“Then we'd better have Bohun. The survivor may need his services.”
“As you please,” I replied, “though my man Diccon dresses my scratches well enough.”
He bit his lip, but could not hide the twinkle in his eye.
“You are cocksure,” he said. “Curiously enough, so is my lord. There are no further formalities to adjust, I believe? To-morrow at sunrise, behind the church, and with rapiers?”
“Precisely.”
He slapped his blade back into its sheath. “Then that's over and done with, for the nonce at least! Sufficient unto the day, etcetera. 'S life! I'm hot and dry! You've sacked cities, Ralph Percy; now sack me the minister's closet and bring out his sherris I'll be at charges for the next communion.”
We sat us down upon the doorstep with a tankard of sack between us, and Master Pory drank, and drank, and drank again.
“How's the crop?” he asked. “Martin reports it poorer in quality than ever, but Sir George will have it that it is very Varinas.”
“It's every whit as good as the Spanish,” I answered. “You may tell my Lord Warwick so, when next you write.”
He laughed. If he was a timeserver and leagued with my Lord Warwick's faction in the Company, he was a jovial sinner. Traveler and student, much of a philosopher, more of a wit, and boon companion to any beggar with a pottle of ale,—while the drink lasted,—we might look askance at his dealings, but we liked his company passing well. If he took half a poor rustic's crop for his fee, he was ready enough to toss him sixpence for drink money; and if he made the tenants of the lands allotted to his office leave their tobacco uncared for whilst they rowed him on his innumerable roving expeditions up creeks and rivers, he at least lightened their labors with most side-splitting tales, and with bottle songs learned in a thousand taverns.