The White Rose

The Royal Daughters in Law

The basket perfumed the air about it with a delicious odor of hot flour, butter and honey.

'Hot, hot pancakes! There won't be enough to go round! Come on, friends, eat up! Hot pancakes!' cried the merchant, busy behind his open-air stove.

He seemed to be doing a great many things at the same time, rolling out his paste, removing the cooked pancakes from the fire, giving change, and keeping an eye on the street urchins to see they did not rob his stove.

'Hot pancakes!'

He was so busy that he paid no particular attention to the customer who, extending a white hand, placed a pound on the board in payment for a small pancake. He only saw the left hand put the wafer, from which but a single bite had been taken, down again.

"Fussy one. I burn my arse off to make this. The flour is the best from Kent and--"

He glanced up, revealing to him something which startled him beyond his wits. Before even the merchant could manage a bow or stammer out an excuse, a man in a white tunic, surrounded by men in red livery had already moved away. The confectioner, with hanging arms, watched him disappear into the crowd, while his latest batch of pancakes began to burn.

London was not dissimilar from Paris or Vienna, or even Jerusalem at this time in history. Indeed, no less a man than Vergil noted this fact. The man, accompanied by his bodyguards, bustled through the crowd. The royal sergeants, in their livery coats followed their master at a distance, always keeping an eye upon him.

Suddenly a young man in a tight-fitting tunic, dragged along by three fine greyhounds on a leash, debouched from an alley, jostling the stroller and very nearly knocking him over. The hounds became entangled about his feet and began barking.

'You scoundrel!' the young man cried in a noticeably Italian accent. 'You nearly trod on my hounds. I wouldn't have cared a damn if they'd bitten you.'

No more than eighteen, short and good-looking, with dark eyes and finely chiseled features, the young man stood his ground in the middle of the street, raising his voice in simulated manliness. Someone took him by the arm and whispered a word in his ear. At once the young man removed his cap, bowing respectfully though without servility.

'Those are fine hounds; whose are they?' asked the stroller, gazing at the boy out of huge, cold eyes.

'They belong to my uncle, Tolomei, the banker, at your service,' replied the young man.

Whereupon the man walked off with his escort in tow. The young Italian stood stock still, shocked by his own mistake. 

'Well, well! He's not so proud now!' they said, laughing.

'Look at him! He nearly knocks the King down and then adds insult to injury.'

'You can count on spending the night in prison, my boy, with thirty strokes of the whip into the bargain.'

The Italian turned upon the bystanders.

'Damn it! I'd never seen him before; how could I be expected to recognize him? And what's more, citizens, I come from a country where there's no king for whom one has to make way. In my city of Sienna every citizen can be king in turn. And if anyone feels like mocking Guccio Baglioni, he need only say the word.'

He uttered his name like a challenge. The quick pride of Tuscany shone in his eyes. A carved dagger hung at his side. No one persisted; and the young man flicked his fingers to put the hounds in motion again. He went on his way with more apparent assurance than he felt, wondering whether his stupidity would have unpleasant consequences.