BOOK III

“THE OAK OF MIVOIE”

XVII

ONE March day a man wrapped in a heavy riding-cloak with the hood turned

back over his shoulders sat looking out over the sea from the cliffs of

Cancale. Behind him a shaggy pony was cropping the grass, lifting its

head to gaze ever and again at its master, motionless against the gray

March sky. A northeast wind blustered over the cliffs, the sea, sullen

and venomous, running high about the islands off Cancale. The great

waves came swinging in to fly in white clouds of spray over the

glistening black rocks that came and went like huge sea-monsters

spouting in the water. Across the bay St. Michael’s glimmered beneath a

chance storm-beam of the sun, while the shores of Normandy were dim and

gray between sea and sky.

It was Bertrand, throned like some old Breton saint, with the waves

thundering on the rocks beneath him and the gulls wailing about the

cliffs. He sat there motionless, fronting the wind, his sword across his

knees, as though watching and waiting for some sail he knew would come.

The strong and ugly face might have caught the spirit of the granite

land. Rock, sea spume, and the storm wind everywhere; a few twisted

trees struggling in the grip of the wind. Bertrand, solemn, gray-eyed,

motionless, akin to the rocks that lay around.

Two months had passed since Bertrand had come to Gleaquim by the

northern sea, where his kinsfolk had kept Christmas in the old house

where the Du Guesclins had had their rise. He had disbanded his free

companions at Rennes, maugre their dismay and their unwillingness to

leave him. The men’s rough loyalty had touched Bertrand, and taught him

that even the saddest dogs could love their master. Guicheaux had even

cast himself at Bertrand’s feet, swearing that he would go with him to

the ends of the earth. It was with a husky voice that Bertrand had

answered them, bade them choose a new captain and fight for Blois. He

had left them bemoaning the obstinacy of his will, to discover, some

twenty miles from Rennes, that Guicheaux and Hopart were following on

his heels. Moved by their homage, he had taken them with him to

Plessis-Bertrand, in Hakims valley by the sea.

There had been no great joy in Bertrand’s home-coming. His father,

failing in years and health, had grown querulous and miserly, while Dame

Jeanne adored Olivier as foolishly as ever. Julienne and the other girls

were at a convent in Rennes. Two of the boys were lodged with their aunt

in the same town, and Gaheris had gone as a page into the Sieur de

Rohan’s household. There had been but a poor welcome for the prodigal,

who brought no spoil or honor with him—nothing but a solemn face and

two hungry followers. Sieur Robert had received him with no outburst of

pride. His mother pursed up her lips, and questioned him as to what he

had done with the money he had had to start him in the wars. Olivier

strutted and swaggered in his finer clothes, made love to his mother’s

serving-women, and sneered openly at his brother, asking him how many

ale-houses he had captured and how many millers’ ransoms he had won.

Even in the kitchen there were brawlings and discord, for Hopart and

Guicheaux drubbed Olivier’s men for lauding up their master and

belittling Bertrand’s courage.

As for the Champion of Rennes, he kept a tight mouth and a flinty face,

took all the trivial taunts without a word, feeling it good that life

should run roughly with him for a season. Vain, vaporing Olivier and

proud, cold-eyed Jeanne knew nothing of the deep workings of that quiet

man’s heart. He never spoke to them of the near past, and told them

nothing of what he had learned and suffered. They thought him sour,

surly, dull in the head. Thus, even in a home, kinsfolk are as strangers

and outlanders together, and the mother knows not the heart of the son.

A great change was working in Bertrand—one of those uprisings that

occur, perhaps, but once in the course of a strong man’s life. The

recklessness, the passionate abandonment of youth were past—likewise

the first peevish curses of disappointed manhood. Bertrand had learned

to humble himself, to look round him, and to think. He had grappled with

the truths and falsities of life, and searched out the flaws in his own

heart with that dogged devotedness that was part of his nature. No easy

and emotional religiosity inspired him, but rather the grim spirit of an

old Stoic, striving after the best for the nobleness thereof. Yet the

change was not without its tender tones. Almost unconsciously Bertrand

had set up Tiphaïne in his heart, while beside her, yet more in the

shadow, Arletta’s white and wistful face seemed to plead with him out of

the past. Those who had known him of old, saving Olivier and his mother,

wondered at the new gentleness, the air of patience, that had mellowed

the rough and violent boy whom they remembered.

Bertrand was much alone that winter. It was a season of rest for him, a

girding up of the loins, a tightening of the muscles of the heart.

Nearly every day, in rain and sunshine, he would ride down to the sea,

and sit there on the cliffs, with the ever-changing sky above him and

the ever-restless waters at his feet. To Bertrand there was something

bracing in this solitude and in the unbelittled magnificence of sea and

shore. It was in those lonely days that he learned to know the true

courage, that nobler quietude that smiles at defeat. And with the

humility that had come upon him a deep and solemn peace seemed poured

like divine wine into his mouth. The conviction grew in him that the

higher life was yet before his face. Even as the grand old Hebrews

trusted in the Eternal One with a faith that made them terrible, so

Bertrand believed, with all the simple instinctiveness of his soul, that

the powers above had work for him to do. The day would come for him,

when or how he knew not yet. He was content to rest and tarry for a

season, perfecting the self-mastery that was to make of him a man.

Bertrand mounted his rough pony and rode homeward that March day with

the sun going down amid a mass of burning clouds. His heart was tranquil

in him despite the wailing of the wind, the moaning of the trees, and

the bleak stretch of moorland and of waste. He saw the peasants

returning from their labor, and smiled at the sight. The patience of

these lowly tillers of the fields seemed to comfort him. He had begun to

think more of them of late than the mere pomp of chivalry and the

glamour of arms. They suffered, these brown-faced, round-backed

peasants, and Bertrand’s heart went out to them as he thought of their

hard lives and the heaviness they bore.

The servants were trooping into supper when Bertrand rode into the old

court-yard and saw the hall windows warm with torch-light. He stabled

his pony, fed the beast with his own hands, and washed at the laver in

the screens before going in to supper. Sieur Robert and his wife were

already at the high table, with Olivier, the young fop, lolling against

the wall. His lips curled as he saw Bertrand enter, for he hated his

brother, and feared him in his heart.

Bertrand went to serve and carve at the high table. He had taken the

task on him of late with that quiet thoroughness that made him what he

was. It was proper, he thought, for him to serve before those who had

begotten him, even though he had known no great kindness at their hands.

Olivier would sneer and smile at Bertrand’s newly inspired filial

courtesy. He was a selfish fool himself, and loathed stirring himself,

even for the mother who would have given him her head.

“Hallo there! those roast partridges look fat. Bring the dish, brother;

this north wind blows hunger into a man.”

Bertrand brought the dish without a word, and Olivier helped himself,

pleased with the honor of being waited on by his brother.

“Give us some Grenarde, Bertrand. Thanks. And the spice-plate. Ah,

madame, you keep to ypocrasse. Bertrand, my mother would drink

ypocrasse.”

Olivier had long lorded it over both his parents with the easy insolence

of a favored son. Bertrand poured out a cup of ypocrasse for Dame

Jeanne, and, having carved for his father, and given him a tankard of

cider, sat down to eat in turn. Olivier, who was greedy despite his

daintiness, left Bertrand in peace awhile, only deigning to talk when he

had ended his hunger.

“Well, Brother Bertrand, how are the pigs to-day?”

This question had become a nightly witticism with Olivier since a

certain morning two weeks ago, when he had found his brother helping the

swineherd to drive his hogs.

Bertrand kept silence and went on with his supper. Olivier, after

staring at him, took a draught of wine, wiped his mouth, and called for

water and a napkin that he might wash. Bertrand rose and brought them

from the buffet below the great window.

“Thanks, good brother.”

The patronage would have set Bertrand’s face aflame not many months ago.

He left Olivier waving his white hands in the air, and carried the bowl

and napkin to his father, and then to Dame Jeanne, who thanked him with

a slight nod of the head.

“Mother, I am thinking of joining the Countess at Rennes this year.”

Olivier was forever on the point of sallying on imaginary quests, and

thrilling his mother’s heart with the threat of daring untold perils. He

had been to the wars but once in his life, when an English spear-thrust

had excused many months of unheroic idleness.

“They must miss you,” said Jeanne, with a jealous look.

Olivier spread his shoulders but did not see that Bertrand smiled.

“True,” he confessed, with divine self-unction; “I am a good man at my

arms. This cursed spear-wound still smarts a little and chafes under the

harness. How many men, mother, can you spare me in the spring?”

Jeanne du Guesclin considered the demand with the fondness of an

unwilling fool. Olivier’s vaporings never rang false in her maternal

ears. Like many a shrewd, cold-hearted woman, she was deceived pitifully

by the one thing that she loved.

“Wait till the summer, child,” she said.

“Child!” And Olivier stood upon his dignity and showed temper. “You are

blind, madame; you never see that I am a man. You women are made of

butter. We men are of sterner stuff.”

His mother’s meekness was wonderful in one so proud.

“Ah, Olivier, you have the soldier’s spirit! I must not try to curb your

courage.”

The hero smoothed his diminutive peak of a beard, and deigned to suffer

her carefulness, like the inimitable peacock that he was.

“Honor is honor, madame. We men cannot sit at embroidery frames and make

simples. It is the nature of man that he should thirst for war.”

A sudden stir among the servants at the lower end of the hall drew

Bertrand’s attention from his brother’s boasting. His ear had caught the

sound of hoofs and the pealing of a trumpet before the court-yard gate.

The clattering of dishes and the babbling of tongues ceased in the great

hall, for Plessis-Bertrand was a lonely house and travellers rarely came

that way. Hopart and Guicheaux, taught caution by long, experienced

exposure to all manner of hazards, took down their swords from the wall

and went out into the court-yard, followed by some of Olivier’s men with

torches. Olivier scoffed at the free companions’ carefulness.

“Some dirty beggar,” he said, “or a couple of strolling friars. Hi,

Jacques, if they are players—and there be any wenches—show them in.”

Bertrand, who was wiser, and had no vanity to consider, saw that his

sword was loose in its sheath.

They could hear Guicheaux shouting and a voice answering him. Then came

the unbarring of the gate and the ring of hoofs upon the court-yard

stones. The men were shouting and cheering in the court. Hopart’s hairy

face appeared at the doorway of the hall. He so far forgot his manners

for the moment as to bawl at his master on the dais.

“Beaumanoir’s herald, Messire Jean de Xaintré. They are going to maul

the English at Mivoie’s Oak. The eagle must look to his claws!”

In came the servants, shouting and elbowing beneath a flare of torches,

old Jean, the butler, flourishing his staff and trying to keep order and

clear a passage. Hopart and Guicheaux were treading on the toes of

Olivier’s men, spreading their fingers and grinning from ear to ear.

Bertrand saw the flashing of a bassinet, the gay colors of a herald’s

jupon, the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s arms quartered with those of Brittany.

Some dozen men-at-arms followed in full harness, shouldering back the

cook-boys and scullions.

The herald, an esquire of the Marshal’s, Jean de Xaintré by name,

marched up the hall and saluted those at the high table.

“Greeting, madame and messires all; God’s grace be with you. I come from

the Sieur de Beaumanoir, Marshal of Brittany. Thirty champions are to

fight thirty English at the Oak of Mivoie on Passion Sunday. We need the

Sieur de Guesclin’s son with us.”

Dame Jeanne looked at Olivier and beckoned him forward.

“Here is your champion, herald,” she said. “Olivier, the Sieur de

Beaumanoir needs your sword.”

Jean de Xaintré stared at the lady and glanced, with a grim twinkle, at

Olivier, who looked as though he were not so ready to deserve his

mother’s pride.

“Your pardon, madame”—and Xaintré laughed—“Bertrand du Guesclin is our

man. Greeting, old friend; you have not forgotten Jean de Xaintré.”

Jeanne du Guesclin bit her lips.

“What—Bertrand!”

“Madame, who but Bertrand, the best son you ever bore!”

Bertrand had risen and was standing with one hand on his father’s

shoulder, knowing that his chance had come at last. The hall, with its

crowd of faces, seemed blurred to him for the moment. Yet he saw Hopart

and Guicheaux squealing and flapping their caps in the faces of

Olivier’s men.

“I am here, old comrade. Give me the Marshal’s orders.”

Jeanne, white and angry, glared at him, and put her arm about Olivier.

“To choose the clumsy fool!” she said.

Jean de Xaintré had drawn his sword, and was holding the hilt crosswise

before him.

“Swear, brother in arms, swear on the cross.”

“Ay, Jean, give me the oath.”

“Swear by Christ’s cross. The Oak of Mivoie on Josselin Moors, to fight

Bamborough and his English on Passion Sunday.”

Bertrand lifted his hand, crossed himself, and took the oath.

“Before God—and our Lord—I swear,” he said.

Xaintré thrust his sword back into its sheath.

“Bertrand du Guesclin will not fail.”

Sieur Robert, sleepy and querulous, sat staring about him, and looking

weakly at his wife. Jeanne du Guesclin had sunk back heavily in her

chair, and was still biting her lips, and looking bitterly at Bertrand.

Olivier had tossed down a cup of wine, and was braving it out as though

the whole matter were the choicest farce. Guicheaux and Hopart were

still stamping and shouting till Dame Jeanne started up in a blaze of

fury, and shouted to her men, who crowded by the door:

“Take the fools out and have them whipped!”

But Bertrand cowed his mother for the once, and swore that no one should

lay hands upon his men.

“Quiet, dogs,” he said, shaking his fist at them, “you have barked

enough; let us have peace.”

He sprang down from the dais and gripped Jean de Xaintré’s hands.

“Old friend, you have not forgotten me?”

“No, no. Come, give me wine. Here’s to you with all my heart.”

XVIII

IT was seven in the morning on the day of his riding to join the Marshal

of Brittany at the Oak of Mivoie, and Bertrand stood warming himself

before the great hall fire. He was in full harness—harness that he had

burnished lovingly with his own hands, and the raised vizor of his

bassinet showed a calm face and the eyes of a man who listened. Bertrand

had broken fast alone in the hall, after keeping a vigil in the chapel

with his sword and shield before him on the altar steps. He was to ride

towards Dinan that day, for Xaintré had told him that Robin Raguenel had

been chosen among the thirty, and Bertrand rode to seek him at La

Bellière, and perhaps win a glimpse of Tiphaïne herself. His heart felt

full of joy that morning, the joy of a man to whom life offers stirring

days again.

Jean, the old butler, appeared at the door that closed the stairway

leading to the private rooms. He looked half timidly at Bertrand, a

tower of steel before the fire, and came forward slowly, coughing behind

his hand.

“Well, Jean, how long will they keep me waiting? The days are short in

March.”

“Your servant, messire—”

“Well?”

“My master has bidden me carry you his good grace—and blessing—”

“What! My father is not out of bed?”

“He prays you to pardon him, messire. He feels the cold, and these raw

mornings—”

Bertrand silenced him with a gesture of the hand. His face had lost its

brightness for the moment, and there was a frown as of pain upon his

forehead.

“Ah, of course, Jean, say no more. And madame?”

“Madame, messire, is at her devotions; she would not be disturbed. In an

hour—”

Bertrand turned with a shrug of impatience, picked up his sword, and

buckled it on.

“My time is God’s time, Jean,” he said; “carry my respects to my father

and my mother—”

He winced over the words, frowning, and looking sorrowful about the

eyes.

“Tell them I could not tarry. And my brother Olivier? Curling his pretty

beard?”

“I will go and see, messire.”

“No, no; never trouble the sweet lad. It is a mere nothing, man, to the

parting of his hair. Good-bye, Jean; forget the mad tricks I played you

as a boy.”

He turned, took up his shield, and strode out from the hall, a sense of

forlornness chilling his ardor for the moment. Hopart and Guicheaux were

waiting for him in the court-yard, holding his horse and spear. Bertrand

had refused to take the men with him, preferring solitude, content with

his own thoughts. Guicheaux and Hopart ran up to him, still hoping that

he would change his purpose.

“Ah, lording, you will crack the English bassinets!”

“Good luck, good luck!”

“Take us, too, messire. We can live on rust and leather.”

Bertrand was glad even of their rude affection. He took out an old

brooch and a ring of silver from his shrunken purse, and thrust the

largesse into their hands.

“No, no, sirs, I ride alone. Keep these things, and think of Bertrand du

Guesclin if he comes not back again.”

They hung round him like a couple of great children, eager and devoted.

“Messire, courage, you are too tough for the English dogs.”

“Keep up your heart, captain, and give them the clean edge.”

They ran for a mile along the road beside him, holding his

stirrup-straps and looking up into his face. And theirs was the only

heartening Bertrand had when he rode out to fight for the Breton poor at

the Oak of Mivoie on Josselin Moors.

Bertrand’s courage warmed again as he mounted the moors and felt the

blue sky over him and the broad Breton lands before his face. He forgot

Olivier’s sneers and his mother’s coldness, and the way they had let him

go uncheered. The truth remained that Beaumanoir had chosen him, and

that the chance had come for which he had waited. That day, also, he

might see Tiphaïne again, give her the good news, and tell her of the

change that had been working in his manhood.

Bertrand was in fine fettle by the time he struck the windings of the

Rance, and saw the river flashing below the cliffs and glimmering amid

the green. He tossed his spear and sang as the towers of Dinan came in

view, the gray walls girding the little town, with the Ranee running in

the narrow meads below. All the thickets were purpling with the spring.

The bare aspens glittered, the clouds sailed white over the wind-swept

Breton town.

But Dinan had no call for Bertrand that March day. He rode on, still

singing, happy at heart, watching for the tall chimneys of the Vicomte’s

house, finding a quick, strange joy at the thought of seeing Tiphaïne

again. Bertrand was not a Provençal rhapsodist. He could not write love

songs to a woman’s lips, but look bravely into her face he could, and

crown her with the homage that only great hearts know.

Soon the turrets and carved chimneys rose up amid the trees, smoke

floating with the wind, the Vicomte’s banner slanting from its staff.

Bertrand rode up amid a swirl of March-blown leaves and blew his horn

before the gate. The servants who came out to him knew the eagle on his

shield, and Robin himself met Bertrand in the court.

“Messire du Guesclin, welcome indeed!” and he held out his hands to take

Bertrand’s spear and shield, his beaming face a greeting in itself.

“Xaintré told me you were chosen.”

“To be sure, he passed this way on the road to Concale. Mother of God,

but I am glad you are come! Tiphaïne is above, playing chess with my

father.”

Robin gave the spear and shield to one of the servants and embraced

Bertrand when he dismounted. There was something comforting to the lad

in having this strong man to bear him company.

“It will be a grim business, Bertrand. Croquart is to fight on

Bamborough’s side, and Knowles and Calverly. Pssh! but who is afraid of

the Flemish butcher? Come to my room; I will help you to disarm.”

He led Bertrand through the garden to his bedchamber joining the chapel,

chattering all the way, with a restless smile on his boyish face. There

was an exaggerated fervor in the lad’s gayety, and his eyes looked tired

as though he had not slept. Bertrand saw that his hands trembled as he

helped to unbuckle the harness, and that his mouth drooped when he was

not talking.

“What a day for us, brother in arms!” he babbled, drawing out Bertrand’s

sword and feeling the edge thereof with his thumb. “Croquart is a

terrible fellow. But then Beaumanoir is as brave as a lion, and

Tinteniac a powerful smiter, and you, Bertrand, are as good a man at

your weapons as any.”

Bertrand looked hard at Robin, and forced a smile.

“We shall hold our own,” he said.

“You think so?” and the lad’s face brightened. “I have been running two

miles each morning to better my wind. Look at my new armor, yonder. It

is the cleverest German work. See the kneecaps, and the pallets to guard

the armpits. It will take a good sword, Bertrand, to pierce it, eh?”

He seemed so eager to be cheered, despite his vivacity, that Bertrand

felt troubled for the lad, and pitied him in his heart. He was wondering

why Beaumanoir had chosen young Raguenel. He was tall and strong enough,

but he had not the dogged look of a born fighter.

“You will do bravely enough, Robin,” he said. “Why, I have seen these

English beaten many a day. We Bretons are the better men.”

“Good, good indeed! Why, man, you are thirsting for Passion Sunday to

come round.”

“Because we shall win,” said Bertrand, quietly, smiling at the lad and

eager to hearten him.

Bertrand had finished his disarming, and, having washed his face and

hands in Robin’s laver, stood for him to lead on to the Vicomte’s room.

He was troubled now that he was to meet Tiphaïne again, wondering how

she would greet him, and whether her father knew what had passed within

the Aspen Tower. He followed Robin through the oriel, stroking his chin

and bracing his manhood for the meeting.

Tiphaïne was seated before the solar window, with the chess-board

between her and the Vicomte. She rose up at once when Bertrand entered,

and held out her hands to him with a readiness that made him color.

“Messire, we meet again.”

To Bertrand her voice brought back a hundred memories that gave him

pain. He winced a little as he took her hand and felt her clear eyes

searching his face. It meant more to Bertrand to meet those eyes than an

enemy’s sword would cost him at Mivoie.

“God grant madame is well,” and he bowed to her clumsily and turned to

Stephen Raguenel, who had pushed back the chess-table and was rising

from his chair.

“Well met at last, Messire du Guesclin. I can thank you with my own lips

for the great debt we owe your sword.”

Bertrand guessed that Tiphaïne had saved his honor. He flashed a look at

her, and saw by the smile and the shake of the head she gave him that

the Vicomte knew nothing of the first spoiling of the Aspen Tower.

Bertrand blessed her, yet felt a hypocrite.

“If I have served you, sire, say no more of it.”

The Vicomte de Bellière, stately seigneur that he was, kissed Bertrand’s

cheek after the quaint fashion of those days.

“My house is your house, lad,” he said, “my servants your servants. I

hold myself your debtor.”

For Bertrand, La Bellière had a strange and saddened sense of peace that

night as he sat before the log fire and talked to the Vicomte of the

combat at the Oak of Mivoie. La Bellière contrasted with the memories of

his own home, for here they loved one another and knew no discords. The

solar, warm with the firelight, had something sacred and beautiful

within its walls. Bertrand felt the quiet dignity of the Raguenels’

life, the charm, the mellowness that made home home.

Tiphaïne sat opposite to him, her embroidery in her lap—a mass of green

and gold—her eyes shining in the firelight, her hair coiled above the

curve of her shapely neck. Her father’s chair was turned towards the

fire, and he could see both his children, for Robin stood leaning

against the chimney-hood, his face drawn and pinched when in repose.

It was pathetic the way the old man gloried in his son. He did not

grudge him to the Breton cause, but let his pride soar over the lad’s

honor. He told Bertrand the deeds of his own youth, beneficently

garrulous, and swore that Robin would outshine his father. His handsome

face mellowed as he sipped his wine and looked from one child to the

other. Bertrand, silent, yet very reverent, watched Tiphaïne’s hands,

too conscious all the while of Robin’s strained and jerky gayety. The

lad’s heart was not happy in him, of that Bertrand felt assured.

“Come, messire, you have not seen Robin fight as yet.”

Bertrand smiled, a little sadly, and shook his head.

“He had his christening when our Countess retook the castle of

Roche-D’Errien. You were one of the first in the breach, Robin, eh? Yes,

yes, and Beaumanoir heard of the spirit you showed in that tussle down

in the south, Ancenis—was it? What a head I have for names!”

Tiphaïne looked up from her work and gave her father the word.

“Aurai, to be sure, where that rogue Dagworth had his quittance from

Raoul de Cahours. Robin won his spurs there. You shall see how the lad

can fight, messire, at the Oak of Mivoie.”

Robin laughed, blushed, and frowned at the fire. Tiphaïne was looking at

him with almost a mother’s love in her eyes. Her brother’s restless

gayety had no sinister significance for her sister’s pride in him. It

was a solemn evening; Robin might be unnerved by the pathos of it, but

nothing more.

“Robin will play his part,” she said, quietly.

“God’s grace, of course, he shall! More wine, messire; let us drink to

brave Beaumanoir and to Brittany.”

Before the hour for sleep came round, Tiphaïne drew Bertrand aside

towards the window, and stood looking keenly in his face. His eyes were

happier than of old, and the sullen discontent had left him since

Arletta’s burying in the garden of the Aspen Tower.

“Bertrand.”

“Yes, Tiphaïne?”

“How is it with you?”

He looked at her frankly, yet with a saddened smile.

“I am learning my lesson—letter by letter,” he answered.

“I am glad of it. We are the firmer friends, and—”

She hesitated, with a troubled light shining in her eyes. Bertrand saw

her glance wistfully at Robin and her father.

“Bertrand.”

“I stand to serve you.”

“Take care of Robin for us, Bertrand; it would kill my father to lose

the lad. And he is so young, though brave and strong enough. If—”

Bertrand reached for her hand and held it, his face transfigured as he

looked into her eyes.

“Trust me,” he said.

“Ah!—”

“I will stand by the lad, and take the blows from him even with my own

body. Tiphaïne, I have not forgotten.”

And Bertrand did not sleep that night with thinking of Tiphaïne and the

Oak of Mivoie.

XIX

BERTRAND and Robin Raguenel rode southwest from Dinan, holding towards

Montcontour, so that they should come on Josselin from the west. All

about Ploermel, and even to the walls of Rennes, Bamborough’s English

and Croquart’s ruffians were still burning and plundering, and driving

the wretched peasantry like sheep before them. Montfort’s English had

been very bitter against the Bretons since Dagworth’s death, vowing that

he had fallen through treachery, and that Brittany should pay the price

in blood.

The sun was setting on the Friday before Passion Sunday, when Bertrand

and Robin came to the little town of Loudéac and sought out a lodging

for the night. They were guided to an inn on the north of the market

square, and given a private chamber, as befitted young Raguenel’s rank.

The lad had shown a strange temper all the way from Dinan, his face like

an April sky, now all sunshine, now all gloom. Moments of gusty gayety

alternated with morose and restless silence. Bertrand had done what he

could to humor the lad, without letting him suspect that he was troubled

for the part he would play at the Oak of Mivoie.

Robin drifted into a reckless mood that night at Loudéac. He called for

much wine and showed the innkeeper an open purse. The servants stirred

themselves to honor “my lord,” who was to fight for Brittany on Josselin

Moors. The innkeeper, a shrewd old pimp, who wished his guests to be

amused, sent up a couple of dancing-girls to the chamber after supper.

Bertrand looked black when the girls came in to them, giggling and

twitching their bright-colored skirts. It was customary at many inns to

keep such ladies, and young Robin laughed at them, his head half turned

with wine.

“Hallo, wicked ones! Come and sit by me. You can dance and sing for a

gentleman, eh? To be sure, Mistress Red-stockings, you have a pretty

pair of ankles. Who calls for muscatel and good Bordeaux? Bertrand, fill

up your cup.”

The women were ready enough to make play for Robin, seeing that he was a

handsome fellow and two parts drunk. Bertrand, however, had no desire to

see the lad preyed upon by such a pair of harpies. Ignoring their

oglings and their tittering, he went to the door and shouted for the

innkeeper, and gave the man a look that did not miscarry.

“None of your tricks, my friend; we have no purses to be picked. What we

have ordered we have ordered, but these delicacies are not to our

taste.”

The man looked at Robin, who had taken the girl with the red stockings

on his knee.

“But, my lord yonder—seems satisfied.”

“Robin, let the girl go.”

The lad quailed before Bertrand’s eyes, and surrendered to him

sheepishly, yet not without some show of spite.

“Now, Sir Shepherd, out with your sheep.”

The innkeeper saw that Bertrand was in no mood to be trifled with, and

that he was the master of the situation so far as Robin was concerned.

He beckoned the women out, pulling a wry face, yet outwardly obsequious

as any son of Mammon. The women followed him, tossing their ribbons and

looking saucily at Bertrand, whose ugly face was like a block of stone.

Their insolence was nothing to him, for he had drunk the dregs of

recklessness and thrown the cup away.

Robin was sitting sulkily before the fire, biting his nails and glancing

at Bertrand out of the corners of his eyes. He knew that the elder man

was in the right, and yet Bertrand’s mastery chafed his pride.

“You meddle rather much, messire,” he said.

Bertrand went up to him with the air of a brother, a good-humored smile

softening his face.

“Nonsense, Robin; you are a little hot in the head. No more wine, lad; I

ask it as a favor. Who kissed you last—was it not your sister?”

Robin shuddered, and sat staring at the fire.

“You are right, Bertrand,” he said. “By God, I was going to Mivoie with

a harlot’s kisses on my mouth!”

“No, no, lad, you have the true stuff in you. Come to bed; we must not

waste our sleep.”

It was some time after midnight when Bertrand woke with a start and lay

listening in the darkness of the room. A voice was babbling in the

silence of the night, making a hoarse whispering like dead leaves

shivering in a frosty wind. Bertrand’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark,

and he could see Robin half kneeling, half lying upon the bed. The lad

was praying like a man in the extremity of terror.

“Oh, Lady of Heaven, pardon all my sins. I am young, and I have erred

often, and often I have prayed with a cold heart. Mea culpa! mea culpa!

Lord Jesu watch over me at the Oak of Mivoie. It is terrible, very

terrible, to be afraid, but I have taken the oath, and all men will mock

me if I fail. St. Malo, hear me; I will build a chapel to thee if I come

back safe from Mivoie.”

To such whimperings Bertrand listened as he lay motionless in bed.

Robin’s whispering terror troubled him; he grieved for the lad, yet knew

not what to do. If Robin had his sister’s heart, there would be no

quailings, no shivering prayers at midnight, no grovelling on the floor.

Bertrand lay listening, half tempted to speak to the lad. He held his

words, however, and watched till Robin climbed back with chattering

teeth to bed. Bertrand betrayed nothing of what he had seen or heard

when they rose to dress and arm that morning, though his heart misgave

him when he saw the lad’s red eyes and drooping mouth. He began to be

keenly afraid for the lad’s courage, lest it should fail utterly and

bring shame on Robin and on those who loved him.

They rode out through Loudeac after paying the reckoning at the inn.

Robin’s spirits revived somewhat as they went through the narrow streets

and the townsfolk cheered them and waved their caps.

“Grace to the Breton gentlemen!”

“God bless ye, sirs, at the Oak of Mivoie!”

The glory of it all brought a flush to Robin’s cheeks. He looked

handsome enough in his new armor, his horse going proudly, with

trappings of green and gold. His manhood stiffened; his blood came more

blithely from his heart. Had he not a part to play, a cause to champion?

Men looked for great things from him, trusted to his word. Robin’s pride

kindled as he rode through the streets of Loudeac, and Bertrand,

watching him, felt glad.

It was when they were free of the town and plunged into the woodlands

that Robin’s courage began to wane once more. Loudeac had been full of

life and the stir thereof, but here in the deeps of the mysterious woods

there was nothing but silence and loneliness about him. The wind sighed

in the beech-trees; the firs waved their solemn boughs. The damp grass

and the sodden leaves were as yet unbrightened by many flowers. The

pitiful thinness of the lad’s courage grew more plain as the hours went

by.

Bertrand talked hard, and tried to make young Raguenel more ready for

the morrow. He told him of the tussles he had come through unharmed and

of the many times that he had seen the English beaten. And

Croquart—what was Croquart the Fleming that they should talk so much of

him? The fellow was only a butcher’s brat; he had learned to use the

knife and the cleaver, and boasted the insolence of a scullion. Brittany

had as good men as Croquart, Calverly, and all the gang of them.

Bertrand took no heed of Robin’s frailty, but held forth strenuously, as

though fired by his own convictions. Yet the more he talked the deeper

grew the lad’s depression.

About noon they halted beside a stream where moor and woodland met,

watered their horses, and made a meal. Robin ate but little, and seemed

to have no heart to talk. Bertrand ignored his restless manner and the

weak twitching of his lower lip. He gave the lad little time for

reflection, feeling that Robin’s courage leaked like wine out of a

cracked jar.

“Come, we must make Josselin before dark.”

Robin dragged himself up from the foot of a tree. He went slowly towards

his horse, walking with no spring at the knees, his chin down upon his

chest. Bertrand’s back was turned for the moment, for he was tightening

his saddle-girths, that had worked slack since the morning. Robin

glanced at him, with the look of a hunted thing in his eyes. He stooped,

lifted up his horse’s left fore foot, and plunged the point of his

poniard into the frog.

Bertrand turned to find Robin’s horse plunging and rearing, with his

master hanging to the bridle.

“Hallo, lad, what’s amiss?”

Robin, fearful lest Bertrand should guess his treachery, patted the

beast’s neck and coaxed him back into control.

“By the saints, Hoel is dead lame!”

He tugged at the bridle and walked the horse to and fro, gloating

inwardly at the way the poor brute hobbled.

“What’s to be done?”

Bertrand marched up without a word, lifted the beast’s fore foot, and

saw the bleeding hoof. His mouth hardened as he turned on Robin, grim

but very quiet.

“Show me your poniard.”

The lad stared at him, his lower lip a-droop.

“My poniard?”

“Yes.”

“Upon my soul, messire—”

He had flushed crimson, and was shaking at the knees, nor did Bertrand

need to press his guilt. He stood looking at Robin, contemptuous, yet

moved to pity, debating inwardly what he should do.

“Well, messire, a nice trick this, laming your own horse! I will get you

to Josselin to-night, even if I have to carry you.”

“Bertrand, I—My God, I cannot go, I am not fit!”

He broke down utterly of a sudden, and threw himself upon the grass,

burying his face in his arms, and sobbing like a girl. Bertrand had

never seen such cowardice before; it was new and strange to him, and the

very pitiableness of it shocked his manhood.

“Come, lad, come,” and he bent down and tried to turn him over.

Robin squirmed away like a frightened cur.

“I can’t, I can’t! Don’t jeer at me; let me be!”

“What! You will break your oath?”

The lad’s shoulders only twitched the more, and he buried his face yet

deeper in his arms.

“For God’s sake, lad, stand up and play the man. What will they say of

you at Dinan?”

It was all useless, useless as trying to turn milk into wine. Robin lay

snivelling on the grass, all the manhood gone from him, his fine armor a

veritable mockery, his whole body palsied by abject fear. Even

Bertrand’s taunts could sting no courage into him. Robin Raguenel was a

coward; Bertrand knew the truth.

He stood looking at the lad, disgust and pity warring together on his

face. Was this the brother Tiphaïne loved, and for whom he had promised

to risk his life! Once more in despair he tried to rouse the lad, yet

doubting in his heart that any good would come of it.

“So, Robin”—and he spoke gently—“you will let your father know that

you are a coward?”

Robin groaned, but did not stir.

“Well—and your sister, she is proud of you?”

“Mercy, have mercy!” And the taunts only brought forth more snivellings

and tears.

“Then you will break your oath to Beaumanoir, messire?”

“Yes, curse him, why did the fool choose me?”

Bertrand turned from Robin with a half-uttered oath, picked up his

spear, and moved towards his horse. There was no help for it; he must

leave the coward to his shame. They needed men, not girls, at Mivoie.

XX

BERTRAND faltered as he was about to mount his horse and stood

irresolute, like a man who repents of parting in anger from a friend. He

thrust his spear into the grass, buckled the bridle round it, and went

back towards Robin with a frown of thought upon his face. His promise to

Tiphaïne had dared him to desert the lad, however much he might despise

him for a weakling and a coward.

“Stand up, messire, I have some last words to say to you.”

Robin turned on his side, his green surcoat dew-drenched and muddy, and,

propping himself upon one elbow, plucked at the grass.

“Ride on,” he growled; “let me be.”

“For the last time, Robin, will you go with me to Mivoie?”

“What! to have my brains beaten out by that brute Croquart? He has a

grudge against me. Xaintré warned me to beware of the fellow.”

“A cool confession, messire.”

“Cool! Why should I be butchered for the sake of a crowd of wretched

serfs?”

Bertrand looked at him as though half minded to pick the lad up and

shake the terror out of him by sheer strength. But even Bertrand saw how

useless it was to argue with such a quivering and sulky tangle of

nerves. Young Raguenel was too soft and sensitive a creature to bear the

rubs of the age he lived in. The stark fear of death was on him, and he

was worse than an hysterical woman for the moment. Even if he were

dragged to Josselin that night he would only disgrace himself at Mivoie

on the morrow.

Bertrand turned on his heel, and began to march to and fro under the

trees. Now and again he looked grimly, yet sorrowfully, at Robin, his

eyes full of reproachfulness as he began to realize what the lad’s

cowardice might mean. The words that he had spoken to Tiphaïne were

sounding in his ears: “Trust me, and I will shield the lad even with my

own body.” There was no shirking such a promise, and argue as he would

the rough candor of his own conscience had him baffled at every point.

What would Tiphaïne think of him if he left this loved but weak-willed

brother to be shamed and dishonored in the knowledge of all Brittany?

And Stephen Raguenel, that generous old man? The blow would kill him,

and bring his white head down into the grave. Bertrand ground his teeth

as he realized the bitterness of it all, and felt his own honor tangled

in the fatal web of Robin’s fear.

Bertrand trampled the sodden grass till he had worn a muddy track under

the beech-trees between Robin and the place where his horse was

tethered. Never did Bertrand fight a tougher fight than he fought with

himself that day on the road to Josselin. Renunciation, the higher

courage, triumphed. Bertrand dashed his hand across his eyes, looked

bitterly at the sword he had sharpened so lovingly and at the shield

with the Du Guesclin blazonings thereon. Well, there was no help for it;

he would sacrifice himself for this miserable boy; he had given Tiphaïne

his promise. And as for his oath to Beaumanoir, he would both keep it

and break it, and God would know the truth.

With the tussle ended, doubt and indecision had no more power over

Bertrand’s will. He made no boast of the deed he was about to do, but

marched to it boldly with a set mouth and an unflinching face.

“Off with your armor, lad; there is no time to lose.”

Robin stared as though Bertrand had commanded him to crawl out of his

skin.

“Up with you!” and there was a ring of fierceness in the voice. “Strip

off your armor; we must change our coats.”

Robin leaned upon one hand, eying Bertrand furtively, and not grasping

his meaning for the moment.

“What will you do, messire?” he asked.

“Do!” and Bertrand’s lips curled as he unbuckled his graves and cuishes;

“save you from shaming the folk who love you by taking your place at the

Oak of Mivoie.”

Had the veriest spark of nobleness been left alive in him that moment,

Robin would have risen up with generous shame, compelled towards courage

by Bertrand’s chivalry. But the meaner powers were in the ascendant, and

the dread of death made him blind to his own littleness. Even Bertrand

saw the look of relief upon his face as he scrambled up, evading Du

Guesclin’s eyes.

“Messire Bertrand, this is too good of you—”

A contortion of contempt swept over Bertrand’s face. The lad was pleased

to approve the sacrifice and mildly call it “good.”

“Don’t thank me, messire. Take off your armor. We are much of a size.

The fesse of silver shall make a show at Mivoie.”

Robin obeyed him, secret exultation stifling shame.

“I shall not forget this, Bertrand.”

“Nor shall I!”

“Beaumanoir will think that something has hindered you.”

“Ah, no doubt.”

Bertrand’s brows contracted as he gave the lad a look that should have

let light into his soul. Robin seemed glib enough with his excuses.

“Do not think that I am doing this for your sake, Messire Robin

Raguenel.”

“No?” and the coward looked astonished at the words.

“I am thinking of your father and your sister at La Bellière. They love

you, Robin, and God knows I am loved by no one. Therefore, I remember

the love they have for you, for no one will grieve if Bertrand du

Guesclin gathers shame.”

Robin looked at him vacantly. So wrapped up was he in his own troubles

that he did not realize the greatness of Bertrand’s sacrifice.

“Oh, it will work very well,” he stammered.

“You think so? Thanks.”

“We can say that your horse fell lame. And if you keep your visor down

no one will know you. Besides, you are strong enough to fight any man

who gives you the lie.”

Bertrand ground his teeth over the ease with which the lad contrived it

all. By the blood of God! did the fool think that it was easy for a

strong man to throw away the chance he had longed and prayed for?

Bertrand knew what men would say of him, and that the public tongue is

as uncharitable as it is false.

“Unbuckle my arm pieces.”

He rapped the words out as though the uttering of them gave him relief.

Robin skipped forward to complete the sacrifice. He was still possessed

by a blind and selfish joy.

“I will help to make the tale sound honest for you,” he said.

Bertrand’s shoulders heaved.

“You are quick enough with your wits,” he answered. “Come, listen to me.

I know this road; there is a low inn not five miles from here, set back

in an empty quarry. Hide there till we have fought at Mivoie.”

Bertrand was curt and peremptory enough; Robin understood him, and

looked sullenly at the grass.

“What if you are killed?” he asked.

The utter coolness of the question staggered Bertrand, despite the

revelations of the last hour.

“Who thinks of being killed!”

“Croquart will strike at you.”

“And am I afraid of Croquart? If I were to fall the trick would be

discovered. You have scented that out, eh, you little fox! No, lie quiet

in your hole till I ride back.”

“And then?”

Bertrand bit his lips.

“God knows, so far as I am concerned!” he said.

In half an hour the transformation was complete. He took Robin’s shield

upon his arm (the fesse argent on an azure ground), but kept his own

horse and his heavy axe that hung at the saddle-bow. Robin melted

somewhat when the time for parting came. He tried to embrace Du

Guesclin, but Bertrand would have none of the lad’s gratitude.

“Off, sir, you owe me nothing; it is your father’s honor that I cherish,

and the vow I made your sister. Keep up the mockery, messire: you are

Bertrand du Guesclin, skulking in the woods of Loudeac.”

And with a grim face he climbed into the saddle and, pricking in the

spurs, went off at a canter.

When he had gone Robin sat down sullenly under a tree and watched

Bertrand disappear over the open moor. He was beginning to hate himself,

yet his gross cowardice still held him firmly by the throat. Rising at

last, he took his lame horse and began to lead the beast wearily along

the road, for Bertrand’s armor was heavy on him, and his heart sick over

the whole coil. But Bertrand rode eastward over the moors, bearing

Robin’s shield, and thinking of Tiphaïne and the shame she would hear of

him.

XXI

THE Josselin Moors were golden with gorse and broom when Beaumanoir’s

banner, with its eleven argent billets on an azure ground, was unfurled

beneath the Oak of Mivoie. He had ridden out from Josselin with the

seigneurs and mesne lords who had gathered to the place, the champions

of Mivoie being marked out from the rest by wearing broom flower in

their helmets. With the Marshal rode the Sieur de Tinteniac, as noble a

gentleman as ever feutred a spear; Geoffroi Dubois, called by some “The

Wolf”; Sir Yves de Charrual, Carro de Bodegat, and many more. A great

rabble of peasantry followed them over the moors, beating up the dust

from the highway with the tramp of their many feet. Along the road they

were joined by knots of people—village flocks, each following its

parish priest. The heart of all Brittany was in the combat, and the

faint pealing of the bells of Josselin borne on the western wind seemed

to speak forth the passion of the poor.

Beaumanoir’s trumpets were screaming when Bertrand came trotting over

the moors towards the oak. He had tarried late in Josselin for the

safeguarding of his deceit, meaning to take his place in the ranks at

the last hour. Twice that morning he had nearly been discovered—once by

a Breton captain who had recognized his voice, and again by one of his

old free companions loitering outside an inn. Bertrand had taken to the

open moors, passing the groups of hurrying peasant folk on his way, and

waving his shield to them as they cheered Sir Robin of Dinan riding to

keep troth with the Sieur de Beaumanoir.

There was much bracing of armor and handling of weapons when Bertrand

pushed through the press towards the oak. He had left his horse close by

with some peasants on the moor, and a herald was calling the roll of

those chosen. Robin Raguenel’s name was shouted out as Bertrand came up

with his visor down. He waved Robin’s shield above his head, so that the

fesse of silver should speak for itself.

Bertrand drew back under the boughs of the oak, and pretended to be busy

bracing up his armor. Over the moors he could see the English spears

glinting in the sunlight along the road from Ploermel. They came on

gallantly, these dreaded English, with Bamborough’s banner blowing in

the van. Bertrand’s eyes wandered towards the silent peasant folk

gathered like sheep upon the moors. He took heart as he thought how

these men of the soil had suffered, and that he was not fighting for

mere selfish fame. The broader issue quenched for the moment the smart

and bitterness of his own self-sacrifice.

“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin.”

It was the herald’s voice calling his name, and Bertrand had been

waiting for that cry for hours. He stood up and looked round calmly at

the burnished bassinets and painted shields, feeling like a man who

watches his own burial in a dream. A second time he heard the herald

call his name, and saw the knights and squires look questioningly from

man to man. Silence had fallen under the great oak. The Sieur de

Beaumanoir was speaking to the gentlemen about him, and in the lull

Bertrand could hear their words.

“I am loath to mistrust the man, yet he has failed us and sent no

warning.”

“A mere spoil-hunting vagabond,” said Yves de Charrual. “I know the

fellow.”

“The oath was given him by Xaintré.”

“True; then this is treachery.”

“The dog shall have the truth from me,” quoth Carro de Bodegat, a

flamboyant gentleman whom Bertrand had once wounded in a duel.

Bertrand stood by in Robin’s armor, grinding his teeth as he listened to

all they said. How ready they were to damn him as a traitor, these proud

ones who had never known how long he had waited for such a chance as

this! Even his doggedness could hardly take their taunts in silence; he

longed to throw his visor up and give Charrual and Bodegat the lie. Only

one lord spoke up for him before the rest, the Sieur de Tinteniac,

asking why a brave man should be slandered without full knowledge of the

truth. Bertrand loved Tinteniac for these words, and vowed in his heart

that they should be repaid.

Meanwhile Beaumanoir had called an esquire forward, Guillaume de

Montauban by name, and given him the honor that Du Guesclin had

forfeited. Bertrand stood listening to the casual ignominy that was

being flung by those about him at his courage. Even when challenged as

Robin Raguenel, and asked for a judgment concerning his own honor, he

grimaced behind his visor, and answered gruffly that he would not

condemn a Breton man unheard.

The sacrament of the mass came to silence all these cavilling tongues.

Bertrand knelt with the rest, grim and silent, wondering whether Robin

guessed how much this ordeal meant to him. He covered the mezail of his

bassinet with his hand when he lifted the visor and took the bread. His

one prayer was that this dallying should not be long, for he was fierce

and ready for the English swords. Soon the Gloria had been sung, and the

priest, facing eastward under the oak, had offered the Gratio ad

Complendum.

“Ite, missa est!” came the cry. And a hundred strong voices shouted,

“Deo Gratias!”

The English were drawn up where the highway to Ploermel broadened into a

smooth stretch of grass and sand. Croquart and five Netherlanders were

to fight for Bamborough, also four Bretons, for the true-born English

mustered but twenty. Bamborough, who had stood laughing and jesting

while the Bretons were hearing mass, turned to his “thirty,” and gave

them his last words.

“Sirs,” he said, “I have read in Merlin’s books that we shall have the

victory. Let us kill or take Beaumanoir and his men and carry them

prisoners to Edward our king.”

Beaumanoir, more devout and less boastful, kissed the cross of his

sword, and held it high above his head.

“Friends, may God make us increase in virtue. Keep a good countenance,

and hold fast together.”

The sun streamed out from behind a cloud when the two bristling banks of

steel surged towards each other over the heather. St. George and St.

Ives, good saints, were hailed perforce into the struggle. The dust

smoked up into the sunlight so that those who watched the fight could

see but vaguely how matters sped. Sword and axe, mace and bill, clashed

and tossed like the play of counter-currents in some narrow strait.

Shields were cloven, plumes shorn away, men thrown down and trampled

underfoot. Through the drifting dust the armed figures flashed like

flames struggling through a pall of smoke.

From the first rush the English party had the upper hand, being bigger

men and more hardened to the trade of arms. Croquart the Fleming broke

to and fro, charging like a boar, hurling men aside, and making the

shields and steel plates ring with the thunder of his heavy mace. He

hunted out Bertrand in the press, and beat him down with a side blow on

the bassinet. It was the Sieur de Tinteniac who sprang forward over

Bertrand’s body, and held Croquart back till the fesse of silver shone

out again.

“Grace to you, sire!” And Bertrand flew at the Fleming with his axe, but

lost his man in the shifting of the fight.

For two full hours the moil went on till sheer exhaustion forced the

wolves of war apart. They drew back to gain breath, some dazed like men

half drunk, leaning on each other, grasping and staggering over the

heath. Two Bretons were dead, many wounded, and three prisoners under

Bamborough’s banner. The honor as yet was with the English; even

Bertrand confessed it grudgingly as he leaned upon his axe.

The Sieur de Tinteniac came stumbling up to him, his visor up, his face

gray, his eyes glazed.

“Give me a prop, Robin,” he said; “I have no breath in me. Curse these

English, they have the devil in their bodies.”

Bertrand put his arm about Tinteniac’s body, his heart warm towards the

man who had spoken for him before the rest.

“Wait, sire,” he said, grinding his teeth, “we have not finished with

Bamborough yet.”

Tinteniac leaned on him, looking curiously at the eyes that showed

through the visor.

“You sound hoarse as an old hound, Robin,” he said.

“My throat is dry,” and Bertrand turned away his head.

On came the English, massed in a solid wedge of steel. Tinteniac roused

himself, their shouts stirring him like the scream of a trumpet.

Bertrand kept close to him, knowing that the strong man was weak and

wounded, and that he could cover him with Robin’s shield.

In the thick of the fight Bamborough of Ploermel had grappled the Sieur

de Beaumanoir, and was dragging him by sheer strength from the mêlée.

“Surrender, Beaumanoir! I’ll send you a prisoner to my lady love!”

Bertrand and Tinteniac sprang forward for a rescue, Du Guesclin bringing

the governor of Ploermel to earth with a down stroke of his axe.

Tinteniac’s sword ended the argument; Bamborough’s head fell away from

the hacked and bleeding neck.

Beaumanoir had freed himself, and was up, shaking his sword.

“St. Ives,” he cried, “Bamborough is dead! Courage, Bretons, and the day

is ours!”

Croquart the Fleming seized on Bamborough’s authority, and, closing up

his men, charged the Bretons and bore them slowly back. Strive as they

would, Bertrand and the stoutest of them were driven to the very shadow

of the great oak. The crowd of watchers went swaying and scrambling back

from the eddying ripples of that pool of death. The sweat and clangor

awed the peasantry, though a hoarse shout of despair went up when the

Sieur de Beaumanoir’s banner lurched down into the dust.

Then came a second pause for breath, the English waiting like dogs to

make their last dash at the wounded stag. Beaumanoir, drenched with

blood, his strength failing because of the fast he had kept before mass,

leaned upon Bodegat and called for wine.

“Drink your own blood, Beaumanoir!” cried Dubois, half mad with his

wounds. “Courage, sirs, there is hope in us yet!”

It was then that young Guillaume de Montauban, whom Beaumanoir had

chosen, ran away towards his horse, his comrades cursing him for a

coward as he stumbled over the moor.

“Take care of your own work,” shouted the youngster, as he scrambled

into the saddle, “and I, before God, will take care of mine!”

He swung round and, thrusting in the spurs, rode for the English at a

gallop. His heavy horse broke through with a crash, scattering the war

dogs, and leaving many floundering, cumbered and weighed down by their

heavy harness. Geoffroi Dubois sprang forward as he grasped the ruse.

The Bretons, rallying together, charged down upon the English before

they could recover. The wedge of steel was rent asunder, the men whom

Montauban had overthrown made easy prisoners as they struggled to rise.

Croquart and a few fought on until the end, but, hemmed in and

outnumbered, they surrendered sullenly to Beaumanoir.

“Well, sirs, you have won by treachery,” said Calverly, throwing down

his sword. And though the Bretons shouted him into silence, there was

the sting of truth in the “free companion’s” words.

Bertrand, bleeding from a sword-cut in the thigh, forced his way through

the peasant folk who came crowding over the moors. Some of them clung

round him, and kissed his shield and harness, even the bloody axe he

carried in his hand. Bertrand forced them aside as gently as he could,

and marched on towards the heather-clad knoll where two country fellows

were holding his horse. He heard a voice calling him as he climbed into

the saddle, and, turning, saw the Sieur de Tinteniac staggering over the

heath. Bertrand had saved Tinteniac’s life more than once in the last

struggle, and the brave fellow was eager to take the supposed Robin by

the hand.

Bertrand wavered a moment as he remembered how Tinteniac had spoken up

for him before them all. Then, waving his hand, he clapped in the spurs,

and went at a canter over the moors to Josselin.

Hungry and weary as he was, he rode into the town to get food and wine

at an inn. Men, women, and children, who had been watching on the walls,

came crowding round him at the gate. A man-at-arms had read Bertrand’s

shield, and it was noised from mouth to mouth that Sir Robin of Dinan

had ridden back from Mivoie.

“News, messire! What news?”

Bertrand looked down at the eager, crowding faces, and saw the ripple of

exultation that spread about him as he threw them the good news like a

stone into a pool. Some went down on their knees and prayed; others

jigged to and fro like roisterers at a fair; even the children shouted

and clapped their hands.

Freeing himself with difficulty from the people, Bertrand broke away

down a side street and drew up before a common tavern. The place was

empty save for one old woman, who served Bertrand as he sat in the dirty

room, pondering on the irony of it all—that he should be the man to

bring the good news to Josselin. Begging linen from the old woman, he

unbuckled the cuishe from his right thigh, poured in wine, and bound up

the wound. Then he gave the dame some money, mounted his horse, and rode

for the western gate.

All Josselin was in an uproar as Bertrand trotted through the streets.

Mounted men had come in from Mivoie, cheering and waving branches of

broom. Bells were pealing, townsfolk and peasantry shouting and crowding

in the narrow streets. They thronged round Bertrand and nearly dragged

him from his horse, striving to touch even his surcoat and armor, and

shouting their blessings on Sir Robin of Dinan. Bertrand, facing the

mockery of it all, won through them patiently, and came to the gate that

led towards Loudeac.

“Du Guesclin played the coward” were the last words he heard as he rode

from Josselin towards the west.

XXII

EVENING had come when Bertrand neared the quarry on the road to Loudeac,

where Robin Raguenel lay hid. A path ran from the main track and wound

through the woods, leaving the open moorland sweeping—a wave of gold

into the west. It was one of those rare passings of the day in spring

when strangeness and mystery were everywhere, brooding on the dream

hills against the splendid sky, watching for the night in the windless

woodways of the forest. The song of the birds went up towards the

sunset, tumultuous, and borne upon the wings of joy. Yet to Bertrand the

beauty of it all was but a mockery, even as the dawn mocks the eyes of a

man dying in his youth.

The inn, a mere hovel with rotting thatch and sagging beams, stood at

the mouth of the quarry with a dirty stable yard behind it. The greater

part of the quarry was tangled with brushwood, a few patches of coarse

grass closing in a strip of shallow soil where the inn folk grew their

vegetables. A Breton lass, brown-legged and bare-armed, was hoeing in

the garden when Bertrand rode up towards the inn. Robin, sitting on a

block of stone, was talking to the girl, making love to her for lack of

else to do. The girl’s black eyes and insolent mouth were charms that

might make a man forget for the moment thoughts that were troubling to

his conscience. She returned Robin as good as he gave, laughing, and

tossing back her hair as she plied her hoe, her bare feet sinking into

the soil.

Bertrand, riding into the dirty yard behind the inn, broke like an

unwelcome elder brother upon Robin philandering with this Breton Hebe. A

few ragged chickens scurried away from Bertrand’s horse. An ass brayed

at him over the door of a byre, and a couple of pigs rooting in the

offal went grunting surlily towards a dung heap.

Bertrand looked round him, saw the girl leaning on her hoe, one hand

stretched out to slap the boyish face that had ventured near in quest of

favors. She dropped her hoe on catching sight of the strange knight in

the yard, and came forward to take his horse. An old woman appeared at

the back door of the inn, and screamed peevishly at her daughter.

Bertrand dismounted and let the girl tether his horse to a post in the

yard.

Robin Raguenel had recognized his own shield with a start and a flush,

the amorous glint gone from his eyes in a moment. His sulky face

betrayed the meaner thoughts that had been working in his heart, and

that he had dreaded the hour of Du Guesclin’s return. He had begun to

hate Bertrand because Bertrand had been a witness of his shame. He hated

him for the very sacrifice he had made, his ungenerous and thin-blooded

nature revolting at the thought that Bertrand held him in his power. The

debt had transformed Robin into a mean and grudging enemy. Self-pity and

disgust at his own impotence had destroyed any feeling such as

gratitude, and he was ready to quarrel with the man who had renounced so

much to save him.

Bertrand left his horse with the girl and went towards Robin, who was

digging his heels into the turf and looking as though he would have

given much to escape the meeting. He made no pretence of welcome, but

stood sulky and ill at ease, all the rebellious littleness of his soul

puffing itself out against the man who had made him such a debtor.

Bertrand, puzzled, and suspecting nothing in the breadth and simplicity

of his heart, scanned Robin’s face, finding no gladness thereon, no

gratitude in the eyes.

“So you have come back?”

The antagonism was instinctive in those few curt words. Bertrand’s

out-stretched hand dropped. He looked hard at Robin, as though baffled

by the lad’s manner.

“We have beaten the English,” he said, quietly.

“Have you?”

“Yes; not a man discovered the trick. The honor of the De Bellières

stands as it stood before.”

Probably it was the ring of reproach in Bertrand’s voice that stung the

lad through his sullen reserve. He took five sharp paces forward, and

stood grimacing, and beating one foot upon the grass.

“So, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, you flatter yourself that you have

done a brave thing!”

Bertrand stared at him.

“I have saved your honor,” he said, bluntly.

“Of course! of course!”

“And heard myself cursed for a coward and a traitor.”

Robin swung round, and began to pad to and fro, his face dead white, his

teeth working against his lips. He was mad with Bertrand, mad with

himself, mad with fate for having twisted him into such a corner. It

never entered his head for the moment that Bertrand had suffered, and

would suffer yet more.

“You expect me to grovel at your feet, messire,” he blurted.

Bertrand flushed under his bassinet.

“I have not asked for your thanks, Robin.”

“No, and I tell you that I have cursed myself because, like a fool, I

let you have my arms.”

Bertrand’s face went hard as stone. He looked at Robin, and understood

of a sudden that the lad loathed him now that his honor had been saved

at Mivoie. He felt himself in Bertrand’s power, and had not the

magnanimity to confess that the whole tangled coil was of his own

weaving. Bertrand gulped down his scorn as he realized the truth.

“Your courage comes two days late,” said Bertrand, holding his anger

back.

Robin whipped round on him like a wild-cat at bay.

“Curse you! Why did you meddle with me? Curse Beaumanoir, curse

Bamborough and his English! I should have fought at Mivoie if my damned

horse had not fallen lame.”

Bertrand’s lips curled.

“Don’t blame the poor beast, Robin,” he said.

“Ha, you call me a liar! I tell you, messire, I never lamed my horse. It

was your doubting me that cut me to the quick. And then when you had

wounded me in the heart you scoffed and sneered. I tell you it was your

taunts that took my strength away at Loudeac.”

He jigged to and fro in his hysterical fury, spluttering, snapping his

teeth, jerking his arms about. It was plain enough to Bertrand whence

all this froth and ferment came. The lad was mad with him for what he

had done and also for what he knew.

“Come,” he said, quietly, bolting up his scorn. “Come, Robin, I never

thought to hear you speak like this.”

Robin still chattered like an angry ape.

“No, no; you thought I should grovel and fall at your knees, eh! Yes,

you are a fine fellow, Bertrand du Guesclin, but, by God, I am not going

to wallow at your feet! Give me back my armor; give me back my armor,

and be damned to you! Go and tell all the duchy that Robin Raguenel

played the coward.”

Bertrand looked at him as Christ might have looked at Judas. The lad’s

squealing passion filled him with bitterness and disgust. It was

difficult to believe that this was Tiphaïne’s brother.

“Fool,” he said, speaking with a self-control that was fiercer than any

clamor, “it is for those who love you that I have done this thing! What

shame I bear, I bear it for their sakes, not for yours. Take back your

arms. I shall suffer for them long enough.”

He took Robin’s shield, scarred and dented by the English swords at

Mivoie, and threw it on its face at Robin’s feet. Then, without a word,

he began to unbuckle the borrowed harness, piling it on the grass beside

the shield. Robin watched him, biting his nails, the futile fury dying

down in him like a fire built of straw. The scorn of Bertrand’s silence

sobered him as he idled to and fro not daring to offer to help Bertrand

to disarm.

The girl looked out at them inquisitively from the back door of the inn.

Robin shouted to her, bidding her bring the armor that lay in his room.

She drew her white face in, and returned anon with Bertrand’s shield

slung about her neck, her arms and bosom full of steel. Bertrand glanced

up at her, and at the sight of his ugly face, made more grim and

terrible by its pent-up passion, she dropped the armor with a clatter on

the grass and, throwing down the shield, skipped away, after darting out

her tongue at Robin. Bertrand had put off the last piece of young

Raguenel’s harness. He stood up and stretched himself, and tightened the

bandage about his thigh.

Robin’s face had grown weak and irresolute once more. His blood had

cooled, and he remembered how much he lay at Bertrand’s mercy.

“You are wounded,” he blurted, seizing the chance of breaking the

reserve of this grim and silent man.

Bertrand picked up his hauberk, but did not look at Robin.

“Take my wallet,” he said, curtly.

The lad gave him a vacant stare.

“There, on the saddle. Get the folk within to fill it.”

Robin loitered a moment, but, finding that Bertrand paid no heed to him,

he slunk away across the yard towards the place where Bertrand’s horse

was tethered. When he returned, after having the wallet filled at the

inn, Bertrand stood again in his own armor, with the eagle of the Du

Guesclins on his arm. He pointed Robin back towards the horse.

“Strap the bag on; get water, and a feed of corn.”

“Messire Bertrand, I am not your groom.”

A look persuaded him. Robin parleyed no further, but turned to feed and

water Du Guesclin’s horse. Bertrand came and watched him at the work,

silent and unapproachable, ignoring Robin’s restless glances and his

jerky and almost cringing manner.

“What am I to say to them at La Bellière?”

“What you will.”

Robin lifted up the bucket for the horse to drink. His eyes were half

dim with tears, his mouth weak and petulant.

“Won’t you help me, Messire Bertrand?”

“To keep up the lie, eh!”

Robin hung his head.

“You must know how we won the day at Mivoie, and how Sir Robin Raguenel

saved the honor of Brittany.”

Robin winced, flushed like a girl, but stood listening while Bertrand

told him all that had passed at Mivoie: who were slain, who were wounded

and taken prisoners, how Tinteniac and Beaumanoir fought, and how

Montauban broke the English ranks. Robin heard all without one flash of

pride or gladness. Humiliation was heavy on him, and he had no joy in

this Breton victory. When Bertrand had made an end, he stood with the

empty bucket dangling in his hand, listless, and without will.

“Bertrand”—Du Guesclin’s foot was in the stirrup—“where—where are you

going?”

The strong man drew a deep breath, but mastered himself in an instant.

“Where God wills,” he said.

He lifted himself into the saddle, setting his teeth as his wound

twinged, and, turning his horse, rode out from the yard. Robin stood

like one in a stupor. It was only when the eagle of the Du Guesclins

flashed out to meet the sunset that he gave a shrill cry and sprang

after Bertrand, holding out his hands.

“Bertrand! Bertrand!”

Du Guesclin did not turn his head. Robin ran on and caught him by the

stirrup.

“Bertrand, forgive me; I will tell the truth—”

“Back, lad, back.”

“Bertrand!”

Du Guesclin clapped in the spurs, and, bending down, tore Robin’s hand

from the stirrup.

“We have thrown the dice,” he said, “and the throw must count. Go back

to La Bellière; the truth is safe with me.”

He cantered off, leaving Robin alone before the inn, mute and miserable

as he thought of the lies he had made for his own mouth.

XXIII

AT La Bellière the Vicomte’s trumpeters stood in the great court betwixt

the hall and the gate-house, and set the walls and turrets ringing.

“Mivoie! Mivoie! Mivoie!” the echoes wailed. “Mivoie! Mivoie!” croaked

the jackdaws that roosted in the great octagonal chimneys. “Mivoie!”

cried the serving-men, as they carried the lavers and napkins into the

hall. La Bellière kept festival in Robin’s honor, and every scullion in

the kitchen had pieces of silver in his pocket.

The Vicomte’s neighbors, unlike the folk in Biblical history, had ridden

in to give the old man joy of his son. There was much washing of hands

in the great hall, where the basins were being carried round before the

meal by the Vicomte’s servants. The tables were covered with white

napery, the walls hung with rich cloth and embroidered hangings, the

floor strewn with fresh rushes, primroses, wind flowers, and wild

violets. Robin, dressed in a surcoat of green stuff threaded through

with gold and with a posy of bay leaves tucked into his girdle, sat in

the place of honor at the high table. Tiphaïne, in white samite worked

with gold, had come down the stairway from the solar, looking joyous and

splendid, with the dames and maidens following in their silks and

sarcenets. There were lute-players and men with viols and citherns in

the gallery. The trumpets rang out as the servants came in from the

screens, bearing the dishes garnished with bays and herbs to the tables.

The Breton gentry had pressed about Robin and his father, pleasing old

Stephen in the praising of his son. Robin, feeling like a thief, had

made light of the whole matter, meeting almost with impatience the

flattery they gave him. He was glad when Father Guillaume stood up to

say grace, pattering out his Latin to the edification of few. Stephen

Raguenel stood with his hand upon Robin’s shoulder. When Father

Guillaume had blessed the puddings—and craved a lively appetite from

heaven—the Vicomte lifted his son’s shield, and showed the battered

fesse of silver with all the pride of a paternal Jove.

“The grace of our Lady and the blessings of the saints be with you,

kinsmen and friends,” he said. “Look at this shield, and you may see how

God has blessed me in sending my lad safe through such a shower of

blows.”

Robin, fidgeting from foot to foot, felt the eyes of all fixed upon his

face. What a terror it was to fear the glances of his fellows and to

imagine doubt in every heart! He passed for a modest fellow by reason of

his blushes, the men liking him no less because he seemed not to relish

the way the Vicomte trumpeted his valor. Robin frowned when his father

called for the mazer bowl, enamelled with the arms of the De Bellières

and banded with silver. Stephen Raguenel held it in both hands and

pledged Robin, and sent the mazer round the tables that the guests might

drink good luck to his son. On the silver band of the mazer were

engraved the words, “Keep troth,” and Robin remembered them, to his

cost.

The devil mocked Robin Raguenel that day, taunting him even from his

father’s happy face, and turning to scorn the pride in Tiphaïne’s eyes.

“Mivoie! Mivoie! Mivoie!” screamed the trumpets in the court, till Robin

sent a servant to tell the men to cease their din. Wine came to him, and

he drank it, feverishly, fiercely, yet feeling his tongue dry with the

lies he had poured into his father’s ears. Behind him, held by a

man-at-arms, shone the shield that Bertrand du Guesclin had carried.

Yeolande of Lehon, Robin’s betrothed, sat next him at the high table and

ate from the same plate. The girl was very proud of her man before them

all, and took no pains to disguise her pride. Her very enthusiasm

refined Robin’s torture, for she could not hear enough of the fight at

Mivoie, and pestered the lad till he could have cursed her to her face.

“How many men had he killed?” “Who were the bravest among the Bretons?”

“Who were knighted?” “Would the Sieur de Beaumanoir die of his wounds?”

Robin, half mad with inward terror and vexation, described twenty things

he had never seen, and tangled his wits in a veritable web of fiction.

The great “ship” was rolling along the table on its gilt wheels, ladened

with sweetmeats and spices, when Sir Raoul de Resay, a kinsman of

Robin’s, leaned forward across Yeolande’s bosom, and touched Robin’s arm

with the silver handle of his knife.

“Messire, a word with you,” he said.

Robin turned to him, ready to be accused at any moment of being a liar

and a coward.

“Is it true what they are saying of Bertrand du Guesclin?”

“True! What are they saying, messire?”

Robin was as red as the wine in his cup.

“Why, that Bertrand played the coward and never came to Mivoie.”

Raoul de Resay’s eyes marked Robin’s flushed cheeks and the tremulous

movement of his lips. He misread the meaning of the lad’s hot color,

thinking that it was the badge royal of a generous heart.

“No, by God, Raoul, Bertrand du Guesclin did not play the coward! His

horse fell lame near Loudeac. I left him in the woods there, and have

not seen him since.”

Yeolande of Lehon touched Robin’s arms.

“I like to see you flush up like that,” she said, “when a brother in

arms is slandered.”

“Slandered! Who spoke of slander, madame?” And Raoul de Resay took the

taunt to heart. “I have known cowards, but Bertrand du Guesclin is not

one of them.”

For three long hours Robin suffered from the good-will of his friends,

and even when La Bellière was free of them, the lad still had his father

to torment him with affection. Stephen Raguenel had the ways and whims

of an old man. Like a child, he was never tired of hearing the same tale

retold. Robin was dragged into the solar, held at bay in the broad

window-seat, and catechised tenderly till the truth itself was torn to

tatters. The lad writhed inwardly under the ordeal, finding each lie the

more bitter to his lips. He escaped from the old man at last, and went

out into the orchard, letting his hot face cool in the wind.

It was under the apple-trees that Tiphaïne found him, tossing twigs into

the pool that reflected the budding bloom above. Robin had said no word

to her of Bertrand’s breaking of his oath. She had heard it spoken of

for the first time at the high table by Raoul de Resay and others. Hot

and angry, she had given the lie to young Prosper of Dinan, who had

called Bertrand a coward, and had silenced those who cavilled

thoughtlessly at Du Guesclin’s honor.

Robin saw her through the trees and cursed her to himself, guessing that

his hypocrisy was to be tested once more. Tiphaïne did not see the spasm

of pain that passed across her brother’s face. She was troubled for

Bertrand, and angry when she remembered how the spruce young squires had

sat in lordly and complacent judgment on a man whom not one of them

would have dared to face in arms.

“Robin, they tell me Bertrand did not fight at Mivoie.”

Robin groaned in spirit, and marched out the weary troop of lies once

more, watching his sister’s face as she stood leaning against the trunk

of an apple-tree. He saw that she was troubled, and, like the guilty

coward that he was, began to wonder whether she suspected him.

“Robin, this is bad news to me.”

The lad was breaking twigs from a bough above his head.

“You do not know how much this meant to Bertrand! He had prayed for such

honor—prayed for it night and day.”

So absorbed was she for the moment that the rush of shame into her

brother’s eyes passed unnoticed. Tiphaïne had turned and stood looking

at the pool, whose still waters reflected the apple-boughs and the

burning clouds above.

Robin recovered himself and began to whistle.

“A man cannot help a lame horse,” he said.

“A lame horse would not keep Bertrand from Mivoie.”

Robin stopped his whistling, and appeared absorbed in watching the

hovering of a hawk above the fields. The bird’s wings were palpitating

in the light of the setting sun. She swooped suddenly and dropped from

sight below the trees.

“Something has happened to Bertrand.”

Robin started, and pretended not to have understood her.

“Happened!”

“Yes. Bertrand would rather have died than break troth at such an hour.”

The tortures of the day seemed to culminate for Robin at that moment. He

had always feared his sister in a measure, and stood half in awe of her

stronger will and the unflinching candor of her eyes. Her words were

innocent enough, and yet they seemed like knots of steel that wring the

truth from some wretch judged to the torture.

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Perhaps. How should I know? I have had no news of Bertrand since I left

him in the woods by Loudeac.”

For the first time Tiphaïne noticed the curious restlessness of her

brother’s eyes.

“Robin, you are not yourself.”

He laughed and swept his hand through his hair.

“I spent too much of myself at Mivoie. I am dead tired. What can you

expect?”

She looked at him keenly, knitting her brows a little, as though she had

caught a falseness in his words.

“Robin, are you hiding anything from me?”

“Hiding! What should I hide?” and his eyes flashed out at her.

“How did Bertrand’s horse fall lame?”

“Stabbed in the foot by a stake.”

“And then?”

“I had to leave him. On my soul, Tiphaïne, I am not a prophet. I cannot

tell you what I do not know.”

They heard the Vicomte’s voice calling them from the house, and Robin,

trembling like a man saved from death, clutched at the reprieve, and

walked back through the orchard. Tiphaïne followed him, slowly,

thoughtfully, playing with her silver-sheathed poniard, her eyes fixed

upon the ground. Some instinct warned her that Robin had not given her

the truth, and she was troubled for Bertrand, wondering what had

hindered him from keeping troth with Beaumanoir.

* * * * *

It was the third night after he had left Robin that Bertrand, who had

eaten nothing all day, saw the flicker of a fire shining through the

trees before him. The cloud of fatalism had thickened about him as the

night came down over the tangled woodways of the forest. All the past

had risen up before him: the savage sorrows of his boyhood, the coming

of Tiphaïne the child, the tournament at Rennes. The years of rough

adventure he had spent had seemed only to taunt him with failure and

with bitterness. He had thought also of dead Arletta, and how the poor

child had died in the autumn deeps of dark Broceliande. Brooding on the

past, he had come to think that God’s wrath was heavy on him, and that

he was cursed, like Cain, because of his stubborn heart. He had ridden

on and on, letting his horse bear him where it would, feeling neither

thirst nor hunger nor the weight of his heavy harness. He had drawn out

his poniard and felt the point thereof calmly, sullenly, with a

balancing of the evils of life and death. He still held the knife in his

hand when he sighted the fire, the flames upcurled like the petals of a

great flower.

Bertrand reined in and sat motionless in the saddle, his eyes fixed upon

the fire. Possibly there was something elemental in the red and restless

play thereof, something that flashed comfort into Bertrand’s heart. He

clapped his poniard back into its sheath and rode on slowly, his jaded

horse pricking up his ears and tugging at the bridle as though scenting

water.

Three figures started up from about the fire as Bertrand rode out from

under the shadows of the trees. He could see that they were peasants,

two men and a girl, and that they were as shy and timid as hunted deer.

The younger of the two men brandished a short cudgel, but there was no

fight in the poor devils; the English wars had broken the spirit of the

Breton poor.

Bertrand shouted to them and waved his hand, wondering at the hoarseness

of his own voice.

“A friend! a friend!”

He rode up towards the fire, the light flashing on his armor and weaving

giant shadows about his horse. The peasants kept their distance, dread

of the mailed fist inbred in their hearts.

Bertrand showed them the eagle on his shield.

“Come, I am a Breton man; you need not run from me. I want food and a

place by your fire.”

They came forward grudgingly, one to hold his horse, the other to help

him from the saddle. So stiff and faint was he that Bertrand staggered

when he touched the earth, and sank down with a groan beside the fire.

The two men stood staring at him stupidly, and it was the girl whose

instinct answered to the appeal. She knelt down by Bertrand, to find

that he had fainted, his face showing gray and haggard through the

mezail of his bassinet. She called to the two men, and they brought her

a stone flask full of cider, and helped her to unfasten the laces of

Bertrand’s helmet. The girl sat down and lifted Bertrand’s head into her

lap. She poured some of the cider between his lips, the woman in her

pitying him and taking charge of his wounded manhood. She was still

bending over him when Bertrand recovered consciousness, and he felt her

hands smoothing back his hair. Rough and toil-lined as her face was,

there was something soft and gentle in the eyes. Above him hung this

peasant woman’s face—one warm touch against the stolid darkness of the

forest. And what did Bertrand do but break down and weep.

The girl held his head in her lap awhile, wonderingly and in silence,

till he struggled up, and, looking round him shamefacedly, asked surlily

for food. They gave him coarse bread, swine’s flesh, and more cider. He

ate ravenously, saying nothing, the peasants watching him, awed by a

something they did not understand. Presently Bertrand pointed to his

horse; the men caught his meaning, and went to unsaddle the beast and

give him water. The girl had turned away, and was throwing sticks upon

the fire.

Bertrand called to her when he had finished the last crust that they had

given him.

“Child, come hither.”

She turned and stood silent before him, while Bertrand fumbled for the

purse he carried at his belt.

“Your name; tell it me.”

“Marie, lording—Marie of the Marshes.”

Bertrand threw her money, with a twist of the hand.

“Take it for the food; God’s blessing go with it. You have done me good,

child; now let me sleep.”

And sleep he did, like one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

The dawn was breaking when Bertrand woke beside the peasant’s fire and

heard the birds singing in the thickets. A soft haze of light filled the

east, and there were mottlings of crimson above the trees. Bertrand lay

still awhile, watching the gold glint of the sunrise through the crowded

trunks, while the dew glittered on the green turf and the birds sang

lustily. He found that the peasant folk had covered him with an old

cloak, and that simple touch of sympathy went to Bertrand’s heart.

The girl Marie came out of the woods singing a Breton song and carrying

a bundle of sticks in her bosom. She threw them on the fire, and looked

at Bertrand as he sat up and felt his wounded thigh. The night’s rest

had put new strength and courage into him. He was no longer the fatalist

drugged with the opiate of despair. The golden splendor of the woods,

the blue sky, the glistening dew gave a sparkle to life and stirred the

joy of being in him.

Scrambling up, he thanked the girl for the cloak, and, looking round

him, asked for his horse. Marie of the Marshes pointed to where the

beast was tethered, under the shadow of a great beech. Some fifty yards

away Bertrand saw a stream flashing through clumps of rushes and tufts

of waving sedge. He went down to it and dashed water over his face and

neck, finding his wound less painful and the muscles less stiff and

sore.

As he walked back to the fire the two peasants came out of the woods

with a couple of rabbits they had snared. Bertrand turned to them like

an old campaigner and helped the fellows to skin the rabbits and sling

an iron pot over the fire. They lost their shyness as he worked with

them, for there was a frankness in Bertrand’s manner that appealed to

these men of the soil.

They were in the middle of the meal, seated round the fire, with the

girl Marie next to Bertrand, when they heard a shout from the woods and

saw a bandy-legged old fellow, very ragged and dirty, running towards

them over the grass. He had a holly-wood cudgel in his hand, and was

followed by a dog that looked more like a wolf, with its long snout,

lean build, and bristling coat. The girl started up and kissed the old

man on the mouth, a duty that Bertrand did not envy her. After bobbing

his head to Bertrand, he came and sat himself down by the fire, while

Marie fished a rabbit’s leg out of the pot for him.

When he had gnawed away the flesh in very primitive fashion, he threw

the bone to the dog and wiped his greasy beard on the back of his hand.

The dog, after crunching the bone, came snuffing round Bertrand, his

ears back, his tawny eyes fixed suspiciously on Du Guesclin’s face.

“Ban, you devil, down! down! Pardon, lording, the dog must have his

smell at strangers.”

Bertrand held out his hand to the beast, snapping his fingers and

looking straight in the dog’s eyes. His absolute fearlessness satisfied

the animal, for he gave a wag of the tail, grinned, and wrinkled up his

snout, and curled himself complacently against Bertrand’s legs.

“He scents a true Breton,” said Du Guesclin, with a laugh. “Any news on

the road, friend?”

The old man was studying Bertrand.

“Well, lording, the broom flower is in bloom, and little Kate, the

ermine, is skipping and chuckling over the fight at Mivoie.”

Bertrand never flinched, but looked the peasant straight in the face.

“That is old news to me, friend,” he said.

The man grinned, and nodded his head mysteriously, with quaint

sententiousness.

“Maybe, lording, you have not heard that the devil is loose again.”

“There are many devils in Brittany, father; we are possessed like the

pigs in the Bible.”

“Eh, yes, but none so bad as Croquart. He has broken out of Josselin,

they tell me, and is at Pontivy, with his free lances, swearing blood

and burnings for Bamborough’s death.”

Bertrand straightened up, and took the news for its solid worth.

“I thought the Sieur de Beaumanoir had the fellow safe for a while,” he

said.

“Ah, no doubt, lording, but Croquart is at Pontivy, and mad as an old

wolf dam that has lost her cubs.”

The sun was well up when Bertrand took leave of the peasant folk, and,

learning the way from them, mounted his horse and rode off into the

woods. He had given the girl Marie a kiss before going, feeling grateful

to her, even though she had seen him weep. New courage stirred in his

heart, and his eyes were keen as he rode under the great trees, thinking

of what the old man had told him concerning Croquart. A curious smile

hovered about his mouth. Presently he dismounted, tethered his horse,

knelt down on the grass, and prayed.

When he had ended his praying he took his shield upon his knees, and,

drawing his poniard, began to batter at it with the hilt. The blows rang

out through the silence of the woods till the eagle of the Du Guesclins

was beaten from the shield.

XXIV

THE sun was setting at La Bellière when a couple of men-at-arms wearing

the Sieur de Tinteniac’s badge upon their sleeves came cantering along

the road from Dinan. They wound through the poplar-trees and the beech

thickets, flashing back the sunlight from their harness and raising a

slight haze of dust that was turned to gold by the glow from the west.

Riding up to the bridge, they hailed the porter who was closing the

great gate and asked whether Sir Robin Raguenel had returned from

Mivoie.

“For,” quoth the bulkier of the twain, “we are the Sieur de Tinteniac’s

men, who has sent us jogging all the way from Montcontour with the news

that he will try your master’s wine to-morrow.”

And so the Vicomte’s porter put back the gate for them, and Tinteniac’s

men smelt the savory scent of the La Bellière kitchens. Nor was the news

long in reaching the great salon where Tiphaïne and her father were

playing chess, with Robin reading at the window. The lad went white when

he heard the news and slunk out into the garden, sick at heart.

Heaven curse Tinteniac! What possessed him to come to La Bellière! Robin

marched up and down under the apple-trees, biting his nails and

smoothing his weak, round chin with the palm of his hand. The incubus of

dread and remorse had grown heavier for him day by day he had lost both

flesh and color, though a restless and feverish cheerfulness simulated

the hectic confidence of a man who refuses to believe that death has him

by the throat. And now the Sieur de Tinteniac was coming to La Bellière,

and the lad’s guilty conscience fluttered like a girl in terror of a

ghost.

At supper Robin saw the two men-at-arms seated among his father’s

servants. They stared at him in all innocence, even as men stare at a

fellow-mortal who has been blessed with the attributes of a hero. But to

Robin, scared and suspicious, and ready to tread upon a snake in every

corner, their interest in him suggested thoughts more sinister. Had

Bertrand betrayed him, or had Beaumanoir and his lords discovered how

the fesse of silver had played a double part? Robin sat in spiritual

torment all through the meal, watching Tinteniac’s men much as a rabbit

in the grass watches a falcon hovering for a swoop. When it happened

that the fellows whispered together, he created their words out of the

terror of his heart, and figured them out into ignominy and shame.

Stephen Raguenel could make nothing of his son that night, and Tiphaïne,

who had watched Robin jealously for many days, set the news of

Tinteniac’s coming beside her brother’s moody face. The lad’s look

troubled her, and she was filled with a vague dread of something she

could not yet foreshadow.

Robin went to his bed in the room beside the chapel, but not to sleep.

The darkness and the silence of the night intensified the misery of his

moral loneliness and held him yet more at the mercy of his conscience.

Toss and turn as he would, he could not escape from the conviction that

his cowardice had been discovered and that the Sieur de Tinteniac was

coming, like some stern St. Michael, to smite and to condemn. Even as a

man upon the mountains may see the image of his own body magnified and

distorted by the mist, so the lad’s conscious guilt took fright at its

own fear. He sat shivering in bed, his teeth chattering, his face white

with the moonlight that poured into the room. Alone, in the silence of

the night, he was like a frightened child, who yearns for a mother’s

warm arms and words of comfort.

It was past midnight when Tiphaïne was awakened by hearing some one

knocking at her door. She sat up in bed and listened, the moonlight

falling across the coverlet and touching her white arms and bosom.

Again she heard a hand knocking on the carved panels of the door.

“Who’s there?”

Since no voice answered her, she slipped out of bed, and, throwing a

long cloak about her, opened the door and looked out into the passage.

Leaning against the wall, with its hands over its face, Tiphaïne saw a

dim and shrinking figure, the figure of her brother.

“Robin!”

She stood with one hand on the door, looking at Robin, a strained wonder

on her face.

“Robin, what is it?—are you ill?”

She heard him groan as though in pain.

“Tiphaïne, my God, what shall I do? It is all a lie—a miserable lie!”

She leaned forward, seized Robin’s hands, drew them down, and looked

into his face.

“You have lied to us?”

“Yes—”

“Of what?”

“I never fought at Mivoie; I was afraid; Bertrand took my arms.”

Tiphaïne dropped his hands and started back from him, a look—almost of

fierceness—on her face.

“Robin, is this the truth?”

The misery of his silence answered her.

“What! You played the coward!—you let Bertrand make this sacrifice!”

Her clear voice rang along the gallery, calling echoes from the sleeping

house. Robin, terrified, sprang forward and gripped her arm.

“Tiphaïne, you will wake every one; listen to me—”

She shook him off, cold as the moonlight for the moment, the shock of

her brother’s shame making her hard and pitiless.

“You think that I shall help you to act this lie?”

His hands leaped out to her with futile pathos in the darkness.

“Tiphaïne, I cannot bear it; Tinteniac comes to-morrow.”

“Well, what then?”

“He may know everything. They will strike off my spurs, and I can never

show my face in Brittany again. Tiphaïne, for God’s sake—help me!”

She unbent nothing to him, the pitifulness of his weakness filling her

with a sense of overmastering scorn and anger.

“No, no.”

“But my father!”

“And you will let Bertrand suffer?”

“He made me promise.”

“Yes, and you kept the promise! My God, to think that you should be so

mean!”

She leaned against the door-post, one hand at her throat, her eyes

blazing even in the dim mingling of moonlight and of gloom. Robin was

standing with his hands clasped about his head like a man frightened by

the lightning in a storm.

“What can I do?—what can I do?—”

He repeated the words again and again, hardly knowing what he said. The

very reiteration of the cry seemed to anger his sister, as the prattling

of a child may anger a woman who is in trouble.

“Fool, keep quiet; let me think.”

Robin ceased his babbling and leaned against the wall, watching

Tiphaïne, his face vacuous and flaccid about the mouth. For some minutes

there was silence between them, a silence that seemed spaced by the

rapid beating of the man’s heart.

Tiphaïne stirred herself at last and stepped back over the threshold

into her room.

“Go back to bed,” she said, quietly.

Robin did not parley with her.

“You will help me?” he asked, with quivering mouth.

“To tell the truth, yes,” and she closed the door on him and left him

shivering in the dark.

It happened that morning soon after dawn that two of the brothers of the

abbey of Lehon, who had gone out to work in the fields, saw a man

running along the road that wound between poplar-trees towards the

abbey. They stood and waited for the man to approach, struck by his

strange look and the way he reeled from side to side. He came on like

one half-dead with running, his mouth open, his eyes glazed. Not at

first did they recognize his face, so drawn and distorted was it with

suffering and despair.

“The abbey?—the abbey?”

He stood panting, waving his hand vaguely down the road, his knees

giving under him so that he rocked like a young tree in a wind.

“By the love of Our Lady, it is Messire Robin!”

They moved towards him, thinking him mad, but the man dodged them and

ran on down the road. The two brothers stood looking after him,

wondering what ill news was in the wind that the young lord of La

Bellière ran half naked along the highway to Lehon.

Master Stephen, the abbot, knelt at his prayers in the parlor when the

brother who served as porter came to him with a grave face and told how

Messire Robin Raguenel had run half naked into the abbey church and was

lying like one dead before the altar. Master Stephen, who was a man of

substance and circumspection, dismissed the brother and went alone into

the church. On the altar steps he found Robin lying, weeping like a

child, his face hidden in his arms.

“Messire Robin! Messire Robin!”

A pitiful face met the abbot’s astonished eyes. It was sharp and sallow,

like the face of a man who had come through some great sickness. Before

he could prevent him the lad had clasped Stephen by the knees.

“Father, take me in, I will take the vows, I—”

He sank down in a dead faint, his hands still clutching the hem of the

old man’s robe. Some of the brothers who were in the cloisters came when

the abbot called them. Together they lifted Robin up, and, wondering,

carried him from the church.

XXV

AT Pontivy, Croquart the Fleming had established himself in the best

hostel the town could boast, his free lances and adventurers swarming in

the streets and quartering themselves at will on the townsfolk, who

dared not grumble. Half the mercenaries in Brittany seemed to have

poured into the place, drawn thither by the high pay Croquart offered.

The Fleming had sworn to avenge the fight at Mivoie, boasting that he

would wipe out Breton treachery with the spoil of Breton towns. He had

offered a hundred gold-pieces to any man who would bring William de

Montauban to him alive, threatening to strangle the esquire and set up

his head over one of the gates of Pontivy.

To the townsfolk it might well appear that the Sieur de Beaumanoir had

only wounded and not scotched the devil, and made him madder than of

yore. Bamborough of Ploermel was dead, and the rabble of English,

Gascons, and Flemings were not likely to abide by the shadowy oaths that

Bamborough had sworn before the fight at Mivoie. All the sweat and

strife of the struggle at the Oak had not bettered the prospects of the

Breton poor. The Sieur de Beaumanoir was still at Josselin, wroth at the

thought that Breton blood had been spilled for nothing, knowing too well

that they of the Blois party were not strong enough to drive Montfort’s

English into the sea.

Pontivy was at Croquart’s mercy, a truth that the townsfolk took

bitterly to heart. The little place was like a sponge in the Fleming’s

hand; he could squeeze what he would from it, till every hole and purse

were dry. And the mercy of a captain of free lances meant also the mercy

of his men, and what such mercy meant a hundred towns in France learned

to their cost through those grim English wars so full of “chivalry.”

After the Poitiers fight the Black Prince served King John as cupbearer

at Bordeaux, yet for the picturesque princeliness of that single deed

there were a thousand miseries hidden from the pages of romance. A king

may pick up a lady’s garter at a dance, and great fame come of it, and

live in the pageant of the world. Yet behind the dawn-flash of some such

splendid trifle a multitude of the dead lift their white hands in the

night of the unknown. The blood of the common folk sinks down into the

earth they tilled, but the froth from a prince’s wine-cup clings to the

lips of men.

It was late one April day when Bertrand rode towards Pontivy, meeting

many who had turned their backs on the place rather than live at

Croquart’s mercy. The gates were well guarded, for the Fleming was no

fool, and knew that he was as well hated as any man in Brittany.

Bertrand, who rode as a common free-lance, and looked the part, with his

rusty harness and battered shield, was suffered to pass with a few

questions, and directed to the hostel where Croquart’s captains were

enlisting men. Bertrand, knowing Pontivy well, made his way up a narrow

street to the house of a merchant named Pierre Gomon, but found the gate

barred and all the windows closely shuttered.

After thundering at the door awhile, he heard the sound of footsteps in

the passage and the harsh grating of the rusty grill. A face showed

behind the iron-work, peering at him suspiciously, for it was growing

dark, and the narrow street caught but little light.

“Who’s there? What may you want?”

Bertrand asked for Pierre Gomon, and discovered that it was Pierre Gomon

himself who looked at him through the iron lattice.

“Hello, sir, have you a quiet attic for Bertrand du Guesclin?”

The voice was familiar to the merchant, but, like his neighbors, he

lived in perpetual terror of Croquart’s men. Anything that walked the

streets with a clank of steel made the burghers of Pontivy shiver behind

their bolted doors.

“I will wager, sir, that Messire Bertrand du Guesclin is not within ten

miles of Pontivy.”

“How, Pierre Gomon, will you tell me I am not myself? Come, I am here on

my own errand, and heed a quiet hole to sleep in. Here is my hand, with

the ring I had from you two years ago.”

He put his hand close to the grill, but Master Pierre Gomon was not to

be satisfied with any such cursory inspection. He left Bertrand standing

outside the gate, and, bringing a lantern, flashed the light upon the

ring Du Guesclin wore.

“Yes, it is the same. And your face, messire?”

Bertrand had put his visor up.

“Ugly enough to be remembered,” he said, with a laugh. “Come, Pierre

Gomon, we are both Breton men. Do you think I am here in Pontivy to

screw money out of you with Croquart and his rabble?”

The merchant’s face betrayed ineffable relief. He unbarred the gate and

let Bertrand in, shooting back the bolts again with the feverish haste

of a man shutting out some wild beast.

“Pardon, messire,” he said, taking the bridle of Bertrand’s horse; “we

are being bled to death by these English barbers. Twice that devil

Croquart has sent men to me for food and money. They broke open my

strongbox and half emptied my cellars. God bless the day when we of

Pontivy see the last of them!”

Bertrand could have laughed at Pierre Gomon’s lugubrious face had he not

known what war was and what manner of wolves herded round Croquart in

the town.

“Lend me one of your attics, friend,” he said, “and give my horse a

stall in your stable.”

“They’ll take the beast, messire, as sure as I’m a ruined man.”

“Let well alone,” said Bertrand, unbuckling his sword.

When night had fallen, Bertrand found himself in one of Pierre Gomon’s

attics, with food and a flask of wine on a table near him. The moon’s

light shone full upon the dormer-window, so that he had no need of the

candle the merchant had brought him. Bertrand stripped off his harness

and made a meal, and then, drawing the stool up to the window, sat

leaning his arms on the low sill and looking out over the little town.

From amid the jumble of roofs, sharp-peaked, like waves in a choppy sea,

Bertrand could hear the shouting of the soldiery who idled in the

streets. In the east a full moon was rising, a huge buckler of burnished

bronze, its light glimmering on the little river that wound about the

town, and making the roofs and steeples white like glass. Between two

houses Bertrand could get a glimpse of the market square and of the

hostel where Croquart had his quarters. The fretted windows were red

with torchlight, and Bertrand could see figures moving to and fro in the

rooms within. Croquart and his comrades in arms were making merry, while

in the market square a crowd of soldiery drank and warmed themselves

about two great fires.

Bertrand’s thoughts went back from Pontivy, lighted by the moonlight, to

his home and to La Bellière by the northern sea. He was wondering

whether Jeanne, his mother, had heard the news of Mivoie. How Olivier

would curl his dainty mustachios, shrug those padded shoulders of his,

and dismiss his brother from all creditable remembrance with a sneer!

Bertrand’s thoughts turned from his own home, where they loved him

little, to La Bellière and to Robin. They would know now that he had

failed to keep troth at Mivoie, and he would have given much to learn

whether Tiphaïne believed him worthless and without honor. Unconsciously

Bertrand had come to set much store on the girl’s goodwill. He judged

his thoughts by the fearless purity of her face, and kept her words

locked in his heart.

Bertrand heard loud shouts and a burst of laughter as a knot of

half-drunken English came staggering and shouldering along the street.

They were shouting a catch-cry that Croquart had given them, and singing

some doggerel that had the Sieur de Beaumanoir for its victim. Bertrand

leaned out and watched them pass, lusting greatly to throw the stool

down on their heads.

One fellow gave a loud screech, jumped on to a comrade’s back, and began

to thump him with his heels.

“Whoa ho, Dobbin! to Josselin we go,

To hang the marshal and his Bretons in a row.”

The men took up the snatch and went bawling down the street, the mock

horse prancing and curvetting with the rhymester on his back. Such

peace-loving people as were abroad went scuttling down alleys, and into

corners like mice running from a cat. Bertrand watched the gentry

disappear down a passage that led into the market square. Their drunken

shouting had given him a cud to chew, for, if Croquart struck a blow at

Josselin, he—Bertrand du Guesclin—might yet have a part to play.

* * * * *

At La Bellière the Sieur de Tinteniac sat at the window of the great

solar, looking out upon the orchard-trees, whose boughs were white

against the blue. He had ridden in about noon from Dinan, to find an

atmosphere of tragic awe filling the house, a sadness that seemed

strange when the woods and meadows blazed with the spring. Dinner had

been set for him at the high table, yet to his questions the old

major-domo had given short and vague replies: “The Vicomte kept his bed,

and Madame Tiphaïne was anxious for her father. Craving the seigneur’s

patience, she would speak with him in the solar when he had dined. No,

Messire Robin was not at home.” Tinteniac had forborne to question the

old man further, for there were tears in the man’s eyes, and the very

servants looked like mutes, going about their work as though death were

in the place. Tinteniac had finished his meal in silence, feeling the

shadow of some great sorrow over the house. Stephen of Lehon had been at

La Bellière that morning, and had ridden back on his white mule to the

abbey, shocked at heart by what he had seen and heard.

The curtain of green cloth, embroidered with gold martlets, that covered

the door leading to the Vicomte’s bedchamber was swept aside by the

white curve of a woman’s hand and wrist. Tinteniac, drumming on the

window-ledge with his fingers, turned with a start and rose to make a

very stately kissing of madame’s hands. Tiphaïne, upon whom the brunt of

the day’s bitterness had fallen, looked white of face and shadowy about

the eyes.

“I am glad, Sieur de Tinteniac, that you have come, for you can help me

more than any man on earth.”

She was looking straight into Tinteniac’s eyes, liking their quiet

braveness and the almost ascetic refinement of his face. He was verging

on middle age, and carried himself with that simple stateliness that

comes to men who have moved in high places and taken the measure of the

world.

“Madame, I have been reproaching myself for burdening you at such a

time. Your father is ill; yet you say that I can help you; good. I had

ordered my horses out for Dinan, but if you would have me stay—”

“Stay, sire,” she said; “I have such a tangle to unravel that I shall

need your wisdom to help me through.”

Tinteniac, grave and restrained, put a chair for her before the window

and turned the shutter so as to keep the sun from shining on her face.

“You do me honor,” he said; “if I can help you, show me how.”

He moved back to the cushioned seat in the broad window, the sunlight

shining on the richness of his dress and showing the silver in his hair.

He was a man who a woman would come to when in trouble, for, of all the

knights of Brittany, Tinteniac held the noblest record.

“Sire, let me tell the truth to you: my father lies half dead in the

room beyond us, and my brother Robin has hid himself in the cloisters of

Lehon.”

She was looking steadily at Tinteniac, trying to read how much he knew,

but his face was a sympathetic blank to her, devoid of subtlety or

pretended innocence.

“Pardon me, madame, you seem to think me wiser than I am.”

“You fought, sir, at Mivoie.”

“True, and your brother Robin saved my life.”

“It was not my brother, sire.”

Tinteniac started.

“No, but Bertrand du Guesclin, who fought in my brother’s arms.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment, each trying to shadow

forth the other’s thoughts. To Tinteniac there was a magnetic strength

shining in the eyes of the girl before him. He felt that each word meant

a stab of the heart to her, and that she suffered, though pain was

hidden by her pride.

“Madame, what are you telling me?”

“Telling you the truth of this great sorrow that has come upon us. My

brother Robin played the coward, God help the lad! for the shame of it

has driven him to take the vows. Bertrand du Guesclin had promised me to

care for the lad. He took Robin’s arms and fought at Mivoie in his

stead, bearing the shame to save a coward.”

She confessed the truth with a strength that mingled pride with pathos.

Tinteniac had risen, and stood leaning against the window-jamb,

conscious of the trust she was laying upon his manhood. Her words had

astonished him, yet he showed no fluster over her confession, respecting

her pride too much to wound her with useless questions.

“Madame,” he said, gravely, “what can I say to you but that I am here to

help you—if it is possible.”

Her heart went out to him for the delicate courtesy of his restraint.

“Sire, the truth must be told.”

Tinteniac turned away his head.

“We are too proud, pray God, to let a brave man suffer for one we love.

Bertrand has done for us what few men would ever do. I know the

bitterness of the sacrifice to him, and those who would slander him

shall have the truth.”

Tinteniac’s eyes flashed as she spoke.

“Madame, I am glad,” he said, “that I stood out for Du Guesclin at the

Oak of Mivoie, and you are right in telling me the truth. Both men were

friends to me, and I know not how to place my pity.”

“Sire, Robin is dead to us, poor lad! God has taken him; he will not see

the scorn that Bertrand might have borne.”

Even her great strength failed her for the moment, and she rose, turning

aside, with one hand covering her face. Tinteniac, touched to the heart,

remained by the window, suffering her bitterness to pass in silence. The

pathos of life seemed very keen to him, held as it was in the proud

walls of this noble house. He thought of Robin as he had known the lad

of old, and pictured him now, cowering in the cloisters of Lehon.

“Sire, I have one more thing to ask of you.”

She had mastered her weakness, and her eyes shone out on him from the

determined pallor of her face.

“Take me to Beaumanoir; let there be no delay. Bertrand du Guesclin

shall be cleared from shame.”

Tinteniac went to her and took her hands.

“Child,” he said, “you have chosen the nobler part. Would to God that I

could mend this sorrow.”

He kissed her hands and stood back, looking sadly into her face.

“The marshal is at Josselin,” he said.

“Then, sire, I shall ride to Josselin. I shall not rest until the truth

is told.”

The next dawn saw them on the road, while at La Bellière an old man sat

before the fire, dazed and stricken, muttering the name of his only son.

And amid the aspens on the Lehon lands young Yeolande wept at the window

of her room, looking towards the tall towers of the abbey, and wondering

why God had stricken Robin’s heart and taken his love from her to make

of him a priest.

XXVI