“Varlets,” cried I, “my Lady Eleonore is no longer a child, she chooses you to know. Twelve years old will she be to-morrow, but two years younger than our new Queen Isabeau. And who knows what brave suitor comes to woo?”
At this they all laughed again, as in truth I hoped they would. With a black look at me and a stamp of her foot, my Lady turns and goes up the stair. This pleased me well, since the hawk was forgotten.
“Wit ye well, ye shall suffer for this,” sneered one of the pages, between whom and me there was ever discord. “Your mistress wilt have you soundly swinged, and well I pray my Lord will do it himself.”
My skin was pricking somewhat at the thought, but it behoved me to show no signs of it; so I looked him in the eye and flung back,—
“If my Lord so much as cuffs me, thou mayst do it also”; and with that I strolled to the mews.
I stroked the hawk, and thought how pleased my Lady would be on the morrow to have her and fly her too, since, to pleasure my Lady, my Lord had passed his word that we all should fly a cast with him on the broad marches that lay to the west a league or more.
Long ere cockcrow the next day was I astir. ’Twas a bright day for me, since my Lord had given me a new livery. For the first time I cast away my leathern doublet and put on one of soft cloth, and drew on a brave pair of chausses, a red one on the right leg and a green one on the left, and tied the points to my doublet.
It needed but only a sword to make me a man!
As I stole down the stair, I crept into the great hall to take one look into the great mirror of purest crystal which had but lately come to my Lord from a land far over seas, called Venice.
What I saw therein causeth me to turn hot, since never thought I to look so fine. Clapping my cap on my head, I ran to the mews, to bathe the feet of the hawk in fair water, to settle her bells and jesses, and to see that the hood could be quickly cast aside. Soon I heard the bustle in the courtyard, and hurried thither with the hawk on hand.