the midst of dead silence, they departed, for now no one seemed to
find either of them a fit subject for jest. Indeed there were some who
said, as they watched the pair pass the door, that Cattrina and the
giant would do well to consult a lawyer and a priest that night.

CHAPTER XII

THE MAN FROM THE EAST

In a great, cool room of his splendid Venetian palace, Sir Edmund Acour,
Seigneur of Cattrina sat in consultation with the priest Nicholas.
Clearly he was ill at ease; his face and his quick, impatient movements
showed it.

"You arrange badly," he said in a voice quite devoid of its ordinary
melodious tones. "Everything goes wrong. How is it you did not know that
this accursed Englishman and his Death's-head were coming here? What is
the use of a spy who never spies? Man, they should have been met upon
the road, for who can be held answerable for what brigands do? Or, at
the least, I might have started for Avignon two days earlier."

"Am I omnipotent, lord, that I should be held able to read the minds of
men in far countries and to follow their footsteps?" asked the aggrieved
Nicholas. "Still it might have been guessed that this bulldog of a
Briton would hang to your heels till you kick out his brains or he pulls
you down. Bah! the sight of that archer, who cannot miss, always gives
me a cold pain in the stomach, as though an arrow-point were working
through my vitals. I pity yonder poor fool of a Swiss to-morrow, for
what chance has he against a fish-eyed wizard?"

"Ten thousand curses on the Swiss!" said Acour. "He thrust himself into
the affair and will deserve all he gets. I pity myself. You know I am no
coward, as not a few have learned before to-day, but I have little luck
against this Englishman. I tell you that there at Crecy I went down
before him like a ninepin, and he spared my life. My God! he spared my
life, being a fool like all his breed. And now the tale is known against
me and that of the changed armour, too. Why could not de la Roche die
without speaking, the faithless hound whom I had fed so well! So, so,
regrets are vain; de Cressi is here, and must be faced or I be shamed."

"You may be killed as well as shamed," Nicholas suggested unpleasantly.
"It is certain that either you or that Englishman will die to-morrow,
since he's set for no fancy tilting with waving of ladies' kerchiefs and
tinsel crowns of victory, and so forth. Merchant bred or not, he is a
sturdy fighter, as we all learne