And the Italian, Fortini, leaned to my shoulder and whispered: 

“One who desires to speak.”

“One who must wait my pleasure,” I answered shortly.

“I wait no man’s pleasure,” was his equally short reply.

And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest, Martinelli, and the gray old man at Rome.  The thing was clear.  It was deliberate.  It was the long arm.  Fortini smiled lazily at me while I thus paused for the moment to debate, but in his smile was the essence of all insolence.

This, of all times, was the time I should have been cool.  But the old red anger began to kindle in me.  This was the work of the priest.  This was the Fortini, poverished of all save lineage, reckoned the best sword come up out of Italy in half a score of years.  To-night it was Fortini.  If he failed the gray old man’s command to-morrow it would be another sword, the next day another.  And, perchance still failing, then might I expect the common bravo’s steel in my back or the common poisoner’s philter in my wine, my meat, or bread.

“I am busy,” I said.  “Begone.”

“My business with you presses,” was his reply.

Insensibly our voices had slightly risen, so that Philippa heard.

“Begone, you Italian hound,” I said.  “Take your howling from my door.  I shall attend to you presently.”

“The moon is up,” he said.  “The grass is dry and excellent.  There is no dew.  Beyond the fish-pond, an arrow’s flight to the left, is an open space, quiet and private.”

“Presently you shall have your desire,” I muttered impatiently.

But still he persisted in waiting at my shoulder.

“Presently,” I said.  “Presently I shall attend to you.”

Then spoke Philippa, in all the daring spirit and the iron of her.

“Satisfy the gentleman’s desire, Sainte-Maure.  Attend to him now.  And good fortune go with you.”  She paused to beckon to her her uncle, Jean de Joinville, who was passing—­uncle on her mother’s side, of the de Joinvilles of Anjou.  “Good fortune go with you,” she repeated, and then leaned to me so that she could whisper:  “And my heart goes with you, Sainte-Maure.  Do not be long.  I shall await you in the big hall.”

I was in the seventh heaven.  I trod on air.  It was the first frank admittance of her love.  And with such benediction I was made so strong that I knew I could kill a score of Fortinis and snap my fingers at a score of gray old men in Rome.

Jean de Joinville bore Philippa away in the press, and Fortini and I settled our arrangements in a trice.  We separated—­he to find a friend or so, and I to find a friend or so, and all to meet at the appointed place beyond the fish-pond.

First I found Robert Lanfranc, and, next, Henry Bohemond.  But before I found them I encountered a windlestraw which showed which way blew the wind and gave promise of a very gale.  I knew the windlestraw, Guy de Villehardouin, a raw young provincial, come up the first time to Court, but a fiery little cockerel for all of that.  He was red-haired.  His blue eyes, small and pinched close to ether, were likewise red, at least in the whites of them; and his skin, of the sort that goes with such types, was red and freckled.  He had quite a parboiled appearance.