The lady’s nose wrinkled disdainfully. “Which way lies the Palace?”
“Down the lane on your left, noble one. You can see where the wall of the King’s garden makes one side of Paternoster Row. You can reach the Cheapside along the road also,” he added, “if you do not turn in your way until you come where the Churchyard joins the Folk—”
“Turn then to the left.”
They obeyed her, but their gay chatter died on their lips. If the road bore none of the repulsiveness of the shambles, it was still little more cheerful than the graveyard. On their right, an ice-stiffened marsh reached to the great City wall, while a remnant of the primeval beech forest lay along their left, leafless, wind-lashed and groaning. Ahead, behind its walls and above its gardens of clustering fruit-trees, rose the towers and gilded spires of the King’s Palace.
As they neared the arched gateway, red with the cloaks of the royal guards, it seemed to Randalin that an icy hand had closed about her heart. The blood was ebbing from Elfgiva’s face, and it could be seen that she was forced to keep moistening her lips with her tongue. Nearer—now they were in front of the entrance—All at once, the lady thrust a spur into her horse as he was slackening his pace in obedience to her tightened rein.
“To the goldsmiths’ first,” she ordered. “On our way back—” Her words were lost on the frosty wind.
The master of the first booth in the row of wretched little stalls was humped with steaming breath over a brazier of glowing coals. He leaped to greet such splendid ladies with a profusion of salaams and a mouthful of pretty speeches that brought some of the color back to Elfgiva’s cheeks.
“Do not have me in contempt, Tata,” she admonished with a laugh of some unsteadiness. “It is not certain that I am going to belie you to the guards, or that I have lost faith in your sign. Let me sharpen my weapon for some space among these precious things, and it may be that I shall go hence panting for the field.”
“Ah, gracious lady, you must needs buy my whole stock,” the merchant cried with ingratiating smiles, “for I can never endure to sell to another what I have once seen near your face.”
Elfgiva laughed beautifully then, and the Danish girl took a fresh grip upon her patience. Certainly the jewelled bugs, the golden snakes, the strands of amber and jet and pearl, seemed to act as tonics upon the Northampton lady. If she had not traded away, at the first two stalls, every ornament in her possession, she would have investigated each booth in the square. She came out in bubbling spirits to the waiting horses and the half-frozen guards.