A grin spread upon the weather-beaten countenance of Nicholas.
“Be that so? Marry, ’twere time. Sir John he be over long i’ th’ tongue.”
Lionel stood amazed at the man’s easy confidence and supreme assurance of how his master must acquit himself.
“You... you have no fear, Nicholas....” He did not add of what. But the servant understood, and his grin grew broader still.
“Fear? Lackaday! I bain’t afeeard for Sir Oliver, and doan’t ee be afeeard. Sir Oliver’ll be home to sup with a sharp-set appetite—’tis the only difference fighting ever made to he.”
The servant was justified of his confidence by the events, though through a slight error of judgment Sir Oliver did not quite accomplish all that promised and intended. In anger, and when he deemed that he had been affronted, he was—as his chronicler never wearies of insisting, and as you shall judge before the end of this tale is reached—of a tigerish ruthlessness. He rode to Arwenack fully resolved to kill his calumniator. Nothing less would satisfy him. Arrived at that fine embattled castle of the Killigrews which commanded the entrance to the estuary of the Fal, and from whose crenels the country might be surveyed as far as the Lizard, fifteen miles away, he found Peter Godolphin there before him; and because of Peter’s presence Sir Oliver was more deliberate and formal in his accusation of Sir John than he had intended. He desired, in accusing Sir John, also to clear himself in the eyes of Rosamund’s brother, to make the latter realize how entirely odious were the calumnies which Sir John had permitted himself, and how basely prompted.
Sir John, however, came halfway to meet the quarrel. His rancour against the Pirate of Penarrow—as he had come to dub Sir Oliver—rendered him almost as eager to engage as was his visitor.
They found a secluded corner of the deer-park for their business, and there Sir John—a slim, sallow gentleman of some thirty years of age—made an onslaught with sword and dagger upon Sir Oliver, full worthy of the onslaught he had made earlier with his tongue. But his impetuosity availed him less than nothing. Sir Oliver was come there with a certain purpose, and it was his way that he never failed to carry through a thing to which he set his hand.
In three minutes it was all over and Sir Oliver was carefully wiping his blade, whilst Sir John lay coughing upon the turf tended by white-faced Peter Godolphin and a scared groom who had been bidden thither to make up the necessary tale of witnesses.
Sir Oliver sheathed his weapons and resumed his coat, then came to stand over his fallen foe, considering him critically.