"And a woman in love?" added Jorian, who, though he followed the lead of the long man in great things, had a shrewder eye for some more intimate matters.
"Eh, what's that you say?" said Boris, turning quickly upon him. He had been regarding with interest a shackled-kneed varlet holding a halberd in his arms as if it had been a fractious bairn.
But Jorian was already addressing the company before him.
"Here, ye unbaked potsherds—dismiss, if ye know what that means. Get ye to the walls, and if ye cannot stand erect, lean against them, and hold brooms in your hands that the Muscovite may take them for muskets and you for men if he comes nigh enough. Our Lady is not Joan of the Dishclout, that such draught-house ragpickers as you should be pinned to her tail. Set bolsters stuffed with bran on the walls! Man the gates with faggots. Cleave beech billets half in two and set them athwart wooden horses for officers. But insult not the sunshine by letting your shadows fall outside the city. Break off! Dismiss! Go! Get out o' this!"
As Jorian stood before the levies and vomited his insults upon them, a gleam of joy passed across chops hitherto white like fish-bellies with the fear of death. Bleared eyes flashed with relief. And there ran a murmur through the ragged ranks which sounded like "Thank you, great captain!"
In a short quarter of an hour the drums of the Plassenburg Palace Guard had beaten to arms. From gate to gate the light sea-wind had borne the cheerful trumpet call, and when Joan returned, heartless and downcast, with half a dozen more mouldy rascals, smelling of muck-rakes and damp stable straw, she found before her more than half the horsemen of Plassenburg armed cap-a-pie in burnished steel. Whereat she could only look at Boris in astonishment.
"Your Highness," said that captain, saluting gravely, "we are only able to accompany you as Envoys Extraordinary of the Prince and Princess of Plassenburg. But as such we feel it our duty in order properly to support our state, to take with us a suitable attendance. We are sure that neither Prince Hugo nor yet his Princess Helene would wish it otherwise!"
Before Joan could reply a messenger came springing up the long narrow streets along which the disbanded levies, so vigorously contemned of Jorian, were hurrying to their places upon the walls with a detail of the Plassenburg men behind them, driving them like sheep.
Joan took the letter and opened it with a jerk.