Supper had been set in the hall of Ploermel wherein the knights
and squires assembled. Bambro' and Croquart were there with Sir
Hugh Calverly, an old friend of Knolles and a fellow-townsman, for
both were men of Chester. Sir Hugh was a middle-sized flaxen man,
with hard gray eyes and fierce large-nosed face sliced across with
the scar of a sword-cut. There too were Geoffrey D'Ardaine, a
young Breton seigneur, Sir Thomas Belford, a burly thick-set
Midland Englishman, Sir Thomas Walton, whose surcoat of scarlet
martlets showed that he was of the Surrey Waltons, James Marshall
and John Russell, young English squires, and the two brothers,
Richard and Hugh Le Galliard, who were of Gascon blood. Besides
these were several squires, unknown to fame, and of the
new-comers, Sir Robert Knolles, Sir Thomas Percy, Nigel Loring and
two other squires, Allington and Parsons. These were the company
who gathered in the torch-light round the table of the Seneschal
of Ploermel, and kept high revel with joyous hearts because they
thought that much honor and noble deeds lay before them.
But one sad face there was at the board, and that belonged to him
at the head of it. Sir Robert Bambro' sat with his chin leaning
upon his hand and his eyes downcast upon the cloth, whilst all
round him rose the merry clatter of voices, everyone planning some
fresh enterprise which might now be attempted.
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