His face was dark with anger, and he wrapped himself in thoughtful taciturnity, meditating a rebuke befitting the insolence with which his condescension and favour had been met.
He grew impatient when along the straight level road nothing could be seen but a single horseman on a lame jade, whose nose almost touched the ground at every step, and whose pace was easily kept up with by a follower on foot.
As this sorry trio approached, however, he saw that the men were habited as monks, and Herfast, who rode beside his royal master on his sleek white mule, flushed deeply red.
''Tis Lanfranc himself!' he exclaimed.
Lanfranc jests with the Conqueror.
'What new mummery is this?' demanded William, his keen eyes straying over the comical figure of the prior and his wretched mount, and a smile gleaming over his stern face, brief but irrepressible, for William was a lover of horseflesh, and spared no pains or expense in the importation of fine horses from Spain for his own use. The creature he bestrode was a splendid animal, and the strongest of contrasts to the prior's pitiful nag.
Slight as the smile was, and hastily repressed, Lanfranc saw it, and took instant advantage.
'By your commands,' said the audacious prior airily, 'I am leaving your dominions, but it is only at a foot's pace that I can proceed on such a wretched beast as this; give me a better horse, and I shall be better able to obey your commands.'
William had a keen sense of humour, and perhaps felt that the clever Lombard would be a formidable foe.