Fortune

Before I could draw my sword my challenger was on his feet, had kicked away the stool on which he had sat, and had bared his own weapon. I was so overcome with fury that I could not stay to mark his enormous stature, yet his head seemed to live among the hams in the roof.

This was the first occasion I had drawn my sword in a quarrel, but I needed to ask no better. The pure reputation of this noble heart I was defending nerved my right arm with unimaginable strength. Besides, I was twenty-one years old, well grown and nourished for one of my nation. My blade was of an ancient pattern, but a true Toledo of the first quality, and many high deeds of the field had been wrought thereby. The Englishman towered above me in the extremity of his stature, but had he been of twice that assemblance, in my present mood I would not have feared him. For, as I was fain to believe, some of the hardiest fighting blood of our northern provinces was in my veins. This was my first duello; but you must not forget, reader, that my father had instructed me how to bear my point, how to thrust, how to receive, and, above all, how to conduct the wrist as laid down by the foremost practice.

We spent little time in courtesies, for my anger would not permit them. At once I ran in upon my adversary, thrusting straight at his heart. Yet he received my sword on his own with a skill that was truly wonderful, and turned it aside with ease. All the power I possessed was behind it, yet he cast it off almost as complacently as if he had been brushing away a mosquito. The sting of this failure and his air of disdain caused me to spring at him like a cat, yet, I grieve to say, without its wariness, for, do what I would, I was unable to come near him. He saved every stroke with a most marvellous blade, not once moving his wrist or changing his posture. After this action had proceeded for some minutes I was compelled to draw off to fetch my breath; whereon said my adversary with a snarl of contempt that hurt me more than my impotence:—

“I wish, my son, you would help me to pass the time of the day.”

My instant response was a most furious slash at his head, although it is proper to mention that this method was not recommended in the rules of the art as expounded by the illustrious Don Ygnacio. But I grieve to confess that rage had overmastered me. Yet Sir Richard Pendragon evaded this blow as dexterously as he had evaded the others.

“Come, brother,” he said; “even for a Spaniard this is futility. This is no more than knife work. I am persuaded your father was a butcher, and owed his entire practice to the loins of the Galician hog.”

Such derision galled me worse than a thrust from his sword. Casting away all discretion I ran in upon him blindly, for at that moment I was minded to make an end one way or another.

“Worse and worse,” said he. “You bear your blade like a clergyman’s daughter. Still, do not despair, my young companion; perhaps you will make better practice for my left hand.”

As he spoke, to my dismay he changed his weapon from his right hand to his left, and parried me with the same contemptuous dexterity. Suddenly he made a strong parade, and in the next instant I felt the point of his sword at my breast.

“Your father must have been a strangely ignorant man, even for a Spaniard,” he said. “I do not wonder that he lost his right hand at an early age. You have as little defence as a notorious cutpurse on his trial. Any time these five minutes you must have been slain.”

Then it was I closed my eyes in the extremity of shame and never expected to open them again. But to my astonishment the forces of nature continued to operate, and soon, in a vertigo of fear and anger, I was fain to look for the cause. It seemed that my enemy had lowered his point and drawn off. Plainly he intended to use me as a cat uses a mouse, for his private pleasure. For that reason I fell the harder upon him, since I knew my life to be forfeit, and I had an instinct that the more furiously it was yielded the less should I know of a horrid end.

“I will now slit your doublet, my son,” said Sir Richard Pendragon. “Have you a favourite rib you would care to select? What of the fifth?”

Without more ado he began cutting my doublet with a dexterity that was amazing. His point flashed here and there across my breast and seemed to touch it in a thousand places; yet, although the old leather was pierced continually, no hap was suffered by my skin.

“If only I had my lighter and more fanciful blade of Ferrara here,” he said in the midst of a thousand fanfaronades and brandishments, “I would flick every button off your doublet so nicely as a tailor.”

“Kill me!” I cried, flinging myself upon his blade.

I made such a terrific sweep with my sword that it whistled through the air, and was like to cut off his head. Instead, however, of allowing it to do so, he met it with a curious turn of the wrist, and the weapon was hurled from my grasp.

As I stood before him panting and dishevelled, and young in the veins and full in them too, I seemed to care no more than a flake of snow for what was about to occur. I could but feel that I had traduced my father’s reputation, and had cast a grievous slur upon his precept. The blood was darkening my eyes and singing in my ears, but quite strangely I was not minding the blade of my enemy. That which was uppermost in my mind was the landlord’s opinion that he was the Devil in Person.

Upon striking my sword to the ground he bade me remark his method of disarmament.

“It approaches perfection so nearly,” said he, “as aught can that is the offspring of the imperfection of man. It is the fruit of a virtuous maturity; it is the crown of artifice; consider all the rest as nought. For I do tell thee, Spaniard, this piece of espièglerie, as they say at Paris, divides one of God’s own good swordsmen from the vulgar herd of tuck-pushers or the commonalty. And, mark you, it was all done with the left hand.”

While awaiting with as much composure as I could summon that stroke which was to put me out of life, there happened a strange thing. There had come into the room, unobserved by us both, the tap-wench to the inn. And in a moment, seeing what was toward, this brave little creature, not much bigger than a stool, and as handsome and flashing a quean as ever I saw, ran between me and the sword of my adversary.

“Hold, you bloody foreign man!” she cried imperiously.

“Nay, hold yourself, you neat imp,” said the Englishman, catching her round the middle by his right arm, and lightly hoisting her a dozen paces as though she had been a sack of feathers. Yet he had made but a poor reckoning if he thought he could thus dispose of this fearless thing. For his wine cup, half full of sherry, which had been set in the chimney-place out of the way of hap, was to her hand. She picked it up, and hurled the pot and its contents full in the face of the giant.

“Take it, you wicked piece of villainy!” she cried.

Now, by a singular mischance the edge of the cup struck Sir Richard Pendragon on the forehead. It caused a wound so deep that his blood was mingled with the excellent wine. Together they flowed into his eyes and down his cheeks, and so profusely that they stained his doublet and dripped upon the floor. And the courageous girl, seeing my enemy’s discomfiture, for what with the liquor and what with his gore he was almost blind for the nonce, she darted across the room and picked up my sword. With a most valiant eagerness she pressed it into my hand.

“Now, young señor gentleman, quick, quick!” she cried. “Have at him and make an end of him!”

“Alack, you good soul,” said I, “this cannot be. I am the lawful prize of my adversary. God go with you, you kind thing.”

I cast the sword to the ground.

“Then oh, young master, you are a very fool.” Tears sprang to the eyes of the honest girl and quenched her fiery glances.

However, so dauntless was the creature in my cause that she picked up my sword again, and crying, “I myself will do it, señor,” actually had at the English barbarian with the greatest imaginable valiancy.

In the meantime the giant had been roaring at his own predicament in the most immoderate fashion. For, on feeling his head, and discovering that the stream that trickled into his eyes was a compound of elements so delectable, he cast forth his tongue at it in a highly whimsical manner, and drew as much into his mouth as he could obtain.

“I have my errors,” he cried, rocking with mirth; “but if a wanton disregard of God’s honest sherris be there among, when he dies may this ruby-coloured one be called to the land of the eternal drought. Jesu! what a body this Pendragon azure gives it. ’Tis choicer than Tokay out of the skull of a Mohammedan. When the hour comes to invest me in my shell, I will get me a tun of sherris and sever a main artery, and I will perish by mine own suction.”

He had scarcely concluded these comments when the brave little maid had at him with my sword. Expecting no such demonstration on the part of one not much taller than his leg, it needed all his adroitness of foot, which for one of his stature was indeed surprising, to save the steel from his ribs. And so set was the creature on making an end of him that the force with which she dashed at his huge form, and yet missed it, carried her completely beyond her balance. With another of his mighty roars, the English giant seized her by the nape with his right hand, and held her up in the air by the scruff, so curiously as if she had been a fierce little cat that had flown at him.

“Why, thou small spitfire,” he said, “thou art even too slight to be cracked under mine heel. Thou pretty devil, I will buss thee.”

“I will bite off the end of your nose, you bloody-minded villain,” cried the little wench, struggling frantically in his gripe.

“Nay, why this enmity, pretty titmouse,” said the giant, “seeing that I have a mind to fondle thee for thy valour?”

“You would slay the young gentleman señor, you wicked cut-throat villain, you!”

“Nay, by my hand I will not, if you will give me twenty honest busses, you neat imp, to heal my contusion.”

“You swear, Englishman, upon your wicked beard, the young señor gentleman shall come to no hurt if I kiss you?”

“I will swear, thou nice hussy, by the bones of all my ancestors in their Cornish cemetery, that young Don Cock-a-hoop shall go uncorrected for all his sauciness and pretension. With eight crowns in his wallet and a most unfathomable ignorance he drew his tuck on a right Pendragon. But so much effrontery shall go unvisited, mark you, at the price of twenty honest busses from those perfect lips of thine. If thou art not the most perfect thing in Spain, I am little better than a swaggerer.”

“Put me down then, Englishman,” said the little wench as boldly as an ambassador; “and do you give the young gentleman señor his sword.”

“So I will; but I would have you remark it, pretty titmouse, that I will be embraced with all the valiancy of thy nature. Ten on each side of my royal chaps, and one for good kindness right i’ th’ middle.”

“Give the young gentleman señor his sword, then, you English villain.”

So had this matter accosted the humour of Sir Richard Pendragon that he obeyed her.

“Take it, young Spaniard,” said he with a magnificent air; “and do you consider it as your first lesson in the affairs of the world. I do perceive two precepts to whose attention your noble father does not appear to have directed you. The first is, never draw upon the premier swordsman of his age, so long as life hath any savour in it; and for the other, never lack the favour of a farthingale. Do I speak sooth, good girl?”

“Yes, you do, you large villain,” said the little creature, with her two fierce eyes as black as sloes. “And now I will kiss you quickly, so that I may have done. I shall scarcely be able to chew so much as a piece of soft cheese for a month after it.”

The Englishman seated himself upon his stool, and set her upon his knees.

“Begin upon the right, my pretty she, slowly, purposefully, and with valiancy. I would as lief have your lips as a bombard of sherris. If it were not for one Betty Tucker, a dainty piece at the ‘Knight in Armour’ public-house hard by to the town of Barnet, in the kingdom of Great Britain, I would bear you at my saddle-bow all the way back to our little England, and marry you at the church of Saint Clement the Dane, which is in London city. For next to sack I love valour, and next to valour I love my soul. Now then, thou nice miniard, I must taste thy lips softly, courteously, but yet with valiancy as becomes thy disposition.”

It was never my fortune to behold a sight more whimsical than that of this monstrous fellow seated with the blood still trickling down to his chin, while this little black-eyed wench, not much bigger than his fist, with her skin the colour of a walnut, her hair hanging loose, and her rough clothes stained and in tatters, dealt out her kisses first to one side of his ugly mouth and then to the other, yet making as she did so lively gestures of disgust.

“Courteously, courteously!” cried the giant. “Let us have no unmannerly haste in this operation, or I will have them all over again.”

“Nay, you shall not; I will take heed of that. That is fifteen. Another ten, you foreign villain, would give me a canker in my front teeth.”

“Nay, that is but fourteen, my pretty mouse. Here we have the fifteenth. Courteously, courteously, do I not tell thee. See to it that it is so long drawn out that I may count nine.”

“There’s twenty, you large villain!” cried the little creature in huge disgust, and slipping off his knee as quickly as a lizard.

“Aye, but where’s the lucky one, the one right i’ th’ middle, that I was to have for good fellowship?”

“It was not in the terms, and I will not give it thee.”

“Not in the terms, pretty titmouse! By my hand I will not be cozened in this manner.”

The little creature scuttled away like a rat, but the giant had his hands on her before she could get to the door.

“Now for the lucky one, thou sweet hellicat, the one right i’ th’ middle,” cried he, swinging her up to him as though she had been a squirrel.

“Unhand me, foreign dog!” she cried, with a snort of defiance, “else I will bite thee in the cheek.”

“Do thou, sweet adder, for I love thee.”

“There, you large villain!”

She darted her strong teeth, flashing with whiteness, at him, and he dropped her with an oath, as though she had been a snake. She made off out of doors as nimbly as a cat, leaving the astonished giant to staunch yet another wound she had dealt him.

“By my soul”—he pressed his hands to his ribs and his face grew empurpled with his roars—“I have the greatest mind in the world to marry that pretty doxey.”