First came a couple of clerks, and after them two men-at-arms, then rode Bernard, attended on one side by his interpreter, on the other by his brother Rogier in full harness. Again clerks, and then a body of men-at-arms.
The bishop was a middle-sized man with sandy hair, very pale eyes with rings about the iris deeper in color than the iris itself—eyes that seemed without depth, impossible to sound, as those of a bird. He had narrow, straw-colored brows, a sharp, straight peak of a nose, and thin lips—lips that hardly showed at all—his mouth resembling a slit. The chin and jowl were strongly marked.
He wore on his head a cloth cap with two peaks, ending in tassels, and with flaps to cover his ears, possibly as an imitation of a miter; but outside a church, and engaged in no sacred function, he was of course not vested. He had a purple-edged mantle over one shoulder, and beneath it a dark cassock, and he was booted and spurred. One of the clerks who preceded him carried his pastoral cross—for the see of St. David's claimed archiepiscopal pre-eminence. In the midst of the men-at-arms were sumpter mules carrying the ecclesiastical purtenances of the bishop.
Not a cheer greeted Bernard as he reached the summit of the hill and was in the midst of the people. He looked about with his pale, inanimate eyes, and saw sulky faces and folded arms.
"Hey!" said he to his interpreter. "Yon fellow—he is the Archpriest, I doubt not. Bid him come to me."
"I am at your service," said Pabo in Norman-French, which he had acquired.
"That is well; hold my stirrup whilst I alight."
Pabo hesitated a moment, then complied.
"The guest," said he, "must be honored."
But an angry murmur passed through the throng of bystanders.