Alazais laughed her pretty rippling laugh. “The fortress is not yet built,” she said with a toss of her golden head. “We are not going to live among the heathen.” “You men!” pouted Beatriz. “You are always thinking of battles and sieges, wars and jousting. Perhaps you would like a tournament of pigeons!” “Why not?” queried Savaric undisturbed. “It would be highly amusing.” “I lay my wager on Blanchette here,” said Peire d'Acunha. “She is as graceful as a lady. She shows her breeding.” “Endurance, my friend, is what counts in a carrier,” said Bertrand d'Aiguerra. “Pere Azuli yonder will forget the miles behind him--as you forget your debts.” “You are both wrong,” said Savaric. “It is spirit that wins. Little Sieur Rien-du-Tout, the pigeon without a pedigree, will make fools of all of you.” The pigeon-tournament was actually planned, with much laughter and light-hearted nonsense. It was to take place at Montfaucon during the week of the wedding. Each knight should adorn his bird with his lady's colors, and the little feathered messengers were to carry love-letters written in verse. Afterward, the pigeons were all to be presented to Lady Alazais for her dovecote in the barbarous land to which she was exiled. Pigeons were very much the fashion for a time. Dainty demoiselles preened and paced on the short sweet turf, petting and feeding the birds, and looking rather like pigeons themselves. But no one became really intimate with the carriers except Ranulph the troubadour, Lady Philippa, and Sir Gualtier Giffard, who loved them for her sake. The guests at the castle were all going to the wedding except Ranulph and the Norman knight. Ranulph expected to accompany King Henry to England, and Gualtier Giffard had to take a report from Count Thibaut to friends in Normandy, touching certain matters of state. Then the Count was invited to a hastily arranged banquet in a town some leagues away, where various important persons were to be guests, among them Henry Plantagenet himself. The way to Montfaucon lying in the same direction, it was decided that Alazais and her bridesmaids should return to her home under escort of the Count and his friends. When the banquet was over and the conference between Henry and his vassals in Guienne was concluded, the wedding guests would assemble at Montfaucon. Gossip about the banquet and the conference flew like tennis-balls among the guests. It was said that one of the matters discussed would be the claim of the deposed King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurragh, who was even now at the heels of the English King, trying to interest him in a possible Norman invasion of Ireland. “I have seen this Dermot,” said de Marsan, “and a choice group of cut-throats he had collected about him. Garin de Biterres was one of them, by the way.” “He was always over-fond of laying wagers,” yawned d'Acunha. “He is probably betting his head on this Irish wild-goose chase.”