So none of these youths had
slain a man with his own hand, as Gilbert had at Faringdon, nor had any
of them faced an enemy with plain steel in a quarrel, as Gilbert had
faced Sir Arnold de Curboil. Though Gilbert told little of his story
and less of his deeds, they saw that he was older than they, they felt
that he had seen more than they had, and they guessed that his hand was
harder and heavier than theirs.
As the day wore, and they rode, and halted, and dined together in the
vast outer hall of a monastery which they reached soon after midday,
the young men who sat beside Gilbert noticed that he could repeat the
Latin words of the long grace as well as any monk, and one laughed and
asked where he had got so much scholarship.
"I lay two months in an abbey," answered Gilbert, "healing of a wound,
and the nursing brother taught me the monks' ways."
"And how came you by such a wound?" asked the young squire.
"By steel," answered Gilbert, and smiled, but he would say no more.
And after that, two or three asked questions of Gilbert's man Dunstan,
and he, being proud of his master, told all he knew, so that his
hearers marvelled that such a fighter had not yet obtained knighthood,
and they foretold that if Long Gilbert, as they named him for his
height, would stay in the Duke's service, he should not be a squire
many weeks.
And on the next day and the days following it was clear to them all
that Gilbert was in the way of fortune by the hand of favour; for as
the company rode along in the early morning by dewy lanes, where
Michaelmas daisies were blooming, a groom came riding back to say that
the young Henry--the Count, as they began to call him about that time--
wished the company of Master Warde, to tell him more of England.
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