On such evenings Odo, stealing from the tapestry parlour, would seek out
Bruno, who sat by the kitchen hearth with the old hound's nose at his
feet. The kitchen, indeed, on winter nights, was the pleasantest place
in the castle. The fire-light from its great stone chimney shone on the
strings of maize and bunches of dried vegetables that hung from the roof
and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind
raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the
maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening
to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a
ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's
orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's tales, told
in the Piedmontese jargon, and seasoned with strange allusions and
boisterous laughter, were of little interest to Odo, who would creep
into the ingle beside Bruno and beg for some story of his ancestors. The
old man was never weary of rehearsing the feats and gestures of the
lords of Donnaz, and Odo heard again and again how they had fought the
savage Switzers north of the Alps and the Dauphin's men in the west; how
they had marched with Savoy against Montferrat and with France against
the Republic of Genoa. Better still he liked to hear of the Marquess
Gualberto, who had been the Duke of Milan's ally and had brought home
the great Milanese painter to adorn his banqueting-room at Donnaz. The
lords of Donnaz had never been noted for learning, and Odo's grandfather
was fond of declaring that a nobleman need not be a scholar; but the
great Marquess Gualberto, if himself unlettered, had been the patron of
poets and painters and had kept learned clerks to write down the annals
of his house on parchment painted by the monks.
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