“I should give you no trouble,” she said simply. “I have had trouble enough to teach me to be contented.”
Fulcon nodded.
“Trouble,” he agreed. “There are many things that bring trouble, more especially such a thing as a King.”
“My trouble began with the King,” she said.
“Ah, to be sure; his men took all my bread one day last year, and I had not so much as a farthing.”
His voice grumbled down in the bass notes, and Ban sympathised with a growl.
The woman felt in her bag.
“I can pay you,” she said, “a little. I can work, too, if you wish it.”
Fulcon narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and looked at Ban as though for advice. The dog wagged his tail. That wag of the tail decided it.
“Come up and see,” he said. “I have a little room under the roof.”