Fear momently wiped every other expression from their faces, and they answered with lame evasion, or more often not at all.
The shadow of the Lord of Machecoul lay heavy upon them.
Clerk Henriet stood awhile watching the lads and listening to their talk behind the carved lattice of Caen stone, with its lace-like tracery of buds and flowers, through which the natural roses pushed their way, and over which the clematis tangled its twining stems.
"Stand up and prove on my body that I am a rank Irelander," Laurence was saying defiantly to the world at large, with his fists up and his head thrown back.

"Saint Christopher, but I will take the lot of you with one hand tied behind me.

Stand up and I will teach you how to sing 'Miserable sinners are we all!' to a new and unkenned tune." "'Tis easy for you to boast, Irelander," retorted Blaise Renouf, the son of the lay choir-master, who had been brought specially from Rome to teach the choir-boys of the marshal's chapel the latest fashions in holy song.

"We will either fight you with swords or not at all.

We do not fight with our bare knuckles, being civilised.