“Even so. One of those whose office it is to keep poor knights from starving.” (It was a fault of this good dame’s, that she would be bitter in her speech at times.) “I will not send these away an hungered. Come, maidens, away with the hose-baskets, and busily with me to the kitchen.” Lady Alice, followed by her two little maidens, left the room. The sound of the horses’ feet approached rapidly. There was no time to be lost. Sir Gilbert clutched Jankin nervously by the arm, and said to him in hurried tones,—
“Take thou brown Crecy; thou wilt find her in the orchard (if she be not loose in the wheat); saddle and gallop like wind to Sir Simon Ballard’s. Bid him lend me his new green velvet surcoat,—that with the gold stars. Dost heed? Say a nobleman of the court is with me, who desires one like it. Then to Dame Adlyn, the yeoman’s wife. Say I have a wager with a certain earl, who lies here, that the weight of her gold chain is greater than his. Bid her lend it me for an hour. Spare not whip or spur, and I will owe thee a guerdon. Stay!—if these riders question thee, say the knight is gone out with his hawks. Speed!”
Jankin departed with a beaming face. He had no great faith in the promised guerdon, but he was fond of horse exercise.
The cavalcade was at the gate.
“A murrain on them!” Sir Gilbert muttered. “Would they were in the Red Sea! And yet I lack court news sorely. Pray Heaven that miser Ballard, and that farmer’s jade, Adlyn, stand me in good stead.”
Sir Gilbert having impressed upon the household the fiction he was desirous of keeping up, retired to bite his nails in a garret, till such time as Jankin should return with the borrowed plumes.
The visitors were met at the gate by one of Lady Alice’s little maids. Falstaff was rather bare in the commodity of men-servants, and those it possessed were none of the most presentable. Master Lambert, the Reve or Steward, who was believed to be much richer than his master, had been called to Sandwich on business of his own, leaving his master’s to take care of itself.
The leader of the cavalcade was a handsome young man of some one or two and twenty. He was
——“a doughty swaine;
White was his face as pandemaine,
His lippes red as rose.
His rudde is like scarlet in grain,
And I you tell in good certain,
He had a seemly nose.
“His here his berde was like safroun,
That to his girdle raught adoun;
His shoon of cordewane;
Of Brugges were his hosen broun,
His robe was of ciclatoun,
That coste many a Jane.”
Read further the description of Sir Thopas, and you will have a good idea of the sort of mediaeval exquisite who announced himself to the little maiden as Sir Thomas Mowbray, who having, with certain other poor gentlemen of his company, mistaken his way, was desirous of paying his respects to the fair lady of the castle.