"Ay, you're a man of the world, good friar, 'tis no doubt for your comfortable nature I keep you for confessor." The Duke's voice had a bitter mocking edge. "Were I to tell you I had abducted, ravished this woman, had forced her to adultery, what would you say then?"
There was a pause, Nirac could hear the rustling of garments as though the friar had shifted on his seat, and he pictured how the plump white hands would smooth each other, and how Brother Walter's little mouth had pursed as he heard the soft voice answer. "With a few penances - my lord - contrition, of course-"
" - and if I told you I had murder in my heart - murder for the stupid clod that stands in my way - what then? Still a few penances, still absolution?"
There was a longer pause. Nirac, straining at the hole, clenched the edges of the wall with his little brown hands, for the Duke went on harshly, "Nay, I cannot do it! You need not rack your conscience for a compromise. The husband is my liege man and feal to me, and he is sickly - wounded - hating him as I do, yet I've helped him heal of his wounds, but my God, why does he not die?"
Nirac silently withdrew from behind the arras. Alone in the disused infirmary, he laughed softly from pure joy. "O Sainte Vierge, je te remercie de ta grande bonte!" he whispered and made a reverent sign of the cross.
In the mid-afternoon, while the Duke dined in the Grande Salle with the English, Aquitainian and Castilian nobles, Nirac set forth for the alley behind the cathedral. The little Moorish dwarf trotted beside him swinging the popinjay in its cage, while the chained monkey scampered along the ground.
Everywhere they passed, the people crowded around laughing at the monkey, poking and feeling of the dwarf and urging that he do tricks, but Nirac. would not let his charges pause until they came into the courtyard below the Swynford lodgings. There, Nirac told the dwarf to wait, while he clambered up the stone steps to the first floor.
Katherine opened to Nirac's knock. Her pale strained face lightened when she saw him perky and grinning on the threshold.
"Morbleu, but 'tis dark and morne in 'ere!" cried Nirac bowing to Hugh who was up, sitting on a chair beside a table littered with the remnants of dinner, his injured leg propped on a stool. Ellis had gone out to make them some small purchases at the fair. "One should be gay on this jour de fete" continued Nirac, noting Ellis's absence with satisfaction. "I've brought you somesing to amuse you, pour vous distraire."
"That was kind of you, Nirac," said Katherine smiling. "It's a bit dismal in here, but Hugh is so much better, I believe he'll soon be out."
"Ah bon !" Nirac looked now neither at Hugh nor Katherine, his quick eyes ran around the rooms, resting on the flagon of wine, then on the clay cup of medicine by the bedside. "The good Brother William prescribes fine drugs for you, hein?" he said. "They make you well, Sir Knight?"
Hugh grunted quite amiably. He didn't like Nirac, but he realised how dull it must be for Katherine cooped up here, and if the little jackanapes amused her-. Also he was free from
pain in the leg or gripes in the belly for the first time in weeks. "To be sure, the Grey Friar knows his craft," he agreed, "and my lady sees that I take his swill." He glanced at the clay cup which contained the black camphorated poppy juice. Nirac nodded, then turning quickly said to Katherine, "But are you not curious to know what I 'ave brought you?"
"A new song?" she smiled, knowing Nirac's many gifts, "or maybe a comic figure you've carved?"
"Nenni - belle dame ! Those would not make you laugh so much. Come to the window."
Their only window gave on to the courtyard and Katherine leaning out cried, "Oh, what is it? A manikin! Is he real? And the green bird, and a little beast jumping on the ground - oh, Hugh, you never saw so droll a sight!"
"But 'e may see it, madame. See, we'll 'elp 'im to the window, 'e can sit there and watch."
Hugh was himself curious, and while Katherine supported his leg Nirac shoved the chair over so Hugh might see out, then Nirac said, "But you, madame - you must see them close and 'ear the dwarf's so foolish jokes. Do you go down and I'll stay with Sir Hugh."
She hesitated, but Hugh said, "Go along Katherine, tell him to do a trick. I saw a monkey once in Castile could juggle nuts like a Christian. Ask him can his monkey juggle."
Katherine ran downstairs into the courtyard, where already a small crowd had gathered around the dwarf, who began to tumble across the courtyard like a leather bouncing ball.
Hugh leaned far over the sill to see and hear what he could, and when the monkey strutted and stamped its feet and slapped its tiny hands on its backside in imitation of the dwarf, Hugh let out a hoarse guffaw.
Nirac's business took only a minute. The Gascon murmured excuse, to which Hugh paid no attention, and walked into the bedroom to relieve himself into the slop jar, then with a lightning motion he snatched a leaden phial from within his tunic, and emptied grey-white powder into the clay cup which was still half filled with Brother William's drug. The alchemist had said the powder was antimoine, as is monk's-bane, but would answer Nirac's specifications even though the recipient be no monk. Nirac did not touch the cup, but with one eye on Hugh's back, he stirred hard with a little stick he had brought. The powder swirled and disappeared into the black mixture. He slipped the stick and empty phial into his tunic and walked back to the window, crying over Hugh's shoulder, "Ah, but 'ow droll - mordieu! The monkey and the popinjay they marry - see! Tis that trick make the Princess Isabel scream with mirth." Nirac's voice trembled, a sudden brief fit of shaking seized on him and passed. Hugh noticed nothing.
When the dwarf had run through all his repertoire, Katherine came back, her face flushed with laughter, and cried, "Ah, Nirac, how good of you it was to give us such a treat!"
Hugh nodded, still smiling a little. "Ay, gramerci," he said. " 'Twas courteously done. Here's silver for the dwarf" - he fumbled in his purse and held out some pennies.
Nirac hesitated only a moment before he took the money. "I must return to 'is Grace," he said, looking at Katherine. " 'Is Grace cannot do without Nirac Always 'e look for me, depend on me."
"To be sure," she said indulgently, but the happy flush faded and the gnawing pain she had forgotten for a few minutes returned.
"Le bon Dieu vous bemisse" said Nirac, still looking at Katherine, who was faintly surprised at this solemnity, but ever a creature of quick moods, the Gascon then grinned, executed a sweeping flourish of farewell, and trotted out of the door with his usual nimbleness.
"Strange little man," said Katherine, straightening up the table and rubbing off the wine stains with a cloth. "He's always been kind and pleasant to me, yet much as I've seen him, I feel I know him hardly at all."
"Bosh - these Gascons!" said Hugh. "There's naught in them worth knowing. Damn the man - he should have thought to wait and help me to bed. I grow weary."
"Ellis'll be back soon," she said soothingly, "or maybe I can manage if you lean on my shoulder. Nay, but there is Ellis."
The young squire clumped in and flung a basket on the table. He too had been enjoying himself, he had tilted at the quintain with a group of other squires on the outskirts of town, and then seen a most wondrous bull-baiting - no scurvy little sport such as it was in England but a pulse-stirring contest in which three bulls had been stabbed and four men gored. Ellis was full of it, and Hugh asked interested questions, while Katherine unpacked the basket. Ellis had brought them peaches and figs and a loaf of flat white bread imbued with garlic. Later she would get hot pork sausage up from the kitchen of the wineshop and refill the flagon for their supper. Soon this day will have passed, she thought, and the next will pass too. She would forget this morning in the garden of the inn - seal it over with wax as the bees sealed over frightening intruders in their hive. As she thought thus sensibly, grey misery enveloped her, and her lips formed words that were pushed up from the place where her mind had no control. "My dear love," she whispered, and going to the pitcher where she had placed the crumpled, withering but still fragrant sprays of jasmine, she buried her face in them.