DOES CALIDORE ACTUALLY consummate his relationship with Pastorella in Book VI, Canto X of The Faerie Queene? In his entry on the Knight of Courtesy for The Spenser Encyclopedia, David Lee Miller expresses some doubt, concluding that [i]t is unclear whether he takes Pastorella's virginity.1 While additional evidence of Calidore's sexual relationship with Pastorella exists, it has not yet drawn the attention of Spenser's critics or editors, even though it is articulated in the very kind of verbal echoing that has long attracted commentators. On the other hand, the fact that we must reach far afield from the moment's immediate context to read Calidore's sexuality points to the kind of secrecy that the Knight of Courtesy is able to prosecute to his advantage in other contexts. Indeed, the canto's thirty-eighth stanza typifies a certain kind of Spenserian slippage of reference, one that prompts questions about Calidore's actions and motivations at the close of the Legend of Courtesy.By this point in the narrative, Calidore has stumbled upon enough copulating lovers to guard his own privacy with some care. Priscilla's intense fear of public exposure of her sexual conduct in Canto iii is treated as commonsensical by the poem's narrator (VI.iii.10-11), a caution that Calidore reinforces by his subsequent he of omission in order to protect her secret (VI.iii. 16-18). By contrast, Serena's careless attitude toward her indiscretion only stanzas later (VI.iii.23-24) leaves her repeatedly vulnerable to the infections of slanderous speech as well as the more literal threat of physical assault. As we learn of Calidore's attainment of his desire, Spenser allows us to suspect, but not fully to confirm, a sexual liaison between the knight and Pastorella:So well he woo'd her, and so well he wrought her,With humble seruice, and with daily sute,That at the last his will he brought her;Which he so wisely well did prosecute,That of his loue he the timely frute,And long in close felicity:Till fraught with malice, blinde, and brute,That enuies louers long prosperity,Blew vp a bitter storme of foule aduersity.(VI.x.38):Some of these terms are richly suspicious: vnto his will, reapt the timely frute, ioyed long in close felicity. On its own this passage entices curiosity-of a particularly malevolent form, as the stanza's conclusion effectively positions the curious reader as yet another intruder in the persona of fortune . . . that enuies louers long prosperity.'' To consider what Calidore does or does not do, judging by this stanza alone, places us uncomfortably in the position of the Blattant Beast and his discourteous surrogates throughout Books IV-VI, particularly Sekunder and Ate.4 But Spenser has not left the issue in complete isolation, for this stanza echoes that of an earlier episode in which a knight also successfully woos his lady, but in more humble terms and with more modest results. We find this echo in Book IV, Canto vi, in which a figure no less than Artegall asks for Britomart's hand in marriage:So well he woo'd her, and so well he wrought her,With faire entreatie and sweet blandishment,That at length a bay he brought her,So as she to his speeches was contentTo lend an eare, and softly to relent.At last through many vowes which forth he pour'd,And many othes, she yielded her consentTo be his loue, and take him for her Lord,Till they with marriage meet might finish that accord.(IV.vi.41)Despite the immense length of The Faerie Queene and its many recurring patterns of word-choice, syntax, and imagery, Spenser rarely echoes lines in so direct a manner. Given this relative scarcity, we can take it as given that the passages lend considerable significance to one another. Given also that other verbal echoes of this kind typically occur within very different contexts, here Spenser's contrasts draw our initial attention. …