Pigeons were very much the fashion for a time. Dainty demoiselles preened
and paced on the short sweet turf, petting and feeding the birds, and
looking rather like pigeons themselves. But no one became really intimate
with the carriers except Ranulph the troubadour, Lady Philippa, and Sir
Gualtier Giffard, who loved them for her sake.

The guests at the castle were all going to the wedding except Ranulph and
the Norman knight. Ranulph expected to accompany King Henry to England,
and Gualtier Giffard had to take a report from Count Thibaut to friends in
Normandy, touching certain matters of state.

Then the Count was invited to a hastily arranged banquet in a town some
leagues away, where various important persons were to be guests, among
them Henry Plantagenet himself. The way to Montfaucon lying in the same
direction, it was decided that Alazais and her bridesmaids should return
to her home under escort of the Count and his friends. When the banquet
was over and the conference between Henry and his vassals in Guienne was
concluded, the wedding guests would assemble at Montfaucon.

Gossip about the banquet and the conference flew like tennis-balls among
the guests. It was said that one of the matters discussed would be the
claim of the deposed King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurragh, who was even now
at the heels of the English King, trying to interest him in a possible
Norman invasion of Ireland.

"I have seen this Dermot," said de Marsan, "and a choice group of cut-
throats he had collected about him. Garin de Biterres was one of them, by
the way."