"Nay, nay," said she, shaking her head; "as bloody a rogue as ever
lived--as bloody a rogue as ever lived. They do say as how he'll set a
whole tavern in a broil ere he be entered in for three minutes."
"But," quoth I, "may he not be provoked?"
"Nay, I tell thee," said she; "but he'll jump at a body's head, and
cleave 't open ere a body can say 'Jesus.'"
At this I said, firmly, "I doubt not but what the poor man is most
surely maligned." Whereupon Mistress Butter did wax exceeding wroth.
"Why wilt thou e'er be seeking to plead the cause o' villains?" cried
she. "First that bloody beast o' my lady's, now this bloody villain o'
th' devil's. I do wonder at thee, Anthony Butter." Whereat I did put in
that I sometimes wondered at myself.
"For why?" quoth she.
"Why, that I ever married to be worded by a wench," said I. And at this
I am most entirely sure that she would have cast her joint-stool at me,
had she not been sitting on 't, and my lady's head against her knee. So
she called me a "zany," and then after a little a "toad," but went on
stroking my lady's hair.
And, by-and-by, back we come to his lordship.
"'Tis not alone his bloody tricks and murderous ways," quoth my wife,
"that causes all Christian folk to abhor him, but he consorts with no
other women than drabs and callets. Dost excuse that?"
"Nay," said I, with sufficient gravity, "then is this earl no longer a
man, but a swine, and not fit for men's discussion, much less that of
women."
At this reproof I saw anger again in her eye, but she was so pleased
withal at having got me to call Lord Denbeigh a swine that she forebore
any further personal affront.
"And yet," she went on, "they do say he be as fine a man as a wench
will walk through the rain to glimpse at, and a brave and a learned; but
that he wed a Spanish maid, and she betrayed him, and so he hath vowed
to hate women, one and all."
"Hast thou seen him?"
"Nay, but I've had him itemized to me by the wife o' Humfrey Lemon. A
blue eye, a hooked nose, a--"
"Well, well, wife," quoth I, "if a blue eye and a hooked nose be as bad
signs in a man as they be in a horse, methinks this thy villain is a
very round villain."
"And so he is," affirmed she.
"Yet," said I, "there is somewhere in me a something that doth pity
him."
"By my troth!" cried my wife. "I do believe, Master Butter, that
thou'dst pity the Devil's wife in childbirth."
"Ay, that I would!" I made answer, with a great calmness, for I saw that
she sought to rouse my spleen.
"Well, do not bellow," blurted she, "for my mistress is as sound as a
gold-piece."
Then quoth my lady, a-rising up on her elbow,
"Nay, that she is not. And, moreover, she would hear all the stories
concerning this bad and bloody Lord of Denbeigh!"