"What matters it, whether her name be Mary or Maud—Giles or Joan?" asked Master Patten, staring in wonder through the bars of his helmet, and laughing the while.
"It matters much to me, Señor Inglese, for I was reared in Old Castile, and on the banks of the Ebro, where my mother taught me it was a sin to make love on a Friday, or to kiss a woman whose name was Mary on a day of fasting; for though I serve King Edward's banner, and fight against the Scots, I am nevertheless, thank Heaven! a good Catholic and a true Castilian, without the taint of Jew, infidel, or Morisco in my blood."
On hearing this, just as fire from a gunmatch was about to be put into the vast pile of fuel, over which the arquebusiers had sprinkled powder from their priming-flasks, the Vicar of Tranent rushed to the entrance of the grotto, and tearing aside the screen of ivy with one hand, waved a white handkerchief with the other, exclaiming,—
"Gloria tibi, Domine! we shall be saved! I am a priest, sir Spaniard, and in the name of our holy Church and of Him I serve, command you to spare me, and those who are with me!" A shout of derision from Patten's men was the sole reply to this.
"Command, quotha—what manner of ware have we here?" said one mockingly.
"A priest and a woman in that dark hole! holy father how farest thou?" said a second.
"By St. George, 'tis a rare one to eschew the world, the flesh, and the devil!" added a third.
"Shoot, shoot! Cogsbones—'twas no priest's hand that slew the best lad in Kendal," exclaimed Patten, "or handled his arquebuse like one of our men at Finsbury!" Two archers drew each an arrow to their heads; but Pedro de Gamboa interposed his drawn sword before them, exclaiming:
"Hold—hold, sirs. I will have naught to do with priests. I have seen enough in my time to prove that Heaven always avenges a sacrilege."
"What!" asked Patten; "hast any qualms about killing a scurvy shaveling—a Scot, too? Don Spaniard, you should have smelled the fires o' Smithfield in old King Harry's time. Go to! we are not now either in Old Castile or on the banks of the Ebro."