trees—huge spreading beeches that stood on a low ridge between two
valleys. The free companions piled their arms about the tree-trunks, and
used the boughs as pegs to hang their harness on. Some of them picketed
the horses, after watering them at a stagnant pool, some fifty yards
down the slope. Others cut down bracken with their swords, and gathered
dead-wood to make a fire. The two women, Gwen and Barbe, chattered and
bandied their coarse jests with the men as they looked to the serving of
the evening meal.
Bertrand had unsaddled his horse, tethered the beast, and sat himself
down at the foot of one of the trees with his shoulders resting against
the trunk. He let Arletta look to her own nag, and did not rouse himself
to give her a helping hand. His morose mood was selfish in its obstinate
self-pity. He hardly heeded the girl as she came and knelt beside him on
the beech leaves and began to search her wallet for food.
Presently Guicheaux approached with an armful of sticks. He kicked the
dry leaves together and began to build a fire, looking curiously at
Bertrand from time to time, and smiling mischievously at Arletta.
Crouching, he struck sparks with his flint and steel, and blew on the
tinder till it flared up and set the dry leaves blazing. Guicheaux
rubbed his hands before the flames with comfortable unction, and looked
at the two women who were slinging a cooking-pot over the other fire.
The men were trooping in with bundles of bracken, which they began to
spread as bedding for the night.
Guicheaux glanced round at Bertrand moping against the tree. “Some of
Gaston’s pig is to fatten us, lording,” he said.
Bertrand did not seem to hear him.
“Bread, boiled pork, and a mug of cider. Consult your stomach, messire,
whether it be not hungry.”
Arletta darted an impatient look at the quipster, and ordered him away
with a wave of the hand. The captain had the black-dog on his shoulders,
and it was better for all that he should be left alone.
Presently she crept close to Bertrand and offered to unlace his
bassinet. Her brown hands were quickly at their work, Bertrand letting
her disarm him, piece by piece, staring sullenly into the fire, and not
guessing how much he resembled a sour and surly child. Arletta gave him
all her patience, keeping her lips shut and pestering him with no more
questions. She took the rusty bassinet and laid it amid the beech
leaves, and soon shoulder-plates, demi-brassarts, and greaves were lying
beside it.
Arletta’s fingers were on the buckle of his sword-belt.
“Ha! what are you at? Let it be!”
He pushed her hands away, looking at her searchingly.
“Lording!”
“I trust no one with my sword; no one shall play tricks with it. Are you
for treachery?”
The taunt was a mean one, and Arletta winced.
“Your sword is a true sword,” she said, “and do you not trust me also?”
She put her hands out to him as she knelt with a pleading tenderness on
her face. Bertrand looked in her eyes, and hated his own soul. Poor,
honorless wench that she was, she shamed him, and gave him a loyalty
that he did not deserve.
“I trust you, Letta,” he said, touching her cheek.
Her sharp face mellowed, and seemed to catch warmth and color from the
fire. Her black eyes glistened, and she looked handsome and desirable,
with her nut-brown skin and raven hair, red lips pouting over her small
teeth.
“Lording, I am only a woman.”
Guicheaux approached them again, carrying a slice of steaming pork on
his poniard, a loaf of bread, and a stone flask of cider. Arletta took
the food from him and nodded him back towards the fire, where the free
companions were making a brave battle over their meal. She knelt down
again beside Bertrand, and pressed him to eat, coaxing him
half-playfully, half-wistfully, till she won her way. Food, drink, and
the cheerfulness of the fire worked their spell on Bertrand’s spirits.
He began to feel comforted in the inner man, warmer about the body, less
befogged about the brain. Life had its satisfactions, after all, and
what were glory and the frail fancies of chivalry compared with good
food and a hale hunger? He began to smile at Arletta as she lay curled
in the beech leaves, her green tunic tight about her figure, and held
the stone bottle in her brown and rough-skinned hands.
“Drink deep, lording,” and she laughed; “it will keep the damp out. See
how bravely the fire burns.”
She began to eat in turn, now that Bertrand had taken his fill, cutting
the meat and bread with the knife she carried at her girdle. Her eyes
caught the light from the fire, and her black hair enhanced the pale
charm of her peevish face. Bertrand slouched lazily against the tree. He
was content for the moment with Arletta’s comeliness.
Night had settled over Broceliande; leagues of darkness and of mystery
wrapped them round, while the flames tongued the gloom and Guicheaux and
his gossips drank and laughed about their fire.
Bertrand stretched his arms and yawned.
“Food puts new courage into a man.”
She bent towards him with a sinuous gliding of the body, pouted out her
lips, and put her face close to his.
“You are yourself again, lording.”
Bertrand kissed her, thinking of Tiphaïne, and swearing stoutly in his
heart that he was beyond her scorn and pity. Arletta, red and happy,
started up, and began to pile leaves and bracken into a bed beneath the
tree. She made a pillow by rolling leaves up in an old tunic, and threw
more wood upon the fire.
“There, lording, I have made a bed.”
She took him by the hands and dragged him playfully from the tree.
The free companions were rolling themselves in their cloaks about their
fire and half burying their bodies in the litter of bracken. Only one
man stood to his arms, to take his watch while the others slept. One by
one the voices died down and surrendered to the silence of the forest.
The clouds had broken overhead, and a young moon was shining through and
through, a patch of celestial silver above the black and half-leafless
branches of the trees. The sentinel, after yawning for an hour, and
rubbing his heavy eyes with his knuckles, looked cautiously at Bertrand,
and slunk from his post to crawl into the bracken about the fire. Under
the beech-trees there was naught but a tangle of bodies, arms, legs, and
snoring faces crowded close about the flames. Broceliande’s stillness
was supreme. Like some forest of dreams, she seemed to hold these
sleepers in her magic power.
Three hours or more had passed when Arletta started awake with a low cry
and sat up in terror, her hands on Bertrand’s chest. She had been
dreaming, and had thought that in her sleep strange shapes had been
crowding round her in the dark. She shivered, and crouched rigid and
motionless, staring as though bewitched into the depths of the gloom
about the fire.
“Bertrand, lording, wake—wake!”
She tugged in terror at Bertrand’s arms as he lay beside her on the
leaves and bracken. The horses were whinnying, stamping, and snorting
under the trees where the men had tethered them. Arletta’s eyes were
fixed on two dots of light that stared eerily at her out of the dark.
Bertrand awoke, grumbling and yawning, and clutching at Arletta with his
arms.
“What, the dawn already?”
“No, no! Look yonder; see—in the dark—there!”
Bertrand heard the horses screaming, started up, and found Arletta
quivering beside him, her face white as linen, her eyes great with fear.
The moon was behind a cloud, and as Bertrand followed the pointing of
Arletta’s hand he understood in an instant the meaning of her terror.
Out of the blackness of the forest circles of red crystal were shining
on them, two by two. There was a padding and rustling of feet in the
dead leaves, the vague flitting of dark figures to and fro, a forward
movement of the blood-red eyes.
“Wolves, by God!”
There was a great plunging and screaming amid the horses as Bertrand
sprang up, kicked the fire into a blaze, and, snatching a burning branch
from it, made at the circle of eyes, roaring like a roused lion. The
dark shapes swerved and scampered over the leaves, snarling and snapping
their jaws, but flinching from Bertrand and his burning brand. The free
companions were scrambling up from the litter of bracken. They saw
Bertrand beating the darkness with his fiery flail, vague shadows flying
before him like the evil spirits of the forest.
The moon came from behind the cloud at the same instant, showing the
struggling, sweating horses, squealing and kicking, and ready to break
loose.
“Wolves! wolves!”
They picked up brands from the fire, and charged this way and that, the
beasts scattering before them and slinking away into the darkness.
Hopart, Guicheaux, and several others ran to quiet the horses and to
prevent them from breaking loose. The tumult ceased in due course, and
the men came crowding back about the fire.
Bertrand strode towards them, carrying his burning branch.
“Guicheaux, Hopart, Simon, whose watch was it? Who the devil let these
brutes up so near the fires?”
The free companions were jostling one another, trying to discover in the
dusk the fellow who had stood on guard when they had lain down to sleep.
It was the Poitevin lad who had shown such terror when the Black Death
had startled them in the hall of the Aspen Tower. He was skulking behind
a tree, ready to take to his heels had he not feared the wolves and the
darkness. Hopart discovered him, and dragged him towards Bertrand before
the fire.
“Pierre, is it? So, lad, you fell asleep. We’ll read thee a lesson.”
The Poitevin, scared to death, cringed as his comrades hustled and
cuffed him. They were furious with the lad for having deserted his post
and left them unguarded against the perils of the night.
“Mercy! Mercy! Messire Bertrand, Messire Bertrand, they are tearing my
arms off!”
Hopart smote Pierre on the mouth with the back of his hand.
“Scullion! Crybaby! Jackass!”
“Let him be, men.”
They left him grudgingly, as though they had caught some of the savagery
of Broceliande’s wolves. Pierre stood shaking before Bertrand. Then he
dropped on his knees and began to snivel, his poltrooning drawing
laughter and taunts from Hopart and the rest.
“Get up, man, get up!”
By way of being wisely foolish, the Poitevin grovelled the more, and
tried to take Bertrand by the knees.
“Mercy, lording, mercy! I was tired, devilish tired—”
Bertrand looked at him, and then rolled the fellow backward with a
thrust of the foot.
“Stand up, fool!” he said, sharply. “Stand up—like a man! Guicheaux,
give him twenty cuts with your belt. We will let him off easily. Next
time it shall be the rope.”
They took Pierre, stripped his back, and trounced him till the blood
flowed. It was Arletta who pleaded with Bertrand for the lad, and saved
him ten strokes out of the twenty, for Guicheaux would have beaten him
till he fainted. They piled wood on the fires and retethered the horses,
for there would be no more sleep for the free companions that night.
Squatting round the fire, they talked and gossiped together, and shouted
songs to frighten the wolves.
As for Bertrand, he lay his head on Arletta’s knees, staring at the
flames, and listening to the howling of the beasts as they still padded
round them in the darkness. He was thinking again of Tiphaïne, of the
counsel she had given him, and of the cross he had cut on the high table
with his poniard. What would she make of his remorse if she could see
him lying with his head in Arletta’s lap? And yet the girl was as loyal
as a dog, patient and gentle when her jealousy had no prick of passion.
Bertrand, as he lay, felt her hands upon his forehead.
“Sleep, lording,” she said, as she bent over him. “Nothing can harm you
while I am watching.”
XI
THEY had been on the march an hour next morning, following the winding
forest ways under Guicheaux’s guidance, when Hopart and several others
who held the van came plump upon a couple of peasants squatting beside a
miserable fire. In the centre of a clearing stood a rude hut built of
logs and thatched with whin and heather. The grass was all trampled and
muddy about the place, as though a number of horses had been tethered
for the night.
At the first glimpse of the free lances and Hopart’s red face under its
iron war-hat, the men by the fire skipped up like rabbits and bolted for
the woods. The free companions gave chase, hallooing to the peasants to
stop, and spattering them with maledictions as they still continued to
run. The slimmer of the two gained the undergrowth and dived into it
like a bird into a bush. Hopart, however, came thundering down on the
other, who was lumbering along on a lame leg, toppled him over by
thrusting his spear between his knees, and, rolling from the saddle, had
the gentleman in hand. He was a stupid, hairy-faced clod, with a
pendulous lower lip and a scar across one cheek. They brought him to
Bertrand, who had ridden in with Arletta, and set him in the midst
before the captain’s horse.
Bertrand, who had been struggling with his conscience since the rising
of the sun, looked round the clearing, noticed the trampled grass, and
promptly fell to questioning the lame boor Hopart had brought to earth.
“Hallo, Jacques Bonhomme, whose hut is that?”
The peasant indicated his own person with his thumb.
“Yours, eh? And who have you been lodging? A large party by the look of
the grass. Speak up! We are Breton men, and we are not here to steal.”
The man’s face brightened a little as he scratched his chin and looked
cunning.
“Maybe you are of the Montfort party, lording?”
“Maybe we are, maybe we are not. Who have you had camped here for the
night?”
“Monk Hanotin, Croquart’s bully.”
“Who? Say that again.”
“Monk Hanotin, lording, and twenty men. They’ve thove my old sow, bad
blood to them, burned my sticks of furniture, and taken all the meal I
had in the tub.”
Bertrand was frowning at the man, while Hopart and the rest listened in
silence.
“Thank the saints, Jacques, that they took nothing else. Croquart’s men!
The devil! And how long have they been gone?”
The man pulled the hairs in his shaggy beard.
“Maybe an hour, maybe less.”
“We saw nothing of them. They are ahead of us, eh?”
“No, lording, they went west.”
“And we rode east. Well, what do you know, anything?”
There was more hair-pulling, more screwing up of the peasant’s sleepy
but cunning eyes, as though he were trying to tune his wits to
Bertrand’s temper.
“I heard something, lording, of the business they have in hand.”
“You did! Tell us.”
“When they were kicking me and making me burn my own stools and table I
heard Monk Hanotin talking. They are for the Vicomte de Bellière’s
tower, the Aspen Tower we call it in these parts. I reckon they mean to
pluck it as they plucked my poor hens.”
Bertrand straightened in the saddle, a flash of fierceness crossing his
face, as though one of his men had called him a coward. Bending forward,
he held his poniard at the peasant’s throat, while Hopart and another
gripped him by the arms and shoulders.
“Swear, Jacques Bonhomme! Swear, swear!”
The man looked stupidly into Bertrand’s eyes as though fascinated.
“Swear, lording?”
“That you have spoken the truth.”
The fellow shook off Hopart’s grip and crossed himself.
“By Holy Jesu, Our Lady, and St. Ives,” he said, “I swear!”
Bertrand clapped his poniard back into its sheath.
“Good,” he said. “God see to it, for your throat’s sake, that you are
not a liar. How many men had Hanotin with him?”
“Twenty, I should say, lording—English, Flemings, Gascons—cut-purses
enough.”
Bertrand’s upper lip tightened. He was alive again to the last sinew.
“Jacques, you know the forest ways?”
“Yes, lording.”
“Bring us to the Vicomte de Bellière’s tower before Hanotin and his
rogues break in.”
“Lording, I will do my best if you will bring back my old sow.”
Bertrand stood in the stirrups and called his men round him.
“Come, who is for robbing a brother thief? Shout, all of you, for
Bertrand du Guesclin and Brittany!”
And shout they did, ready as Bertrand to strike a blow at Hanotin,
Croquart the Fleming’s man. Guicheaux gave tongue to the common will.
“Lead on, lording, we will follow.”
“Well said, comrade,” quoth Hopart, “I’d give a knight’s ransom to stick
my poniard in Hanotin’s belly.”
There was stir and ardor everywhere. The men were down tightening up
girths and looking to each other’s armor. Guicheaux and Hopart were
unlading one of the pack-horses and hoisting up the peasant onto the
beast’s back. Bertrand had drawn his sword and was feeling the edge
thereof. Of a truth, God had given him his opportunity. He would save
Tiphaïne—yes, or lose his life in the adventure.
A hand touched his bridle. It was Arletta’s. She was looking up
wistfully, jealously, into Bertrand’s face.
“Take me with you, lording.”
“No, no, Letta, this is no woman’s business.”
“I can ride with the best—”
“Yes, you have spirit, child; but we shall have our stomachs full of
fighting before night. Stay with Gwen and Barbe. You will be safe here.”
Arletta went white under her black hair, and then red as fire. Her eyes
flashed, her bosom heaved.
“Lording, I will go with you—yes, yes, though you ride to save madame.
I know your heart, I know your heart!”
A wave of color swept over Bertrand’s face. He looked hard at Arletta,
who was clinging to his bridle with both hands.
“What! Jealous, Letta? For shame, for shame!”
She burst out weeping of a sudden, all her woman’s nature rushing out in
tears.
“Take me, lording, I am your servant. No, I’ll not stay while you are
fighting. Lording, lording!”
She leaned against his horse’s shoulder, and tried to clasp him with her
arms. Bertrand was frowning and gnawing at his lip. His mood had
changed; the sullen repinings of the night were past. He felt his sword
sharp, his arm mighty.
“Well, you shall come,” he said.
“Lording, I am your servant.”
She kissed his hands and sprang away, smiling dimly through her tears.
Yet her heart was not quiet despite her victory. Why was Bertrand so
fierce and eager to fly at Hanotin’s throat? Was it because he was of
the English party, or because—And Arletta clinched her fists and
shivered.
So Bertrand and his men turned back towards the Aspen Tower, leaving the
two women in the hut, with Simon and the Poitevin to guard them and the
baggage-cattle. Bertrand took the lead once more, and loitered no longer
like a sick stag behind the herd. Guicheaux had Jacques Bonhomme on a
horse beside him, keeping a fast hold on the bridle, and improving the
fellow’s loyalty by grimly reminding him that some one’s back would be
the worse for their stirrup-straps if the Aspen Tower were not reached
before night. The men were blithe and full of fettle. Monk Hanotin and
his free lances were gentlemen of parts—brilliant rogues, so far as
devilry could carry them. They did not ride with empty saddles. The
peasant swore that they had the spoil of half a dozen castles and manors
on their pack-horses.
As for Bertrand, the whole tone of life was changed in him since he had
turned back from that patch of open land in Broceliande’s heart. The
mopes had fallen away; he had a deed in view; the day was justified by
its endeavor. Some strange stroke of chance had beaten him back towards
the woman who had shown him his own soul. He was riding to save
Tiphaïne—Tiphaïne, the child who had made a man of him at Rennes. He
recalled her as he had known her then—sweet, winsome, passionate,
generous in her championing of his ugliness. He saw her as she had stood
but yesterday on the altar steps, brave, scornful, haloed round with a
lustre of gold. All the deep pathos of the scene smote home to him—dead
Brunet’s body, the pest-stricken home, old Jehanot shivering behind the
hangings. Why, he had been no better then than this bully of Croquart’s,
this Hanotin whom he was thirsting to slay! Great God, how a man might
discover his true self in the likeness of another!
Bertrand awoke over the peril of the child he had loved of old. He was
as hot to save her as though he were still her champion at Rennes.
Tiphaïne in Hanotin’s ruffian hands! Bertrand set his teeth and raged at
the thought of it. He must reach the Aspen Tower before the patched gate
fell.
Arletta rode at Bertrand’s side that morning, biting her red lips, and
tasting the bitterness of her own reflections. A woman is quick in the
telling of a man’s moods, and his actions speak for him in lieu of
words. With Arletta jealousy was an ever-smouldering passion. It lurked
at all times behind her pale and sinful face, and in the restless deeps
of her troubled eyes. She had been known to stab fat Gwen in the arm
because the woman had dared to laugh at Bertrand before his men. Arletta
could brook no rivalry in this poor, honorless conceit of hers. She
loved Bertrand, loved him like a mother, a mistress, and a slave—was
proud of his great strength and of the truth that he belonged to her.
Yet Arletta had kept a vision of madame of the Aspen Tower, concerning
whom her lord had been so glum and silent. She hated Tiphaïne with her
whole soul. A woman soon grasps the character of a sister woman, and to
Arletta Tiphaïne stood for every contrast that could make Bertrand see
her as she was. Untarnished pride and haughty purity! The thin,
white-faced light of love, with her jet-black hair and sinuous ways,
knew how steep was the slope between Tiphaïne and herself. She had seen
her but for a moment, but that moment was sufficient. Bertrand, her
master, had humbled himself before this lady of the tower, and to
Arletta there had been a reflected bitterness in Bertrand’s homage. She
was but a poor sparrow-hawk compared to this gerfalcon, whose splendid
pinions had never been imped by the hand of man.
About noon they halted by a stream to water the horses and make a meal.
Arletta could see how Bertrand chafed and fretted at the delay, how hot
and fierce he was to come up with Hanotin and his free lances, whose
tracks showed in the wet grass. Arletta would have rejoiced if half the
horses had fallen lame; but no, there was to be no slackening of the
chase that day. Bertrand was in the saddle, inexorably eager, and
shouting to his men:
“Forward! forward!”
The brown thickets swam by them as they cantered on through shadow and
through sunlight. The sun sank low, hurling his slanting showers of gold
over the bosom of Broceliande. Every forest monarch seemed afire,
touched with a glory that was not of earth. The pungent scent of the
rotting leaves rose up like invisible incense before the reddening altar
of the west. Another league and they would be on the brink of the
valley, and near the tower that Arletta hated.
Bertrand called a halt. He was a man who never racked his wits for
strategy or battle craft. Like a good hawk, he “waited on” till the
quarry rose in view; courage and strength of pinion did the rest. The
horses steamed in the frosty air. The men sat silent, images in steel,
listening for any sound that might break the silence. They were close on
the valley, close on Monk Hanotin and his scum of Gascons, English, and
Flemings.
From afar came the faint crying of a horn, wild and wailing, like the
voice of the dying day.
“Hear them, hear them, brave dogs!”
Hopart was biting at his beard and setting back his shoulders, as though
to feel their weight.
“Blow, brother Hanotin!” he growled. “We will be with thee before dark.”
They drew together under the trees, their eyes on Bertrand, who was
holding his breath and listening. The rough fellows had confidence in
him. There would be no bungling where Bertrand led.
“Ready, sirs?”
A growl and a loosening of swords came in response.
“Good. Keep your tongues quiet. We must hold to the trees till we have
the tower in sight.”
He was spurring on his horse when he remembered Arletta, and drew rein
again with an impatient frown.
“Here, one of you look after the girl. Keep her safe in the woods till
we have finished.”
Arletta, jealous and very miserable, held out her hands to him with a
sharp cry.
“Lording, I am not afraid—”
“What devil’s nonsense now! Back, I say! Am I to be obeyed?”
Arletta looked at Bertrand’s face, and slunk away as though he had
smitten her. Tiphaïne of the tower had all his tenderness. She only
cumbered him, and his passionate impatience hurt her heart.
“Off! I can look to myself,” she said, as one of the men came to take
her bridle. “Go forward and fight; I’ll be a clog on none of you.”
Another furlong and they neared the valley, pushing on cautiously under
the trees. Bertrand and Guicheaux rode ahead, speaking not a word, but
keeping their eyes fixed on the woodways before them. Soon the sky
broadened into a pillared arch of gold. The great trees gave back,
showing the valley and the aspens glimmering about the tower.
“Yonder are their horses.”
Guicheaux was pointing with his spear, his thin face working with
excitement.
“We have them, lording! We have them on the hip!”
Bertrand peered down the valley under his hand. He saw some thirty
horses picketed on the edge of the aspen wood. Only two men were
guarding them. Where were the rest?
He gave a shout, and drew his sword.
“Listen, they are breaking in!”
From the valley came the confused cries of men hurrying to the assault,
and Bertrand could hear the dull crash of blows given upon the gate. A
confused shimmer of steel showed under the black bulk of the tower as
Hanotin’s men thronged across the causeway.
“On—on!”
Bertrand was already galloping down the slope into the gold mist that
drowned the meadows.
XII
HANOTIN’S men had already broken down the gate when Bertrand came
galloping through the aspen wood. He had halted but a moment to cut down
the two fellows who had been left to guard the horses, and who had drawn
their swords on him and tried to give the alarm to their comrades on the
causeway. Thanks to the din his own men were making, Hanotin had no
warning of the rescue that was at hand.
Tiphaïne, who had climbed the tower with Jehanot when Hanotin’s horn had
blown the first challenge, stood looking down in a species of stupor
through the machicolations of the battlements at the mob of men
struggling through the wreck of the twice-broken gate. They had forced
up the portcullis, and were shouting with savage triumph, their shouts
coming up to Tiphaïne like the snarling of wild beasts. She could see
their bassinets and shoulder-plates and their thrust-out heels as they
struggled to be first in through the entry.
The last men were still in view when she saw one of them clap his hand
to the back of his neck, turn, and stare in astonishment across the
moat. Tiphaïne, vividly receptive of all details in her dull terror,
noticed a red patch of blood between the rim of the man’s steel cap and
the edge of his gorget. He had been hit in the neck by a cross-bow bolt,
and was shouting and gesticulating, calling back his comrades, who were
crowding through the gate.
Tiphaïne was startled by a cry from old Jehanot. He was hopping from
foot to foot, brandishing his cross-bow, his eyes shining out curiously
above the bandage over his mouth and chin.
“Look! look!”
Tiphaïne followed the pointing of his hand, and understood whence the
cross-bow bolt had flown. Through the aspen wood, with its last yellow
leaves flickering in the sunlight, came Bertrand’s men, pressing forward
on foot behind their captain, whose sword flashed as he cantered down on
his great black horse. They came on in good order with their shields up,
spears bristling, steady and silent.
Tiphaïne recognized the blue surcoat.
“It is Bertrand!” she said—“Bertrand du Guesclin!”
Jehanot was waving his cross-bow above his head.
“A rescue! a rescue! To the chapel, madame. There will be bloody work.
Shut yourself in. I’ll bide here and watch.”
Hanotin’s men were crowding back under the arch of the gate, jostling
each other, taken by surprise. Some were for meeting Bertrand upon the
causeway, others for holding the tower and letting the portcullis fall.
Hanotin, a giant with a face like raw meat, came pushing through the
press, cursing his men, and shouldering them aside as a ship shoulders
the waves.
“Out of the way! Out of the way! Let me get a glimpse at these
gentlemen.”
He pushed through and had his desire—a vision of a wedge of shields and
spears thrusting forward across the causeway.
Hanotin sprang back, brandishing his mace.
“Down with the grid! Curse these foul trees, the bridge is jammed.”
He swept his men back, and stood alone to hold the entry till they
should have time to lower the portcullis. Bertrand saw that the need was
imminent.
“St. Ives!—Du Guesclin!”
Hanotin snarled and swung his mace.
“Out, fools, out!”
There was a squeal of delight from the battlements above. Old Jehanot
had toppled a loose stone over. It brushed Hanotin’s body, made him
stagger, and broke in fragments at his feet. Before the free lance could
recover Bertrand rushed on him, and knocked him over with a blow of the
fist. Shouting, cursing, heaving, the whole rout went in over Hanotin as
he struggled to rise. They drove the Monk’s men through the tower arch
by sheer weight of numbers, burst into the court, and stood shouting and
cheering as though gone mad.
Hanotin had picked himself up and was rallying his men. Furious at the
way he had been wrested and trampled under foot, he stormed at his
fellows, taunting them with having given way before a mob of footpads
and boys. Bertrand’s free companions in their rush had carried the
court-yard, but they had left the tower gate and guard-room in Hanotin’s
hands.
The Monk, who was an inspired bully, and knew how to make the most of a
situation, ordered the portcullis to be lowered—a piece of ostentatious
bravado that he was soon to regret. The great grid came jerking down;
they were to fight it out like cats in a cage. Hanotin bluffed beyond
his powers when he thought to frighten Bertrand into a surrender.
“Steady, steady. Keep close together, and follow when I give the word.
Let them drop the grid. They are stopping their own bolting-hole.”
Bertrand’s coolness heartened his men on the instant. They could see
that he was smiling—smiling one of those grim and quiet smiles they had
learned to treasure. Messire Bertrand knew his business. Guicheaux and
Hopart watched him in silence, ready for the spring they knew was
coming.
“Good-evening, brother. How is it to be—your mace against my sword?”
Hanotin ran his eyes over Bertrand’s figure, and shirked the challenge.
“Not so fast, sir,” he said; “I am too big for thee, and the game is
ours. Throw down your arms, or—” And he drew the edge of his hand
across his throat.
Bertrand laughed. His men were grinning and nudging one another,
gloating at the way the free lance had shirked the challenge. Bertrand
spoke a few words to them over his shoulder.
“As you will, brother,” he said, setting his sword swinging. “In, sirs,
in! Notre Dame du Guesclin! Follow me!”
Hanotin’s men were the better armed, but Bertrand, who had the advantage
of numbers, kept his fellows together, and broke Hanotin’s ranks at the
first charge. It was rough-and-ready scrimmaging enough in the gathering
darkness of the narrow court. Men shortened their swords, used poniards
and gadded fists, grappling together, squirming and wriggling on the
stones. Bertrand hunted out Hanotin, and hammered him while the sparks
flew. The bully labored with his mace, puffing and grunting as he gave
each blow. Twice wounded, he closed with Bertrand and tried to bear him
down beneath his weight. Hanotin would have been wiser had he shirked
the bear’s grip that had given Bertrand many a victory over the Breton
wrestlers as a lad. The Monk went down with a crash that startled even
the men who were struggling in the death grips round him. He lay still a
moment, and then, heaving himself upon his hands and knees, wriggled
away like a huge lizard into the thick of the press.
Bertrand sprang after him, but a sudden rush of his own men and a
weakening of the Montfort party threw him sideways against the wall.
Hopart, who was close at hand, helped Bertrand to his feet.
“Hurt, lording?”
“Hurt? Not a bit of it! On; they are losing heart!”
They were losing ground also, and had been driven back under the tower
gateway. With the grid down there was no escape save into the
guard-room, or up the newel stairway leading to the lesser solar, and by
the gallery to the lord’s solar and the chapel. Hanotin, who had
recovered his feet and picked up a fallen sword, shouted to his men to
take to the stairway. There was a rush for the narrow entry, Hanotin and
three others holding their ground while the rest tumbled pellmell up the
stairs.
This was the very move Bertrand had dreaded, for he knew that Tiphaïne
must be hidden somewhere in the rooms above. He had seen her head on the
tower for an instant when he and his men had first charged for the gate.
Hanotin’s free lances would be like wild beasts brought to bay in the
place. They might kill the girl, or harm might come to her with men
hunting one another through the darkening rooms. Calling off ten of his
own fellows, he left Hopart and the rest to force the stairs, and
doubled across the court-yard for the hall.
It had grown so dark that the great room was like a cavern. Bertrand
groped through it, and climbed the stairs towards the solar. The door
was slammed against him from within, and his shout of “Tiphaïne!”
answered with curses. Setting his teeth, he threw his weight against the
door, broke it, and went sprawling, with rattling harness, into the
blackness of the room.
In an instant two of Hanotin’s men were on him, trying to stab him in
the dark. Bertrand kicked out right and left, caught one gentleman by
the ankle and brought him down backward with a crash. There was a rush
and a great shouting of “Lights!—lights!” The room seemed full of
tumbling, struggling shapes. Furniture was overturned, whirled away, and
broken. Men were grappling and stabbing haphazard in the gloom, cursing
the darkness and calling to one another.
Light streamed in suddenly. The chapel door had been burst open by two
men who had fallen against it, and were now wrestling together on the
floor. Bertrand, scrambling up, with a poniard wound in his forearm,
stood back against the wall and looked round him. Three men were
struggling on the bed, a confused tangle of arms and legs, while at the
far end of the solar Guicheaux and several more were holding back the
fellows whom they had driven into the gallery leading to the tower.
Bertrand could hear Hopart and the rest fighting their way up the
stairway to the lesser solar above the gate.
A den of horror, brute force, and death the place seemed as Bertrand
leaned against the wall and recovered his breath. He turned and saw the
two men struggling by the chapel door. The bigger of the pair had the
other under him, and was driving his dagger into the agonized wretch’s
throat. The victor scrambled up from the body, shook himself, and looked
round with his teeth a-gleam like a dog at bay. Bertrand recognized
Hanotin by the beard.
“Hallo, brother—you are there! Good!”
Hanotin snarled and darted through the chapel doorway, swinging the door
to after him. Bertrand dashed it open, and stepped over the body of the
man the Monk had stabbed. A woman’s cry rang out through the chapel.
Before the altar stood Hanotin, holding Tiphaïne by the bosom with one
great paw, and brandishing his poniard with the other.
“Off, dog, off!”
Hanotin spat like a cat, and forced Tiphaïne down across his thigh.
“A truce, or the knife goes home.”
Bertrand faltered in his fury and stood looking at Tiphaïne, Hanotin’s
hand gripping her bosom, her hair falling down in disorder as he held
her across his knee. Bertrand could not see her face. She was struggling
a little, her bosom heaving under the man’s paw, her hands stretched out
to catch the blow.
“Loose your hold!”
Hanotin showed his teeth and grinned. The ruse was a desperate one, but
he had Bertrand baffled for the moment.
“No, no, messire. You see my terms. Curse you!—she-dog—”
Tiphaïne had seized her chance and twisted herself free from Hanotin’s
grip. She slipped and fell upon the altar steps, and rolled down them to
the floor. Hanotin sprang forward, but Bertrand was too quick for him.
There was the whistling of a sword, the clang of a helmet, and the
Monk’s bassinet ran blood. He staggered and fell, with Tiphaïne beneath
him, and in his blind death agony tried to stab her as he lay. Bertrand,
throwing down his sword, seized Hanotin by the sword-belt. He lifted him
from Tiphaïne and swung him away upon the floor, and in the fury of his
vengeance dashed his mailed heel again and again into the man’s face.
Life was over for Hanotin. He had given his last blow.
Bertrand turned towards Tiphaïne, who was half lying below the steps,
supporting herself upon her hands. She was dazed, shocked out of her
senses for the moment, with the Monk’s blood dyeing her hair and
clothes. She looked at Bertrand and gave a little gasp of pain.
He was bending over her on the instant, the distorting anger gone from
his face. He took her in his arms and felt the quivering of her body.
She clung to him for a moment like a frightened child, staring in his
face, her eyes full of the horror of Hanotin’s death.
“Bertrand, my God! oh—let me breathe—air, air—”
He let her lean against the altar, all the savagery gone out of him, his
face twitching.
“Are you hurt? Tiphaïne—”
She shook her head, and then pressed her hands over her ears as though
to shut out the brutal babel that came from the dark rooms and
passage-ways. Bertrand could hear Hopart shouting in the solar, “Kill!
Kill!”
“Bertrand, Bertrand, for God’s sake, tell them to spare the wretches!”
She sank to her knees and laid her head against the cold stone-work of
the altar, pressing her hands in horror over her ears.
Bertrand lifted a strand of her hair, kissed it, and then turned to end
the slaughter.
XIII
A SUNNY morning, with white clouds banding the blue of the autumn sky,
Broceliande, a sea of gold, glimmering over the silent hills. A sparkle
of frost in the air, rime on the grass, brown leaves falling everywhere,
the aspen leaves murmuring feebly about the black waters of the moat.
Grimness and horror still lingered about the place, despite the blue sky
and the golden woods. Even the water in the moat seemed to hide within
its depths dim visions of death that would make the eyes that gazed
thereon dilate and harden. Memories haunted the Aspen Tower—memories of
men hunting one another through dark passage-ways and chambers. Every
black squint and window seemed to gape and whisper as though trying to
tell of what had passed within.
Fires were burning in the aspen wood, horses cropping the grass, men
building rude huts with boughs cut from the forest. Southward of the
moat, in a hollow, where thorn-trees grew, three fellows, stripped half
naked, were shovelling earth back into a long and shallow trench. Ever
and again there was a splashing of something into the moat and a rush of
water from the stone shoots draining the hall and tower. The guard-room
door was barred, and two men with grounded spears were standing on duty
under the arch of the gate. In the court lay piles of broken or
blood-stained furniture, scraps of armor, trampled rushes. Men were
going to and fro, carrying buckets which they filled at the moat.
Water in a miniature cascade was running down the stairway leading to
the lord’s solar, to be sluiced about the hall with mops and brooms and
swept out again into the court. In the solar itself, Bertrand,
barelegged, his tunic turned up over his belt, was throwing water
against the walls and swilling the floor. The whole place had a damp and
sodden smell, like a house that has lain empty long after the masons and
plasterers have done their work. From the gallery and the lesser solar
above the gate came the sound of voices, the plash of water, the
swishing of brooms.
Perched on the bed, that had been dragged into the middle of the room
and stripped of coverlet and sheets, sat Arletta watching Bertrand with
her restless eyes. She had her cloak over her shoulders, because of the
cold, and her fingers were picking at the gaudy embroidery on her gown,
as though she were brooding over some hidden grievance. There was
something forlorn and pathetic in the bright colors of her clothes, the
reds and greens, their superficial brilliancy. She was very miserable,
was Arletta. Her heart ached as dully as her head, and her hands were
blue and numb with cold. Bertrand paid no heed to her presence as he
used his broom, strange weapon for his hands, and took the buckets
Guicheaux and Hopart brought him.
He sluiced the last ripple of water down the stairs, stood up and
stretched himself, as though cramped in the back. A strip of
blood-stained linen was wrapped round his left forearm. Beside Arletta,
on the bed, lay piled his armor, his shield, sword, and surcoat hanging
from a peg near to the window.
Arletta opened her mouth and yawned.
“Lording,” she said.
She spoke almost in a whisper, her face pinched, her teeth ready to
chatter.
“Lording!”
The appeal was a little louder, bringing Bertrand round upon his heel,
to stare at her vacantly, as though his thoughts were far away.
“Yes, child, yes.”
“May I make a fire?”
Bertrand glanced at the wet hearth and the gloom of the great chimney.
“It would be as well,” he said; “the place is damp as a cellar. It is
not fit—” and he halted, stroking his chin.
Arletta gave a little shiver, and a twinge of pain swept across her
face. She shook her black hair, climbed down from the bed, and went and
stood close by Bertrand.
“Lording, you are tired.”
She touched his arm and tried to slip her hand in his. Almost
imperceptibly Bertrand shrank from her, yet with an instinctiveness she
could not miss. He was listening, and glancing restlessly towards the
chapel door.
“You will find wood in the shed by the kitchen.”
“Yes, lording.”
“Hopart will light a fire in the room over the gate. Gwen and Barbe can
share it with you when they return. This is madame’s chamber—”
“Yes, lording,” she said, sullenly, ready to weep.
“And, Letta”—he looked guiltily shy of her, despite his
courage—“madame is much troubled; she would see no one—as yet. The men
will camp in the aspen wood, because of the Black Death. If you are
afraid—”
“Afraid, lording?”
“Yes, of the plague.”
She flashed an indescribable look at him, her mouth quivering.
“No, lording, I am not afraid.”
Bertrand frowned, but said no more to her. The girl’s strained face
troubled him. Everything was coming to Arletta, slowly, and by degrees.
Bertrand was beginning to be ashamed of her; he would have her away
while Tiphaïne was near.
She went out from the solar and stood shivering on the stairs, leaning
her weight against the wall. Her knees felt weak under her, dread heavy
on her shoulders, dread of this great lady and of the slipping away of
her one poor pride. She beat her hand across her mouth, and went slowly
and unsteadily down the stairway into the hall. Pools of water still
covered the floor, and the damp emptiness of the place seemed to echo
the beatings of her heart. Crossing the court in the quivering sunlight,
and threading her way between dead men’s armor and broken wood, she came
to the kitchen, where Hopart had already built a fire. He looked at
Arletta and grinned, gave her the stuff she asked for, but held his
banter, for the girl’s face sobered him. Returning, she climbed slowly
to the solar and found it empty, Bertrand gone.
Throwing the wood down petulantly upon the hearth, she looked round the
room, pressing her face between her hands. Bertrand’s surcoat had been
taken from the peg beside his shield and sword. She guessed what drew
him, and why he had wished to be rid of her for a while. Sullenly and
with effort she knelt down and began to build a fire. There would be no
warmth for her in its red, prophetic blaze. Her heart was cold—cold as
the stone hearth she knelt upon.
When Arletta had left him, Bertrand had taken down his blue surcoat from
the peg where his sword and shield were hanging, the blue surcoat that
had once been blazoned over with eagles of gold, but was now wofully dim
and threadbare. He had slipped into it, pulled on his hose and shoes,
and felt the stubble on his chin, that had not been barbered for two
days. Opening the chapel door, he found the place empty and the sun
making a glorious mosaic of light of the eastern window above the altar.
The Virgin’s robes gleamed like amber wine; the greens and purples were
richer than the colors of the sea. Bertrand closed the chapel door, and,
leaning against it, stood looking towards the altar and at the steps
where Hanotin had fallen the night before.
It was here that Tiphaïne prayed, and yonder stood her prie-dieu, with a
missal on the book-ledge. How quiet the chapel seemed, how full of
sunlight and of peace after the brutal violence of yesterday! Bertrand
went and stood by the prayer-desk, and, looking like a boy half fearful
of being caught in mischief, opened the missal and turned over the
pages. The book was beautifully illuminated, the vermilions, golds, and
greens glowing with the freshness of young flowers, the quaint pictures
and grotesque letters making the book a thing of beauty and of
strangeness. Bertrand knew naught of Latin, save the few prayers he had
been taught by Father Isidore at Motte Broon. In truth, he hardly knew
his letters, and it was curious to see him running his finger under a
word and trying to come to grips with the profundities of a pronoun.
But if Bertrand could not read its Latin, the missal itself spoke to him
in a language of the heart that he could understand. How often had
Tiphaïne’s hands turned these pages! How pure she was, how utterly
unlike the poor drabs upon whom he had wasted his manhood! Bertrand
stood fingering his unshaven chin and staring at the missal, with his
brows wrinkled up in thought. He had come face to face with one of those
barriers in life that mark off beauty from ugliness and deformity. Was
character worth the building, worth every careful chisel-mark on the
stone? Bertrand looked round the chapel; it was oracular to him that
morning, eloquent of those higher truths he had lost in the rough
petulance of his distemper. He felt himself a prodigal, an interloper, a
foolish boy who had thrown away his birthright in a moment of peevish
irritation.
There was much boyish simplicity in Bertrand still. He touched
Tiphaïne’s missal with his great hands, and then knelt at the prie-dieu
as though trying to experience some new sensation. He crossed himself,
fixed his eyes on the book, and, great, broad-backed sworder that he
was, tried to imagine how Tiphaïne felt when she knelt to pray before
the Virgin. It seemed quite natural to Bertrand that Tiphaïne should
pray. He would like to watch her fair, strong face turned up in
adoration to the cross. It would do him good to look at her, drive the
evil out of his heart, and perhaps teach him to pray in turn. What,
Bertrand du Guesclin praying! He stumbled up with a rough and ingenuous
burst of self-contempt. He was a fool to be kneeling at Tiphaïne’s
prie-dieu. He had forgotten how to pray, and his one religious
inspiration was the dread of ever playing the hypocrite.
“Bertrand!”
He started as though one of his own rough fellows had caught him on his
knees. The door of Tiphaïne’s bedchamber had opened while Bertrand was
kneeling before the missal. She was standing on the threshold, wearing
her wine-red gown.
Bertrand faced her sheepishly.
“I was only looking at the missal,” he explained, bent on thoroughness
and sincerity.
They stood considering each other, with something of the cautious
coyness of a couple of strange children brought suddenly face to face.
Both were embarrassed, both conscious of a sense of antagonism and
discomfort, as though troubled by the thoughts imagined in the heart of
the other.
“Bertrand, I have not thanked you—yet.”
He glanced at her keenly a moment, and rested one hand on the prie-dieu.
“It is nothing. We crossed Hanotin’s tracks, that was all. Besides, we
owed them a grudge.”
Tiphaïne was struck by his dogged air of self-restraint, and yet there
was something in his voice that touched her. The long, wakeful hours of
the night had changed her mood towards him. She seemed to have been
given sudden insight into the heart of this strong and rebellious man,
whose arm had saved her from a thing that she dared not picture.
“We each have something to forgive,” she said.
“I disobeyed you in that one thing.”
“Yes.”
“I did it that I might still have the memory of Rennes.”
She was gazing at the altar steps, as though recalling how Hanotin had
held her across his knee. She shuddered a little. It was something,
after all, for a man to be grim and mighty in battle.
Bertrand stood by the prie-dieu, watching her.
“Do you remember, Tiphaïne, that night when you came to us at Motte
Broon?”
She looked up at him and smiled.
“I was just such a rough dog then; it was sympathy I wanted, and the
sympathy you gave me won me the prize at Rennes.”
If he had read her thoughts his words could not have touched the woman
in her more.
“You are right in reproaching me,” she said.
“I? What reproach have I to make? You showed me my true self two days
ago. I have learned to take hard blows—when they are given honestly.”
Their eyes met.
“Yet—there is the other self.”
He steadied himself against the prie-dieu.
“Let me tell you the whole truth, as I blurted it out to you at Motte
Broon. I’ll not spare myself; it would do me good.”
She met him bravely with her eyes.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
And she knelt at the prayer-desk, her chin upon her hands, while
Bertrand, leaning against the wall, told her the whole tale—all that
had befallen him since the siege of Vannes.
There was silence between them when he had finished. Tiphaïne’s eyes
were turned towards the altar, with no self-righteous pride upon her
face.
“I can understand, Bertrand,” she said.
“Be rough with me.”
“Rough!”
He flushed and spread his arms.
“I am what I am; but, before God, I believe that there is something in
me—yet. Do not flatter me; flattery did no man any good.”
She set herself to match his sincerity with equal truth.
“What right have I to preach to you? And yet—”
“Say what you will.”
“There is a courage above the mere courage of a man swinging a
sword—the courage to suffer, to be patient, and to bide by one’s true
self.”
He looked at her steadfastly, and bent his head.
“That is where I failed,” he said, slowly; “I see it now as plainly as I
see your face.”
At the chapel door Arletta stood listening, her mouth twisted with
jealousy and hate. She had heard all that had passed between the two.
The great lady was taking away her one poor pride, her love. And Arletta
shivered, gripping her bosom till her nails bruised the skin.
XIV
JEALOUSY is as the dark under world to the warm day of a woman’s love.
It is peopled with phantoms and with shadows—a land of credulity, of
whisperings, and of gloom.
Arletta, poor wench, was dwelling on this black sphere of her troubled
life. A child of the soil, quick in her passions, hot of blood, she had
had no schooling in the higher patience, or learned that world-wise
nonchalance that shrugs its bland shoulders at despair. Impulse was law
to her, the blind instincts of her body her counsellors, her hands her
ministers of justice. She loved Bertrand—loved him with the zeal of a
wild thing for its mate. She loved him because he was stronger than
other men, because his strength had made him her master. Many a night
she had lain awake, smiling over some bold trick of his, the plunder he
had taken, the devil-may-care courage dear to the heart of such a woman
as Arletta. She had never thought that she was holding him back from
nobler things, and that her hands were strangling the ambitions of his
manhood. Arletta would have been content to have him the most feared and
fearless swashbuckler in all the Breton lands, and she would have taken
pride in the rough triumphs of such a life.
Little wonder that she awakened with a start of dread when this
white-faced madame with the calm and quiet eyes came sweeping royally
across her path. It was as though some saint had stepped down out of a
painted window, touched Bertrand on the breast, and disenchanted him
with the light of love who had ridden over the moors and through the
woodlands at his side. Arletta understood all that Tiphaïne’s influence
portended. Her woman’s instinct tore out the truth of her own
dethronement. Bertrand would be the gentleman once more, ashamed of a
bed of bracken and of a poor quean who had no honor.
Hate found the door of the girl’s heart open, with jealousy beckoning
from within. She hated Tiphaïne—hated her with a reasonableness that
had its justification in the truth. Who had the silkier skin, the finer
clothes, the more sweeping grace, the longer hair? Even in the mere
physical rivalry the lady outshone the poor woman of the smithy and the
moors. But it was for her birth that Arletta hated Tiphaïne most of all,
and for the superiorities that went therewith—the grace, the presence,
the clear, quiet voice, the beauty of completeness, the habit of
command. Even hatred fed on its own humiliation, and jealousy confessed
with bitterness the justice of its cause.
Arletta’s dreads were quickly justified. The “free companions” were to
camp in the aspen wood, for madame was to be guarded till her father’s
banner should come dancing through the woods. Arletta herself was sent
to the kitchen to cook and scour with Barbe and Gwen. The women began to
jeer at her before her face, seeing how the wind blew, and that Messire
Bertrand du Guesclin had changed his coat. He served and carved at
madame’s table, acted as seneschal, took her commands, and saw them
followed.
As for the Black Death, it seemed to have spent its fury in the place,
for it laid no hands on Bertrand’s men. Perhaps their wild life saved
them, the sun and storm that had tanned and hardened them against
disease. There was work and enough for them in regarnishing the Aspen
Tower under Bertrand’s orders. He sent them hunting in Broceliande to
bring back food for Tiphaïne’s larder. To keep the rest busy he ordered
the building of a new gate from timber stored in one of the out-houses,
and the strengthening of the palisades closing the garden from the moat.
The men worked willingly, for Bertrand had given them all the plunder
they had taken from Hanotin. Not a sou would he touch; the days of his
thieving were at an end. Then there were the prisoners to be looked to
in the guard-room, wounded men to be cared for, bread to be baked,
strayed cattle to be sought out in the woods. A lord’s house in those
days was a little town within itself, fitted for every common craft,
supplying its own needs by the labor of its inmates’ hands.
Bertrand went about his duties with a shut mouth and a purposeful
reserve. Even his rough fellows felt that he had changed, for he no
longer laughed with them and joined in their jesting. Like a masker he
had thrown off his buffoon’s dress and taken to the habit that was his
by right. The men whispered together over Bertrand’s transfiguration,
but took no liberties in his presence. Messire Bertrand was still their
hero; his slaying of Hanotin was like to become an epic deed among them;
moreover, the generous squandering of his share of the plunder had made
his whims and moods respected.
As for Arletta, she went sullenly about her work, wincing at the sneers
she had from Gwen and Barbe, and hating to be stared at by the men.
Often she would creep away into some quiet corner and brood bitterly
over her lost power. Bertrand but rarely spoke to her, and then the
careful kindness of his words stung her more sharply than a whip. He was
no longer rough and tender by turns, and Arletta would have welcomed
blows only to feel his strong arms once more about her body. Bertrand
avoided her, kept his distance when there was no escape, and even spoke
to her of Ancenis, where her father was growing prosperous on forging
armor for the wars. How easy it all seemed to Messire Bertrand! It was a
man’s way, she imagined, to be able to forget everything in three days,
and to turn his back upon the past.
Tiphaïne and Bertrand seemed often together. They walked in the garden,
rode hunting in the woods or in the fields to give Tiphaïne’s hawks a
flutter. Bertrand served madame at her table in the hall, and slept
across the chapel door at night. Arletta exaggerated all these
happenings in her heart.
The fourth morning after the saving of the tower she saw Bertrand cross
the court as she stood in the kitchen entry half hidden by the door.
Bertrand was alone, and, slipping out, she followed him, driven to dare
his displeasure by the bitterness of neglect. Bertrand’s foot was on the
first step of the solar stairway when he heard the rustle of a woman’s
skirt.
“Lording, lording.”
He turned, half angry, half ashamed, and stood looking down into her
white and passionate face.
“Why, Letta”—and he tried to smile—“what is it, wench?”
His coolness stung her. Why, Bertrand had loved her once—had told her
so with his own lips! Desperate in her dread, she flung out her arms and
clung about his neck.
“Lording, lording, why do you turn from me? Dear God, what have I done?”
She was panting, quivering, looking up into his face. Bertrand,
conscious of the straining arms about his neck and of the questioning
wildness of her eyes, stood helpless for a moment, betrayed by his own
conscience.
“Gently, child, gently,” he said, trying to unfasten her hands, and
dreading lest Tiphaïne should hear them—“gently. What ails you? Come,
come, be a good wench!”
Arletta clung to him the more, quivering, and pleading with him in
passionate whispers. Bertrand began to lose patience.
“Letta, Letta!”
He spoke hoarsely, forcing down her hands.
“Listen, Letta, I have words to speak to you.”
Repulsed, she sprang away, thrusting him back with her hands, her eyes
miserable yet full of fury.
“Yes, yes, I know—I’ll not bear it. You are ashamed of me; you hate me;
I see it clear enough.”
Bertrand tried to soothe her, holding out his hands.
“Letta!”
“No, no,” and she thrust him off, “I am nothing—a mere drab. You hate
me; you would like to see me dead. Ah, yes, messire, I am no fool.
Madame is not as I am. She is a great lady. Ah—ah—how can she take you
from me!”
She burst out weeping, covering her face with her arms, her passion
sinking into despair. Bertrand looked at her. What could he say? He felt
tongue-tied, helpless, and ashamed.
“Letta!”
She stood sobbing, her arms before her face.
“Letta!” And he went near to her.
“No, don’t touch me, messire.”
“Come, be sensible—”
She flashed up again, her passion working through her misery like flames
through wet wood.
“No, no! Hold off, messire! I am a woman; I have my pride; I can give as
well as take.”
Bertrand said nothing.
“Yes, you would be rid of me, you would throw me away like an old shoe!”
She turned suddenly, threw up her arms, and ran unsteadily towards the
door. Bertrand sprang after her, and then halted. What was the use of
it? The wrench must come, the reckoning be paid. Perhaps the girl was
only trying her woman’s tricks on him. He strove to comfort himself with
the suspicion, and let her go, weak and wounded, like a winged bird.
Tiphaïne supped in the solar that night, Bertrand serving her, and old
Jehanot carrying the dishes from the kitchen. Two torches were burning,
one on either side of the great hooded chimney, and freshly cut rushes
were strewn upon the floor.
Tiphaïne was in a silent mood, engrossed in her own thoughts. By chance
she had overheard Arletta’s pleadings with Bertrand in the hall. Her
heart was sad in her for the girl’s sake, though she was but learning
the rough methods of the world.
Old Jehanot had gone to the kitchen with the empty dishes, and Bertrand
stood filling Tiphaïne’s glass with ypocrasse.
“Enough,” and she raised her hand.
He let the lid of the beaker fall, and moved towards the door, for
Jehanot had left it ajar, and the draught from the hall came in like a
winter wind. Bertrand’s hand was on the latch when he heard the rattling
of the curtain-rings along the bed-rails, as though some one had stood
hidden and bided their time to sweep the curtains back. Tiphaïne’s chair
was drawn up before the fire, and Bertrand, turning on his heel, saw
Arletta swoop towards her with one arm raised.
It was all done in the taking of a breath. Arletta had struck her blow,
and in her flurry snapped the knife-blade on the oak head-rail of the
chair. Bertrand, forgetting the past utterly in the moment’s wrath, took
Arletta by the throat and hurled her back against the bed.
“Mad beast!—murderess!”
She cowered before him, choking from the grip he had given her throat,
and hiding her face behind her arm. Bertrand stood over her, as though
tempted to strike again.
“No, not that!”
Tiphaïne, unhurt, her face pale, her eyes full of pity, came between
Bertrand and the girl.
“Be careful, the cat is mad!”
“You are too rough—and blind.”
Arletta still cowered against the bed, as though Bertrand’s hands had
throttled her last hope. The lust for revenge had flowed from her like
wine from a broken jar.
Tiphaïne bent over Arletta, waving Bertrand aside when he sought to
interfere. The significance of the scene had flashed suddenly before her
eyes, moving her not to anger but to a spasm of pity.
There was no need for her to question Arletta. The flare of passion had
died out of her, and she looked like a frightened child, ashamed and
humbled.
“Come!”
Arletta writhed from her touch and hid her face.
“Come; the blow’s forgiven; you did not think. The wine-cup, Bertrand.”
He brought it her, a man whose conscience was crying within his heart.
“Drink some of the wine, child.”
But the girl only broke into bitter weeping and hid her face in the
coverlet of the bed. Tiphaïne stood looking at her, her lips quivering,
her eyes compassionate.
She turned to Bertrand, and gave the cup back into his hands.
“She is better alone, perhaps. Take one of the torches and light me to
the chapel.”
Bertrand obeyed her without a word. The whole scene had been a
revelation to him, as though the last glimpse of Arletta crouching by
the bed had been a vision betraying his own shame. Carrying the torch,
he went before Tiphaïne into the chapel, feeling himself guilty of the
blow that had been aimed by Arletta at her heart.
Bertrand set the torch in one of the iron brackets on the wall. Tiphaïne
went to kneel at her prie-dieu, her chin upon her hands, her face lifted
towards the altar. She knelt there awhile, silent, motionless, while
Bertrand watched her, wondering what her woman’s mind would weave out of
the tangle.
She spoke at last.
“How long has the child been with you?”
“Two years; perhaps less. Her father was an armorer at Ancenis; she left
him when the French marched through. I did not take her from her home.
Besides, she is no longer a child.”
Bertrand’s face seemed furrowed with recollections, or as though he were
asking himself some question that he could not answer. Tiphaïne did not
move.
“How a man stores judgments for himself! The girl cannot be left to a
life like this. I feel I have some duty by her. And yet I could swear
she would be ready to throw herself into the moat if I told her I would
send her home.”
“There is one other way, Bertrand.”
“How?” And his face appealed to her.
“She is a woman; she could be your wife.”
Bertrand’s jaw dropped.
“Marry her!”
“So you are too proud for that?”
He remained silent, staring at Tiphaïne, his hands opening and shutting,
his forehead a knot of wrinkles.
“It is not pride in me,” he said, at last.
“Not pride?”
“No. What could we hope for, she—and I? Would she be happy with me? No,
by Heaven, for we should hate each other in a week! What good could
there be in such a life, for us?—one long tavern brawl till we grew
more brutal and besotted, each dragging each deeper into the mire. How
could Letta, poor wench, help me to gain what I have sworn in my heart
to win? How could I give her all my homage in return? No, we should both
sink; perhaps—in the end—she would stab me—or I—her.”
He had spoken rapidly, almost with fierceness, feeling the inevitable
destiny beating within his heart. At the end he drew breath and leaned
against the wall, still watching Tiphaïne at the prie-dieu.
“Yes, you are right,” she said; “one cannot mend life with a
make-believe. And then—”
“There is her home at Ancenis.”
Tiphaïne thought a moment.
“Let me talk to her—alone. Perhaps she may listen.”
XV
A FAINT cry came stealing through the silence of the place, like the
wail of a bird that passes on the night wind and is gone.
Tiphaïne heard it and stood listening, her eyes changing their intensity
of purpose for a shadowy and vague unrest. Bertrand was still standing
by the torch he had thrust into the iron bracket clamped to the wall.
The flare flung darkness and light alternate upon his face.
Tiphaïne started up from the prie-dieu, and, opening the chapel door,
called:
“Arletta, Arletta!”
No sounds came to them save the crackling and hissing of the wood upon
the fire. Tiphaïne passed in, looking into the dark corners of the solar
for a crouching figure or the white glimmer of a human face. The room
was empty; Arletta had disappeared.
Tiphaïne stood for a moment like one taken with a sudden spasm of the
heart. The broken knife-blade shone symbolically at her feet.
“Bertrand!”
The cry came sharply from her, as though inspired by fear.
“Bertrand!”
He followed her and looked round the room, not grasping the prophetic
instinct of her dread.
“Hist!”
She stood silent again, her eyes fixed on Bertrand’s face.
“Quick! Search the tower! I am afraid for Arletta!”
Bertrand gave her one look, pushed past her without a word, took down
the torch, and went out into the gallery leading to the tower.
Tiphaïne’s foreboding had taken hold of his man’s heart. As he passed
down the gallery with the torch flaring above his head he looked out
from the narrow windows, and saw the moon rising huge and tawny over the
forest. The night had built an eerie background before Bertrand’s eyes.
He felt suddenly afraid, strong man that he was—afraid of what the dark
tower might hide within its walls.
Coming to the newel stairway, black as a well, he stood listening,
holding his breath. Before him was the door of the lesser solar. The
darkness and silence seemed to come close about his heart. He opened his
lips, and was startled by the harshness of his own voice.
“Letta, Letta!”
Still no sound.
“Letta, Letta, where are you? Come, you are forgiven.”
He stood listening till the echoes had died down the gallery where the
moonlight streaked the floor. What was that! A sound as of weeping, a
number of sharp-drawn breaths, and then a short cry, given as in pain.
Bertrand started like a horse touched with the spur. He stumbled up the
stairway, for the sounds came from above, the torchlight reddening the
walls, the smoke driven down by the draught into his face.
A door barred his progress. He tore at the latch savagely, and felt
something heavy against the door as he forced it back and slipped into
the room. His foot touched a hand; the hand moved. A whispering moan
came up to him out of the dark.
Bertrand was down on his knees with the torch flaring on the floor
beside him. Behind the door, and half crushed between it and the wall,
lay Arletta, her head sunk upon one shoulder. There was blood on her
limp hands, blood soaking her bosom, the whiteness of death upon her
face.
Bertrand, shocked to his heart’s depths, thrust his arms about her, and
drew her to him out of the dark. He was babbling foolishly, calling her
by name, bidding her take courage and forget his roughness. Arletta’s
head lay heavy on his shoulder. She stirred a little, sighed, and lifted
her hands. For a moment her lips moved, and her eyes looked into
Bertrand’s face.
“Lording—”
“Letta, what have you done? My God—”
“Lording, I am dying.”
Bertrand burst out weeping, his man’s tears falling down upon her face.
Arletta shuddered. Her mouth was close to Bertrand’s cheek, and he felt
her warm blood soaking his surcoat.
“Lording, kiss me, forgive—”
He kissed her, his arms tightening about her body. She lifted her hand
jerkily, unsteadily, and felt his hair. Then with a long sigh her head
sank down, her mouth opened, and she was dead.
Bertrand knelt there holding her in his arms, stunned, incredulous, his
hot tears falling down upon her lifeless face. He spoke to her, touched
her lips, but she did not answer. It was thus that Tiphaïne found them,
death and life together, with the torch setting fire to the wood-work of
the floor.
Tiphaïne trod out the flame, and, standing with the candle in her hands
she had taken from the chapel, looked down at Bertrand with Arletta
lying in his arms. Her pity and her awe were too deep for tears. She
turned to leave them, but paused before the door.
“Bertrand,” she said.
He groaned, kissed the dead face, and then laid Arletta gently upon the
floor. Still kneeling, he watched her, the truth—and the irrevocable
bitterness thereof—coming home to him slowly with a great sense of
shame.
“Bertrand.”
“Don’t speak to me”—and he buried his face deep in his hands—“let me
bear it out alone.”
Tiphaïne passed out, leaving the candle burning in a sconce upon the
wall. She groped her way down to the moonlit gallery, and so to the
chapel, where she knelt before the altar, her face turned to the figure
upon the cross. But Bertrand watched all night beside Arletta’s body,
holding the hands that were cold in death.
XVI
THE dawn was streaming up when Bertrand came down the stairway from the
upper room in the tower and paused in the gallery leading to the solar.
A bitter watch had it been for Bertrand, a long vigil with the
relentless past condemning him with the thoughts of his own heart. He
had knelt there, stunned and awed, with Arletta’s blood dyeing the floor
and her white face shining on him from amid the dark wreathings of her
hair. There had been no horror in her death for him, only a great
revulsion of remorse, a moving of all his manhood. He had looked on the
dead face hating himself, haunted by memories—memories poignant as a
mother’s tears. How good the girl had been to him, even when he had been
rough and petulant! She had often gone hungry that he might eat. And now
he had killed her—killed her with his great blundering penitence that
had trampled on her love in its struggles to be free. He had blood on
his hands—the blood of the woman whose bosom had pillowed his head in
sleep.
Bertrand stood in the gallery, miserable and cold, watching the dawn
come up over the thickets of Broceliande. There was no joy for him in
that splendor of gold, for the eyes of Arletta would open with the dawn
no more. Ah, God, what a brute he had been, what a self-righteous
coward! He had taken this woman’s heart, broken it, and thrown it back
to her in this awakening of his, of which he had been so proud. Bertrand
gripped the window-rail and stared at the moat. A glory of gold was
streaming over the forest, and the black water beneath him caught the
splendor and seemed glad.
The two women, Gwen and Barbe, were washing themselves in the water-butt
before the kitchen entry when Bertrand went down into the court. They
pulled their clothes up over their breasts on catching sight of him, and
stood giggling and looking at each other.
“Good-morrow, lording.”
“Your servant, Messire Bertrand. Letta’s a proud woman again, I’m
thinking—”
They burst out laughing, cawing like a couple of crows.
“S-s-h, Gwen, be decent!”
“Why shouldn’t I have my jest with the captain—”
She stopped, open-mouthed, for Bertrand’s white face shocked the
insolence out of her. There was something more than fury on it,
something more terrible than pain. There was blood, too, on his surcoat.
The women shrank from him, holding their loose clothes, awed by the look
in Bertrand’s eyes.
“Out, you fools!”
He pointed to the tower gate, and followed them like some inexorable
spirit as they went before him like a couple of sheep. Guicheaux was
sleeping on a pile of straw outside the guard-room door. Bertrand shook
him, and pointed to Gwen and Barbe as the quipster sat up, rubbing his
eyes.
“Turn them out!”
The women were ready enough to be deprived of Bertrand’s presence, and
they scampered across the bridge when Guicheaux swung the gate open. The
man watched them, then turned, and, looking curiously at Bertrand, put
his lips together as though tempted to whistle.
“Shut the gate.”
Guicheaux obeyed him, wondering what was to follow.
“Arletta is dead.”
“Dead, captain!”
“She stabbed herself. I am going to bury her. Keep the men out of the
place.”
He spoke curtly, fiercely, forcing out the words as though each one gave
him pain. Guicheaux’s face was a white patch in the shadow—the mouth a
black circle, the eyes two dots of light.
“Dead, captain!”
Bertrand looked as though he would have struck the man.
“Yes. The fault was mine. Arletta was jealous; she tried to stab madame,
and, when balked, stabbed herself instead.”
Guicheaux said nothing. He stood pulling his peaked beard and frowning
at the stones. The thing had shocked him, lewd-mouthed ruffian that he
was. Bertrand watched him a moment, and then, turning on his heel, went
to one of the out-houses where tools were kept.
The grass in the garden was crisped with fallen leaves and dusted with
dew that twinkled, thousand-eyed, under the sheen of the dawn. All the
pungent freshness of autumn was in the air. Bertrand chose his ground—a
clean stretch of turf close to the steam of a great apple-tree, and far
from the mounds the Black Death had built. He set to work with the look
of a man who feels his heart helped by physical effort. Sweat ran from
his forehead and his breath steamed up into the air, but he never paused
till the grave lay finished.
Thrusting the spade into the pile of earth, he went into the court and
climbed the tower stair to the room where Arletta lay dead. Bertrand
stood and looked at her awhile, dry eyed, moved to the depths, his mouth
twitching. Then he lifted her in his arms, feeling the solemn coldness
of her body striking to his heart, and carried her down the stair and
across the court into the garden. Very tenderly he laid her in the
grave, and, kneeling, set her hair in a circle about her face and
crossed her hands upon her bosom. Then he stood up and looked at her,
the sunlight touching her face, as she lay in her last resting-place,
her hands in the shadow that hid the blood-stains on her dress.
A foot-fall in the grass and a shadow stealing athwart the band of
sunlight brought Bertrand round upon his heel. Tiphaïne had crossed the
garden, her red gown sweeping the fallen leaves, her crucifix in her
hands, and a few half-faded flowers. Her eyes were full of the sadness
of deep thought.
“You have laid her there?”
He nodded, and stood twisting his hands together.
Tiphaïne went close to the grave and looked down at Arletta sleeping her
last sleep, with her black hair about her face. How quiet and unhurt she
looked, her jealousy dead with her, her hands folded upon her bosom!
Tiphaïne knelt down and began to pray, holding her crucifix over the
grave. The act brought Bertrand also to his knees by the pile of brown
earth he had thrown up out of the trench. He looked at dead Arletta and
then at Tiphaïne, whose hair shone like amber in the sun. He saw her
lips move, saw her take her breath in deeply, her eyes fixed on
Arletta’s face. Bertrand tried to pray also with the groping yet
passionate instincts of a soul still half in the dark. He strove after
the words that would not come, knowing full well what his heart desired.
“Bertrand.”
Tiphaïne was looking at him across the grave. Her mouth was soft and
lovable, her eyes tremulous with pity. It was to be peace between them.
Bertrand’s remorse pleaded for mercy.
“Bertrand, the child is asleep; she will know no more pain.”
Bertrand hung his head and stared into the grave.
“I have killed her,” he said; “yes, there is no escaping it. She was
very good to me, poor wench, and I—I was often rough and selfish.”
He knelt there, gnawing his lip, twisting his hands into his surcoat,
and trying to keep the tears from coming to his eyes. Tiphaïne watched
him with a strange, sad smile. She was wondering whether Bertrand would
forget.
“One cannot change the past,” she said.
He flung up his head and looked her in the face.
“I have done with the old life. This child’s blood shall make a new man
of me.”
“Well spoken.”
“I mean it. Help me with your prayers.”
She held out her hands to him across the grave.
“There are brave men needed—yes, and you are brave enough. Take arms
for our Breton homes, Bertrand, and help to drive the English into the
sea.”
They knelt, looking steadfastly into each other’s eyes, no pride between
them for the moment. It was then that a sudden thought came to Bertrand.
He drew his poniard, and, bending over the grave, cut off a lock of
Arletta’s hair. Reddening a little, he held it out to Tiphaïne, his eyes
pleading with her like the eyes of a dog.
“Here is the poor child’s token. Give me a strand of your hair to bind
with it. It is all I ask, and it will help me.”
She stood up without a word, let her hair fall from the net that held
it, a cloud of gold and bronze about her pale face and over her wine-red
dress. Taking Bertrand’s poniard, she cut off a lock and gave it him,
content that the threads of gold should be twined with dead Arletta’s
tresses.
“Take it, Bertrand, and I will pray for you.”
Bertrand was binding the black and bronze together, smiling to himself
sadly, and thinking of Tiphaïne when she was a child.
“I shall not forget,” he said, simply.
“Nor I,” she answered, throwing the flowers and crucifix she had brought
into Arletta’s grave.
And so Tiphaïne left him, and Bertrand turned to end his work. He
covered Arletta with dead leaves, and threw in the few flowers he could
find in the garden. Then he thrust back the earth very gently into the
grave, growing ever sadder as the brown soil hid Arletta’s face from him
forever.
And that same noontide young Robin Raguenel came riding in with twenty
spears bristling at his back and English plunder on his pack-horses.
Broceliande had given back Tiphaïne her own at last, after weeks of
peril and despair. As for Bertrand, he took young Robin’s thanks in
silence, and told the truth rather than play the hypocrite. The lad’s
pleading could not hold him. Bertrand saw Tiphaïne alone no more, and,
marching his men out, plunged into the deeps of Broceliande.