Will you indeed
take no less than a hundred and fifty? Alas! you pluck from me my
profits of a month. It is a fell morning's work for me. I would
I had never seen you!" With groans and lamentations he paid the
gold pieces across the counter, and Nigel, hardly able to credit
his own good fortune, gathered them into the leather saddle-bag.
A moment later with flushed face he was in the street and pouring
out his thanks to Aylward.
"Alas, my fair lord! the man has robbed us now," said the archer.
"We could have had another twenty had we stood fast."
"How know you that, good Aylward?"
"By his eyes, Squire Loring. I wot I have little store of reading
where the parchment of a book or the pinching of a blazon is
concerned, but I can read men's eyes, and I never doubted that he
would give what he has given."
The two travelers had dinner at the monk's hospitium, Nigel at the
high table and Aylward among the commonalty. Then again they
roamed the high street on business intent. Nigel bought taffeta
for hangings, wine, preserves, fruit, damask table linen and many
other articles of need. At last he halted before the armorer's
shop at the castle-yard, staring at the fine suits of plate, the
engraved pectorals, the plumed helmets, the cunningly jointed
gorgets, as a child at a sweet-shop.
"Well, Squire Loring," said Wat the armorer, looking sidewise from
the furnace where he was tempering a sword blade, "what can I sell
you this morning? I swear to you by Tubal Cain, the father of all
workers in metal, that you might go from end to end of Cheapside
and never see a better suit than that which hangs from yonder
hook!"
"And the price, armorer?"
"To anyone else, two hundred and fifty rose nobles.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130