Gaillard, skirting the cypresses of the pleasaunce, had his eyes on the window of the great tower where Peter of Savoy loved to sit playing chess with Dan Barnabo his chaplain, or listening to a woman singing to the lute. The lutanist sang to others as well as to Count Peter. Gaillard the Gascon knew the twitter of her strings, better perhaps, than Peter of Savoy himself. “Give me a red rose, my desire, And a kiss on the mouth for an _Ave_.” The words were those of Etoile of the Lute, and Gaillard hummed them under the shade of the cypresses as he rode towards the inner gate. But some hand threw a clod of turf at him that morning, and threw it so cleverly that the thing hit Gaillard on the ear, and spattered his blue surcoat over with soil. The Gascon turned sharply in the saddle, and saw a white hand showing between two cypress trees, and a wrist that betrayed the golden threads embroidering a woman’s sleeve. A voice laughed at him. “Throw me a clod of turf, my desire, Give me a blow on the ear for a greeting!” The arm put the boughs aside, and a face appeared, wreathed by the cypress sprays, a woman’s face, white, mischievous, and alluring. Her black hair was bound up in a golden net. She showed her teeth at Gaillard, and put out the tip of a red tongue. “Can I throw straight, dear lord?” He turned his horse, glanced at the window in the tower, and then laughed back at her, opening his mouth wide like the beak of a hungry bird. “Better at a man’s heart, than at his head, dear lady.” “A Gascon has more head than heart, my friend.” “And a long sword, and a longer tongue!” She tilted her chin, two black eyes laughing above a short, impudent nose, and a hard, red mouth. “Go and have your gossip with good Peter. Barnabo has beaten him twice at chess, and he was ready to throw the board at me. The leopards are better tempered.” Gaillard snapped his fingers. “I will be a leopard,” he said. “Wait till I have washed the dust off. Peter always plays until he wins.” The white face disappeared behind the cypress boughs, and Gaillard rode on to his quarters, ready to wash the dust of the road away with wine and water, and thinking of Etoile, Count Peter’s lutanist and lady. She was a Gascon also from the land of the Garonne. Etoile and Gaillard were excellent friends, especially when the Savoyard was playing chess.