“News, sirs, what would you with news? If Crookback is still king, I have no news for you.”
“There have been rumors of landings.”
“Rumors of old wives’ petticoats!”
The man and the girl were close at his elbow, ready to leave the ship. The man carried a leather-covered casket in one hand, and a viol under his arm, while the girl carried a lute. She kept her eyes fixed on the tower of the town church; they were very dark eyes, blue almost to blackness, her skin was softly browned like the skin of a Frenchwoman, but her lips were very red. The hair under her hood was the color of charcoal. Her attitude toward her neighbors seemed one of aloofness; men might have voted her a proud, fierce-tempered wench.
Master Hamden looked at the pair with his red-lidded, angry eyes. The man nodded to him.
“Good-day, master.”
“Give you good-day, Jack Jester. Go and get some wine in you, and wash the yellow out of your skin.”
He looked slantwise at the girl as she passed him, but he did not speak to her. Had she been all that she pretended to be she would not have left old Hamden’s ship without a coarse jest of some kind.
Her brother was pushing his way toward a handsome, ruddy man in a black camlet cloak, and the man in the cloak was eying him intently.
“Sir Adam, a word with you.”