Alack! his Grace was not to be seen, being away on a visitation; and his Grace’s secretary had other matters to attend to, and sent word to me to enquire again to-morrow about the same time. So I was forced to let the business wait, much to my sorrow, and meanwhile seek to hear some news of Ludar’s maiden.
I remembered what Tom Price in his drunken speech had said of the nunnery, hard by which was a certain tavern by name of the “Oriflame,” where I was like to hear of the English soldier, Jack Gedge. Thither, accordingly, I went, being told I should find it outside the walls on the Dover road.
’Twas a low, mean house, with little accommodation for man or beast, being, indeed, as much farmhouse as hostel, with naught but the flaming sign to tell me I might wade through the muck and litter to the door and there call for refreshment.
The host was a civil, stupid fellow, who eyed me like one from whom he suspected mischief, and seemed impatient till I had drained my pot and was gone.
But I had no thought of going, and bade him, since business kept me that night in Canterbury, get me a bed.
He declared he had none to spare, and that I might get better quarters in the town. But I replied I wanted no better quarters than the “Oriflame,” and if it came to a lack of beds, he and I could do with one betwixt us.
“Or,” said I, “if, as I am told, my old friend and comrade Jack Gedge, once a soldier, lodgeth here, he and I will not quarrel over our share of a crib.”
At that he looked uneasy and said Jack Gedge was not there. He would have me believe at first he knew no man of the name; but I wormed it out of him that a month back a fellow had come and taken service with him as drawer and labourer, calling himself plain Gedge. But only a week ago, as this same fellow was bringing in the pigs, a handful of men had set upon him, with a magistrate’s warrant, and arrested him as a deserted soldier, skulking to avoid her Majesty’s service, and had carried him away to Rochester gaol. I questioned him as to who his captors were, but he said he knew them not, but supposed them to be men in the company of the Captain whose colours the fellow had abandoned.
Knowing what I did, I guessed this was so, and that it had been part of a plan against the maiden thus to get one of her protectors out of the way.
“And have you had much company here of late,” I asked, “that your house is so full?”