the blush. His bonnet also received a new white feather for its adornment. “It was not seemly,” he said, “that one of his lineage should come before the good France like a guy in a field of young beans, lest France, who was a good fellow, should consider him to be one of the Spanish nobility.”
Upon these loose words I felt my hand stray to the hilt of my sword. And although our situation was one of great instancy, and my incapacity to cope with the Englishman’s skill in this weapon was notorious, we must have crossed blades in the public street had not the peace been indebted to the notable behaviour of the worshipful Count of Nullepart. His apologies for this rude foreigner were so delicate that I swallowed my choler in what sort I might; and to such a point did the Count of Nullepart carry his courtesy that he even brought the Englishman to say that his reference to the Spanish nobility “was only his humour, which, as was the case with his nation, was apt to lead him into all kinds of fantasy; although foreign peoples, who lived in dark places, and rubbed but seldom against enlightened minds, could never addict themselves to this English pleasantry. Y’are solemn rogues, you continentals,” he concluded. “I don’t wonder you require so much holy water and so many masses for your souls.”
As we came through the market-place there were hens and turkeys exposed for sale in the open bazaars. To the astonishment of those who sold these wares, Sir Richard Pendragon lifted a number of them on to his saddle on the point of his sword, saying “that, in his opinion, although doubtless it was his English whimsicality, their flavour, if roasted gently over a sea-coal fire, compared not unfavourably with the finest Spanish sand and the fattest Spanish flies.”
The Count of Nullepart and myself being of this mind also, our companion left to us the task of appeasing those who had thus been ravished of their wares. Yet even to us he addressed a remonstrance. “Is it good silver money you are giving these poor souls?” he said. “I dare say it is the continental custom, but it marks an essential difference between the nations of the earth. We quick-moving islanders are more peremptory. You continentals ask a ‘by your leave,’ and live by the power of the purse; we English all the world over claim our own where we find it.”
In this, at least, I think Sir Richard Pendragon must have had a just appreciation of his countrymen. For all the long leagues we rode with him upon our embassy it was never once our hap to find him with his hand within his poke.
When we had come out of Toledo, and had got fairly upon the narrow winding tracks which traversed the great wilderness that was spread before us, Sir Richard Pendragon began to show a great concern for robbers. His eyes were continually casting about the horizon. No bush, no rock, no tree escaped his dark suspicion; his hand was upon the hilt of his sword a hundred times a day. At every turn of the road he expected to see a robber; and, indeed, as the day wore on without any sort of an encounter, it seemed to be a grief to him that robbers were so few. But if we came upon any chance wayfarers, to judge by the haste which they made to get clear of our path, I should say that this opinion was not general.
“By my soul,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, as three honest, grey-bearded merchants upon comely asses scurried away up a steep mountain path, “these Spaniardoes are the poorest spirited people upon the face of the earth. If I had not had a good mother, and she had not had a good son, I might have unloaded those fish-blooded burgesses so easily as I drink sherris.”