you, Sir Prior, in this cup of wine, which I trust your taste will approve, and I thank you for your courtesy. Should you be so rigid in adhering to monastic rule,” he added, “as to prefer your acid preparation of milk, I hope you will not strain courtesy to do me reason.”
“Nay,” said the Priest, laughing, “it is only in our abbey that we confine ourselves to the lac dulce or the lac acidum either. Conversing with, the world, we use the world’s fashions, and therefore I answer your pledge in this honest wine, and leave the weaker liquor to my lay-brother.”
“And I,” said the Templar, filling his goblet, “drink wassail to the fair Rowena; for since her namesake introduced the word into England , has never been one more worthy of such a tribute. By my faith, I could pardon the unhappy Vortigern, had he half the cause that we now witness, for making shipwreck of his honour and his kingdom.”
“I will spare your courtesy, Sir Knight,” said Rowena with dignity, and without unveiling herself; “or rather I will tax it so far as to require of you the latest news from Palestine , a theme more agreeable to our English ears than the compliments which your French breeding teaches.”
“I have little of importance to say, lady,” answered Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, “excepting the confirmed tidings of a truce with Saladin.”
He was interrupted by Wamba, who had taken his appropriated seat upon a chair, the back of which was decorated with two ass’s ears, and which was placed about two steps behind that of his master, who, from time to time, supplied him with victuals from his own trencher; a favour, however, which the Jester shared with the favourite dogs, of whom, as we have already noticed, there were several in attendance. Here sat Wamba, with a small table before him, his heels tucked up against the bar of the chair, his cheeks sucked up so as to make his jaws resemble a pair of nutcrackers, and his eyes half-shut, yet watching with alertness every opportunity to exercise his licensed foolery.