"'Tis easy for you to boast, Irelander," retorted Blaise Renouf, the son of the lay choir-master, who had been brought specially from Rome to teach the choir-boys of the marshal's chapel the latest fashions in holy song. "We will either fight you with swords or not at all. We do not fight with our bare knuckles, being civilised. And that indeed proves that you are no true lover of the French, but an English dog of unknightly birth."
This retort still further irritated the hot-headed son of Malise.
"I will fight you or any galley slave of a French frog with the sword, or spit you upon the rapier. I will cleave you with the axe, transfix you with the arrow, or blow you to the pit with the devil's sulphur. I will fight any of you or all of you with any weapons from a battering-ram to a toothpick—and God assist the better man. And there you have Laurence O'Halloran, at your service!"
"You are a loud-crowing young cock for a newcomer," said Henriet, the confidential clerk of the marshal, suddenly appearing in the doorway; "you are desired to follow me to my lord's chamber immediately. There we will see if you will flap your wings so boldly."
Laurence could not help noticing the blank alarm which this announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the ancient game of brag.
It was Blaise Renouf who first recovered. He looked across the little rose-grown space of the cloister to see that Henriet had turned his back, and then came quickly up to Laurence MacKim.
"Listen to me," he said; "you are a game lad enough, but you do not know where you are going, nor yet what may happen to you there. We will fight you if you come back safe, but meantime you are one of ourselves, and we of the choir have sworn to stand by one another. Can you keep a pea in your mouth without swallowing it?"
"Why, of course I can," said Laurence, wondering what was to come next. "I can keep a dozen and shoot them through a bore of alder tree at a penny without missing once, which I wot is more than any Frenchman ever—"
"Well, then," whispered the lad Renouf, breaking in on his boast with a white countenance, "hearken well to me. When you enter the chamber of the marshal, put this in your mouth. And if nothing happens keep it there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it. But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de Sillé seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel a bitter taste and then swallow. That is all. You are indeed a cock whose comb wants cutting, and if all be well, we will incise it for your soul's good. But in the meanwhile you are of our company and fellowship. So for God's sake and your own do as you are bid. Fare you well."
As he followed Clerk Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in his hand. It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic consistency, and of the largeness of a pea.