"Whistle him off, sire! Whistle off the gerfalcon!" cried the Bishop.
"Nay, nay, he is overfar. She would fly at check."
"Now, sire, now!" cried the Prince, as the great bird with the breeze behind him came sweeping down the sky.
The King gave the shrill whistle, and the well-trained hawk raked out to the right and to the left to make sure which quarry she was to follow. Then, spying the heron, she shot up in a swift ascending curve to meet him.
"Well flown, Margot! Good bird!" cried the King, clapping his hands to encourage the hawk, while the falconers broke into the shrill whoop peculiar to the sport.
Going on her curve, the hawk would soon have crossed the path of the heron; but the latter, seeing the danger in his front and confident in his own great strength of wing and lightness of body, proceeded to mount higher in the air, flying in such small rings that to the spectators it almost seemed as if the bird was going perpendicularly upward.
"He takes the air!" cried the King. "But strong as he flies, he cannot out fly Margot. Bishop, I lay you ten gold pieces to one that the heron is mine."
"I cover your wager, sire," said the Bishop. "I may not take gold so won, and yet I warrant that there is an altar-cloth somewhere in need of repairs."
"You have good store of altar-cloths, Bishop, if all the gold I have seen you win at tables goes to the mending of them," said the King. "Ah! by the rood, rascal, rascal! See how she flies at check!"
The quick eyes of the Bishop had perceived a drift of rooks when on their evening flight to the rookery were passing along the very line which divided the hawk from the heron. A rook is a hard temptation for a hawk to resist. In an instant the inconstant bird had forgotten all about the great heron above her and was circling over the rooks, flying westward with them as she singled out the plumpest for her stoop.
"There is yet time, sire! Shall I cast off her mate?" cried the falconer.
"Or shall I show you, sire, how a peregrine may win where a gerfalcon fails?" said the Bishop. "Ten golden pieces to one upon my bird."
"Done with you, Bishop!" cried the King, his brow dark with vexation. "By the rood! if you were as learned in the fathers as you are in hawks you would win to the throne of Saint Peter! Cast off your peregrine and make your boasting good."
Smaller than the royal gerfalcon, the Bishop's bird was none the less a swift and beautiful creature. From her perch upon his wrist she had watched with fierce, keen eyes the birds in the heaven, mantling herself from time to time in her eagerness. Now when the button was undone and the leash uncast the peregrine dashed off with a whir of her sharp-pointed wings, whizzing round in a great ascending circle which mounted swiftly upward, growing ever smaller as she approached that lofty point where, a mere speck in the sky, the heron sought escape from its enemies. Still higher and higher the two birds mounted, while the horsemen, their faces upturned, strained their eyes in their efforts to follow them.