Pastourel gave Jeanne half a dozen more blows, upon the sides, the shoulders and the head, then set his stick in the corner, and flinging himself down upon the straw ate the meat and black bread without the broth. The night set in, dark, wet and chill.
Yet the next morning showed a bright sky with sunbeams that pierced even those lanes. Black Martin’s band took station betimes in the market-place. That was a large, unpaved space, muddy this morning under foot, but roofed by a sky of sapphire. The great buildings that showed above intermediate structures were the church and monastery. Above them in turn, upon the rock above the town, struck against the blue Bishop Héribert’s house that was nothing less than a castle. Coming back to market-place, there were found a storehouse, a guild house, other buildings rude and small, a few better houses belonging to the principal burghers. Down the opening of a street showed the peaked roof of a béguinage, and nearer yet to the market-place the long front of the brothel licensed by the town. The market cross rose in the middle of the market-place, and all around were the hucksters’ booths.
Rude was the time and place, and rude the folk, clergy and laity, country and town, fief-holding noble, man-at-arms and servitor, serf and villein, monk and pilgrim, stroller, beggar, outlaw, leper, Jew, Saracen, and Christian. Such as they were, samples of all skirted or traversed the market-place of this town.
It should have been a good day. But though a crowd gathered, it was nothing like so good a crowd as it should have been. Its units looked hungrily for a turn or two, then drifted away. Others took their places, but these also proved unstable. There was little real applause, hardly any loud jocularities tossed back to the Entertainers. These, like all Entertainers, had the quickest ear for any drop or hollowness in applause. Such communication received, the ray What’s the use? saw to it that their own movements became dispirited. The people of this town had been taxed of all their money or had given it all away. At least, none of the booth people seemed to have it, for their faces, too, were long, and on the other side of the place the man with the brown bear did not seem to have it. The bells clanged noon; the folk were streaming into the church. A palmer crossed the market-place. He held up his staff that had tied to it a bit of dried palm. “It is almost One Thousand years since He suffered! Almost One Thousand years! Be not taken buying and selling, ploughing and building, laughing and clapping of the shoulder as though ye did not believe! Almost One Thousand years!” The bell clanged again. Up in the sky was a cloud. Now it floated so that it came between the sun and the town. Shadow wrapped the place. Half the people took panic fright. “Signs and signs! The End of the World—!”
Rainulf the Red rode into town with a train of twenty. He had a quarrel with Bishop Héribert; he came to make it lighter or make it darker. To the sound of ringing bells he came into the market-place on his way to the bishop’s house that was in every aspect a castle. He knew the town well, and the castle and the bishop—at least he thought that he knew the bishop. There came in the only doubt—doubt as to whether the quarrel’s shade was solely a matter of Red Rainulf’s will.
He rode his huge grey horse across the market-place, caring not at all that he and his men thrust against booths, made goods to fall in the mire, threatened to trample children and the old and unwary. “Rainulf the Red!” cried the people, men and women, and ducked and cringed.
“Come laugh at Baudwin Buffoon! Come marvel at Pastourel and Rayneval the wrestlers! Come listen to Barnabo’s song, a circumcised Jew that became a Christian! Will you see the dwarf Seguin?—Maria the dancer that danced before the soldan of Paynimry! A soothsayer, a soothsayer! Gersonde the soothsayer, who can taste what the king has for dinner, and hear the bells in Rome!”
Black Martin’s bull voice burst its way from the other side of the market cross. Rainulf the Red rode on, then turned his horse’s head. His men turned with him, Gerbert the music-maker, whom, for some whim, he had brought with him, turned—Black Martin, seeing them coming, felt as though he had swallowed a stoup of wine. He spoke in an undervoice to the Entertainers, that, for this reason and that and another, he dominated as though they were his fingers: “Do your best—each one of you! Get bright coin from him—or answer to me—or answer to me!”
Rainulf the Red said, “Where is your soothsayer?”
Black Martin indicated Gersonde where she sat upon a stone, her mantle about her. “Lord, will you have her come to your bridle-rein?”