“Speak, then, we give thee license,” replied the King.
“So please your Majesty, I do conceive myself grossly insulted by a Scottish knight; in such wise, indeed, that the blood of one of us must wash out the stain. May we then have thy Royal leave to fight before thee even now, to the outrance?”
“Name the Scottish knight of whom thou dost so complain,” said the King, with difficulty composing his features; “thou hast our full license to give him thy darreigne.”
“’Tis he who now rideth this way,” replied Courtenay, “Sir William de Dalzel.”
“Ha! what wouldst thou with me, most puissant Sir Piers?” said Dalzel, who just then returned from riding slowly along the whole length of the bridge, with his vizor up, a grave face, and a burlesque attitude, so as to show his pie off to the greatest advantage, bringing a roar of laughter along with him from the balconies and open lattices on both sides of the way, and who now approached Courtenay with a bow so ridiculous, that it entirely upset the small portion of gravity that the young King was blessed with; “what wouldst thou with me, I say, most potent paragon of knighthood?” [[502]]
“I would that thou shouldst redeem thy pledge,” replied Courtenay, with very unusual brevity.
“What, then, Sir Piers,” replied Dalzel, “must it then be pie against popinjay? Nay, cry you mercy, I forgot. Thy bird, I do believe, is called a falcon, though, by St. Luke, an ’twere not for the legend, few, I wis, would take it for aught but an owl, being that it is of portraiture so villanous.”
“By the blessed St. Erkenwold, but thy bantering doth pass all bearing,” cried Courtenay impatiently, and perhaps more nettled at this attack on the merits of his embroidery than he had been with anything that had yet passed. “Depardieux, my falcon was the admiration of the Westminster feast. By the holy St. Paul, it was the work of the most eminent artists the metropolis can boast.”
“Perdie, I am right glad to hear thy character of them,” replied Dalzel, “for my pie is here by the same hands; nay, and now I look at it again, ’tis most marvellously fashioned. By the Rood, but it pecks an ’twere alive.”
“Thou hast contrived to turn all eyes upon me by thy clownish mockery,” cried Courtenay, getting still more angry, as the laugh rose higher at every word uttered by his adversary.