“Filia pulchra mater pulchrior!” the magister muttered, and he cast his arms about her soft and plump waist. “The maid was a fair skewer, the hostess is a plumper roasting bit.” She took his kisses on her fire-warmed cheeks, but in the end she thrust him mightily from her with a large elbow.
He gasped with the strength of her thrust, and she said:
“Greedy dogs getten them hard cuffs,” and rearranged her neckercher. When he tried to come nearer her she laughed and thrust him aback.
“You have tried and tasted,” she said. “A fuller meal you must pay for.”
He stood before her, lean and lank, his gown flapping about his calves, his eyes smiling humorously, his lips twitching.
“Oh soft and warm woman,” he cried, “payment shall be yours”; and whilst he fumbled furiously in his clothespress, he quoted from Tully: “Haec civitas mulieri redimiculum praebuit.” He pulled out one small bag: “Haec in collum.” She took another. “Haec in crines!” and he added a third, saying: “Here is all I have,” and cast the three into her lap. Whilst she counted the coins composedly on the table before her he added: “Leave me nevertheless the price to come to England with.”
“Sir Magister,” she said, turning her large face to him. “This is not one-tenth enough. You have tasted an ensample. Will you have the whole meal?”
“Oh, unconscionable,” he cried. “More I have not!” He began to wave his hands. “Consider what you do do,” he uttered. “Think of what a pest is love. How many have died of it. Pyramus, Thisbe, Dido, Medea, Croesus, Callirhoe, Theagines the philosopher … Consider what writes Gordonius: ‘Prognosticatio est talis: si non succuratur iis aut in maniam cadunt: aut moriuntur.’ Unless lovers be succoured either they fall into a madness, either they die or grow mad. And Fabian Montaltus: ‘If this passion be not assuaged, the inflammation cometh to the brain. It drieth up the blood. Then followeth madness or men make themselves away.’ I would have you ponder of what saith Parthenium and what Plutarch in his tales of lovers.”
Her face appeared comely and smooth in his eyes, but she shook her head at him.
“These be woeful and pretty stories,” she said. “I would have you to tell me many of them.”
“All through the night,” he said eagerly, and made to clasp her in his arms. But she pushed him back again with her hand on his chest.
“All through the night an you will,” she said. “But first you shall tell a prettier tale before a man in a frock.”
He sprang full four feet back at one spring.
“I have wedded no woman, yet,” he said.
“Then it is time you wed one now,” she answered.
“Oh widow, bethink you,” he pleaded. “Would you spoil so pretty a tale? Would you humble so goodly a man’s pride?”
“Why, it were a pity,” she said. “But I am minded to take a husband.”
“You have done well this ten years without one,” he cried out.
Her face seemed to set like adamant as she turned her cheek to him.
“Call it a woman’s mad freak,” she said.
“Six and twenty pupils in the fair game of love I have had,” he said. “You shall be the seven and twentieth. Twenty and seven are seven and two. Seven and two are nine. Now nine is the luckiest of numbers. Be you that one.”
“Nay,” she answered. “It is time you learned husbandry who have taught so many and earned so little.”
He slipped himself softly into the cushions beside her.
“Would you spoil so fair a tale?” he said. “Would you have me to break so many vows? I have promised a mort of women marriage, and so long as I be not wed I may keep faith with any one of them.”
She held her face away from him and laughed.
“That is as it may be,” she said. “But when you wed with me tonight you will keep faith with one woman.”
“Woman,” he pleaded. “I am a great scholar.”
“Ay,” she answered, “and great scholars have climbed to great estates.”
She continued to count the coins that came from his little moneybags; the shadow of her hood upon the great beams grew more portentous.
“It is thought that your magistership may rise to be Chancellor of the Realm of England,” she added.
He clutched his forehead.
“Eheu!” he said. “If you have heard men say that, you know that wedded to thee I could never climb.”
“Then I shall very comfortably keep my inn here in Paris town,” she answered. “You have here fourteen pounds and eleven shillings.”
He stretched forth his lean hands:
“Why, I will marry thee in the morning,” he said, and he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. Outside the door there was a shuffling of several feet.
“I knew not other guests were in the house,” he uttered, and fell again to kissing her.
“Knew you not an envoy was come from Cleves?” she whispered.
Her head fell back and he supported it with one trembling hand. He shook like a leaf when her voice rang out:
“Au secours! Au secours!”
There was a great jangle, light fell into the dusky room through the doorhole, and he found himself beneath the eyes of many scullions with spits, cooks with carving forks, and kitchenmaids with sharpened distaffs of steel.
“Now I will be wed this night,” she laughed.
He moved to the end of the couch and blinked at her in the strong light.
“I will be wed this night,” she said again, and rearranged her headdress, revealing, as her sleeves fell open, her white, plump arms.
“Why, no!” he answered irresolutely.
She said in French to her aids:
“Come near him with the spits!”
They moved towards him, a white-clad body with their pointed things glittering in the light of torches. He sprang behind the great table against the window and seized the heavy-leaden sandarach. The French scullions knew, tho’ he had no French, that
