The woman was good to look upon in a large, florid fashion. She came in and sat herself down on a stool at the end of one long wooden table, and stared round with her hard brown eyes. One man passed her a cup, another the wine jar. She tossed the former aside with an air of scorn, and buried her face in the mouth of the jar. When she had taken her pull she spat on the floor with a certain quaint deliberation, and wiped her mouth on the back of her bare arm.
A wicked innuendo came from a man grinning at her elbow. Malmain laughed and pulled at her lip. Her presence conferred no leavening influence upon the place, and her sex made no claim for decorum. She was more than capable of caring for herself in the company of these gentlemen of the guard, for she could take her laugh and liquor with the best of them, and claim a solid respect for a fist that could smite like a mace.
She flustered up a sigh that ended in a hiccough. “I am tired,” she said, stretching her arms and showing the breadth and depth of her great chest.
“Go to bed, fragile one, and shake the castle.”
“Little chance of that; who says I snore?”
“Gildas the trumpeter.”
“Curse him; how should he know?”
The man questioned grinned, and shrugged his shoulders.
“I meddle no further,” he said. “How is the lord’s wife?”
Malmain licked her lips and reached for the pot. She tilted it with such gusto that the liquor overflowed and ran down her chin. After more cat’s-pawing and a snivel she waxed communicative with a matter-of-fact coarseness, and like an old hound soon had the rest tonguing in her track.