“When the thorns are white, and the larks singHigh in the blue sky over the fields.”
“When the thorns are white, and the larks singHigh in the blue sky over the fields.”
“When the thorns are white, and the larks singHigh in the blue sky over the fields.”
“When the thorns are white, and the larks sing
High in the blue sky over the fields.”
Heavens! how cracked and shrill her voice sounded! She stopped as though the sound of it frightened her, and threw the lute aside in mute disgust. Ah, that something would happen, that a storm would come, anything but this autumn mist, this silence, these dripping trees! Why should she not take Fate by the throat and go forth into the darkness of Broceliande? There were wolves in the forest, but were they more horrible than the Black Death? There were thieves—and footpads. Yes, but even a knife would be better than the pest’s slow torture.
She turned suddenly to a table of carved oak that bore a small basin of black marble. The bowl was half filled with water, water that reflected the colored hangings and the beams and plaster-work of the ceiling. Tiphaïne bent over the bowl and looked into the spirit mirror. She knew something of magic, and had dabbled her white hands in the mysteries of the age. Muttering certain words that had some deep meaning according to the strange old book the girl kept locked in the chest at the bottom of her bed, and shading the water with her hands, she looked into it till the pupils of her eyes were wide as in the dark. For a long time she stood there gazing into the bowl, while it remained pictureless, showing nothing but her white face and her weary eyes. At last she seemed to be blessed with a vision, for her features sharpened and she breathed more rapidly, like one troubled by some sudden warning. In the bowl Tiphaïne could see the image of men riding, the glimmer of their armor like moonlight upon the sea.
“Guicheaux, you have ridden Broceliande before; is not that a tower yonder, rising above the trees?”
Guicheaux, a lean fellow with a face like a hatchet, heeled his horse forward and followed the pointing of Bertrand’s spear.
“It looks like stone, lording,” he said.
“Well, and what then?”
“Why, lording, it will be something to crack a nut upon,” and Guicheaux chuckled, unconverted ribald that he was and the quipster of the party.
Bertrand frowned at him.
“Come, leave your fooling. What place is it? Do you know this valley?”
“Pardon, lording,” and Guicheaux grinned till his creased face looked longer than ever; “I left a wife here once. I should know it.”
“Get on, get on.”
“It was the Sieur de Rohan’s hunting-tower, and many a good stag has he pulled down in these thickets. He loved the place, lording, and the ladies in it. I was a beater, and yet beaten in those days, for of all the washerwomen who ever handled a mop-stick my wife was the strongest in the arm.”
The men laughed; Guicheaux had flown his jest, and smirked as he gathered up the applause.
“Your servant, sires; and, seigneurs, you will not betray me if the woman is still alive?”
“No, no, Guicheaux; she has consoled herself, or swallowed her own stick.”
Bertrand had halted his company on the edge of the wood, the great trees towering above them in their amber and green. Before them grass-land sloped, even to the thousand aspens that stood crowded about the tower. It was a desolate scene, even for Broceliande. Three days had Bertrand and his men been wandering in the forest, till they chanced upon the path that led to the Valley of Aspens.
Bertrand was smiling and stroking his chin, as though tickled by some thought that had occurred to him. He half wheeled his horse and looked keenly at the brown and wind-tanned faces drawn up before him under the trees.
“Listen.”
Every eye was on him.
“Do you remember how the Sieur de Rohan cheated us out of our spoil at Guingamp?”
“Curse him, captain! Are we likely to forget it?”
Their vindictiveness was full of mischief. They guessed what Bertrand had to say to them.
“Well, gentlemen and free companions, why should we not have our share of the bargain? It is possible that we can plunder the place, and make a bonfire of it for the sake of the seigneur’s soul.”
The suggestion had been seized even before it had passed Bertrand’s lips, and the men caught their leader’s spirit. Bertrand was in one of his reckless moods, when he was ready to lead his fellows into any mischief under the sun. They cheered him, and began tightening up their harness and looking to their arms. Bertrand was as grim and strenuous as any. The game pleased him that day, and Arletta had his smiles as he came to her to lace his bassinet.
“Give me a kiss, wench,” he said.
She gave him three, and a brave hug, laughing wickedly as he chucked her chin.
“The black dog has a holiday, lording,” she said.
“Little mistress, your eyes have scared him. Wait till we have our hands in some of De Rohan’s coffers! You shall have the baubles in your pretty lap to play with. Guicheaux, remember the axes. Some of you cut a young tree down; we may need it to break the gate.”
They set to work, and had a young oak down in a twinkling, and cleared the branches from the bole. The two women who were standing by straddled the trunk and made the men carry them, laughing, chattering, and making fun, till Bertrand, turning martinet, ordered them down to mind their business. The shorter of the two caught her skirts on a lopped bough, and had to be rescued amid roars of laughter.
“How you alarmed me!” quoth Guicheaux, as he helped her up. “I feared your linen had not been washed for a month!”
Tiphaïne was brooding before the fire in the solar the day after Le Petit de Fougeres had been buried, when she heard a voice calling to her from the hall.
“Madame Tiphaïne! Madame Tiphaïne!”
Rising, with a rush of hope from her heart, she slipped back the panel in the wall above the dais, through which the lord could look down on his people from the solar, and found Jehanot peering up at her with a cross-bow in his hand. She could see that the man was trembling, whether with joy or fear she could not tell.
“Madame, there are riders in the valley; I have seen them from the tower.”
Tiphaïne remembered the mystic pageant that had been shown her in the basin of black marble.
“Well, Jehanot, well?”
“I could see no banner or pennon. Maybe—”
He hesitated, thumbing the string of his cross-bow and looking up into the corners of the roof. Tiphaïne guessed what was passing in his mind. She shot the panel back and went down from the solar into the hall.
“Jehanot,” she said, very earnestly.
The man waited.
“It is not the Vicomte—no—I can read that on your face. There is no banner or pennon; and that means a ‘free company.’ ”
She was standing with one fist to her chin, looking vacantly at the pile of straw that covered the dead bodies, for Richard and the lad Berart had not yet been buried.
“Jehanot, go up into the portcullis-room and watch.”
The cripple nodded.
“They will summon us. If they are strangers, learn from them who they are. If friends, say that I will come out to them.”
“Yes, madame.”
“You understand, Jehanot? We are of the Blois party. Be careful; look for enemies—”
“If they are a rough crew,” the old man answered, “I will preach the Black Death’s sermon to them.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And lie if needs be.”
“Should they be Croquart’s ruffians—”
Jehanot grimaced as he limped away.
“God give us better luck!” he said; and then, turning at the door: “Stay in the chapel, madame. If they are for plunder, they may grant you sanctuary.”
Jehanot climbed up to the portcullis-cell and looked out through one of the squints across the moat. A faint breeze stirred in the aspen boughs, and the trees were muttering as though feeling the presence of some peril in their midst. Leaves were falling in golden showers, and through the crowded alley-ways of the wood the wet grass glistened in the sunlight. What was that? Jehanot’s head was straining forward on its skinny neck, his eyes fixed in a hard stare. He had seen a dim figure flit across the main path to the moat and take cover behind a tree. Another and yet another followed it. Still all was silent save for the chattering of the aspen leaves. They were reconnoitring the place, and their stealth did not comfort Jehanot’s fears.
Then he heard a deep voice sounding over the water.
“Forward, sirs—forward!”
Instantly the aspen wood seemed alive with steel, and Jehanot saw men swarming down towards the moat. Several of them carried the trunk of a tree, and at the sight of it Jehanot sucked in his breath expressively and whistled. There was no doubt as to their purpose as they headed for the causeway with a man in full armor on a black horse leading them. Jehanot saw Bertrand dismount, fling his bridle to a follower, and come clanging along the causeway till he reached the gap left by the raised drawbridge.
“Sound your horn, Hopart; we will challenge them to surrender.”
The horn’s scream echoed through the valley, while the men crowded the causeway at Bertrand’s back. The fierce, wolfish faces were turned this way and that as they scanned every wall and window. A sudden thought seized Jehanot as he crouched behind his squint. He put his hands to his mouth and broke out into a wailing cry.
“ ’Ware the Black Death! ’ware the Black Death!”
He waited, watching the men crowding the causeway from the darkness of the cell. They were looking at one another, gesticulating and pointing towards the squints of the portcullis-room.
“ ’Ware the Black Death! The plague is heavy on us!”
Jehanot could see that they wavered and were wrangling together. Bertrand, who was watching the windows, caught sight of Jehanot and shook his sword.
“It is a trick, sirs!” he shouted. “Back! back! they are cheating us to gain time. How could the pest reach such a place as this?”
“True, captain, true,” came the response.
Jehanot, white and terrified, put his face close to the squint and shouted to Bertrand:
“It is no trick, messire; it is no trick.”
Bertrand swore at him.
“Silence, you old liar. We want the Sieur de Rohan’s treasure-chest. Back, lads! back! We must cut down more trees to bridge the gap. Guicheaux, take five men and cover the squints; they will be playing on us with their cross-bows in the winking of an eye.”
The cripple shouted to them again, but his cries were unheeded in the bustle and uproar. The men had herded back over the causeway, leaving Bertrand leaning on his sword, confident in his armor to defy both bolt and arrow. Axes were soon swinging and the white chips flying from the trunks of several young trees. Guicheaux and three others had wound their cross-bows and posted themselves along the moat, and were waiting for archers to show themselves at the squints or on the battlements.
Jehanot was still squealing, repeating the same words in his unreasoning fear.
“Keep back!—the Black Death is with us! Keep back, for the mercy of God!”
Bertrand waved to Guicheaux with his sword.
“Silence the old fool!” he shouted.
The soldier trained his cross-bow on the squint where he could see Jehanot moving to and fro, waving his hands to them and shouting, like one gone mad. The string twanged, and the quarrel, glancing from the stone jamb, struck the old man in the face.
He fell back, squeaking like a mouse, his hand over his mouth, for the bolt had knocked his teeth away and broken his lower jaw. Trembling and panic-stricken, he stumbled back into the lesser solar, where Enid lay dead upon the bed. A woman’s figure stood outlined against the window; it was Tiphaïne’s.
“Jehanot! Jehanot!”
The old man mumbled through his bloody fingers:
“To the chapel, for God’s sake, madame; have a care, they are shooting at the windows.”
Tiphaïne held Jehanot by the shoulder.
“Ah—ah, the cowards! they have hurt you, my poor Jehanot. Come, come with me; we will go to the chapel, and I will hide you behind the hangings. Where is Guy?”
The old man was sick and faint with pain. Tiphaïne dragged him along the gallery to the lord’s solar, gave him wine, and bound up his bleeding mouth. The man Guy had jumped into the moat an hour ago, swum across, and fled into the woods. Jehanot confessed as much, moaning, and holding his broken jaw between his hands.
“Whose company is it—not Croquart’s?”
Jehanot shook his head, turning his whole body with it.
“They seem bad enough,” he said, “whoever they may be.”
Brunet was following them, growling and ruffling up his collar as the sound of the men battering at the gate echoed through every gallery and room. Tiphaïne half dragged Jehanot to the chapel, and hid him behind the hangings beside the altar. Then she ran back into the solar, took a burning brand from the fire with the iron tongs, and, returning, lit the candles on the altar and threw the flaming wood upon the floor. Beside the chalice, on the white altar cloth, stood the silver swan that Bertrand had given her at Rennes.
The great gate was down, and half a dozen sweating fellows were prising up the portcullis with spear-staves and the trunks of young trees. Inch by inch the great grid went up till Bertrand and two others had their shoulders under the teeth and held it till the rest wedged it up with timber. Shouting and swearing, they crowded pellmell like a drove of swine through the tower arch. Some turned into the guard-room, to find it empty. Others made for the hall across the court, expecting resistance and finding none.
The man Guicheaux was at the head of those who made for the hall. With them were the two women, as wild and keen as any of the men. They found the hall empty, but spread this way and that, some towards the screens, others towards the high table and the place where the buffet stood.
A brisk shout startled the whole rabble. Guicheaux, who had been turning over the straw with the truncheon of a spear he had broken under the grid, had started back and stood pointing at the straw, white and abashed, like a man who has found a snake curled in the grass.
The rest crowded round him, querulous and wondering. Then a blank silence fell. They stood staring at one another and at the blackened body Guicheaux had uncovered with his spear. One of the women, who had been peering over a man’s shoulder, clapped her hands over her face and broke into hysterical screaming.
“The murrain, the black murrain! We shall all die of it!”
Guicheaux cursed her, tossed the straw back over the body, and looked at his companions. They were huddling away from the spot like a pack of sheep, the lust of plunder out of them for the moment.
“Let us be off!” quoth a young Poitevin, holding a hand over his nose and mouth.
“Quiet, you fool!” and the big fellow Hopart, with the red beard and angry eyes, cuffed the lad with his gadded glove. “Out with you, milksop! We have taken our chance, and the devil’s with us. Let us have our spoil. Who’s afraid of a dirty corpse?”
He strode up, kicked the body under the straw, and turned a bloated face to Guicheaux and the rest.
“To the chambers first, sirs, and then for the wine.”
Hopart’s recklessness persuaded them in a moment. They broke away, all the fiercer for the fright, and raced for the stairway leading to the solar and the chapel. Bertrand joined them as they reached the dais, Arletta hanging on his arm, her face flushed, her eyes shining.
The men were jostling and crowding on the stairs, pulling one another back in the scramble, cursing and shouting—a mad crew. Guicheaux was the first to reach the solar. He ran to the hutch at the bottom of the Vicomte’s bed, beat his spear-staff through the lid, and wrenched up the splintered panels. They were all scrambling over the hutch like pigs over a trough. One man pulled out a silver mug, another a bag of money, a third an ivory crucifix set with stones.
“To the chapel!”
It was the big fellow, Hopart, who had kicked the dead body in the hall who gave the cry. A dozen men followed him, leaving Guicheaux and the rest to plunder the ambreys on either side of the fireplace, while Arletta unlaced Bertrand’s bassinet, laughing all the while at the way the men showed their greed.
They had forced the doorway of the chapel, when there was a sudden scuffle, a swaying back of the press, the loud bay of a dog. Hopart was rolling on the floor, stabbing at Brunet, who had him by the throat. The men who had fallen back rushed in and slashed at the dog with their swords and poniards. Hopart freed himself, hurled the hound aside, and began to kick the beast as it lay dying upon the floor.
“Cowards!”
Hopart and his comrades were crowding together and staring at the lady in the red tunic who stood upon the altar steps. The candles flickered above her, their light glimmering on the silver upon the altar and on the golden sheen in Tiphaïne’s hair. She was white and furious, moved to the depths by Brunet’s death.
“Cowards!”
It would have been difficult to compress more scorn in one single word. The rough thieves held back before her, even the great blackguard of a Hopart looking clumsy and abashed. It needed another woman, and one of a coarser type, to break the spell this white-faced madame had cast upon the men.
“Ho, ho! the fine she-leopard. See—she has jewels on her! What, sirs, are you afraid of a fine lady? Let me pass; I’ll show ye how to pull out hair.”
It was Gwen, the broad-hipped wench who had caught her clothes on the stump of the tree. She was shaking her fists and urging on the men with the instinctive hatred of a veritable drab for a sister whose face was as clean as her clothes. The men swayed forward towards the altar. Hopart, his throat bloody from Brunet’s fangs, had his eyes on the jewelled girdle that Tiphaïne wore. He shouldered the rest aside only to be plucked back by a strong hand from the altar steps and sent staggering against the wall.
“Back! back!”
Bertrand was before them, his sword out, his hair bristling, a look on his face that the men had learned to fear. They gave ground as the white blade whistled to and fro, huddling together, each man trying to get behind his neighbor.
Bertrand drove them back towards the door, and then turned to the altar, where Tiphaïne still stood. His bassinet was off, for Arletta had unlaced it in the solar, and the light from the candles fell full upon his face.
“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin!”
Tiphaïne’s hands were at her bosom. She was staring at the man before her, incredulous scorn blazing in her eyes. Bertrand went back three full paces and stood looking at Tiphaïne with his mouth agape.
“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin!”
“Madame, who are you?”
For answer she took up the silver swan and held it in her hands before them all.
“Who was it who gave me this, messire, at the tournament at Rennes?”
Theone pure thing in that little chapel, Tiphaïne, stood there on the altar steps, looking down on Bertrand, the swan of silver in her hands. Behind her burned the candles, above rose the eastern window with its painted glass: azure, purple, and green. She seemed strangely high above them all, a being apart, one in whom no selfish cowardice dimmed the glow of her woman’s scorn. For the common herd, the mere pawns in the game of plunder and of war, she had no remembrance for the moment. It was at Bertrand that she looked, sternly, wonderingly, yet with a sadness that shadowed her whole face.
As for Bertrand, he stood with his sword held crosswise in his hands, his head bowed down a little, his brows contracted like a man facing a cloud of dust. He looked at Tiphaïne as though confident that he had no cause for shame, but failed in the deceit, as a man who was not utterly a blackguard should. The girl’s eyes made him feel hot from head to heel. She was so calm, so proud, so uncompromising, so pure. To Bertrand she was as a being who had stepped by magic out of a golden past. He found himself shuddering at the thought of what might have befallen her had Hopart and the rest laid their rough hands upon her body.
“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, have you nothing to say to me?”
Bertrand was squaring his shoulders and trying to look her frankly in the face.
“We took this for the Sieur de Rohan’s place,” he said.
Tiphaïne’s eyes held his.
“How much honor is there in the excuse, messire?”
“Honor?”
“To take the castles of one’s friends, castles that have no garrisons, where the Black Death conquered before you came?”
The men and women were crowding the far end of the chapel, grinning and giggling, and not a little astonished at the way that Bertrand had his tail between his legs. It was a new thing for them to see their captain bearded, and bearded successfully, by a mere woman.
The truth was plain to Tiphaïne as she looked at the man’s sullen and silent face, and at the rough plunderers who called him leader. She had no fear either of Bertrand or his men. The plague had taught her to look on death without a tremor.
“Then you are no longer of the Blois party, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin.”
“I—madame?”
“Yes.”
He gnawed his lip, with the air of a man wishing himself saved from some merciless scourging.
“The Sieur de Rohan is for the Count of Blois.”
“It is so.”
“Therefore, messire”—and she looked down at him from her full height—“therefore—I do not understand.”
The woman Gwen, who had torn her skirts on the trunk of the tree, began to laugh and declaim:
“Lord help us, what has come to the captain? Did ye ever see such a meek gentleman?”
The men chuckled. Bertrand whipped round with a devil’s look in his eyes, and made at them, making mighty sweeps with his sword.
“Out! out!”
His wrath sobered them. There was something terrible in it, something so grim that they quailed and went back before him, pushing one against another. Few of the men were cowards, but none wished to tempt the whistling fierceness of Bertrand’s sword.
“Out! out!”
They crowded through the doorway, flinching, and covering their faces with their arms. In a minute the chapel was empty, but Bertrand still followed them. He drove them through the solar and down the stairway into the hall, thrusting Arletta out last, and barring the door. Huddling together like a flock of silly sheep, they stood gaping at the blank wall and the closed door.
Bertrand lingered a moment in the solar, listening, one hand gripping the handle of his sword, the other stroking his strong chin. It was even as though this great, grim-faced fellow, who had driven twenty men before him by sheer strength of will, shrank from facing the woman waiting for him in the chapel. After pacing the solar, he shook himself and recrossed the threshold. Tiphaïne was standing where he had left her. Her eyes looked straight at Bertrand as he moved towards her, trying not to slouch or shirk her gaze.
“Well, messire?”
She challenged him curtly with those two words. It was no mere question, but the call to an ordeal that he could not shirk.
“I am sorry—” he began.
“Sorry! That is generous—indeed! See, there lies my best friend, my dog Brunet, slashed to death by the swords of your men. My castle gate has been broken by you, my father’s house pillaged!”
Her words came quickly, yet with the clear ring of an armorer’s hammer upon steel. She was still wroth with him, and, with good reason, grieved also by the falling of his manhood into such a life.
Bertrand could not meet her eyes.
“What can I say to you, madame?”
She dropped her arm and looked at him in silence, her face aglow, her breath drawn deeply.
“Messire Bertrand! Messire Bertrand!”
The change of tone was wonderful, piercing through to the man’s heart. He hung his head, knowing too well what was passing in her mind.
“I am what I am,” he said, sullenly.
“Yet—you remember Rennes?”
“What good is it, madame, to remember what one cannot keep.”
“What good, messire! Have you, then, fallen so much from your own heart?”
He flung back his head suddenly and looked her in the face.
“Why should I shirk it?” he said. “I am what I am—a captain of free companions, a beast, a ruffian—God knows what! Where is my honor? Ask those great lords who made me what I am.”
He seemed to recover his dignity of a sudden, a dignity that, though bitter and rebellious, boasted sincerity and truth. He rested his sword-point on the floor, crossed his two hands on the pommel, and waited like a man who has thrown down the gage.
Tiphaïne stood above him on the altar steps.
“Then you have forgotten Rennes?” she said.
“I—madame?”
“How, then, should Bertrand du Guesclin have fallen to leading these poor fools to the plunder of Breton homes? I should not have dreamed it when—I was a child—at Rennes.”
Her words moved him, and he bent his head.
“Men fail—sometimes,” he said, sullenly.
“Sometimes; but you—”
“I?”
“You—who were so strong, messire; you—who feared nothing!”
He stretched out his arms before her, the sword sweeping the air.
“Before God—the whole fault was not mine!”
“And why not yours, Bertrand du Guesclin?”
“They were against me—those great captains; what was I to them?—a dog to be kicked when the meat scorched on the spit.”
“And then?”
“They took my honor from me. Was not that enough?”
“No man need lose his honor, even though the whole world calls him liar.”
He looked at her steadfastly a moment, noting her queenliness and the sadness of her eyes.
“I am what I am; the how, or why, neither mends—nor matters. Give me your commands.”
She turned to the altar, and, lifting the silver swan, held it out to him with both her hands.
“Take it, messire.”
He glanced up at her and frowned.
“Not that!”
“And yet you remember Rennes?”
He caught her meaning, and understood—to his own cost—the significance of the thing she wished.
“You strike hard, but the blows are true,” he said. “I have lost what once was mine; I acknowledge it; a man can do no more.”
He sheathed his sword and took the swan from Tiphaïne, looking at her hands and nothing else. For Bertrand there was a bitter symbolism in the scene. The few pure memories he had given to the past were flung back to him like the dry petals of a cherished flower.
He thrust the silver swan under his surcoat, so that it was held there by his belt.
“And now?”
She stood silent a moment, as though considering.
“Am I to be obeyed?”
He crossed himself.
“Before God, yes.”
He looked up at her and waited.
“These are my commands,” she said: “return your plunder; bury the two dead men—in the hall. Mend the gate that you have broken; then leave us to our liberty.”
“Here—alone?”
“I have said it.”
“But—madame!”
“Madness—you would say?”
“Only command me, and I will see you safe to Rennes, or Josselin, or Dinan.”
She was calm and determined, for she had made her plans.
“Messire, I have said it. I am not alone,” and she drew back the hangings and showed him Jehanot, cowering against the wall.
Bertrand looked at her, baffled, yet realizing that she wished to be obeyed.
“I would have had it otherwise, madame.”
“And I—had it been different.”
He turned and pointed towards Brunet’s body.
“And the hound?”
“Ah, poor Brunet, leave him; Jehanot and I will bury him. But for the rest—”
“You shall be obeyed.”
She turned suddenly, as though she had ended her meeting with him, and knelt down before the altar, her hands folded over her bosom. Jehanot was kneeling also, while from poor Brunet’s body the blood still curled across the stones. Bertrand stood motionless for a moment at the chapel door, looking at Tiphaïne as though he were being banished from light and warmth into the night. Perhaps she did not trust him. Why should she? Had he not broken the child’s faith she had kept for him from the past?
He went out into the solar and closed the chapel door. A fierce gloom had fallen on him, the gloom of a proud man who has had the cold truth flung in his face. Great God, was he so vile a fellow that Tiphaïne held the Black Death’s terror to be more merciful than his kindness? Yes, he was a beast, a bully, a common thief. Bertrand humbled himself with all the passionate thoroughness of his nature.
Tiphaïne had given him her commands. Good! He would at least show her that he could obey. Striding through the solar and down the stairs, he found his fellows still loitering in the hall. They were whispering together with the restless air of men vaguely afraid of the days before them. Some were counting money on one of the long tables, others gloating over the spoil they had taken, and making coarse jests at Bertrand’s lingering in the chapel.
Bertrand came down into the hall, his naked sword over one shoulder, his mouth set. He looked the men over with that searching stare that seemed to fix itself on every one in turn. Bertrand was in one of his silent, tight-lipped moods. The men waited, watching him and wondering what was to follow.
“Guicheaux, hither!”
The words were sharp and vicious. Guicheaux started, colored, and came forward nimbly.
“You have a silver mug under your surcoat.”
The quipster would have lied had he dared, but Bertrand’s eyes were on him.
“Come, do you hear me? Disgorge, all of you. Guicheaux, put your mug down on the floor at my feet.”
They began to murmur, to grumble, to nudge one another. Guicheaux hesitated. Bertrand’s lion’s roar set the rafters ringing.
“Come, all of you; let me have no grumbling! Hopart, you have money on you. Bring it here, I say, or, by God, I will break your neck!”
The men had seen him fierce, but never in such a mood as this before. They obeyed, grudgingly, sullenly, each man knowing Bertrand for his master, and fearing to be the first to feel his wrath. Cups, money, ewers, a silver “ship,” a rich girdle or two were lying in a heap at Bertrand’s feet. His face softened as he took the swan of silver from under his surcoat and added it to the pile of spoil.
“Men,” he said, with a keen look.
They stood watching him; no grumbling was to be heard.
“I have sought a favor from you, and you have obeyed me. I give you thanks.”
Guicheaux grinned at the coolness of the speech. He had an inveterate love of insolent address, and he could have licked Bertrand’s shoes for homage at that moment.
“Men, I have some share of plunder on the pack-horses. Divide it among yourselves. I make a gift of it.”
The change that swept over the rough faces was significant. Satisfaction succeeded surliness, and they cheered him as though he had won some great fight and driven the English into the sea.
Bertrand, who knew their hearts, held up his sword for silence. How different the applause of the fellows seemed to him from what it would have seemed an hour ago.
“Guicheaux, take ten men, find tools and timber, and repair the gate.”
Guicheaux grimaced, but prepared to see the whim obeyed.
“The rest of you go out over the moat and pile your arms in the aspen wood. We shall march as soon as the gate is mended.”
Never had Bertrand’s free companions met with such strange strategy before. To take plunder—only to return it; to break down a gate—only to rear it up again! They could make nothing of the riddle, save that the lady in the chapel had bearded Bertrand as though she had been a queen of France. They poured out from the hall, leaving Bertrand standing before the pile of metal, the silver swan glistening in the sunlight that slanted from one of the narrow windows. He stood there a long while, leaning on his sword, his face dark and expressionless, his eyes sad. At last he turned to the penance he had taken upon himself, the burying of the bodies that lay stiff under the straw.
Alone he buried them, digging a shallow grave in the orchard, while Guicheaux and his comrades hammered at the gate. There was heroism in the deed, but Bertrand hardly felt it at the moment. The responsibility was his, and he took it, lest his men should suffer.
The gate was patched and firm upon its hinges, Richard and the lad Berart stretched in their last resting-place under the apple-trees. The “free companions” had built a fire in the aspen wood, and were cooking meat and making a meal. They had joined their sagacities in unravelling the mystery of their captain’s orders, but none save the women came near discovering the truth.
“I will tell ye how it is,” and fat Gwen wiped her mouth and looked at Arletta, of whom she was jealous: “madame, yonder, was once the captain’s lady love; that is why the brave fellow looked so meek.”
Meanwhile Bertrand had passed once more into the empty hall, and was standing staring at the swan of silver crowning the untaken spoil. No sound came from the chapel, where Tiphaïne and old Jehanot kept sanctuary till the troop had gone. Bertrand was smiling sorrowfully and fingering his chin. Suddenly he took his poniard from its sheath and went to the high table on the dais. Bending over it, he carved a rude cross thereon, and, taking the swan of silver, set it on the board beside the cross.
Then he saluted the closed door of the solar and went out of the Aspen Tower to join his men.
A windhad risen when Bertrand and his men rode forward into the woodways of Broceliande. Falling leaves were flickering everywhere, drifting in showers, dyeing the green grass bronze and gold. The forest was full of the murmuring of the crisp foliage of autumn. Deep in the inner gloom the rust-red masses of the dead beech leaves glowed like metal at dull heat. The western sky had taken its winter tones, that flush of orange and of maroon that backs the purple of the misty hills.
Bertrand loitered behind his men, slouching in the saddle and looking straight before him into the forest. The emotions in him were complex for the moment, so much so that they might have taken their temper from Broceliande itself. The rustling of leaves, for falling memories; the shrill piping of the wind, all human in its infinite anxiousness and dread. Humiliation and gloom were heavy on Bertrand’s soul. He had been shown his own likeness in the mirror of Tiphaïne’s honor, and the ugliness thereof had made him consider what manner of man he was.
He awoke at last to find Arletta watching him as she trotted beside him on her half-starved nag. There was a jealous look in the girl’s black eyes, a sharp petulance about her face. Bertrand’s quixotry had puzzled her not a little, and Gwen’s words were still sounding in her ears.
“Lording,” she said, “is the black dog back upon your shoulders?”
Bertrand frowned, and swore at his horse as the beast stumbled over a piece of dead-wood. He was in no mood for Arletta’s questions.
“Mind your business, wench,” he said, “and I will mind my own.”
Arletta’s curiosity was aroused; moreover, it was not in her woman’s nature to be driven from the truth with a snub.
“You have had these moods and whimsies of late, lording.”
“Ah, have I?”
“Yes, often and often, and to-night you look blacker than a Moor. Who is the lady who scolded you in the chapel?”
She affected innocence, but the pretence could not hide the hardness of her voice.
“What is that to you?” quoth Bertrand, digging his knees into his horse’s flanks.
“Nothing, lording, nothing.”
“Nothing, eh? Then leave well alone.”
“Ah—ah—”
“What ails you now?”
“To-day you kissed me and were gay. What has happened?—what have I done? Dear Heaven, I am always vexing you!”
Bertrand lost patience, and was turning on her with a snarl and a curse, when something seemed to stay his temper. Tiphaïne’s face had risen before him. She had told him the truth? Yes, he was a rough beast and a bully.
“Let me be, child,” he said, even gently.
Arletta’s lips quivered, but she took his kindness into her heart and looked less peevish and jealous about the eyes.
“Lording, maybe you are tired and hungry.”
She rummaged in the bag that hung on her saddle, and brought out a piece of bread and a few olives.
“Take them, lording,” she said, holding out her hands.
Bertrand was touched. He took the food and ate it.
“Thanks, child,” he said, “you must put up with my rough temper, and close your ears when I take to growling.”
In the Aspen Tower, Tiphaïne had come from the chapel, after covering Brunet’s body with the cloth from the altar. She had made Jehanot sit by the solar fire, for the pain of his broken jaw and the terror he had borne had brought the old man near to a collapse. The pillaged chest, the rifled ambreys, the scanty furniture, tossed pellmell into the corners, made Tiphaïne wonder whether Bertrand had kept his vow.
She left Jehanot in the solar, and, going down into the hall, found the pelf piled on the floor, even as Bertrand had promised. The straw had been thrown aside, and the bodies of Richard and the lad Berart were no longer there. Then Tiphaïne’s eyes fell upon the swan of silver, swimming beside the rough cross cut by Bertrand on the high table.
However proud a woman may be, she can rarely cast past kindness wholly from her heart. Her sweetness, if she be a good woman, persists in trying to sanctify a friendship threatened by all the influences of fate. Tiphaïne had tried her power on Bertrand that day. Her courage, like a bold haggard, had flown at the man’s rough pride and brought it tumbling out of the blue. Bertrand had obeyed her, save in one respect. He had left the prize he had won for her at Rennes, and had cut a cross beside it, to symbolize some thought that had been working in his heart.
Tiphaïne’s face softened as she stood looking at the swan. She was not without vanity, the true vanity of the soul that cries out with joy when some great deed has been inspired; some evil pass prevented. Bertrand had disobeyed her in one thing, and she grasped the thought that had made him carve the cross upon the table. Her words had gone home to the man’s heart; he was not dead to scorn; he could react still to the cry of his own conscience.
Would the mood last? Tiphaïne hung her head and wondered. There were so many powers behind the man, dragging him back from the prouder life. He had been wronged, perhaps treated unjustly, driven to recklessness by some undeserved disgrace. She remembered Bertrand’s passionate nature as a child. He was quickly wounded, and stubborn over the smart thereof.
“Ah, Bertrand du Guesclin,” she thought, “how long will my words ring within your ears? Will you hate me when your humbleness has gone? Will you hold to the old life, or break from it like a brave man, turning shame to good account? Who knows?—who knows? Yet I will keep this gift of yours, to prove or condemn you as the days may show. Will it be the smelting-pot for the silver swan, messire, or God’s altar again, towards which the hearts of true men turn?”
Bertrand was fighting out the same question in his heart as he rode with Arletta through the darkening woodways of Broceliande. Dusk was falling, and the heavy silence of the forest was broken only by the trampling of hoofs and the voices of his men. Mist and gloom were everywhere. The falling of the leaves was very ghostly in the twilight, and the piping of the wind grew more plaintive as the red flush dwindled in the west.
A sense of loneliness and of nothingness had fallen on Bertrand, a savage spirit of self-abasement that took him by the shoulders and thrust him down into the deeps. Of what use were Tiphaïne’s words to him? Defeat was heavy on him, fate against him, and wherefore should he swim against the tide? How could a mere freebooter, a beggarly captain among thieves, hope to retrieve the failures of the past? He had chosen his part in life, and he must abide by it, without clutching at the golden fruit that hung above his reach. The past was beyond him, with its memories. Nothing could flush his soul once more with the boyish ardor he had felt at Rennes.
It is strange to what poltroonery even a brave man will fall, and how the stoutest heart can flag, the most strenuous spirit fall into the mopes. Men are not demi-gods, and their very fibres are fashioned out of clay. Physical starvation can bring the strutting hero low, while soul hunger is the most paralytic misery of all. The truest courage is that which meets fate in the mists of twilight, and passes the valley of shadows with set mouth and dogged will. It is easy to be brave when trumpets scream and the flush of fame burns upon the clouds. To defeat defeat, alone, and with the bitterness of failure in the heart—then is it that the iron in the man must prove its temper. As yet Bertrand had not learned the highest courage. He was as a petulant boy who cries “Shame! Shame!” when the world baffles his first venture.
The man Guicheaux came cantering back from the main company, for it was growing dark, and they would have to lodge as best they might under the autumn shelter of Broceliande.
“Shall I call a halt, captain?”
Bertrand glanced at him like a man waking unwillingly from sleep, and nodded.
“Make me a fire apart, Guicheaux,” he said.
The quipster grinned, and glanced at Arletta.
“There are some big beeches yonder, lording,” he said, flourishing his hand as a signal to the men to halt.
“The leaves are dry as shavings, and there is bracken waiting to be cut. We shall find plenty of dead wood about, and a good beech-tree will make Dame Arletta a fine bower.”
Guicheaux trotted away, and the men were seen off-saddling under the trees—huge spreading beeches that stood on a low ridge between two valleys. The free companions piled their arms about the tree-trunks, and used the boughs as pegs to hang their harness on. Some of them picketed the horses, after watering them at a stagnant pool, some fifty yards down the slope. Others cut down bracken with their swords, and gathered dead-wood to make a fire. The two women, Gwen and Barbe, chattered and bandied their coarse jests with the men as they looked to the serving of the evening meal.
Bertrand had unsaddled his horse, tethered the beast, and sat himself down at the foot of one of the trees with his shoulders resting against the trunk. He let Arletta look to her own nag, and did not rouse himself to give her a helping hand. His morose mood was selfish in its obstinate self-pity. He hardly heeded the girl as she came and knelt beside him on the beech leaves and began to search her wallet for food.
Presently Guicheaux approached with an armful of sticks. He kicked the dry leaves together and began to build a fire, looking curiously at Bertrand from time to time, and smiling mischievously at Arletta. Crouching, he struck sparks with his flint and steel, and blew on the tinder till it flared up and set the dry leaves blazing. Guicheaux rubbed his hands before the flames with comfortable unction, and looked at the two women who were slinging a cooking-pot over the other fire. The men were trooping in with bundles of bracken, which they began to spread as bedding for the night.
Guicheaux glanced round at Bertrand moping against the tree. “Some of Gaston’s pig is to fatten us, lording,” he said.
Bertrand did not seem to hear him.
“Bread, boiled pork, and a mug of cider. Consult your stomach, messire, whether it be not hungry.”
Arletta darted an impatient look at the quipster, and ordered him away with a wave of the hand. The captain had the black-dog on his shoulders, and it was better for all that he should be left alone.
Presently she crept close to Bertrand and offered to unlace his bassinet. Her brown hands were quickly at their work, Bertrand letting her disarm him, piece by piece, staring sullenly into the fire, and not guessing how much he resembled a sour and surly child. Arletta gave him all her patience, keeping her lips shut and pestering him with no more questions. She took the rusty bassinet and laid it amid the beech leaves, and soon shoulder-plates, demi-brassarts, and greaves were lying beside it.
Arletta’s fingers were on the buckle of his sword-belt.
“Ha! what are you at? Let it be!”
He pushed her hands away, looking at her searchingly.
“Lording!”
“I trust no one with my sword; no one shall play tricks with it. Are you for treachery?”
The taunt was a mean one, and Arletta winced.
“Your sword is a true sword,” she said, “and do you not trust me also?”
She put her hands out to him as she knelt with a pleading tenderness on her face. Bertrand looked in her eyes, and hated his own soul. Poor, honorless wench that she was, she shamed him, and gave him a loyalty that he did not deserve.
“I trust you, Letta,” he said, touching her cheek.
Her sharp face mellowed, and seemed to catch warmth and color from the fire. Her black eyes glistened, and she looked handsome and desirable, with her nut-brown skin and raven hair, red lips pouting over her small teeth.
“Lording, I am only a woman.”
Guicheaux approached them again, carrying a slice of steaming pork on his poniard, a loaf of bread, and a stone flask of cider. Arletta took the food from him and nodded him back towards the fire, where the free companions were making a brave battle over their meal. She knelt down again beside Bertrand, and pressed him to eat, coaxing him half-playfully, half-wistfully, till she won her way. Food, drink, and the cheerfulness of the fire worked their spell on Bertrand’s spirits. He began to feel comforted in the inner man, warmer about the body, less befogged about the brain. Life had its satisfactions, after all, and what were glory and the frail fancies of chivalry compared with good food and a hale hunger? He began to smile at Arletta as she lay curled in the beech leaves, her green tunic tight about her figure, and held the stone bottle in her brown and rough-skinned hands.
“Drink deep, lording,” and she laughed; “it will keep the damp out. See how bravely the fire burns.”
She began to eat in turn, now that Bertrand had taken his fill, cutting the meat and bread with the knife she carried at her girdle. Her eyes caught the light from the fire, and her black hair enhanced the pale charm of her peevish face. Bertrand slouched lazily against the tree. He was content for the moment with Arletta’s comeliness.
Night had settled over Broceliande; leagues of darkness and of mystery wrapped them round, while the flames tongued the gloom and Guicheaux and his gossips drank and laughed about their fire.
Bertrand stretched his arms and yawned.
“Food puts new courage into a man.”
She bent towards him with a sinuous gliding of the body, pouted out her lips, and put her face close to his.
“You are yourself again, lording.”
Bertrand kissed her, thinking of Tiphaïne, and swearing stoutly in his heart that he was beyond her scorn and pity. Arletta, red and happy, started up, and began to pile leaves and bracken into a bed beneath the tree. She made a pillow by rolling leaves up in an old tunic, and threw more wood upon the fire.
“There, lording, I have made a bed.”
She took him by the hands and dragged him playfully from the tree.
The free companions were rolling themselves in their cloaks about their fire and half burying their bodies in the litter of bracken. Only one man stood to his arms, to take his watch while the others slept. One by one the voices died down and surrendered to the silence of the forest. The clouds had broken overhead, and a young moon was shining through and through, a patch of celestial silver above the black and half-leafless branches of the trees. The sentinel, after yawning for an hour, and rubbing his heavy eyes with his knuckles, looked cautiously at Bertrand, and slunk from his post to crawl into the bracken about the fire. Under the beech-trees there was naught but a tangle of bodies, arms, legs, and snoring faces crowded close about the flames. Broceliande’s stillness was supreme. Like some forest of dreams, she seemed to hold these sleepers in her magic power.
Three hours or more had passed when Arletta started awake with a low cry and sat up in terror, her hands on Bertrand’s chest. She had been dreaming, and had thought that in her sleep strange shapes had been crowding round her in the dark. She shivered, and crouched rigid and motionless, staring as though bewitched into the depths of the gloom about the fire.
“Bertrand, lording, wake—wake!”
She tugged in terror at Bertrand’s arms as he lay beside her on the leaves and bracken. The horses were whinnying, stamping, and snorting under the trees where the men had tethered them. Arletta’s eyes were fixed on two dots of light that stared eerily at her out of the dark.
Bertrand awoke, grumbling and yawning, and clutching at Arletta with his arms.
“What, the dawn already?”
“No, no! Look yonder; see—in the dark—there!”
Bertrand heard the horses screaming, started up, and found Arletta quivering beside him, her face white as linen, her eyes great with fear. The moon was behind a cloud, and as Bertrand followed the pointing of Arletta’s hand he understood in an instant the meaning of her terror. Out of the blackness of the forest circles of red crystal were shining on them, two by two. There was a padding and rustling of feet in the dead leaves, the vague flitting of dark figures to and fro, a forward movement of the blood-red eyes.
“Wolves, by God!”
There was a great plunging and screaming amid the horses as Bertrand sprang up, kicked the fire into a blaze, and, snatching a burning branch from it, made at the circle of eyes, roaring like a roused lion. The dark shapes swerved and scampered over the leaves, snarling and snapping their jaws, but flinching from Bertrand and his burning brand. The free companions were scrambling up from the litter of bracken. They saw Bertrand beating the darkness with his fiery flail, vague shadows flying before him like the evil spirits of the forest.
The moon came from behind the cloud at the same instant, showing the struggling, sweating horses, squealing and kicking, and ready to break loose.
“Wolves! wolves!”
They picked up brands from the fire, and charged this way and that, the beasts scattering before them and slinking away into the darkness. Hopart, Guicheaux, and several others ran to quiet the horses and to prevent them from breaking loose. The tumult ceased in due course, and the men came crowding back about the fire.
Bertrand strode towards them, carrying his burning branch.
“Guicheaux, Hopart, Simon, whose watch was it? Who the devil let these brutes up so near the fires?”
The free companions were jostling one another, trying to discover in the dusk the fellow who had stood on guard when they had lain down to sleep. It was the Poitevin lad who had shown such terror when the Black Death had startled them in the hall of the Aspen Tower. He was skulking behind a tree, ready to take to his heels had he not feared the wolves and the darkness. Hopart discovered him, and dragged him towards Bertrand before the fire.
“Pierre, is it? So, lad, you fell asleep. We’ll read thee a lesson.”
The Poitevin, scared to death, cringed as his comrades hustled and cuffed him. They were furious with the lad for having deserted his post and left them unguarded against the perils of the night.
“Mercy! Mercy! Messire Bertrand, Messire Bertrand, they are tearing my arms off!”
Hopart smote Pierre on the mouth with the back of his hand.
“Scullion! Crybaby! Jackass!”
“Let him be, men.”
They left him grudgingly, as though they had caught some of the savagery of Broceliande’s wolves. Pierre stood shaking before Bertrand. Then he dropped on his knees and began to snivel, his poltrooning drawing laughter and taunts from Hopart and the rest.
“Get up, man, get up!”
By way of being wisely foolish, the Poitevin grovelled the more, and tried to take Bertrand by the knees.
“Mercy, lording, mercy! I was tired, devilish tired—”
Bertrand looked at him, and then rolled the fellow backward with a thrust of the foot.
“Stand up, fool!” he said, sharply. “Stand up—like a man! Guicheaux, give him twenty cuts with your belt. We will let him off easily. Next time it shall be the rope.”
They took Pierre, stripped his back, and trounced him till the blood flowed. It was Arletta who pleaded with Bertrand for the lad, and saved him ten strokes out of the twenty, for Guicheaux would have beaten him till he fainted. They piled wood on the fires and retethered the horses, for there would be no more sleep for the free companions that night. Squatting round the fire, they talked and gossiped together, and shouted songs to frighten the wolves.
As for Bertrand, he lay his head on Arletta’s knees, staring at the flames, and listening to the howling of the beasts as they still padded round them in the darkness. He was thinking again of Tiphaïne, of the counsel she had given him, and of the cross he had cut on the high table with his poniard. What would she make of his remorse if she could see him lying with his head in Arletta’s lap? And yet the girl was as loyal as a dog, patient and gentle when her jealousy had no prick of passion.
Bertrand, as he lay, felt her hands upon his forehead.
“Sleep, lording,” she said, as she bent over him. “Nothing can harm you while I am watching.”