It was Blaise Renouf who first recovered. He looked across the little
rose-grown space of the cloister to see that Henriet had turned his
back, and then came quickly up to Laurence MacKim.
"Listen to me," he said; "you are a game lad enough, but you do not
know where you are going, nor yet what may happen to you there. We
will fight you if you come back safe, but meantime you are one of
ourselves, and we of the choir have sworn to stand by one another. Can
you keep a pea in your mouth without swallowing it?"
"Why, of course I can," said Laurence, wondering what was to come
next. "I can keep a dozen and shoot them through a bore of alder tree
at a penny without missing once, which I wot is more than any
Frenchman ever--"
"Well, then," whispered the lad Renouf, breaking in on his boast with
a white countenance, "hearken well to me. When you enter the chamber
of the marshal, put this in your mouth. And if nothing happens keep it
there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it.
But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de
Sille seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel
a bitter taste and then swallow.
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