surprise at the breaking of a summer dawn. The little town, with its
gate-houses and spires, its high roofs and timber-capped turrets, had
stood black and silent against the gold of the east when Croquart’s
stormers crept up to set their ladders against the walls. Unluckily for
the Fleming and his men, the Sieur de Beaumanoir had been forewarned as
to their coming, and their welcome that May morning came in the shape of
stones, molten lead, pitch, and a rain of quarrels from the walls. They
had been beaten back, to flounder, many of them, like great black
cockroaches in the mud of the town ditch. And, to complete the
thoroughness of the repulse, the gates of Josselin had opened wide to
pour columns of armed men into the town meadows.
The cocks of Josselin were still crowing when Geoffroi Dubois and his
Breton gentlemen and men-at-arms rode through and through the disordered
companies of the Fleming’s “horse.” Many debts were waiting for
dismissal on the green slopes under the walls of Josselin town. Every
man who could carry a sword or bill swarmed out by the gates to strike a
blow against these plunderers of Breton towns. Butchers with their
cleavers, smiths with their hammers, armorers’ apprentices with arms
fresh from the forge followed in the track of the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s
columns of steel. There was no taking of prisoners that morning in the
Josselin meadows. The townsmen rushed in among the disordered
free-lances, stabbing the horses and bringing the men-at-arms to earth.
John Hamlin, an Englishman, and the Fleming’s brother in arms, was
battered to death by the hammers of two smiths as he lay helpless in his
heavy harness. Before the sun had topped the steeples the broken
companies were streaming for the open moors, with Geoffroi Dubois and
his Bretons in pursuit.
It was past noon that same day when Croquart reined in his black horse
on the last sweep of moorland beneath the crests of the Loudeac woods.
The Fleming wore a red surcoat covered with gold diapering, carried a
fox’s brush in his gilded bassinet, and was armed in harness that any
great lord might have coveted. The coxcombry of the adventurer showed
itself even in the trappings of his horse, for the butcher-boy of
Flanders, gay as any popinjay, had the love of a risen man for jewels,
color, and the pomp of life.
Croquart stood in the stirrups and scanned the moorland under his hand.
Hard galloping alone had saved him from the glitter of Dubois’s spears,
and, as for his own mercenaries, he had left the fellows to look after
their own souls. Three solitary riders were forcing their jaded horses
up the slope towards him, the last and best mounted of his free lances,
who had been able to keep sight of the black stern of Croquart’s horse.
Though still young, the Fleming had the coarse and florid features of a
man whose appetites had been pampered by success. Vulgar, vain,
supremely cunning, with a chest like a barrel, hands and throat like an
Esau’s, he looked a heavy man, even on the big horse he rode. His broad,
flat face mingled a snub-nosed audacity with the cheerful arrogance of
sensual strength. The cheek-bones were high, the eyes small, deep set,
and quick with the glint of a bird of prey. Even in defeat the man’s
unbounded impudence had not deserted him, and his eyes twinkled as he
watched the laboring approach of the survivors of his “free company,” a
company that had dwindled to the ludicrous muster-roll of three.
“Hallo, sirs!” and he laughed in their faces; “Beaumanoir has made us
hurry a little. Why, Tête Bois, you have the lives of a cat. Pluck up
heart, man; why so white about the mouth?”
He raised himself again in the stirrups and scanned the moors for any
showing of pursuit. Save for a solitary figure on horseback that had
appeared like a black speck on the brow of a low hill, the moorland
appeared innocent of Dubois’s pursuing spears.
Croquart sat back in the saddle with a grunt of relief, and turned his
eyes to the faces of his men. He had had sufficient experience of such
gentry to know that he could trust their loyalty just as long as he
could rely upon his purse.
“Tête Bois, my sweet scoundrel, tell me how much Beaumanoir has promised
to any man who shall bring him my head. You heard of it at Pontivy, eh?”
The man looked uneasily at the Fleming. There was an ironical glint in
Croquart’s eyes that was disconcerting to a fellow with so sensitive a
conscience.
“I never heard of the money, captain.”
Croquart’s lids contracted a little.
“Well, how much was it?”
“Sang de Dieu, captain—”
The Fleming laughed.
“Speak up, dear comrade. I see by your snout that you know as much as I
do. Was it not five thousand crowns?”
He watched the men narrowly, yet with the cool confidence of one sure of
his own strength.
“Five thousand crowns, sirs, for the head of Croquart the Fleming! Come,
friend Tête Bois, five thousand crown-pieces would give you many merry
months in the taverns, eh?”
The tanned war-dog looked restless, as though Croquart’s raillery was
too cunning to be pleasant.
“We are your men, captain.”
“Good fellows! good fellows! You love me about as well as a whore loves
a gentleman with a pocketful of gold. I shall take care, sirs, not to
sleep till we unsaddle in the west. Five hundred gold pieces are easily
earned by a stab in the dark, Tête Bois, eh? And, then, I am such a gay
devil—my rings are worth a duke’s ransom,” and he glanced at his huge
hands and then at the faces of his men.
“By St. George, captain—”
“Hallo, you are wondering how much money I have in my coffers at
Morlaix. Good lads! I will remember to be generous.”
He understood the men and they him. It was a matter of money between
them, a bribe that should out-bribe Beaumanoir’s bounty. Given fair
play, the Fleming was more than a match for the three of them, and they
knew it.
“No rat’s tricks, captain; we’ll take our oath on it.”
Croquart laid a hand significantly on his sword.
“The woods will serve us best,” he said. “We will take the forest way
towards Loudeac. Dubois will not press too far into the west. After
Loudeac we can take our time, for young Bamborough is at Guingamp.”
Croquart turned his head with a last backward look over the moors. The
solitary rider who had topped the hill had dropped again from sight.
Probably, so thought the Fleming, it was only another of his men who had
escaped from the bloody Josselin meadows.
“Forward!” and he gave the word with gusto, as though he still commanded
five hundred spears.
His men waited for him to lead the way.
“No, by my blood, gentlemen!” and he laughed. “Go forward. I prefer to
take care of my own back.”
The popinjay is known by his gay colors, and it was Croquart’s love of
gaudy trappings that betrayed him to the Breton rider whom he had seen
poised for a moment on the brow of the next hill. The man had reined in
his horse, craned forward in the saddle, and scanned with the keenness
of a hawk the four steel-clad figures covered by the shadows of the
Loudeac woods. Messire Croquart’s red surcoat, with its gold diaperings,
and his gilded bassinet showed clearly against the green. It was for
such a chance as this that Bertrand had played the spy at Pontivy. And
for such a boon he had loitered on the moors near Josselin, coveting
Dubois his battle-cry, and yet believing in his heart that Croquart
would break free. The thing had happened even as Bertrand had desired it
should. He was on the track of the Fleming, the taking of whose head
would bless Brittany more than the fight at Mivoie had ever done.
“Brother Croquart, Brother Croquart, you think too much of the women, my
friend!” and yet Bertrand forgot the fact that he himself thought each
hour of the day of a pair of brown eyes and hair that changed in the
sunlight from bronze to ruddy gold.
The champion of the fox’s brush rode towards Loudeac, with Bertrand on
his heels, and at Loudeac the Sieur de Tinteniac’s shield hung in the
guest-hall of the little abbey of St. Paul. Tinteniac and Tiphaïne had
ridden by Montcontour, following the same road that Bertrand and her
brother had taken not a month before. They had passed the first night at
Montcontour, the second at Loudeac, and at Loudeac they had heard that
Croquart had escaped from Josselin and was enlisting men on the banks of
the Blavet. Refugees had fled to Loudeac from Pontivy, and the little
town already trembled amid its woods, dreading to hear the Fleming’s
trumpets sounding a challenge at the gates.
Tinteniac’s two esquires were making the final moves in a game of chess
in the guest-hall oriel, while Tiphaïne and her serving-woman were
dressing in their bedchamber for the day’s journey. Horses and palfreys
stood saddled in the court, Tinteniac’s men and the two La Bellière
servants strapping such baggage as they had on the backs of a couple of
bony and ill-tempered mules. It was not known at Loudeac that Croquart
had made his dash on Josselin from Pontivy, and that he and his men were
scattered in flight over the Breton moors.
In the abbey garden the Sieur de Tinteniac leaned over the rail of the
abbot’s fish-pond and threw pieces of bread to the fat carp that teemed
in the waters of the “stew.” His pose was one of reflection, of dignity
upon the pedestal of thought, as he watched a dozen silvery snouts clash
together for each white morsel of bread. The high forehead and the
meditative eyes, the stateliness of many stately generations, made of
Tinteniac a figure of mark among the Breton nobles who followed the
banner of Charles of Blois. The very hands that fed the fish were
typical of the seigneur’s nature, clean, refined, sinewy, virile. His
manner had that simple graciousness that makes beauty in man admirable
even to his uglier fellows.
The ladies of Jean de Penthièvre’s household had long despaired of
making the Sieur de Tinteniac blush for them, yet a most palpable
deepening of color overspread his face that morning as the mistress of
La Bellière came towards him between the herb-beds of the abbot’s
garden. Thyme, marjoram, lavender, basil, rosemary, and balm crowded
about the lithe lightness of her figure. As she stood before Tinteniac
in her gray riding-cloak, lined with crimson silk, her hair burning in
the sunlight about her face, she seemed to recall to him the troubled
tenderness of a green yet stormy June, long grass weary with the rain,
pools brimming with the sunset, silent trees wrapped in a mysterious
glory of gold. Beauty in woman should fire all the best beauty in the
soul of man. And to such as Tinteniac, whose natural impulses towards
nobleness were above mere religious and chivalric ordinances, the girl’s
brave charm was a mystery and a romance.
“Are the horses ready?”
“Ready, if you are not afraid of being snapped up by some of Croquart’s
plunderers.”
“No, I am not afraid,” and her eyes showed Tinteniac that she spoke the
truth; “but your wounds, sire? How one’s own trouble makes one selfish
towards others!”
Tinteniac looked at her as though he might imagine other woundings than
those he had earned at the Oak of Mivoie.
“I am myself again, though I wear half-armor. We had better take the
forest road.”
“As you will; I trust to you.”
She began to fasten her cloak with its loops of crimson cord, her hands
moving slowly, her eyes looking past Tinteniac as though he were mere
mist to her for the moment. She was thinking of Robin, her brother,
buried in the abbey of Lehon, and of the old man, her father, sitting
alone before the fire. From La Bellière her thoughts swept over Brittany
with an impatient pity for the land that suffered.
“I had hoped that Mivoie would have ended all this misery,” she said.
Tinteniac was watching her as though her beauty had more meaning for him
than her words.
“Montfort and Blois have the poor duchy by the horns and tail, while
such a fellow as Croquart steals the milk.”
She looked at him with a slight frown and an impatient lifting of the
head.
“Croquart, the butcher-boy from Flanders! And you nobles of Brittany,
with all your chivalry, cannot match this fellow in the field.”
Tinteniac shrugged and smiled at her.
“What would you?”
“Why, were I a man—”
“Well—”
“And a Breton man—”
“Yes.”
“I should not rest till I had freed Brittany from such a brute.”
The seigneur spread his hands.
“But when the brute has a few hundred men behind him!—”
“Well, and no matter; Croquart is vain enough to take a challenge from a
Breton noble.”
Tinteniac smiled, as though any mood of hers had magic for him.
“You trouble too much about this butcher-boy,” he said; “he will feel
the rope like most of his brother thieves.”
“Ah, sire, I see, your hands are too white—”
“Too white?”
“To soil themselves with such as Croquart.”
Tinteniac’s stateliness appeared unruffled by the impatience in her
voice. An aristocrat, he saw no great glory in hunting down this Flemish
butcher-boy, who robbed towns and fed his men on the peasants’ corn, a
fellow whose head was rancid with grease and whose breath stank of the
nearest tavern. He would be taken and hanged in due season by the
providence of God; but as for making an adventurous romance out of
Croquart’s capture, Tinteniac, with his refined breeding, was not
inspired to such a quest.
“The true chivalry”—and he spoke without haughtiness—“is of the heart,
not of the arm.”
“They tell me Croquart has a giant’s arm.”
“Yes, from handling the butcher’s cleaver.”
“Then, sire, a gentleman would shame himself by taking blows from
Croquart’s arm?”
Tinteniac’s eyes expressed amusement at the vehemence with which she
spoke. It was good to see the child, so ran his stately reflection,
flame up over the wrongs of the Breton poor.
“Madame, would you have me search from Dol to Nantes in order to break a
butcher-boy’s skull?”
“Are you sure you would break it, sire?”
“No”—and he laughed with a generous frankness that could not be
quarrelled with—“the butcher-boy might prove himself the better man. At
Mivoie he was the best champion the English had.”
Tiphaïne flashed a look straight into Tinteniac’s eyes.
“Well, sire, I should honor the man who put an end to Croquart’s
savagery.”
Tinteniac colored and gave her one of his most stately bows.
“Your words set a new price upon the fellow’s head.”
XXVII
THE walls of Loudeac melted away amid the green as the Sieur de
Tinteniac’s party turned eastward along the forest-way to Josselin. They
had taken a Loudeac shepherd with them as a guide, for there were many
branching ways amid the woods, and it was easy to go astray amid that
wilderness of oaks and beeches. Tinteniac sent his two esquires forward
with the three men-at-arms, the two La Bellière servants coming next
with the mules, and Tiphaïne’s woman upon her palfrey, while Tinteniac,
the tall carack of the fleet, sailed beside the Vicomte’s daughter, his
shield flashing gold and gules towards the morning sun.
No healthy male is without vanity, and Tinteniac, despite the serenity
of his pride, had taken some of Tiphaïne’s words to heart. It was
peculiar to her, this power of hers of establishing her ideals in the
minds of others—foreign gods in a foreign sanctuary. A gesture, an
expression of the eyes, a few movements of the lips, and her own
intensity of soul poured out its inspiration upon others. She had all
the passionate enthusiasm of youth, that fine fire that will not be
damped by the cynicism of experience. And yet when she spoke it was
without any intrusion of prejudice or self-will. Her heart force, her
peerless sincerity, gave her this influence over the world about her.
Tinteniac was not a man to be dictated to by the tongue of a mere girl,
and yet there was something so compelling in Tiphaïne’s nature that he
discovered himself questioning the aristocratic niceness of his
opinions. It was her courage, her great-heartedness, that had struck
Tinteniac from the hour he had first spoken with her in the solar at La
Bellière. Few women would have chosen so straight a path as Tiphaïne.
Her courage appeared to brush formalities aside. When trouble came she
might have sat dazed beside her father in the great house at La
Bellière, or hurried to Lehon to reproach Robin, or taken to her room
and made sorrow selfish by refusing to be comforted. One clear thought
appeared to have dominated her mind, the thought that a brave man had
sacrificed himself, perhaps because she was Robin’s sister. Tinteniac
envied Bertrand the part he had played at Mivoie.
They spoke of Robin that morning as they rode towards Josselin through
the dewy woods. The Sieur de Tinteniac would have made an admirable
confessor, for he had the sympathetic self-effacement of the ideal
priest, with the strength and sincerity of the soldier. Tiphaïne found
him easy to trust. He helped her with his knowledge of the world without
uncovering her sense of humiliation and regret.
“A lively imagination may be a treacherous blessing,” he confessed to
her. “I remember being saved from playing—from forgetting my
manhood—once.”
“You, sire, a coward!” and she used the word that he had avoided.
“All men are human—nerve, muscle, and blood. We build up character as
our monks build a church. One loose stone in the tower arch and half the
place may be in ruins.”
“How did it happen?”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes.”
And he gave her the tale without affectation and without reserve.
Tiphaïne was silent when he had ended, watching the winding woodways of
the forest. She was thinking of her brother Robin, and how Tinteniac’s
trial compared with his. The one man had failed in the ordeal, the other
risen to greater strength above the sense of his own self-shame.
“It was, then, your mother, sire?” she said, at last.
“Yes, my mother who saved me—”
“I can understand.”
“That a man would be a miserable rat who would play the coward under his
mother’s eyes.”
Tiphaïne’s silence showed that she was thinking.
“And Robin had no mother, sire,” she said; “if I had been wiser—”
“And the lad less reticent.”
“My love would have sent him like a man to Mivoie.”
Tinteniac looked ahead between the dark boles of the trees.
“It is the waiting for danger that tires the courage,” he said. “Like
the sounds of wolves following at night, when one can see nothing.”
“And the wolves?”
“May be a man’s own thoughts. Most of us are brave when we plunge into
peril with no time given us to think.”
Had Tinteniac been able to see five furlongs through the forest, he
might have put his philosophy to the test by watching the champion of
the fox’s brush cantering on the same road towards Loudeac. About them
were the quiet glades and woodways of the forest, green with the glamour
and the mystery of spring. Wind flowers fluttering white as swan’s-down;
wild hyacinths like the dust of lapis lazuli scattered on emerald cloth;
the cuckoo flower with its lilac crosslets; primroses brilliant in the
green gloom of coppice and of dell. The winding glades were paved with
color and arched with tremulous foliage bathed in the sunlight. Through
many a green cleft could be seen the golden splendor of the gorse in
bloom, the white clouds moving over the azure of the sky.
Tinteniac and Tiphaïne had loitered as they talked, and the rest of the
troop, with the two esquires leading, had disappeared round the shoulder
of a beech wood, the great trunks rising out of the bronze flooring of
leaves to spread into a delicate shimmer of green above. In a thicket of
birches to the south of the road a cuckoo was calling, while the
sunlight played on the white stems of the trees.
Tiphaïne was still thinking of all that Tinteniac had told her, her eyes
looking into the distance, a sad smile hovering about her mouth. The
wild woods and the brown birds darting and fluttering in the brakes made
her pity the poor lad who was shutting himself in Lehon against such
life as this. She was roused from her reverie by the sound of men
shouting on the road beyond the beech wood. Tiphaïne’s horse pricked up
its ears. The birds, those spirits of the solemn woods, came scudding
fast over the tree-tops.
Tiphaïne’s eyes were turned to Tinteniac’s face. His fine profile, with
its alert lines, showed that he had spoken of panic with the quiet smile
of a man remembering a weakness long since dead.
“Listen, they are at blows yonder. Let us push forward. Hallo, what have
we here?”
Round the edge of the beech wood came the two La Bellière men, whipping
up their horses, with Tiphaïne’s woman on her palfrey between them. Hard
at their heels cantered the two baggage mules, with halters dangling, a
fair omen of an unquestionable rout.
Tinteniac’s sword was up. He put his horse across the road, a hint that
the La Bellière men seemed too scared to accept.
“Steady! steady!!”
“Fly, sire, fly—”
They were up and past, maugre the seignorial sword, Tinteniac barely
escaping the indignity of being rammed by the near man’s horse. To shout
at them was as useless as hallooing after a rabble of frightened sheep.
Tiphaïne had caught a glimpse of her serving-woman’s scared face as she
was whirled past, clinging to the saddle with both hands. The woman had
opened her lips to call to her mistress, but an inarticulate cry alone
came from them. The two mules went cantering past with their packs
slipping down under their bellies. In the taking of ten breaths the
woods had swallowed men, woman, and beasts.
Tinteniac gave a contemptuous laugh.
“It seems that I am something of a prophet. What are we to look for
next?”
He was as cool as though exchanging courtesies with a guest in the great
hall of his own castle. Tiphaïne saw his lips grow thin, the pupils of
his eyes contract like the eyes of a hawk on the hover for a stoop. He
glanced this way and that into the woods, setting his shield forward and
balancing his sword.
“What do you make of it, sire?” and she matched him for composure.
“Gilles and Gilbert are fighting. Listen! They are falling back towards
us. Look, who goes there?”
There was a crackling of the underwood near them, and they had a glimpse
of the white face of a man pushing through the brushwood into a little
glade. He seemed to see neither Tiphaïne nor the knight on the great
horse. And with the flash of a helmet he was gone, the green boughs
closing on him like water over a diver’s body.
Tinteniac bit his lip.
“A bad omen”—and he reached for Tiphaïne’s bridle—“that fellow of mine
has taken to his heels. Perhaps he is discreet. We, too, can take
cover.”
He had already dragged Tiphaïne’s palfrey half across the road, when a
man in red, riding a black horse, swerved round the beech wood into the
sunlight. Three others followed him at a canter, shields forward, swords
out. Tinteniac saw himself caught in the open. He wheeled briskly,
covering Tiphaïne with his horse.
“Keep close to me, child.”
“Thanks, sire; do not risk anything for my sake.”
He answered her with a look that it was impossible for her to parry.
Croquart drew rein when he saw nothing more terrible on the forest road
before him than a knight and a lady without escort and without servants.
The Fleming had taken the two esquires and their men for the
advance-guard of a company pushing forward to help in the defence of
Josselin. He had not waited to ask questions, but had charged without a
parley, and, since the two poor youngsters had made a gallant stand
against him, the Fleming had used his tusks in his hurry to break
through.
The first thing that Croquart noticed was the gold and gules upon
Tinteniac’s shield; the second, Tiphaïne’s figure with its gray cloak
lined with crimson silk, and the glitter of her hair under the boughs of
the trees. Now Croquart was one of those insufferable creatures whose
vanity takes fire at the first flash of a woman’s gown. Ugly and
illiterate rascal that he was, he had conceived a fashionable fury for
the French romances, and had even taken to modelling his behavior upon
that of their aristocratic heroes. A renegade is always doubly bitter
against the party he has deserted; so Croquart, hating the past, aspired
to be the gay and flamboyant gentleman, tender and irresistible to
women. Hard and grim in the business of life, the sex feeling made a
fool of him, even so much as to make him one of those fulsome fops who
cannot refrain from displaying their feathers to the poorest
draggle-tail be she beneath the age of fifty. His gaudy clothes would
have seemed wasted but for the women, and his successes among the
bourgeoisie had made him ambitious of flying for nobler game.
When Croquart recognized the Sieur de Tinteniac by his shield, and also
saw the lady beside him with hair that took a sheen from the sun, he
dropped his ferocity as though it had been his butcher’s cleaver and
assumed an air which he believed to possess all the aristocratic
gentleness of those sentimental heroes who never existed.
“Halt, sirs!”
He waved his men back with his sword and rode on at a trot towards
Tinteniac and the Vicomte’s daughter. The spirit of ostentation pervaded
even the salute he gave them.
“God’s grace to you, madame, and to you—sire. Am I to be honored by
taking you as my prisoners?”
Tinteniac was trying to fathom the new-comer’s identity, for Croquart
carried no proper device upon his shield.
“There has been no word spoken of surrender,” he said.
The Fleming bowed in the saddle.
“Then the Sieur de Tinteniac will honor me by meeting me with his
sword.”
Tinteniac’s handsome face betrayed no hesitation.
“I am known to you, messire?”
“I remember your shield, sire. I saw enough of it at Mivoie to make me
respect its master.”
“At Mivoie?”
“Certainly, sire.”
“And you—your name?”
The Fleming threw up the visor of his bassinet with the unction of a
hero discovering himself at the dramatic moment. He looked at Tiphaïne
as though to watch how she received the impression of his magnificence.
“Sire, I am Croquart the Fleming.”
“Croquart! So; this is fortunate.”
Tinteniac’s face could express haughtiness with the perfect calmness of
the aristocrat. Croquart had more looks for the lady than for the man.
He saw her color deepen a little and a peculiar shadowiness pass across
her eyes.
“No doubt, sire, you have heard of me,” and the fat hand seemed to
insinuate the glitter of its rings into Tiphaïne’s notice.
“The Flemish butcher-boy.”
Tinteniac’s tone had the whistle of a whip.
“Sire, William the Norman’s mother was a tanner’s daughter, and yet he
became a king.”
“I said, sir, the Flemish butcher-boy.”
Croquart’s eyes gleamed for the moment like a cat’s. Tinteniac’s face
roused the plebeian passion in him.
“By your grace, sire, we will see whether the Sieur de Tinteniac or the
Flemish butcher-boy is the better man.”
“That, perhaps, is too great an honor.”
“An honor, sire, that my sword will compel you to confer.”
Tiphaïne looked anxiously at Tinteniac. He was but half armed, because
the wounds he had won at Mivoie would not yet bear the weight of heavier
harness, nor would his pride suffer him to confess the disadvantage. It
was Tiphaïne who read his thoughts and said what Tinteniac would not
say.
“Sire, you are but half armed, and Messire Croquart is in his battle
harness.”
She glanced at the Fleming, and he felt the fearless influence of her
eyes.
“Messire Croquart is gentleman enough to respect fair play.”
“Madame, you have read me right,” and he fell to her flattery without a
question. “Hi, Tête Bois”—and he climbed out of the saddle—“take off
my breastplate and my cuishes. The butcher-boy of Flanders will take no
man at a disadvantage. Madame, I most reverently kiss your hands.”
Tiphaïne’s heart misgave her for Tinteniac, as she watched the man Tête
Bois at work upon his master under the shadows of a great beech. The
Fleming’s girth of chest and limb seemed almost monstrous when compared
with Tinteniac’s Grecian stateliness. The one was like a Norman pillar,
massive and ponderous, giving a sense of uncrushable strength; the other
like a fluted shaft of a more decorative age, its lines the lines of
well-balanced beauty, its power concealed by perfection of design. The
faces of the men were as vividly in contrast as their bodies. The
butcher had the face of a butcher, and, as Tiphaïne watched him, the
very insolent superfluity of his strength made him appear as the
champion of the brute world against the nobler ideals of the soul.
“Sire, shall we fight mounted or on foot?”
Tinteniac, with the courtly composure of an aristocrat, stood leaning on
his sword.
“As you please.”
“On foot, then.”
“I am ready.”
They engaged each other on a broad strip of grass clear of the roots and
the sweeping branches of the trees. Croquart had lived by his sword; the
noble had drawn his only when the serenity of the seignorial honor was
embroiled. From the first the Fleming had the upper hand. Tiphaïne could
see his grinning mouth, the glint of his eyes as though insolently sure
of his own strength. Tinteniac never flinched from him, despite his
wounds, taking Croquart’s blows with shield forward and head thrown
back.
In the first minute Tinteniac was wounded in the thigh; Tiphaïne could
see blood on his green surcoat, but to have meddled would have been an
insult that no true man would have forgiven. His own blows seemed to
lack power against the Fleming’s greater bulk. He felt the wounds crack
that the English had given him at Mivoie, and he was short in the wind,
like a man who has been a week in bed.
Three minutes’ fighting found Croquart playing with his man. Tinteniac
had not so much as flustered him. Strength and condition were all to the
Fleming’s honor.
“Come, sire, surrender,” and he gave Tinteniac time to breathe.
The noble had faltered, more from faintness than from any failing of his
courage. He saw Tiphaïne watching him and read the misgiving in her
eyes. The pride of such a man was very sensitive. To be beaten, and to
be beaten before her, by a butcher!
“Who asks for surrender?”
“In faith, sire, not I!”
“Come, then.”
And they went at it again with exuberant good-will.
An unparried blow on the right shoulder brought Tinteniac to earth at
last. He struggled to his knees and tried to rise, but Croquart rolled
him backward with a mere touch of the sword-point on the breast.
“Surrender, sire; I am in luck to-day.”
Tinteniac, with a last effort, turned sideways and broke his sword
across his knee.
“You can take the pieces, Fleming,” and he dropped on his elbow, his
face but a hand’s-breadth from the tangled grass.
A strong man’s anguish of exhaustion and defeat has some of the agony of
hell in its expression, and to Tiphaïne the shock of Tinteniac’s
dramatic overthrow was as vital as though he had been her brother. It
wounded her woman’s pride to see this man of the finer fibre crushed at
the feet of this brute mass of insolence and strength. She was out of
the saddle and facing Croquart before that gentleman had had leisure to
exult.
“Messire Croquart”—and her courtesy was sublime, the most perfect
weapon she could have chosen—“a Tinteniac can never surrender, a woman
can. We are your prisoners.”
The Fleming dropped his battle humor and made her a fat bow.
“I am at your service, madame.”
“That is well spoken, sir. There are wounds to be looked to.”
“Tête Bois, my saddle-bag.”
The man brought it. Croquart, who, despite his undoubted courage, had a
peculiar loathing for seeing his own blood flow, always carried wine,
oil, and linen with him in the wars.
“Thanks, messire.”
“Madame, it is a privilege to please.”
Tiphaïne understood the possible significance of the privilege, and
hated the fawning bully with all the energy of her distrust. He gave her
the wine and linen with his own hands, making the exchange slowly, that
he might touch her fingers and discover the color and temper of her
eyes. The self-same eyes were brown and full of flashes of sunlight,
flashes that made Croquart mutter “vixen” under his breath.
Tinteniac was still lying propped on one elbow and hanging his head like
a man bleeding in pride as well as in body. That one of the first
knights in Brittany should have been trampled under foot by a
butcher-boy from Flanders was an indignity that needed superhuman
courage to rescue it from contempt. And yet the fine fortitude of the
man triumphed. He retrieved his respect by meeting Tiphaïne with a
smile.
“You see, child, the boaster has had his beating.”
She knelt down by him, knowing how much that smile and those few words
had cost him.
“It was your wounds from Mivoie.”
“Perhaps,” and he looked at his broken sword, “I am beaten for the
moment. Wine and linen! My shoulder feels like a piece of red-hot iron.
Child, listen,” and he spoke in a whisper, “we are in this fellow’s
power.”
Croquart had turned and moved away a few paces to shout orders to his
men. Tiphaïne was supporting Tinteniac’s head and holding the wine-flask
to his lips. As she bent over him he continued his whisperings in her
ear, taking a drink from the wine-flask between each few words.
She colored and looked at him unwillingly, yet reading the honorable
purpose in his eyes.
“I know this whelp’s ways, child. You are Tiphaïne de Tinteniac.
Remember. It will make for your safety.”
“But, sire—”
“Let Croquart think you are my wife.”
“I have no ring.”
“Take this.”
And the exchange was made while the Fleming’s back was turned, the
circlet of gold slipping along the girl’s finger.
Croquart had turned on them, and Tinteniac’s discretion prompted him to
show no temper to the Fleming. His natural serenity returned. He even
smiled at Croquart as he knelt beside him.
“You have broken me, sir, and now you must help to mend me for madame,
my wife—here. We had heard that you were at Pontivy.”
Croquart was busy with Tiphaïne uncovering Tinteniac’s wounded shoulder.
Gilded bassinet and golden head were nearly touching. At the word
“wife,” Tiphaïne felt the Fleming’s breath upon her cheek. She knew that
he was looking at her, but she kept her eyes on Tinteniac’s face.
“I was at Pontivy, sire.”
“Grace de Dieu, you are everywhere. We thought the Josselin road safe
to-day.”
Croquart grinned, but said nothing of his defeat.
“And my two esquires, Messire Croquart?” and Tinteniac tried not to
wince as the wound smarted.
“I have sent two of my men, sire, to bury them.”
Tinteniac started, but restrained any show of feeling. He had caught the
shocked pity in Tiphaïne’s eyes, and, though the poor lads were dead, he
remembered for Tiphaïne’s sake the need for dissembling.
“Thanks, Messire Croquart,” he said, vowing many solemn things in his
heart.
“The lads fought well, sire. It was a pity.”
“A pity, most certainly a pity. Poor Gilbert!—poor Gilles! We cannot
have war, sir, without death. Madame—wife, you look troubled; leave us
awhile. Messire Croquart will feel for you over these poor lads’ death.”
Tiphaïne understood him, and, rising, moved away with her face between
her hands. It was no mere piece of acting, for there were tears upon her
cheeks—tears of pity and of passionate impatience that all this brutal
work should be done under God’s sun.
Croquart looked after her with a glint of the eyes. He noticed the
fineness of her figure, despite her riding-cloak; the sweeping curves of
bosom and of hips were not to be hid. He began binding up Tinteniac’s
wound, thinking the while that the aristocrat had excellent taste.
“Come, my friend, let us be frank. How much do you want from me?”
Their eyes met. Croquart laughed.
“Ten thousand crowns.”
“What, sir?”
“For you, sire. Also ten thousand for madame.”
“Twenty thousand crowns!”
The Fleming’s eyes were full of cunning impudence.
“You are the Sieur de Tinteniac,” he said.
“True.”
“And courtesy would not permit you, sire, to value yourself more highly
than madame—your wife.”
Tinteniac looked at his broken sword.
“Well, friend, you will have to wait.”
“Content, sire, content.”
“What road do you take us?”
“The road to Morlaix, sire. I shall join young Bamborough there.”
XXVIII
IN the underwood that topped a high bank overhanging the road where it
swept round the beech wood a man in black harness crouched behind the
twisting roots and stems of a clump of hazels. The black shell of steel
was almost indistinguishable in the shadows. Snakelike it had crawled
through a bank of gorse and reached the hazels overhanging the road.
Bertrand, with his sword naked at his side, had lifted his head
cautiously and looked down into the road through a loop left by the
twisting roots. The first glance had shown him Tiphaïne seated on her
palfrey under the trees, watching Tinteniac weakening before the
Fleming’s sword. Bertrand was not a man easily astonished, but his heart
gave a great leap in him as he saw the Lady of the Aspen Tower with the
sunlight shining through the branches on her face. Bertrand’s thoughts
were in a tangle for the moment. The Sieur de Tinteniac fighting with
Croquart the Fleming, and the Vicomte de Bellière’s daughter waiting to
be claimed as the better man’s prize! Bertrand felt dazed for the moment
by the utter unexpectedness of the scene before him. The whole tone of
the adventure had changed on the instant. Had a miracle been performed
before him the man amid the grass and hazels, with bluebells nodding
about his body, could not have been more struck than by this strange
interweaving of the threads of fate.
When Tinteniac fell, Bertrand was on his knees, teeth set, sword ready,
on the brink of a battle with the Fleming. The three men-at-arms
watching the fight had not seen the black figure poised amid the hazel
boughs. It hung there a moment as though hesitating, and then dropped
back again into the grass and leaves.
Tiphaïne was facing Croquart, while Tinteniac grovelled on his elbow,
and this new grouping of the characters had sent Bertrand back to cover.
He lay like a fallen bough, almost invisible, his body sunk in the dead
leaves and the grass tussocks, hearing Tiphaïne speak, yet unable to
catch her words. Her face, clear before him in the sunlight, had that
look that was peculiar to her when her courage was in arms. She was
speaking for Tinteniac, and Bertrand watched her, noting the play of
feeling on her face with the intentness of a man who watches the face of
one he loves. It hurt him to see her speaking for Tinteniac, so
sensitive is the strongest heart when a woman’s eyes have power to wound
or heal. The old blind feeling of bitterness that had been bred in him
at Motte Broon rushed up to tantalize him with the imagined meaning his
instinct set upon the scene.
Croquart gave her the wine-flask and the linen, and she knelt beside
Tinteniac, one arm about his shoulders, her face very close to his.
Bertrand winced, drove one knee into the grass, and yet cursed himself
for a credulous fool. Would any woman stand by and see a wounded man
bleed to death, and would that woman be Tiphaïne of La Bellière?
Croquart had moved away, and was shouting orders to his men. Bertrand
heard them, though his eyes never left Tinteniac, with his head upon
Tiphaïne’s knee. They seemed to be speaking together in low tones, and
watching the broad back the Fleming had turned to them for the moment.
Bertrand saw their hands touch, and looks that were alive with a subtle
significance pass between them. Bertrand would have given all he had to
have heard the words they had spoken.
The little picture was broken at last, though it seemed to the man among
the hazels that Tinteniac had had hours at his disposal. They were
binding up the wounded shoulder, and there was blood, Tinteniac’s blood,
on Tiphaïne’s hands. With some trick of the memory the sight of it
brought back to Bertrand the vision of Arletta dying with red hands in
that dark tower amid the beeches of Broceliande. It was as though God’s
voice had called to him—a still, small voice amid the silence of the
mysterious woods. The perfervid selfishness went out of him like the
lust out of the man who remembers the womanhood of his mother.
Bertrand’s hands gripped the blade of his sword as he lay with it
crosswise under his throat. He saw Tiphaïne rise, draw aside, her face
hidden by her hands. Bertrand felt numb at the sight of it, yet very
humble. If she wept for Tinteniac, then Tinteniac was of all men the
most to be honored. Honored? And Bertrand’s face burned with the hot
memories of many unclean years—years when he had bartered his manhood
for harlots’ kisses.
He drew back slowly from under the hazels, and, crawling through the
gorse and underwood, reached the place where he had left his horse. A
dead tree lay there that had fallen in a winter gale, and Bertrand sat
down on the trunk with his drawn sword across his knees. He was humbled,
but the struggle was not over with him yet. His heart was still full of
the bitterness of the man who covets what he imagines another man to
possess.
Bertrand sat on his tree-trunk with the sword across his knees and
stared at his horse, that was trying to crop the grass, though the
bridle was hitched over the bough of a tree. The oak bough would not
bend, nor would the grass spring up to the hungry beast’s muzzle.
Bertrand, with a wry twist of the mouth, saw that he and his horse were
the victims of a somewhat similar dilemma.
Jealousy is the great distorter of justice, and Bertrand had the devil
at his elbow for fully ten minutes on the trunk of the dead tree. The
imp shouted every imaginable grievance in his ear, exaggerating
possibilities into facts and creating reality from conjecture. Had not
he, Bertrand du Guesclin, sacrificed himself for Robin Raguenel’s sake,
and accepted shame to save a coward? If Tiphaïne was so tender for
Tinteniac’s sake, then, by God, let Tinteniac look to the guarding of
his own petticoats!
But that great advocate whose irony slashes to shreds the special
pleading of the meaner spirit, the sense of chivalry, that great
chastener of manhood, took up the argument in Bertrand’s cause. All
ethical struggles are fierce in powerful natures, fierce in their
climax, but sure in their decision. Bertrand’s honesty was not to be
cajoled. He sat in judgment on himself, the self-asking of a few
pitiless questions baring that sincerity that makes true strength.
When he carried Robin’s arms at Mivoie, had he not hoped that some day
Tiphaïne might know what he had done?
Had Tiphaïne ever given him the promise of any deeper thing than
friendship?
Whose past was the cleaner, the Sieur de Tinteniac’s or his own?
Bertrand knotted his brows over these accusations, and confessed that
the spirit of justice had him at its mercy.
He rose, stood irresolute a moment, and then moved towards his horse.
The imp of jealousy made a last leap for his shoulders. Bertrand shook
them, and was a free man, breathing in new inspiration for the days to
come.
Now Croquart had ordered two men-at-arms to go and cover the bodies of
Tinteniac’s esquires, who lay dead together in the middle of the forest
road. Bertrand was no hot-headed fool. He knew enough of the Fleming and
his men to realize that a mere free lance such as he seemed would be
treated to no such courtesy as had been given to Tinteniac. He was worth
no ransom. If worsted, the point of a spear or the edge of a sword would
give him his quittance in the Loudeac woods.
Bertrand knew, also, that he would have no chance with Croquart and his
three men, one against four, and that Croquart would not trouble to
engage him singly as he had engaged Tinteniac. For one moment Bertrand
thought of returning towards Josselin, in the hope of meeting some of
Dubois’s men. But the plan did not please him. He had marked down
Croquart as his own stag.
Unhitching his bridle from the bough of the tree, he took his spear,
that rested against the trunk, and, making a détour through the woods,
bore towards the place where the two esquires lay dead.
Croquart, meanwhile, was preparing to resume his march on Loudeac. He
had dressed and bound Tinteniac’s wounds, and lifted that gentleman back
to the saddle.
“I take your word, sire, as a knight—and a Breton.”
“Be easy, friend, I have not enough blood in me to give you trouble.”
Croquart turned to hold Tiphaïne’s stirrup. She had ceased her anger of
weeping, and her face had the white sternness of one whose courage has
cooled from the heat of passion. Croquart’s smile was as powerless as a
feeble sun upon the winter of her face. She mounted, took the bridle,
and looked into the distance to avoid meeting the Fleming’s eyes.
Croquart and Tête Bois got to horse. The two men who were covering the
dead bodies with sods and leaves were to follow the Fleming as soon as
their work was done. Croquart placed himself between Tiphaïne and
Tinteniac. He had rearmed himself in all his heavy harness. No more
courtesies were to be expected from him that day.
They had hardly gone a hundred yards when a cry came stealing through
the silence of the woods. It held a moment, quivered, to end in a last
up-leap like the last flash of a gutted candle. Croquart reined in and
set his hand upon his sword. His face, ugly in repose, grew doubly
sinister as he glanced back under the boughs of the trees.
A single man-at-arms came cantering over the grass, crouching in the
saddle and looking back nervously over his shoulder. Croquart swore at
him as he pulled up his horse.
“Hallo, cur!—where is Guymon?”
The man straightened in the saddle and pointed towards Josselin.
“A fellow ran at us out of the woods, struck down Guymon with his
spear—”
“And you used the spurs.”
The man agreed, as though Croquart’s anger was preferable to the
stranger’s spear.
“Well, what next?”
“The man turned back into the woods, captain.”
“What! He did not follow you?”
“No.”
“How was he armed?”
“Rusty harness that had been oiled and looked black.”
“And both of you ran away—he from you, and you from him.”
“Yes, captain.”
Croquart laughed, and turned again towards Loudeac.
“You must have looked fiercer than you are, fool, or else your brother
coward has stopped behind to take the dead men’s rings.”
The free lance accepted the explanation. As a matter of fact, he had
taken the dead men’s rings himself, but he did not trouble to tell
Croquart so.
XXIX
THE thrushes were singing on the glimmering spires of the oaks as the
crimson banner of the sunset waved to pale gold. In the deepening azure
of the east the moon had lost the filmy thinness of a cloud and stood
out in splendor over the black hills and the valleys faint with mist.
Night came, and with it the bent figures of Croquart’s men, gathering
sticks and kicking leaves together to make a fire.
The very brilliance of the night made the woods cold, and Tinteniac,
stiff with his wounds, sat propped against a tree, trying to pretend
that he was neither in pain nor cold. Tiphaïne stood near him, her eyes
seeming to catch the melancholy of the dying afterglow.
Croquart turned his hands everywhere to help his men. Whistling, as he
might have whistled as a boy when splitting carcasses in Flanders, he
looked to the horses, cut down underwood, the fresh, green foam of the
woods in spring, and built a screen between the trunks of two great
oaks. A horse-cloth stretched across two poles gave some sort of
shelter. Business was brisk and money forthcoming, despite the rout at
Josselin and the loss of all his baggage. A ransom of twenty thousand
crowns was not to be counted on every day of the week, and with the
Sieur de Tinteniac as a hostage he could bargain with Beaumanoir should
the marshal be discourteous enough to continue offering bribes for his
head.
Croquart plunged down the slope of the hill where he had chosen ground
for the night, to reappear with a bundle of freshly cut broom, which he
tossed down under cover of the screen of boughs. His men’s cloaks were
purloined to cover the litter; the fellows could go damp when a
Tinteniac was to be kept dry. Tête Bois had already persuaded the fire
to blaze, and Croquart turned to his prisoners with a smile that
suggested supper.
“A bed, sire, for you and for madame.”
They saw, and avoided each other’s eyes. Croquart, officious in his
courtesies, picked up Tinteniac and laid him on the pile of broom, with
a saddle on which he might rest his shoulders.
“Room for two, sire,” and he looked at Tiphaïne as though it would have
pleased him to lift her as he had lifted Tinteniac. Her immobility
discouraged him, and the dusk covered the color on her face. She was
watching the flames leap up through the crackling wood, and thinking of
poor Gilbert and poor Gilles, left to be spoiled of their rings in the
lonely Loudeac woods. Only that morning she had seen their two heads,
tawny and black, bowed over the chess-board as they made, little knowing
it, the last moves in the game of life. Croquart had killed them, yet
stood there offering her the impertinences of his butcher’s tongue. The
two lads might have been two sparrows caught in a trap and left with
their necks wrung, for all the reflection the deed caused the Fleming.
She went and sat with Tinteniac on the bed Croquart had made for them.
Her mock husband felt the unwillingness of her nearness to him, an
antagonism, that he would have found in few ladies of the court.
“I remember we have a part to play,” she said, when the Fleming had
moved away some paces.
“You trust me, child?”
“Yes, at all times. Yet to lie to this fellow makes me despise myself. I
cannot forget the Breton blood he has upon his hands.”
“We shall remember it,” and his eyes grew alive with the firelight.
“Mother of God, does a Tinteniac forget such things!”
Supper came, with Croquart ready to serve as their esquire. The man Tête
Bois had been sent into a hamlet to the north of Loudeac, with orders to
get food, wine, a horse-cloth, flint, steel and tinder, and an iron pot.
A boiled chicken, eggs, brown bread, and a flask of cider had resulted
from Tête Bois’s marketing. Hunger is a great leveller of prides and
prejudices, yet Croquart, ravenous as he was, set his reputation for
gallantry before the cravings of his stomach, and carved the chicken and
broke the bread.
On a square manchet the white slices of the bird’s breast were proffered
to the lady. Tiphaïne saw the two great hands loaded with rings. She
thought of the dead esquires, and the food disgusted her, given by those
butcher’s hands.
“Madame will eat?”
She took the bread and meat as though they smelled of blood. Tinteniac,
less sensitive, and a veteran in the art of concealing his feelings,
drew his knife and betrayed no disgust.
“Keep the fool in a good temper,” ran his counsel to Tiphaïne in a
whisper.
“Must I eat this food?”
“Yes, though it choke you.”
Croquart watched her, as though his cunning had uncovered her pride. He
came to her with the wine-flask, saw her touch it with her lips and
hardly taste the wine. Tinteniac was less scrupulous. Croquart’s turn
came next. He took a long pull, wiped the mouth on a corner of his
surcoat, and smiled a smile that made his small eyes glitter.
“Madame, more wine?”
“Thanks to you, sir, no.”
He saw the repugnance on her face, as though the slime of some unclean
reptile could not have made the flask more nauseous to her lips.
“Madame will not drink after me?”
“I am not thirsty.”
“And you do not eat? Well, as you will,” and he treated her as though
she were a sulky child. “Sire, I drink to you, the champion of Mivoie.”
Tinteniac laughed.
“Women never know what is pleasant,” he said.
Croquart sprawled beside the fire.
“The battle makes men friends,” and he sucked at the flask till the wine
dribbled down his chin.
“I remember, sire, when the Countess de Montfort gave me her own cup
after the first taking of Roche d’Errien.”
“Ah, yes.”
“A great lady, sire, who can set courage before birth. I had this ring
from her,” and he held a hand up in the light of the fire.
Tinteniac humored him.
“Rubies! I have no such stones in my strong-box.”
“Ah, sire, Jeanne de Montfort knows the value of a brave man when she is
served by him. What say you, madame?”
Tiphaïne swept the crumbs from her lap with a quick gesture of the hand.
“No doubt the Countess had need of you,” she said.
Croquart’s watch-fire was the red eye of the night to Bertrand, the
black shadow on the black horse stealing through the greenwood on the
Fleming’s heels. Bertrand saw the flames waving through the trees as he
sat amid the crooked roots of a great oak, cutting slices from a loaf of
bread he had bought on the road, his bassinet full of brackish water
that he had drawn from a woodland pool. Bertrand was not a
sentimentalist, and he broke his dry bread in the dusk as though hungry
from a sense of duty, knowing that Croquart was not the man to starve on
the march, and that a full stomach makes a better soldier than a head
stuffed full of Southern songs. Bertrand carried an amusing
matter-of-factness into the current of his adventures. It was not that
he did not feel or suffer, but rather the obstinacy of his strength that
insisted on coolness and lack of flurry. Thoroughness was a passion with
him, even to the masticating of a loaf of bread.
When the dusk had deepened into the white mystery of a moonlit night,
Bertrand braced on his bassinet, saw that his horse was securely
tethered, and began his advance on Croquart’s fire. Slipping from trunk
to trunk and bush to bush, he made a mere moving shadow amid the trees.
Croquart had chosen his ground on the slope of a low hill, a ridge of
forest hiding the fire from the main track running to Loudeac town.
Bertrand, by crawling along the farther slope of the knoll, got within
twenty yards of the fire, and lay where a tree threw a black patch on
the grass like a piece of ebony set in silver.
The figures were easily distinguishable to Bertrand. Tiphaïne, head held
high, lids drooping, the whiteness of her throat rising out of the
crimson stuffs beneath. Tinteniac, propped against a saddle, his
handsome face looking thin and tired, his eyes restless like the eyes of
a man in pain. Croquart, a burly patch of angry red, bassinet off,
tanned throat showing, a wine-flask in one hand, a charred stake in the
other for stirring the fire. The two men-at-arms stretched half asleep
on the far side of the flames.
The setting of the picture gave Bertrand the chance of testing the
sincerity of his renunciation. He saw the rough bed, the canopy, the
screen of boughs; Tiphaïne close to Tinteniac, a space between them and
the Fleming, as though the two were one by courtesy and by desire.
Bertrand gnawed at his lips, despite the sternness of his
self-repression. The group seemed typical of his own luck in life.
Tiphaïne and the Sieur de Tinteniac shared the fire, while he, as ever,
lurked in the dark, alone.
“I would say, sire, without making a boast of it, that I have found none
of your Breton men a match for me in arms.”
Bertrand heard the words as a man who is half asleep hears a voice that
wakes him in the morning. Croquart had been telling a few of his
adventures, poking the fire with his stick and brandishing it like the
baton of a master musician marshalling the lutanists and flute-players
at a feast. The vanity of the Fleming was so inevitable a characteristic
that one was no more surprised by it than by seeing a toad spit.
Innocent egoism may be a delicate perfume, an essence that adds to the
charm of the individual, admirably so in women when they are deserving
of desire. But with Croquart his intemperate arrogance was a veritable
stench, an effluvium of the flesh, a carrion conceit that nauseated and
repelled.
To Bertrand, Tiphaïne’s face seemed tilted antagonistically towards the
moon. Her throat lengthened, her lids drooped more over her eyes. She
looked impatient over the bellowings of this bull. Tinteniac leaned on
his elbow and watched the fire. His contempt, deep as it was, found no
expression on his face.
“You cut a notch on your spear,” he said, “for every gentleman you have
beaten in arms.”
Croquart prodded the embers with his stick.
“I have cut twenty notches, sire, already.”
“You will have no wood left to your spear soon, eh?”
“Room for more yet,” and he laughed. “I will tell you the names: Sir
John de Montigny, Sir Aymery de la Barre, Geoffroi Dubois, Sir Gringoir
of Angers, Lord Thomas Allison, whom I challenged at Brest—” And he ran
on, mouthing the syllables with the air of a gourmet recalling the
dishes at some great feast.
Tiphaïne drew her cloak about her as though she felt the cold.
“And to-day, sir, you have cut another notch,” she said.
“Ah, madame, it shall be one of the deepest, I assure you.”
Tinteniac was able to laugh.
“You flatter me, Fleming. We shared the fame at Mivoie.”
“Sire, madame your wife would break my spear at this last notch if she
could.”
His eyes challenged Tiphaïne, and she did not deny him.
To the man lying in the shadow of the tree these words came like the
blows of a passing bell. It seemed to him that he had heard all now that
he could ever know, and that the silver swan of Rennes would be but a
memory and a lost desire. He lay very still in the wet grass, looking at
Tiphaïne with a dull aching of the heart, as a man might look at a lost
love who has risen to trouble him beyond the waters of the river of
death.
XXX
CROQUART yawned behind his arm. He rose, threw a bundle of sticks upon
the fire, and called Tête Bois aside towards the horses. The free lance
was a little bowlegged, brown-faced Gascon, very tough and wiry, with
eyes like a hawk’s and a sharp nose and beard.
“Hello! can you keep awake to-night?” and Croquart shook him by the
shoulder. “We are in the way of earning a lapful of crowns. I will give
you a thousand crowns if we bring the Sieur de Tinteniac to Morlaix.”
Tête Bois’s eyes lost their sleepiness and twinkled like the eyes of a
rat.
“A thousand crowns, captain?”
“I say it again. Take this ring as a pledge. No tricks, or I shall pay
you in other coin.”
“Trust me,” and he took the ring; “you can go to sleep in peace. Madame
and her gentleman are safe by the fire. Go to sleep, captain,” and he
assumed the responsibility with an alert swagger.
“No tricks, little one.”
“A thousand crowns, captain!” and his eyes twinkled. “Curse me, I love
you.”
Bertrand saw the Fleming turn back towards the fire, where Tiphaïne was
helping Tinteniac to wrap himself in his cloak for the night. Bertrand
buried his face in the grass, as though unable to watch them at such an
hour as this. Tiphaïne, upon her bed of golden broom, had a sacredness
for him, even though she slept at another man’s side. She was pure,
irreproachable, herself still, and no carnal thoughts made his happier
memories bleed.
When Bertrand lifted his face again from the grass, Tinteniac, muffled
in his cloak, lay full length upon the bed of broom; while Tiphaïne,
leaning against the screen of boughs, had unloosed her hair and was
combing it with a little silver comb. Croquart, a mass of dusky red,
sprawled by the fire, his naked sword under his arm and his shield
propped against the saddle under his head. Tête Bois’s short and
bow-legged figure went to and fro with a shimmer of steel, his shadowy
face and the polished back of his bassinet turned alternately towards
Bertrand as he kept his guard.
Bertrand, forgetting Croquart and the sentinel, watched Tiphaïne as she
combed her hair. Her cloak, turned back a little, drew with its crimson
lining rivers of color from the whiteness of her throat. Tossed by the
comb, her hair glimmered in the firelight, rich whorls of mystery moving
about her face. To Bertrand her eyes seemed to look far into the night,
but what her thoughts were he could not tell.
He saw her put her comb away at last, turn and look at Tinteniac, who
seemed ready to forget his wounds in sleep. She stretched a hand towards
him, slowly, tentatively, but drew back sharply as Croquart found his
bed uncharitable and shifted his body with much heaving of the
shoulders. Tête Bois’s keen profile showed against the firelight,
mustachios upturned, nose beaking out from under the rim of his open
bassinet.
“Madame had better sleep. We travel early.”
The fellow had seen her stretch out her hand towards Tinteniac, and the
words warned her that the Gascon was not to be cajoled. His strut was
independent and alert as he turned his back on her abruptly and resumed
his marching to and fro.
Tiphaïne lay down on the bed, so that, though her face was hidden from
Bertrand, he could see the glitter of her hair. There was the length of
a sword between her and Tinteniac, three feet of flowering broom between
the green cloak and the gray. Bertrand in his heart thanked God that he
could see her so, separate, untouched under the moon. He could not have
looked at Tiphaïne if she had lain wrapped in Tinteniac’s arms. Twice he
saw her lift her head and look at Croquart and the rest. An hour passed
before weariness seemed to overpower distrust, and her stillness showed
him that she was asleep.
Tête Bois, tired of pacing to and fro, had come to a halt some ten paces
from the fire, and now leaned heavily upon his spear. The Gascon was
amusing himself by calculating how far a thousand crowns would go to
making him the master of a troop of horse. The pieces kept up a
fantastic dance before his eyes. He handled them lovingly in
anticipation, letting them slip through his fingers in glittering
showers, pouring them upon a table and listening to the joyous clangor
of the metal. The moon was but a great crown-piece so far as Tête Bois
was concerned. He took off the ring Croquart had given him as a pledge,
and held it out towards the fire to watch the flashing of the stones.
Unfortunately for Tête Bois, greed dulled the keenness of his senses,
and he neither saw nor heard the stealthy and sinuous moving of a black
shape across the moonlit grass. The Gascon might have swallowed his
thousand crowns for supper to judge by the nightmare that leaped on him
out of the mists of the silent woods.
Dawn came, and Croquart the Fleming was the first to wake. He yawned,
stretched himself, and sat up sleepily, his red face suffused, his
surcoat wet with the heavy dew. Gray mist hung everywhere over the
forest, though in the east there was a faint flush of rose and of gold.
The birds were piping in the thickets. Tinteniac and the lady were still
asleep.
Croquart smiled at them as a farmer might smile over the fatness of two
prize beasts. He scrambled up and looked round him for Tête Bois,
thinking that the Gascon might have gone to cut fodder for the horses.
The bow-legged paladin was nowhere to be seen. The watch-fire was out,
though the embers still steamed in the cold air of the morning.
“Hallo, there, Tête Bois!”
The deep voice, resonant from the Fleming’s chest, woke echoes in the
woods and silenced the birds singing in the thickets. Harduin, the
second free lance, sat up and rubbed his eyes like a cat pawing its
face. Tinteniac turned from sleep to find his wounds stiff and aching
under the sodden bandages. Tiphaïne, propped upon one elbow, her hair
falling down to touch the flowering broom, saw Croquart striding to and
fro, flourishing a stick, restless and impatient.
“Tête Bois, rascal, hallo!”
A few rabbits scurried down the misty glades, and a couple of partridges
went “burring” into cover. The Fleming’s voice brought back nothing.
Croquart looked grim.
“The little Gascon devil!” he thought. “That ring was worth a hundred
crowns, and a ring on the finger, Messire Tête Bois, is worth a thousand
crowns in my strong-box, eh? If I ever catch you, my friend, I will
break your back. Let us see whether you have taken your own horse.”
But Tête Bois’s horse was standing quietly with the rest, and the frown
on the Fleming’s face showed that he was puzzled. What had happened to
the fellow? And if he had deserted, why had he left his horse?
Tête Bois’s disappearance opened the day ill-humoredly for the Fleming.
The natural roughness of his temper broke to the surface, and he was
sullen and abrupt, his affectations of refinement damp as his own finery
with the night’s dew. Tiphaïne and her champion had never a smile from
him as they made their morning meal and Croquart bustled them to horse,
impatient as any merchant afraid of losing his silks and spices to
footpads ambushed in the woods. Such baggage as they had was tied on the
back of Tête Bois’s horse, and before the sun had been up an hour they
were on the road towards Morlaix.
The mists rolled away, leaving a dappling of clouds over the blue of the
May sky. The grass glittered with dew, and the scent of the woods was
like the scent of some cedar chest filled with the perfumed robes of a
queen. The beech-trees, with their splendor of misty green, towered up
beside the embattled oaks, whose crockets and finials seemed of bronze
and of gold. The grass was thick with many flowers, the robes of the
earth wondrous with color.
Yet beauty cannot save a man from pain, and before they had gone two
leagues that morning Tiphaïne saw that Tinteniac suffered. From white
his face had changed to gray, and his eyes had the wistful look that one
sees in the eyes of a wounded dog. He had lost much blood and needed
rest, for his harness and each jolting of the saddle gave him pain.
Pride kept Tinteniac silent—the pride of the man unwilling to ask
favors in defeat. The cool air of the morning had its balm, but when the
sun rose above the trees the heat of the day made his forehead burn.
Tiphaïne, looking up at him with pitying eyes, saw how he suffered,
though he told her nothing. Croquart, sullen and out of temper, had
forged on ahead, feeling the smart of the rout at Josselin. The man
Harduin, leading Tête Bois’s horse, followed leisurely in the rear.
“Your wounds are too much for you.” And she drew her palfrey close to
the great horse.
“No, child, no.”
“Tell the Fleming you must rest.”
Tinteniac straightened in the saddle with a slight shudder of pain.
“I can bear it longer,” he said, quietly.
“Why, sire, why? Croquart must let you rest.”
“Upon my soul, I will ask him no favor.”
“And upon my soul, sire, in ten minutes you will fall from your horse.”
She pushed past him without further parley and overtook the Fleming, who
was biting his beard and looking as ill-tempered as it is possible for a
man with an ugly jowl to look. Tiphaïne caught a glimpse of his solid
and pugnacious profile before he turned to her with an impatient glint
of the eyes.
“Well, madame, what now?”
“The Sieur de Tinteniac’s wounds are still open; he cannot travel
farther without a rest.”
“Rest—a soldier asks for rest!”
Tiphaïne’s color deepened. The very arrogance of the man’s impatience
fed her hate. She could have laid a whip across Croquart’s face with
immense comfort to her self-respect.
“You answer me—that?”
“I command here, madame.”
“Then call a halt.”
“The Sieur de Tinteniac must hold on to the saddle till we reach the
hills.”
“You have no pity!”
“I have no time to waste.”
“And I—no words.”
She reined in her palfrey, slipped from the saddle, and, leading the
beast aside by the bridle, began to pick the flowers that grew in the
long grass, as though she were at home in the La Bellière meadows.
Croquart pulled up his horse, looking as black and threatening as a
priest out-argued by a heretic. Tinteniac, guessing what had passed
between them, reined up in turn and let his horse crop the grass.
Croquart’s veneer of chivalry cracked under the heat of the sun.
Tiphaïne’s eyes had flattered him too little to persuade him to be
pleased with a woman’s whims. He heeled his horse across the road, to
see the Vicomte’s daughter retreating from him at her leisure, singing
to herself and stooping to pick flowers.
“Madame!”
Tiphaïne went on with her singing.
“Devil take the woman!” And he pushed on after her, not knowing for the
moment how to meet her tactics.
Tiphaïne stood in a pool of waving grass, where bluebells touched the
hem of her gray gown. Great oaks, with tops of burnished gold, swept up
beyond to touch the clouds. She reached out a white arm for the flowers,
seeing the shadow of Croquart’s horse loom towards her over the grass.
He was quite close before she turned and faced him, keeping her palfrey
between her and the Fleming.
“Well, Messire Croquart,” and she gave him the title with a curl of the
lip, “am I to believe that you have no manners?”
“A truce to this foolery.”
“I tell you, I am tired, sir, and I am going to rest.”
Croquart bit his beard.
“I shall have to dismount to you, madame.”
Her eyes blazed out at him, their splendor more visible now that she was
angry.
“Dismount to me, you butcher boy from Flanders! No, that would be too
gracious of you. Please continue to forget your manners.”
“Madame, I shall lose my temper with you.”
“It is lost already, Messire Croquart. Try the flat of your sword, or
the edge thereof if it pleases you. I am not afraid.”
“I shall have to put you up into the saddle.”
“You cannot keep me from falling off.”
“Hands and feet can be tied, eh?”
“Yes, and I have a knife.”
“Pah, madame, am I a fool? I tell you I am in no temper to be bated.”
“Get down, then, sir, and see if you can run in your heavy harness.
Meanwhile the Sire de Tinteniac might have his rest.”
Croquart opened his mouth to swear, but mastered himself with an effort,
as though realizing that the species of dictatorship was not crowned
with too much dignity.
“Come, madame, be reasonable.”
“Is it unreasonable, Messire Croquart, for a wife to fear that her
husband may die of his wounds?”
“Oh—you exaggerate.”
“The weight of your blows? They were not too feeble.”
“Grace de Dieu, madame, have your way, or we shall be quarrelling here
till midnight!”
“Then we rest for an hour?”
“I grant it.”
And he capitulated sulkily, with the air of a man giving way to the
foibles of a woman.
Of all this by-play Bertrand had a distant view as he followed Tiphaïne
through the green mystery of May. What were the golden meads to him, the
winding woodways wonderful with spring, the dawn song of the birds, the
scent of the wild flowers rising like incense out of the grass? To
Bertrand that silent and unseen journey towards Morlaix seemed like a
pilgrimage for the humbling of his heart. He followed, watched, planned,
yet felt himself forgotten, reading into every incident that passed a
woman’s tenderness for a man whom he himself could easily have loved.
Through the long watches of the night and the shining of the east at
dawn Bertrand had wrestled with his loneliness. It was not easy for him
to renounce so much, to accept forgetfulness, to look upon the past as a
mere memory. And yet the very obstinacy of his new self-discipline
helped him to throw his jealousy aside. What kind of creature would he
find himself if he deserted Tiphaïne at such a pass, standing upon a
mean punctilio, refusing to be generous save for his own ends? If he was
to suffer, then let him serve and suffer like a man, remembering the old
days when Tiphaïne had saved him from his shame.
XXXI
A DESOLATED homestead in a valley among the northern hills gave Croquart
and his prisoners shelter the same night. The house, built of unfaced
stone and thatched with straw and heather, had been plundered by some of
Bamborough’s English, whose passion for thoroughness in their thieving
moved them to burn what they could not carry.
Croquart rode into the grass-grown yard, where all the byres and
out-houses had been destroyed by fire, nothing but a few charred posts
rising above the weeds and nettles. The Fleming dismounted, after
sounding his horn to see whether any of the farm folk still loitered
about the place. They found the house itself to be full of filth, for
the birds had roosted on the rafters, and the English used it as a
stable, the droppings from their horses rotting upon the floor. It held
nothing but the hall, a cellar, and the goodman’s parlor under the
western gable—the last room being a little more cleanly than the hall,
its single window, with the shutter broken, looking down upon the
orchard. Pears and apples piled up their bloom above the rank splendor
of the grass—a sea of snow flecked and shaded with rose and green. To
the east of the orchard a great pool shimmered in the sunlight, its
waters dusted with blown petals from the trees.
Tinteniac was so stiff and sore with his wounds after the day’s ride
that Croquart had to help him from his horse. The Fleming, who had
examined the house, took Tinteniac in his arms, and carried him to the
upper room, where there was some mouldy straw piled in a corner. He laid
Tinteniac on the straw, having made a show of his great strength by
carrying a man taller than himself with the ease that he would have
carried a child of five. Croquart had recovered his self-complacency
since his skirmish with Tiphaïne in the morning, and she had had nothing
to charge him with save with his insufferable boasting.
Tinteniac was so utterly weary that he had not sufficient mind-force
left in him to resent his being treated as a dead weight for the
exhibition of the Fleming’s strength. He drew a deep breath of relief
when he felt his body sink into the straw—too faint to care whether the
bed was one of swan’s-down or of dung. In five minutes he was fast
asleep.
Harduin had watered the horses and stabled them in the hall, lit a fire,
and slung the cooking-pot over a couple of forked sticks. In a little
hovel at the end of the orchard Croquart had found some clean straw, and
carried a truss into the goodman’s parlor to make Tiphaïne a bed. She
met him with a finger on her lip, and pointed to Tinteniac, whose tired
body drank in sleep as a dry soil drinks in rain. How much alone she
was, how wholly at the Fleming’s mercy, she only realized as she watched
him spread the straw in a far corner of the room.
“You will sleep softly enough,” he said, turning on his knees, and
looking at her with an expression of the eyes she did not trust.
“It is not likely that I shall sleep,” and she moved aside towards the
window.
“No bedfellow, eh?” And he got up with a chuckle, leaving her alone with
the wounded man upon the straw.
Presently he returned with a pitcher full of water, some brown bread,
and a few olives. He set them down on a rough bench by the window, and
loitered foolishly at the door.
“I trust madame has forgotten the quarrel we had this morning?”
“I am ready to forget it, Messire Croquart.”
“Thanks,” and he gave her an impudent bow, “we shall be better friends
before we reach Morlaix.”
When he had gone she closed the door on him, and found to her delight
the wooden bar that was used in lieu of a latch. The staples were firm
in the oak posts, yet not so firm that she could abandon her distrust.
The rough bench at the window, a cup of water, olives, and bread; with
such comforts she was content, so long as the door parted Croquart and
herself. While Tinteniac slept she watched the sun sink low behind the
woods that broke like green waves upon the bosoms of the hills. Below
her lay the orchard trees, smothering the old house with beauty under
the benisons of eve. Swallows were skimming over the still waters of the
pond, and the mist in the meadows covered the sheeted gold of May.
In the dirty cobwebbed hall Croquart was making his plans for the coming
night. The house door, studded with iron nails, lay wrenched from its
hinges in the yard, and through the open windows the birds and bats
could come and go. Croquart, sitting on a saddle by the fire, his sword
across his thighs, called Harduin to him, and offered him the same bribe
as he had given Tête Bois the night before.
“Well, my friend, are you in a hurry to desert?”
The fellow fidgeted under the Fleming’s eyes.
“Come, let us understand each other; I have a mind to be generous. Will
you stand by Croquart the Fleming or follow Tête Bois, who preferred a
ring to a thousand crowns?”
Harduin, who had already stolen the rings from Tinteniac’s dead
esquires, appeared even more greedy than the Gascon.
“When shall I finger the money, captain?”
“At Morlaix.”
“Call it a bargain.”
“And easily earned, eh? Keep guard in the orchard near the Sieur de
Tinteniac’s window.”
Harduin nodded.
“The house shall be my affair. Whistle if you see anything strange.”
“Right, captain.”
And taking his spear and shield with him, he went out into the orchard
to keep watch.
About midnight Tinteniac awoke, and turned on his straw with the
confused thoughts of a man whose surroundings are strange to him.
Tiphaïne, seated by the window, where the moonlight streamed in upon the
floor, went to him quietly, and knelt down by the bed.
“You have slept well,” and she felt his forehead; “there is food here if
you are hungry.”
“Asleep! Selfish devil that I am! You must be tired to death.”
“No, I am not tired.”
He looked at her steadily, propping himself upon one arm. Sleep had
cooled the fever in him, freshened his brain, and strengthened the
beating of his heart. The room lit by the moonlight, the perfumed
coolness of the night, the white face of the woman by the bed, filled
him with a sense of strangeness and of mystery.
“It is my turn to watch.” And he touched her arm, thrilling, man of
forty that he was, at Tiphaïne’s nearness to him in the moonlight.
“There is no need for it; I have barred the door.”
“And Croquart?”
She did not tell him of her great distrust.
“Croquart has left us as man and wife. I have too much to think about to
wish to sleep.”
Tinteniac sank back on his straw, watching her as she brought him the
water-pot, bread, and olives.
“I am afraid I am a broken reed,” he said, with the smile of a man
contented to be ministered to by a woman’s hands.
“You must gain strength, sire, for both our sakes.”
“Yes, true.”
“Therefore, you must sleep again.”
“I would rather talk.”
“We can talk to-morrow.”
“Have we not changed our parts? Well, I will obey your orders.”
And in half an hour his breathing showed that he had forgotten the world
and such subtleties as the glimmer of moonlight on a woman’s hair.
Tiphaïne had returned to her seat by the window, her sense of loneliness
increased now that Tinteniac was asleep. The night, with all its
infinite uncertainty, its vague sounds and distorted shadows, filled her
with restlessness and with those imaginings that people the world with
half-seen shapes. The bravest of us are but great children when a wind
blows the boughs against the window at midnight, and the moon, that
magician of the skies, brings back the childhood of the race, when man
trembled before Nature, filling the forest, the desert, and the marsh
with goblin creatures born out of his own vivid brain.
Before Tiphaïne at her window stood the orchard trees, pillars of ebony
spreading into carved canopies of whitest marble, each chisel-mark
perfect as from the touch of a god. The deep grass looked black as water
in a well, the wooded slopes of the silent valley steepled with a
thousand shimmering spires. Under an apple-tree stood Croquart’s
sentinel, leaning lazily against the trunk, the moonlight sifting
through the apple bloom and dappling his harness with silver burrs.
Tiphaïne had discovered Harduin there, and knew that he had been set
there to watch the window. Twice she saw Croquart enter the orchard to
assure himself that Harduin was awake at his post.
An hour later she heard the Fleming mount the stairs, stealthily and
with the deliberation of a man fearing to wake a household as he creeps
to an intrigue. She could hear his breathing as he stood and listened,
while the rats scuffled and squeaked under the wood-work of the floor.
His hand tried the door, shaking it cautiously with tentative clickings
of the wooden latch. Tiphaïne thanked God for the good oak-bar that gave
Messire Croquart the lie for once. He turned at last and went back to
the hall, where she could hear him swearing and throwing wood upon the
fire. There would be no thought of sleep for the mock wife that night.
Now whether Tiphaïne was very quick of hearing, or whether the tension
of her distrust had turned up the sensitiveness of her ears, she heard
some sound in the moonlit orchard that seemed lost upon Harduin as he
leaned against his tree. The noise resembled the faint “tuff—tuff” of a
sheep cropping at short grass. Sometimes it ceased, only to commence
again, nearer and more distinct to her than before. Tiphaïne strained
her ears and her conjectures to set a cause to the approaching sound.
She wondered that Harduin had not heard it, and judged that his bassinet
might make him harder of hearing than herself.
A suggestion of movement, a vague sheen in the grass showed in the
moonlight under the apple-trees, as of something crawling towards the
house. Slowly, noiselessly, a figure rose from the grass behind the
trunk of the tree against which Croquart’s sentinel was leaning. There
was a sudden darting forward of the stooping figure, a flinging out of a
pair of arms, a curious choking cry, a short struggle. Tiphaïne saw
Harduin drop his spear, writhe and twist like a man with a rope knotted
about his neck. In the moonlight she could see the violent contortions
of his body, his hands tearing at something that seemed to grip his
throat, his feet scraping and kicking at the soft turf. The man’s
struggle reminded her of a toy she had had as a child, a little wooden
manikin, whose legs and arms flew into grotesque attitudes on the
pulling of a string. Before she realized what had happened, Harduin’s
muscles relaxed, his hands dropped, and he hung against the trunk of the
tree like a man nailed there through the throat. The body slid slowly to
earth, doubled upon itself, was seized and heaved up over the shoulders
of the other, and carried away into the deeps of the orchard.
A shudder of superstitious terror passed through Tiphaïne. It had been
done so swiftly, with such unhuman silence, that Harduin might have been
pounced upon by some ogre out of the woods. The patch of grass under the
apple-tree fascinated her; her eyes remained fixed on it, her heart
going at a gallop, the blood drumming in her ears. With a sudden flash
of intuition she remembered Tête Bois’s disappearance the preceding
night, and the way the man Guymon had been stricken down over the bodies
of the dead esquires. Some grim and inexorable spirit seemed tracking
Croquart through the woods, a fierce shadow that seized its prey under
cover of the night.
She lifted her head suddenly with a quick-drawn breath of eagerness and
fear. Something was moving in the orchard, for she heard the same
peculiar sound that had heralded its first coming. A faint glimmer of
harness under the white boughs, and a figure drew out of the mists of
the night and halted under the tree where Harduin had stood a few
minutes ago. A half-luminous band ran from the man’s breast to the rank
grass, the long blade of a sword like a beam of moonlight slanting
through a chink in a shuttered window at night. The figure remained
motionless, leaning upon the sword, as though it stood on guard in the
orchard and waited for the dawn.
XXXII
BERTRAND kept watch in his black harness under the apple-tree, knowing
that his time would come when Croquart should find him there, an enemy
in Harduin’s place. Whether it was the last night-watch he would ever
keep, Bertrand du Guesclin could not tell. He knew Croquart’s great
strength and the little mercy he might expect from him; he knew that he
was to match himself against a man who had never taken a beating in
single combat. Bertrand put the chances of victory and defeat beyond the
pale of thought. He was to fight Croquart for his head and for the two
prisoners pent up in the ruined house. For his own life Bertrand had no
particular greed. He would kill Croquart or be killed himself.
Cool, calm-eyed, firm at the mouth, he watched the night pass and the
dawn come up out of the broadening east. He saw the color kindle on the
apple-trees, the wet grass flash and glitter at his feet, the dim woods
smoking with their silvery mists. He heard the birds begin in the great
orchard, thrush and robin, blackbird and starling, piping and chattering
as the sky grew bright.
“Bide by it! bide by it!” sang a thrush in the tree above his head.
“Thanks, my brown fellow,” he said, with a grim smile; “wait and see
whether Bertrand du Guesclin runs away.”
He stretched his arms and the muscles of his chest and shoulders,
tossing his sword from hand to hand. The flash of the steel seemed
reflected to him for the moment from the narrow window of the solar in
the western gable. Bertrand stood still. He had seen the white oval of a
face framed by the inward darkness of the room, as though some one
watched him without wishing to be seen. He knew that it was Tiphaïne by
the faint gleam of her coiled hair. How coldly she would be looking at
him with those eyes of hers, taking him for Croquart’s man, a shabby
fellow who fought for hire. His carcass and his destiny could concern
her little.
“Hallo, a whistle! Now, Brother Croquart, let us get to work.”
He whipped round, closed his visor, and looked quickly to the buckles of
his harness, and to see that his dagger was loose in its sheath. His
shield, that he had hung on a bough of the apple-tree, dipped down and
changed the fruit bough for his arm. The taut grip of the strap gave
Bertrand a kind of comfort. He had two friends left him, his battered
shield and his old sword.
Round the corner of the house came Croquart, his bassinet half laced,
his scabbard bumping against his legs, the creases in his red surcoat
showing that he had been asleep. He saw the man leaning lazily against
the tree, and promptly cursed him for not answering his whistle.
“Harduin, blockhead, water the horses!”
The sentinel moved never an inch.
“Hallo, there, hallo, have you got maggots in your brain?”
Croquart’s hail might have cheered on a troop of horse in the thick of a
charge home. He came striding through the grass, with his fingers
twitching, a buffet tingling in the muscles of his arm.
“Hallo, you deaf fool—”
His mouth was open, the lips a red oval, empty for the instant of more
words. It was not Harduin under the tree, but the man in the black
harness who had stricken down Guymon in the woods. Croquart looked
staggered, like some fat grandee charged in the pit of the stomach by a
small boy’s head.
The repulse was but momentary. He leaped full six feet from where he
stood, sweeping his gadded fist forward with good intent for the
stranger’s head. Bertrand, every muscle on the alert, was quicker far
than Croquart. The Fleming’s fist smashed the bark from the tree,
leaving him bloody knuckles despite his glove.
“Good-day, Brother Croquart”—and a sword came to the salute—“they have
offered five thousand crowns for your head at Josselin.”
The Fleming began tying the laces of his bassinet.
“And who are you, sir, that you are such a fool to think of earning the
Sieur de Beaumanoir’s money?”
“I am a Breton, Brother Croquart, and that is the reason why I am going
to have your head.”
XXXIII
TINTENIAC was still asleep upon his straw, nor did Tiphaïne wake him,
but stood at the window and watched the drama that was taking shape
under the apple boughs. The man in the black harness was leaning on his
sword, waiting for Croquart, whose fingers fumbled at the laces of his
bassinet. There was something familiar to Tiphaïne in this attitude of
his, the attitude of a man whose heart beat steadily and whose eyes were
quick and on the alert.
Croquart’s sword was out. He looked at the window where Tiphaïne stood,
and guessed by her face that she did not wish him great success.
“Guard, Breton.”
They sprang to it with great good-will, Bertrand keeping careful guard,
and never shifting his eyes from the Fleming’s face. He had learned his
lesson off by heart, to let Croquart think that he had an easy bargain
and that a few heavy blows would end the tussle. The butcher-boy of
Flanders fell to the trick; he had met so few men who could match him in
arms that he had grown rash in his methods, forgetting that guile is
often more deadly than muscle and address. He had seen that Bertrand was
a head shorter than himself; he soon suspected that he was clumsy, and
not the master of his sword.
Bertrand gave ground, puffing and laboring like a man hard pressed. He
let the Fleming’s blows rattle about his body harness, half parrying
them with a concealed adroitness, continually retreating, or dodging to
right and left. He was playing for an opening in Croquart’s attack,
luring him into rashness, tempting him to hammer at him without thought
of a dangerous counter in return. Croquart would soon stretch himself
for the _coup de grâce_, thinking his man tired, and that he had trifled
with him over-long.
Still Bertrand bided his time. He faltered suddenly, made a pretended
stumble, tempted Croquart with an unguarded flank. Down came the
Fleming’s open blow, given with the rash vigor of a man imagining the
victim at his mercy. Bertrand bent from it like a supple osier, rallied,
and struck out with a swiftness that caught Messire Croquart off his
balance and off his guard. Steel met steel on the vambrace of the
Fleming’s sword-arm. Tiphaïne had a vision of a lopped limb swinging by
its tendons, of a falling sword, of a second blow heaved home on the
Fleming’s thigh.
The loss of his right hand sent Croquart mad. He picked up the fallen
sword, and flew at Bertrand like any Baersark, the one lust left in him
to wound, to mutilate, and to kill.
The din of their fighting had wakened Tinteniac, and he had dragged
himself from the straw to join Tiphaïne at the window. They stood
shoulder to shoulder, silent, and half awed by the fury of these two
men, who neither desired nor craved for mercy. Tinteniac had seen such
battles before, but to the woman there was something horrible and
repulsive in its animal frenzy, a reversion to the brutal past, when the
lusts of man made him an ape or a bull. She shuddered at Croquart’s
dangling hand, and at the mad biting of his breath as he lashed at
Bertrand with his sword. Shocked by the brute violence, the physical
distortions of the scene, she turned back into the room, unwilling to
watch the ordeal to the end.
Soon she heard a hoarse cry from Tinteniac. The men had closed and gone
to earth, and were struggling together in the long grass. Croquart was
losing blood and strength, and in such a death-grapple under the trees
the cunning of the wrestler gave Bertrand the advantage. Though the
lighter man, he was tougher and more sinewy than the Fleming, and fit in
the matter of condition as a lean hound who has worked for his food.
“By God, he has the fellow down!”
Tinteniac was biting his lips in his excitement, and shivering like a
dog on leash waiting to be let loose upon the quarry. Bertrand, with a
twist of the leg and a hug of the Fleming’s body, had turned Croquart
under him and won the upper hand. The Breton’s fist flew to his poniard.
Croquart, who knew the meaning of the act, kicked like a mad horse,
twisting and turning under Bertrand’s body. With a heave of the arm he
rolled half over, and, lifting Bertrand, struggled to his knees. Before
he could shake the Breton off the misericord was splitting the plates of
his gorget. Croquart, with a great cry, fell forward upon his face,
dragging Bertrand with him into the grass, as a sinking ship drags down
the enemy it has grappled hulk to hulk. Slowly the black figure
disentangled itself from the red, rose up, and leaned for a moment
against the trunk of a tree.
“An end to Croquart!”
The words came from Tinteniac in a half whisper, but Tiphaïne heard them
where she stood in the deep shadow against the wall.
Croquart dead! And she seemed to feel the great breath of gratitude the
Breton folk would draw for such a death. Guymon, Tête Bois, Harduin, and
the Fleming, all had fallen to the sword of this one man who had dogged
them through the woods past Loudeac. Tinteniac had taken his shield, and
was holding it from the window so that the hero of the orchard should
see the blazonings. Tiphaïne still leaned against the wall, watching
Tinteniac and the blur of green woodland and blue sky above his head.
Bertrand was bending over Croquart and unlacing the bassinet that still
bore the fox’s brush. He saw Tiphaïne’s face beside Tinteniac at the
window. Her presence did not hinder him, but rather urged him to
despatch the work in hand.
“Sieur de Tinteniac,” he shouted, “make me one promise and I give you
back your liberty.”
The aristocrat made the man in the black harness a very flattering bow.
“The conqueror of Croquart can ask what he pleases.”
Bertrand, with Tiphaïne’s face looking down on him like lost love’s face
out of heaven, broke the laces of Croquart’s bassinet.
“Sire”—and his voice needed no disguising—“I ask you and madame, your
wife, not to leave that room till I have made an end.”
Tinteniac gave the promise, turning with a smile to Tiphaïne, who
promised nothing.
“Granted, sir. And in return, will you trust us with your name?”
Bertrand had turned his back on them and was bending over the body.
“Sire, you ask me what I cannot answer.”
“We will hold it sacred.”
Bertrand shook his head.
Tinteniac pressed him no further, and Bertrand, forcing off Croquart’s
bassinet, broke away the plates of the gorget from the bleeding throat.
Picking up his poniard he slit the Fleming’s surcoat from breast to
knee, dragged it from the body, and spread the stuff upon the grass. Two
sharp sweeps of the sword served to sever the neck. The dead thing was
wrapped up in the red surcoat, and the ends of the cloth knotted
together.
Tinteniac watched all this from the window, mystified in measure as to
what the man in the black harness purposed next. He had not noticed that
Tiphaïne had left him, had lifted the bar from the staples, and was
hurrying down the stone stairway into the hall.
Bertrand ran the blade of his sword under the knotted ends of the
surcoat, slung it over his shoulder like a bundle, and picked up his
shield. He gave a last look at the window, saluted Tinteniac, and
marched off briskly into the orchard. His black harness had already
disappeared beyond the apple-trees before Tiphaïne’s gray gown swept the
grass.
She looked round her with a slight knitting of the brows, seeing only
Tinteniac at the window, the white domes of the trees, and the headless
body in its gaudy harness lying prone in the long grass.
“Where?” and her eyes questioned Tinteniac, who stroked his chin and
appeared puzzled.
“Our Breton champion has left us with our liberty.”
“Gone?”
“Like a beggar with a bundle. Let the man alone. He has his reasons and
the advantage of us.”
“And yet—”
Tinteniac laughed.
“The woman in you is inquisitive,” he said.
Tiphaïne went a few steps nearer to Croquart’s body. It seemed difficult
to believe that this lifeless, weltering thing had raised in her but an
hour ago all the passionate hatred that great love of her home land
could inspire. Now that it was mere carrion she conceived a scornful
pity for the thing as she recalled the man’s arrogance, his bombast, his
supreme and coarse self-adoration. Truly this was the proper rounding of
such a life, to be bred a butcher, fattened with the blood of a noble
province, and left a mere carcass for the crows and wolves. She turned
from Croquart’s body with a sigh half of pity, half of disgust.
Tinteniac watched her from the window, his mind moved by the same
reflections, the religious instinct in him pointing a moral. In the
distance he had seen a figure on a horse pass through the morning mists
in the meadows and vanish into the sun-touched woods.
“Our Breton has gone,” and he lifted up his shield, “I would have given
half that ransom to have had a glimpse of his face.”
Tiphaïne looked at him with eyes that mused.
“Why should he have deserted us?”
“I am no reader of riddles. And our plans? What are they to be?”
“I am thinking of your wounds,” she answered.
“They are nothing. This fellow has given me new strength. Shall we still
say, ‘to Josselin’?”
“Thanks, sire. I remember that I have the truth to tell.”
XXXIV
NOT a league from the Breton homestead, where Croquart the Fleming had
made his end, the gyron of Geoffroi Dubois, vert, a bend between two
buckles argent, came dancing along the road from Loudeac. With Dubois
were Carro de Bodegat and some score more who had sworn on the crosses
of their swords to overtake Croquart before he could find sanctuary with
an English garrison in the west. By luck they had struck upon his trail
near Loudeac where the fox’s brush and the red surcoat had been seen,
and recognized; and at Loudeac, also, Dubois had found Tinteniac’s
men-at-arms and the La Bellière servants, ready to affirm on oath that
the Fleming could muster at least a hundred men. Dubois and his
gentlemen had wasted no time scouring the country towards Morlaix, and
doubtless they would have won the credit of taking the Fleming’s head
had not the man in the black harness been more forward in the adventure.
Geoffroi Dubois and Carro de Bodegat were pushing on with their troop at
a brisk trot that morning, when the very fellow who had cheated them of
the prize loomed up against the sky-line, on the crest of a moor. The
morning sun shone in Bertrand’s eyes, and he was seen by Dubois’s men
before he caught the flutter of their pennons down in the hollow where
the moorland touched the woods. Half a dozen riders had broken away to
right and left, and were cantering over the heather to make a capture
certain.
Bertrand showed no concern at the measures taken to secure the pleasure
of a parley with him. He reined in his horse to a walk, and approached
Dubois’s troop, reading their pennons and the devices upon their
shields. If the green gyron of Dubois did not please him hugely, the
tawny and blue of De Bodegat’s pennon was even less welcome to
Bertrand’s eyes. These two Breton knights had been no friends to him in
the Montfort wars. Dubois was a man jealous for his dignity, a good
hater, and not over magnanimous or honest where his own interests were
concerned. Carro de Bodegat had a grudge against Du Guesclin, an old
wound, and an unpaid score. They would be ready to throw the
troth-breaking at Mivoie in his face, the more so he thought now that he
had forestalled them in the taking of Croquart’s head.
Bertrand, on his raw-boned horse, looked for all the world like a needy
free lance riding from town to town in search of hire. The green gyron
came to a halt on a hillock, Dubois, gentleman of distinction that he
was, refusing to drag his dignity aside to catechise a fellow who made
so indifferent a show. The humble rush-light should approach the
baronial torch, and Bertrand, knowing Dubois’s nature, kept his visor
down, and prepared to be hectored by the noble.
“Hallo, my man, you are on the road early.”
Bertrand saluted the Breton gentlemen as their tall spears gathered
about him like the striding masts of as many ships. He had the red
bundle before him on the saddle, and answered Dubois in broad Breton
patois, posing as the common soldier in search of pay.
“God’s grace to you, sire, I ride towards Josselin; they tell me men are
needed under the Marshal’s banner.”
Dubois studied him with the leisurely impertinence of a great lord
criticising the patched clothes of a servant.
“So you go to Josselin, my little fellow, eh? Have you had news
hereabouts of Croquart the Fleming?”
Bertrand looked stupidly at Dubois’s green plume.
“Croquart! To be sure, sire, Croquart is dead.”
“How! Croquart dead!”
There was a slight swaying of the spears like the swaying of tall
ash-trees in a wind.
“Sire, if it please you I saw Croquart’s body lying unburied in the
orchard of a farm-house not three miles farther west.”
Dubois was not pleased; nor were De Bodegat and the rest.
“Be careful, my friend, how you tamper with the truth. How did you know
that it was Croquart you saw dead?”
Bertrand did not hesitate.
“Sire, by the fox’s brush.”
“Yes.”
“And the ugliness of the Fleming’s face.”
Carro de Bodegat, tempted to quarrel with the nature of the news, leaned
towards Dubois, and pointed out the red bundle Bertrand carried on his
saddle.
“I’ll swear the fellow is playing tricks with us.”
“Well, try him.”
“Let him open that bundle.”
Carro de Bodegat’s sharp eyes had picked out the gold thread-work on the
scarlet cloth, and a patch of purplish ooze on the under side thereof.
“Friend, do you carry your food there?”
“Where, sir?”
“There, in that bundle.”
Bertrand held the thing up by its knotted ends.
“Devil take it, the cider bottle has had a knock!”
Bodegat pouted his lips, and sniffed.
“Do you carry your brown bread in ciclaton and your cider bottles in
silk?” he asked.
“God’s mercy, sirs, what’s there to quarrel with in the stuff?”
Dubois exchanged a glance with Bodegat.
“Let us see what you have in that cloth.”
Bertrand made a show of hesitation.
“Open it, I say.”
“But, sirs—”
“Open it, or—” and at a sign from Dubois half a dozen spears were
slanted at Bertrand’s body.
Persuaded, he fumbled at the knots, flung out his arm suddenly, holding
the surcoat by a corner.
“Have your way, Messire Geoffroi Dubois. Look and see whether this is
Croquart’s head.”
That which but an hour ago had held the conscious soul of a man was
tossed from the red surcoat at the feet of Dubois’s horse. The beast
reared and backed some paces. Twenty figures were craning forward in
their saddles to get a glimpse of the thing that had half hidden itself
in a clump of heather.
Carro de Bodegat was the first to earth. He threw his bridle to a
trooper, and, picking up the Fleming’s head by the hair, looked at the
face, with its closed lids and gaping mouth, and, turning with a sharp,
inarticulate cry, held up the head before Dubois.
“It is Croquart’s.”
“Should I not know it?”
“Who killed him?”
“Bertrand du Guesclin.”
Bodegat turned sharply on the man in the black harness.
“And you?”
“I am Bertrand du Guesclin, Messire Carro de Bodegat. Has my face
changed since I fought with you at Quimperlé?”
He put up his visor and let Dubois and the Bretons see his face. Many of
them knew him; but there was no comradely cheering, no out-stretching of
the hand.
Dubois had touched Bodegat on the shoulder with his spear, and they were
speaking together in low tones, glancing from time to time at the man
who had robbed them of Croquart’s head. Bertrand liked neither their
looks nor their whisperings; the hedge of spears about his horse raised
his impatience and filled him with distrust.
“Messire Dubois, I am waiting for that head.”
The pair ignored him, and still chattered together, their faces nearly
touching, like a pair of lovers poking confidences into each other’s
ears. Bertrand was spreading the red surcoat for the return of Croquart
the Fleming’s head, watching the two whisperers with gathering
impatience.
“We make a virtue of waiting,” he said to the three Bretons nearest to
him; “these two gentlemen seem very enamoured of each other’s tongues.”
Dubois’s figure straightened suddenly in the saddle. Carro de Bodegat
turned, with an unpleasant smirk hovering about his mouth.
“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, we have not finished with you yet.”
“So!”
“There is a matter which concerns us all.”
“Messire, I ask you to give me back that head.”
“Gentlemen, close round; I order you to arrest a traitor.”
Bertrand’s hand went to his sword. Carro de Bodegat had already seized
his bridle.
“Bertrand du Guesclin, surrender.”
“Surrender! In God’s name, no!” and he struck at Bodegat with his fist,
broke loose, and made a plunge forward to be free. Half a dozen men
closed round him like Saracen galleys about a sturdy ship. His sword was
struck down, the shaft of a spear thrust between the hind legs of his
horse, bringing the beast to earth, with Bertrand pinned by the right
knee. Before he could break loose De Bodegat and four others heaped
themselves on him and soon had him helpless and flat upon his back.
“Off, fools!—I surrender.”
“Let him up, sirs!” and Dubois bent forward in the saddle, still holding
Croquart’s head by the hair.
The men rose from him, and Bertrand, sullen and angry, scrambled slowly
to his feet.
“Which of you calls me a traitor?” and he swung round and looked from
man to man. “Answer me; I am to be heard. You, De Bodegat? By Heaven,
you have not the courage!”
Dubois’s mounted figure, haughty and splendid with its opulence of armor
and sweeping plume, moved forward and overtopped Bertrand with an air of
towering and seigniorial strength.
“Messire du Guesclin, what of the Oak of Mivoie?”
Dubois’s horse overshadowed him, but Bertrand held his ground.
“Well, what of Mivoie?”
“You broke troth, sir.”
“And if I did?”
“You stand to be judged by any two of those whom you deserted; so run
the Marshal’s orders. As for this head—well, it is Croquart’s, and it
has been noised abroad that you were Croquart’s man.”
“I Croquart’s man! By Heaven, a lie!”
His sturdy scorn flew full in the face of Geoffroi Dubois. It was then
that Carro de Bodegat stood forward, precise, courteous, and insolently
suave.
“By your leave, gentlemen, I will ask Messire Bertrand du Guesclin a few
questions.”
“Ask on.” And Bertrand held his head high and squared his shoulders.
“Come, sweet sir, why should we quarrel? You were not at Mivoie; good;
and why?”
Bertrand looked Bodegat straight in the face.
“That is my affair.”
“You will not answer?”
“No.”
“Then we can conclude the reason—some slight sickness, a seductive soul
in a tavern on the road. But wait, you have been at Pontivy, eh, with
the Fleming’s men?”
Bertrand felt the coils of Bodegat’s cunning, but he was far too
stubborn to slip through them with a lie.
“True; I was at Pontivy. Does that make me Croquart’s man?”
Bodegat smiled and gave a shrug of the shoulders.
“Oh, we had our spies there, messire; we are not fools. But bear with
me; another question: Why have you beaten out the eagle from your
shield?”
Bertrand’s sturdy figure quivered under the unruffled insolence of
Bodegat’s pleased cleverness.
“That also is my affair.”
“Of course; these gentlemen will understand. You choose to ride abroad
unrecognized. And, doubtless, messire, you were at the fight before
Josselin town?”
Bertrand bent his head.
“You did not fight for us.”
“I fought for neither side.”
Bodegat and the listeners laughed aloud.
“Messire du Guesclin, you are a prudent soldier. And yet you had heard
that Beaumanoir had offered five thousand crowns for the Fleming’s
head.”
“I had heard it.”
“Five thousand crowns, good money, for striking off a Fleming’s head,
perhaps while he was asleep.”
This last taunt brought Bertrand’s patience down. He sprang at Bodegat,
only to be dragged back and to find a couple of spear-points at his
throat.
“Messire Carro de Bodegat”—and he grappled with his wrath and conquered
it—“these words of yours shall not be writ in sand. Ask the Sieur de
Tinteniac whether Croquart the Fleming was murdered in his sleep.”
Bodegat bowed.
“The Sieur de Tinteniac and the Vicomte de Bellière’s daughter—the Lady
Tiphaïne—where are they?”
“Where Croquart’s body lies.”
“And they know that Bertrand du Guesclin killed him?”
“No, messire, they do not.”
Bodegat made a pitying gesture with his hands. There was a grim yet
ironical exchange of confidences among the esquires and troopers. Carro
de Bodegat had entangled Bertrand in what appeared to them a web of
treachery, greed, and double-dealing. They showed no surprise when
Dubois ordered Du Guesclin’s hands to be bound behind his back, that he
should be set upon his horse, and his feet tied under the beast’s belly.
He suffered the shame of it without a murmur, ignoring the derision and
looking steadily at Croquart’s head, that Dubois still carried.
“Forward, gentlemen!”
And, getting to horse, they pushed on for the homestead where Croquart
and his prisoners had passed the night.
XXXV
BERTRAND, bound hand and foot, rode between Dubois and Carro de Bodegat,
a figure of flint. His eyes seemed to see nothing but the monotonous
banking of the clouds across the western sky. Dubois and Carro de
Bodegat had never a word from him. They thought him savage and sulky, a
rough fellow with a temper of the more sinister sort, who was furious at
having been brought so suddenly to book.
Carro de Bodegat and Dubois knew nothing of the agony of loneliness that
wounded Bertrand’s heart, nor did they imagine that they were dragging
him to a humiliation that he dreaded more than death. Bertrand had a
foreshadowing of the ignominies that would soon ensue. In thought he saw
himself standing before Tiphaïne, a disgraced man, a traitor, a breaker
of solemn promises. He felt death in his heart at the thought of meeting
those eyes of hers. What a hypocrite he would appear, what a mean,
dastardly fool, whose honor was a mere drab to be debauched shamelessly
for the sake of gold! Bertrand du Guesclin, bribed by the English not to
fight at Mivoie! Inferences and facts were against him on every side.
Robin, poor coward, had confessed nothing; of that Bertrand felt
assured.
And now Tiphaïne was Tinteniac’s wife. Had he not seen them whispering
together, lying on one bed, passing before him as lover and beloved? The
bitterness of his predicament gave jealousy a second opening into
Bertrand’s heart. Why should he bear all this for Tiphaïne and for Robin
Raguenel, her brother, and what was Bertrand du Guesclin to the Sieur de
Tinteniac’s wife, that he should die dangling on a rope to save her and
her kinsmen from the humiliation of the truth? Surely his passion for
self-sacrifice had made him mad, and he was throwing life and honor away
for the sake of an imaginary duty.
Yet of such stubborn stuff was Bertrand’s soul that the fight was fought
and won in him before his black horse had carried him a furlong. Like
some old pagan martyr, he would rather drink the poison than confess
himself a fool and recant from a philosophy that the world might class
as madness. He had chosen his part, and it should serve him to the
bitter end. Every child in Brittany might be taught to curse him as a
traitor, but confess himself beaten—that, before God, he would not do.
Bertrand could meet death, but to meet Tiphaïne—that was another
matter. The infinite refinement of such a humiliation, the pitiful
injustice of it, modified his pride in that respect alone. What need was
there for Dubois and De Bodegat to make a mock of him before her face?
If they had any pity, any touch of chivalry nearer their knightliness
than the tinctures on their shields, they would spare him this ordeal
and let him make his end in peace. At least he could ask them this last
favor. They could but refuse it, and then he would know the worst.
“Messire Dubois,” and he opened his lips for the first time since they
had bound him upon his horse, “you have called me a traitor. Is my
treachery so great that I cannot speak to you as man to man?”