"Our Lady Joan! Aye, that is it!" said the old man. "We would all gladly die in battle for our lady. We have done more—we have risked our own honour and her favour in order to convey her away from these dangers. Let the boy be given up; and that he go not alone without fit attendance, I will go with him as his chamberlain."
The other two men, Peter Balta and George the Hussite, did not answer for a space, but sat pondering Alt Pikker's counsel. It was George the Hussite who took up the parable.
"I do not see why you, Alt Pikker, and you, Maurice the Dane, should hold such a pother about what you are ready to do for our Lady Joan. So are we all every whit as ready and willing as you can be; and I think, if any are to be given up, we ought to draw lots for who it shall be. You fancy yourselves overmuch, both of you!"
The Sparhawk laughed.
"Great tun-barrelled dolt," he said, clapping Peter on the back, "how sweet and convincing it would be to see you, or that canting ale-faced knave George there, dressed up in the girdle-brace and steel corset of Joan of the Sword Hand! And how would you do as to your beard? Are you smooth as an egg on both cheeks as I am? It would be rare to have a Duchess Joan with an inch of blue-black stubble on her chin by the time she neared the gates of Courtland! Nay, lads, whoever stays—I must go. In this matter of brides I have qualities (how I got them I know not) that the best of you cannot lay claim to. Do you draw lots with Alt Pikker there, an you will, as to who shall accompany me, but leave this present Joan of the Sword Hand to settle her own little differences with him who is her husband by the blessing of Holy Church."
And he threw up his heels upon the table and plaited his knees one above the other.
Then it was Alt Pikker's time.
"Peter Balta, and you, George the Heretic, listen," he cried, vehemently emphasising the points on the palm of his hand. "You, Peter, have a wife that loves you—so, at least, we understand—and your Marion, how would she fare in this hard world without you? Have you laid by a stocking-foot full of gold? Does it hang inside your chimney? I trow not. Well, you at least must bide and earn your pay, for Marion's sake. I have neither kith nor kin, neither sweetheart nor wife, covenanted or uncovenanted. And for you, George, you are a heretic, and if they burn you alive or let out the red sap at your neck, you will go straight to hell-fire. Think of it, George! I, on the other hand, am a true man, and after a paltry year or two in purgatory (just for the experience) will enter straightway into the bosom of patriarchs and apostles, along with our Holy Father the Pope, and our elder brothers the Cardinals Borgia and Delia Rovere!"
"You talk a deal of nothings with your mouth," said George the Hussite. "It is true that I hold not, as you do, that every dishclout in a church is the holy veil, and every old snag of wood with a nail in't a veritable piece of the true cross. But I would have you know that I can do as much for my lady as any one of you—nay, and more, too, Alt Pikker. For a good Hussite is afraid neither of purgatory nor yet of hell-fire, because, if he should chance to die, he will go, without troubling either, straight to the abode of the martyrs and confessors who have been judged worthy to withstand and to conquer."
"And as to what you said concerning Marion," nodded Peter Balta truculently, "she is a soldier's wife and would cut her pretty throat rather than stand in the way of a man's advancement!"