Читать книгу The Red Saint онлайн

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The little red spider thought Messire Gaillard a fine fellow. He had such limbs on him, such a voice, such a cheerful way of bullying everyone. The Gascon might have been made of brown wire, he was so restless, so sinewy, so alert; a rust-coloured man with red and uneasy eyes, a harsh skin blotched with freckles, hair that curled like a negro’s, and a big mouth insolent under the aggressive tusks of its moustache. A vain man, too, as his dress and his harness showed, a man who put oil on his hair, wore many rings, and had a quick eye for a woman. He was just the lusty, headstrong animal, a born fighter, and a bully by instinct, inflammable, self-sufficient, a babbler, and a singer of love songs.

The waters of the bay were covered with purple shadows, and the marshlands brilliant as green samite when Gaillard’s men came to the western gate of the castle, and rode two by two with drooped spears into the great outer bailey closed in by the old Roman walls. Gaillard came last, with the spy pattering beside his horse. The men went to their quarters, rough pent houses that had been built for them along the northern wall, for there was not room enough in Peter of Savoy’s new castle within a castle for all those hired men from over the sea.