'I am cultivating English ways, thou seest,' observed the Earl of the East Angles. 'It is well to begin at once.' Whereat Hereford laughed.
The fare was dainty rather than bountiful. A cold venison pasty, and a young heron, larded, roasted, and eaten with ginger, forming the most important dishes; with simnel and wastel cakes, and sundry sweetmeats, and wines rejoicing in the strange names of pigment and moral.
The earls carved for themselves with their daggers, and used neither forks nor spoons.
Hereford, although he had declared himself in such a famished condition, showed no great prowess as a trencherman, but seemed more inclined to help himself from the wine-cup. He was obviously in an unsettled and irritable mood, while his companion inclined to the taciturn.
Suddenly Earl Roger exclaimed,—
'By the mass! this meal is not sprightly. Did I not see thy jester Grillonne amongst thy meinie? Send for the rogue and for my Marlette, and let the twain hold a tourney of wit. Though I wager thy knave will win.'
'If thy sleepy almoner might not be summoned from his slumber to hold converse on a weighty matter, methinks it is somewhat hard that my poor jester should be called upon to cudgel his wits!' said Ralph. 'But as thou wilt.'
'I'll waken the varlet up with a cup of moral,' answered Hereford; and a few moments later the two fools were introduced, in obedience to his order,—Marlette rubbing his eyes and yawning; Grillonne awake and eager-eyed.
Marlette was a poor imbecile, with a heavy face and clumsy figure, who caused laughter more by the incongruity of his short, puzzle-headed interjections, than by any real humour in his sayings. But the Earl of East Anglia's jester was a born buffoon, who would have made a comfortable living, if not a fortune, in the circus in these days. Little, alert, wiry, his lithe body seemed to be always in motion, and the bells on his peaked cap rarely ceased to jingle. He was nearly sixty, and his scant white hair, straggling from under his whimsical headgear, gave him an elfish look, enhanced by the wizened, wrinkled countenance beneath it, and his oblique, twinkling eyes. He was a Breton, who had come over in the train of Ralph the Staller's Breton bride in good King Eadward's days, and he had loved the gentle lady, who was always kind to him, and well pleased to hear him troll French ballads when she grew weary of hearing the strange Saxon tongue, and felt forlorn and homesick. And he had loved her handsome boy, who inherited her dark face and eagle nose, though not her bright dark eyes, and had followed him back to Brittany, when, for some reason the chroniclers do not report, he had suffered banishment and confiscation of his estates. And he had returned with him when he helped the Conqueror to win England. De Guader knew and valued his fidelity, and took him with him whithersoever he went.
'How now, fool Grillonne!' was the Earl of Hereford's greeting. 'I promised to pour out a full cup of moral to wake thee up withal, but it seems thou art by far too much awake already. I had best give two cups to Marlette here.'