She smiled grimly.
“And are these,” she asked, with a ferocious sarcasm, “the jests with which you pay the score?”
“Jests?” quoth I. “Score? Pish! More eyes, less tongue would more befit a hostess who has never housed a fool.” And with a splendid gesture I pointed to the ducat gleaming on the table. At sight of the gold her eyes grew big with greed.
“My master—” she began, and coming forward took the piece in her hand, to assure herself that she was not the dupe of magic. “A fool with gold!” she marvelled.
“Is a shame to his calling,” I acknowledged. Then—“Get me a needle and a length of thread,” said I. She scuttled off to do my bidding, like nothing so much as one of the rats that tenanted her unclean sty. She was back in a moment, all servility, and wondering whether there was a rent about me she might make bold to stitch. What a key to courtesy is gold, my masters! I drove her out, and eager to conciliate me, she went at once.
With my own hands I effected in my doublet the slight repair of which it stood in need. Then I donned my hat, and, cloak on shoulder, made my way below, calling for my horse as I descended.
I scorned the wine they proffered me ere I departed. That last night’s draught had quenched my thirst for ever of such grape-juice as it was theirs to tender. I urged the taverner to hasten with my horse, and stood waiting in the squalid common-room, my mind divided ’twixt impatience to resume the road to Pesaro and fresh speculations upon the means I was to adopt to enter it and yet save my neck—for this was now become an obsessing problem.
As I stood waiting, there broke upon my ears the sound of an approaching cavalcade: the noise of voices and the soft fall of hoofs upon the thick snow carpet. The company halted at the door, and a loud, gruff voice was raised to cry:
“Locandiere! Afoot, sluggard!”
I stepped to the door, with very natural curiosity, a company of four mounted men escorting a mule-litter, the curtains of which were drawn so that nothing might be seen of him or her that rode within. Grooms were those four, as all the world might see at the first glance, and the livery they wore was that of the noble House of Santafior—the holy white flower of the quince being embroidered on the breast of their gabardines.