No sooner had we come into Castile, the enemy’s kingdom, than what I was forced to regard as Sir Richard’s distemper took a more palpable form. At a small rustic place, a three days’ journey from France, he insisted that we should assume the guise of peasants, and should consign our horses to the keeping of the proprietor of the local venta.
To my astonishment, he himself set the example we were to copy. Doffing his magnificent canary-coloured doublet and all the rest of the bedizenments he had acquired at Paris, even to the cockado in his bonnet, he habited himself entirely in the garb of a peasant, so that, making allowance for his bulk and his stature, I doubt whether “the sainted lady his mother” would have known him.
By what means he had contrived such a disguise, and whence he had obtained it we were unable to learn. In some places it was mightily close to the skin; in others it was burst open; and further he had sought out similar attire for the Count of Nullepart and myself.
Perhaps it were well to state that on my own part I had no intention to submit to this unseemliness, because I could only regard the whole matter as a distemper of the brain. Yet when, to my great surprise, I saw the worshipful Count of Nullepart tricked out in this vulgar garb, with his handsome face and shapely limbs emerging out of the rude clothes of a clown, I was obliged to yield my dignity, since, whatever the whimsicality of my companions, my youth rendered me no more than a cadet in the service I had embraced. All the same, nothing could have exceeded the disgust with which I doffed my fine clothes from Paris, which were so admirably proper to the figure of a gentleman, and exchanged them for the coarsest and most ill-fitting suit in which it has ever been my lot to invest my person.
I was equally reluctant to part with Babieca, my honest horse. I mentioned to my friends the distress such an act would cause me, whereon it appeared that Sir Richard Pendragon shared these feelings in the matter of his singular beast Melanto, and the Count of Nullepart partook of them also in respect of his palfrey that was called Monsieur. Therefore by the address of these two strange persons, who certainly in this particular did not appear to be so whimsical as they were in others, the keeper of the venta was persuaded to hold them in his stable against the time when we should send for them again.
Doubtless it were well to state that the landlord of the venta was hardly a free agent in regard to the horses. Sir Richard Pendragon threatened him with such atrocious penalties if the three animals were to go amiss within the next six months, even as to a single nail of their shoes or a minor hair of their tails, that the cheeks of the poor man were blanched with terror.
It was not until we had become privy to further whims of the Englishman’s brain that we got upon our road. For early in the morning as we were about to go forth, a cart used for the conveyance of water was seen to be standing at the inn door. Skins hung from its sides, and it was drawn by four sturdy mules. No water was contained in the cart, but in lieu of it were three long poles such as are affected upon a journey by the country people. Sir Richard gave one of these staves to each of us, took one himself, and starting the mules upon their road, led them out of the town in the direction of Toledo.
To all my inquiries as to what possible use there could be for an empty water-cart and four sturdy mules I received the most unsatisfactory answers. The Count of Nullepart still professed himself as wholly in the hands of his commander. And he assured me solemnly that his experience of Sir Richard Pendragon had taught him that whatever were the actions of that singular man they were the fruits of a rare intelligence and were greatly to be admired by those who had reverence for the things of the mind.
As you will conceive, good reader, to this flattery Sir Richard Pendragon—trudging through the dust and the mire with his long pole in true peasant fashion, and wearing a great slouch hat and brass rings in his ears, so that he looked more than ever like a robber, and continually exhorting his four mules with barbarous oaths—gave an assent that was most ready and gracious. He took occasion to pay the Count of Nullepart a compliment of his own upon the power of his philosophy and his old-fashioned respect for high intelligence, “the which he was sore to observe in these days did not always obtain with springald youth.” And the courteous gravity with which this English barbarian assured the Count of Nullepart that he loved him for his liberal opinions made me furious.
For could anything have been more unseemly than that we three persons of birth and high breeding—in such a description Sir Richard Pendragon is included by courtesy—should be pursuing the highways of Spain in the company of a water-cart drawn by four mules and wearing the rudest attire to be seen out of Galicia. Yet, as we moved through the unfrequented country places at the rate of one league an hour, there were some advantages at least to be taken from this fashion of progress. We needed not to keep a watch for robbers, since they were not likely to trouble three peasants who themselves had the appearance of bandits. Neither had we need to fear falling in with the army of Castile, because none could have discerned that three prominent servants of the King’s enemy were hidden in such wretched guise. Again, neither was there to be suspected in the homely and rustical figure of a water-carrier the accomplished robber of churches.