A faintcry came stealing through the silence of the place, like the wail of a bird that passes on the night wind and is gone.
Tiphaïne heard it and stood listening, her eyes changing their intensity of purpose for a shadowy and vague unrest. Bertrand was still standing by the torch he had thrust into the iron bracket clamped to the wall. The flare flung darkness and light alternate upon his face.
Tiphaïne started up from the prie-dieu, and, opening the chapel door, called:
“Arletta, Arletta!”
No sounds came to them save the crackling and hissing of the wood upon the fire. Tiphaïne passed in, looking into the dark corners of the solar for a crouching figure or the white glimmer of a human face. The room was empty; Arletta had disappeared.
Tiphaïne stood for a moment like one taken with a sudden spasm of the heart. The broken knife-blade shone symbolically at her feet.
“Bertrand!”
The cry came sharply from her, as though inspired by fear.
“Bertrand!”
He followed her and looked round the room, not grasping the prophetic instinct of her dread.
“Hist!”
She stood silent again, her eyes fixed on Bertrand’s face.
“Quick! Search the tower! I am afraid for Arletta!”
Bertrand gave her one look, pushed past her without a word, took down the torch, and went out into the gallery leading to the tower. Tiphaïne’s foreboding had taken hold of his man’s heart. As he passed down the gallery with the torch flaring above his head he looked out from the narrow windows, and saw the moon rising huge and tawny over the forest. The night had built an eerie background before Bertrand’s eyes. He felt suddenly afraid, strong man that he was—afraid of what the dark tower might hide within its walls.
Coming to the newel stairway, black as a well, he stood listening, holding his breath. Before him was the door of the lesser solar. The darkness and silence seemed to come close about his heart. He opened his lips, and was startled by the harshness of his own voice.
“Letta, Letta!”
Still no sound.
“Letta, Letta, where are you? Come, you are forgiven.”
He stood listening till the echoes had died down the gallery where the moonlight streaked the floor. What was that! A sound as of weeping, a number of sharp-drawn breaths, and then a short cry, given as in pain. Bertrand started like a horse touched with the spur. He stumbled up the stairway, for the sounds came from above, the torchlight reddening the walls, the smoke driven down by the draught into his face.
A door barred his progress. He tore at the latch savagely, and felt something heavy against the door as he forced it back and slipped into the room. His foot touched a hand; the hand moved. A whispering moan came up to him out of the dark.
Bertrand was down on his knees with the torch flaring on the floor beside him. Behind the door, and half crushed between it and the wall, lay Arletta, her head sunk upon one shoulder. There was blood on her limp hands, blood soaking her bosom, the whiteness of death upon her face.
Bertrand, shocked to his heart’s depths, thrust his arms about her, and drew her to him out of the dark. He was babbling foolishly, calling her by name, bidding her take courage and forget his roughness. Arletta’s head lay heavy on his shoulder. She stirred a little, sighed, and lifted her hands. For a moment her lips moved, and her eyes looked into Bertrand’s face.
“Lording—”
“Letta, what have you done? My God—”
“Lording, I am dying.”
Bertrand burst out weeping, his man’s tears falling down upon her face. Arletta shuddered. Her mouth was close to Bertrand’s cheek, and he felt her warm blood soaking his surcoat.
“Lording, kiss me, forgive—”
He kissed her, his arms tightening about her body. She lifted her hand jerkily, unsteadily, and felt his hair. Then with a long sigh her head sank down, her mouth opened, and she was dead.
Bertrand knelt there holding her in his arms, stunned, incredulous, his hot tears falling down upon her lifeless face. He spoke to her, touched her lips, but she did not answer. It was thus that Tiphaïne found them, death and life together, with the torch setting fire to the wood-work of the floor.
Tiphaïne trod out the flame, and, standing with the candle in her hands she had taken from the chapel, looked down at Bertrand with Arletta lying in his arms. Her pity and her awe were too deep for tears. She turned to leave them, but paused before the door.
“Bertrand,” she said.
He groaned, kissed the dead face, and then laid Arletta gently upon the floor. Still kneeling, he watched her, the truth—and the irrevocable bitterness thereof—coming home to him slowly with a great sense of shame.
“Bertrand.”
“Don’t speak to me”—and he buried his face deep in his hands—“let me bear it out alone.”
Tiphaïne passed out, leaving the candle burning in a sconce upon the wall. She groped her way down to the moonlit gallery, and so to the chapel, where she knelt before the altar, her face turned to the figure upon the cross. But Bertrand watched all night beside Arletta’s body, holding the hands that were cold in death.
Thedawn was streaming up when Bertrand came down the stairway from the upper room in the tower and paused in the gallery leading to the solar. A bitter watch had it been for Bertrand, a long vigil with the relentless past condemning him with the thoughts of his own heart. He had knelt there, stunned and awed, with Arletta’s blood dyeing the floor and her white face shining on him from amid the dark wreathings of her hair. There had been no horror in her death for him, only a great revulsion of remorse, a moving of all his manhood. He had looked on the dead face hating himself, haunted by memories—memories poignant as a mother’s tears. How good the girl had been to him, even when he had been rough and petulant! She had often gone hungry that he might eat. And now he had killed her—killed her with his great blundering penitence that had trampled on her love in its struggles to be free. He had blood on his hands—the blood of the woman whose bosom had pillowed his head in sleep.
Bertrand stood in the gallery, miserable and cold, watching the dawn come up over the thickets of Broceliande. There was no joy for him in that splendor of gold, for the eyes of Arletta would open with the dawn no more. Ah, God, what a brute he had been, what a self-righteous coward! He had taken this woman’s heart, broken it, and thrown it back to her in this awakening of his, of which he had been so proud. Bertrand gripped the window-rail and stared at the moat. A glory of gold was streaming over the forest, and the black water beneath him caught the splendor and seemed glad.
The two women, Gwen and Barbe, were washing themselves in the water-butt before the kitchen entry when Bertrand went down into the court. They pulled their clothes up over their breasts on catching sight of him, and stood giggling and looking at each other.
“Good-morrow, lording.”
“Your servant, Messire Bertrand. Letta’s a proud woman again, I’m thinking—”
They burst out laughing, cawing like a couple of crows.
“S-s-h, Gwen, be decent!”
“Why shouldn’t I have my jest with the captain—”
She stopped, open-mouthed, for Bertrand’s white face shocked the insolence out of her. There was something more than fury on it, something more terrible than pain. There was blood, too, on his surcoat. The women shrank from him, holding their loose clothes, awed by the look in Bertrand’s eyes.
“Out, you fools!”
He pointed to the tower gate, and followed them like some inexorable spirit as they went before him like a couple of sheep. Guicheaux was sleeping on a pile of straw outside the guard-room door. Bertrand shook him, and pointed to Gwen and Barbe as the quipster sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“Turn them out!”
The women were ready enough to be deprived of Bertrand’s presence, and they scampered across the bridge when Guicheaux swung the gate open. The man watched them, then turned, and, looking curiously at Bertrand, put his lips together as though tempted to whistle.
“Shut the gate.”
Guicheaux obeyed him, wondering what was to follow.
“Arletta is dead.”
“Dead, captain!”
“She stabbed herself. I am going to bury her. Keep the men out of the place.”
He spoke curtly, fiercely, forcing out the words as though each one gave him pain. Guicheaux’s face was a white patch in the shadow—the mouth a black circle, the eyes two dots of light.
“Dead, captain!”
Bertrand looked as though he would have struck the man.
“Yes. The fault was mine. Arletta was jealous; she tried to stab madame, and, when balked, stabbed herself instead.”
Guicheaux said nothing. He stood pulling his peaked beard and frowning at the stones. The thing had shocked him, lewd-mouthed ruffian that he was. Bertrand watched him a moment, and then, turning on his heel, went to one of the out-houses where tools were kept.
The grass in the garden was crisped with fallen leaves and dusted with dew that twinkled, thousand-eyed, under the sheen of the dawn. All the pungent freshness of autumn was in the air. Bertrand chose his ground—a clean stretch of turf close to the steam of a great apple-tree, and far from the mounds the Black Death had built. He set to work with the look of a man who feels his heart helped by physical effort. Sweat ran from his forehead and his breath steamed up into the air, but he never paused till the grave lay finished.
Thrusting the spade into the pile of earth, he went into the court and climbed the tower stair to the room where Arletta lay dead. Bertrand stood and looked at her awhile, dry eyed, moved to the depths, his mouth twitching. Then he lifted her in his arms, feeling the solemn coldness of her body striking to his heart, and carried her down the stair and across the court into the garden. Very tenderly he laid her in the grave, and, kneeling, set her hair in a circle about her face and crossed her hands upon her bosom. Then he stood up and looked at her, the sunlight touching her face, as she lay in her last resting-place, her hands in the shadow that hid the blood-stains on her dress.
A foot-fall in the grass and a shadow stealing athwart the band of sunlight brought Bertrand round upon his heel. Tiphaïne had crossed the garden, her red gown sweeping the fallen leaves, her crucifix in her hands, and a few half-faded flowers. Her eyes were full of the sadness of deep thought.
“You have laid her there?”
He nodded, and stood twisting his hands together.
Tiphaïne went close to the grave and looked down at Arletta sleeping her last sleep, with her black hair about her face. How quiet and unhurt she looked, her jealousy dead with her, her hands folded upon her bosom! Tiphaïne knelt down and began to pray, holding her crucifix over the grave. The act brought Bertrand also to his knees by the pile of brown earth he had thrown up out of the trench. He looked at dead Arletta and then at Tiphaïne, whose hair shone like amber in the sun. He saw her lips move, saw her take her breath in deeply, her eyes fixed on Arletta’s face. Bertrand tried to pray also with the groping yet passionate instincts of a soul still half in the dark. He strove after the words that would not come, knowing full well what his heart desired.
“Bertrand.”
Tiphaïne was looking at him across the grave. Her mouth was soft and lovable, her eyes tremulous with pity. It was to be peace between them. Bertrand’s remorse pleaded for mercy.
“Bertrand, the child is asleep; she will know no more pain.”
Bertrand hung his head and stared into the grave.
“I have killed her,” he said; “yes, there is no escaping it. She was very good to me, poor wench, and I—I was often rough and selfish.”
He knelt there, gnawing his lip, twisting his hands into his surcoat, and trying to keep the tears from coming to his eyes. Tiphaïne watched him with a strange, sad smile. She was wondering whether Bertrand would forget.
“One cannot change the past,” she said.
He flung up his head and looked her in the face.
“I have done with the old life. This child’s blood shall make a new man of me.”
“Well spoken.”
“I mean it. Help me with your prayers.”
She held out her hands to him across the grave.
“There are brave men needed—yes, and you are brave enough. Take arms for our Breton homes, Bertrand, and help to drive the English into the sea.”
They knelt, looking steadfastly into each other’s eyes, no pride between them for the moment. It was then that a sudden thought came to Bertrand. He drew his poniard, and, bending over the grave, cut off a lock of Arletta’s hair. Reddening a little, he held it out to Tiphaïne, his eyes pleading with her like the eyes of a dog.
“Here is the poor child’s token. Give me a strand of your hair to bind with it. It is all I ask, and it will help me.”
She stood up without a word, let her hair fall from the net that held it, a cloud of gold and bronze about her pale face and over her wine-red dress. Taking Bertrand’s poniard, she cut off a lock and gave it him, content that the threads of gold should be twined with dead Arletta’s tresses.
“Take it, Bertrand, and I will pray for you.”
Bertrand was binding the black and bronze together, smiling to himself sadly, and thinking of Tiphaïne when she was a child.
“I shall not forget,” he said, simply.
“Nor I,” she answered, throwing the flowers and crucifix she had brought into Arletta’s grave.
And so Tiphaïne left him, and Bertrand turned to end his work. He covered Arletta with dead leaves, and threw in the few flowers he could find in the garden. Then he thrust back the earth very gently into the grave, growing ever sadder as the brown soil hid Arletta’s face from him forever.
And that same noontide young Robin Raguenel came riding in with twenty spears bristling at his back and English plunder on his pack-horses. Broceliande had given back Tiphaïne her own at last, after weeks of peril and despair. As for Bertrand, he took young Robin’s thanks in silence, and told the truth rather than play the hypocrite. The lad’s pleading could not hold him. Bertrand saw Tiphaïne alone no more, and, marching his men out, plunged into the deeps of Broceliande.
BOOK III
“THE OAK OF MIVOIE”
OneMarch day a man wrapped in a heavy riding-cloak with the hood turned back over his shoulders sat looking out over the sea from the cliffs of Cancale. Behind him a shaggy pony was cropping the grass, lifting its head to gaze ever and again at its master, motionless against the gray March sky. A northeast wind blustered over the cliffs, the sea, sullen and venomous, running high about the islands off Cancale. The great waves came swinging in to fly in white clouds of spray over the glistening black rocks that came and went like huge sea-monsters spouting in the water. Across the bay St. Michael’s glimmered beneath a chance storm-beam of the sun, while the shores of Normandy were dim and gray between sea and sky.
It was Bertrand, throned like some old Breton saint, with the waves thundering on the rocks beneath him and the gulls wailing about the cliffs. He sat there motionless, fronting the wind, his sword across his knees, as though watching and waiting for some sail he knew would come. The strong and ugly face might have caught the spirit of the granite land. Rock, sea spume, and the storm wind everywhere; a few twisted trees struggling in the grip of the wind. Bertrand, solemn, gray-eyed, motionless, akin to the rocks that lay around.
Two months had passed since Bertrand had come to Gleaquim by the northern sea, where his kinsfolk had kept Christmas in the old house where the Du Guesclins had had their rise. He had disbanded his free companions at Rennes, maugre their dismay and their unwillingness to leave him. The men’s rough loyalty had touched Bertrand, and taught him that even the saddest dogs could love their master. Guicheaux had even cast himself at Bertrand’s feet, swearing that he would go with him to the ends of the earth. It was with a husky voice that Bertrand had answered them, bade them choose a new captain and fight for Blois. He had left them bemoaning the obstinacy of his will, to discover, some twenty miles from Rennes, that Guicheaux and Hopart were following on his heels. Moved by their homage, he had taken them with him to Plessis-Bertrand, in Hakims valley by the sea.
There had been no great joy in Bertrand’s home-coming. His father, failing in years and health, had grown querulous and miserly, while Dame Jeanne adored Olivier as foolishly as ever. Julienne and the other girls were at a convent in Rennes. Two of the boys were lodged with their aunt in the same town, and Gaheris had gone as a page into the Sieur de Rohan’s household. There had been but a poor welcome for the prodigal, who brought no spoil or honor with him—nothing but a solemn face and two hungry followers. Sieur Robert had received him with no outburst of pride. His mother pursed up her lips, and questioned him as to what he had done with the money he had had to start him in the wars. Olivier strutted and swaggered in his finer clothes, made love to his mother’s serving-women, and sneered openly at his brother, asking him how many ale-houses he had captured and how many millers’ ransoms he had won. Even in the kitchen there were brawlings and discord, for Hopart and Guicheaux drubbed Olivier’s men for lauding up their master and belittling Bertrand’s courage.
As for the Champion of Rennes, he kept a tight mouth and a flinty face, took all the trivial taunts without a word, feeling it good that life should run roughly with him for a season. Vain, vaporing Olivier and proud, cold-eyed Jeanne knew nothing of the deep workings of that quiet man’s heart. He never spoke to them of the near past, and told them nothing of what he had learned and suffered. They thought him sour, surly, dull in the head. Thus, even in a home, kinsfolk are as strangers and outlanders together, and the mother knows not the heart of the son.
A great change was working in Bertrand—one of those uprisings that occur, perhaps, but once in the course of a strong man’s life. The recklessness, the passionate abandonment of youth were past—likewise the first peevish curses of disappointed manhood. Bertrand had learned to humble himself, to look round him, and to think. He had grappled with the truths and falsities of life, and searched out the flaws in his own heart with that dogged devotedness that was part of his nature. No easy and emotional religiosity inspired him, but rather the grim spirit of an old Stoic, striving after the best for the nobleness thereof. Yet the change was not without its tender tones. Almost unconsciously Bertrand had set up Tiphaïne in his heart, while beside her, yet more in the shadow, Arletta’s white and wistful face seemed to plead with him out of the past. Those who had known him of old, saving Olivier and his mother, wondered at the new gentleness, the air of patience, that had mellowed the rough and violent boy whom they remembered.
Bertrand was much alone that winter. It was a season of rest for him, a girding up of the loins, a tightening of the muscles of the heart. Nearly every day, in rain and sunshine, he would ride down to the sea, and sit there on the cliffs, with the ever-changing sky above him and the ever-restless waters at his feet. To Bertrand there was something bracing in this solitude and in the unbelittled magnificence of sea and shore. It was in those lonely days that he learned to know the true courage, that nobler quietude that smiles at defeat. And with the humility that had come upon him a deep and solemn peace seemed poured like divine wine into his mouth. The conviction grew in him that the higher life was yet before his face. Even as the grand old Hebrews trusted in the Eternal One with a faith that made them terrible, so Bertrand believed, with all the simple instinctiveness of his soul, that the powers above had work for him to do. The day would come for him, when or how he knew not yet. He was content to rest and tarry for a season, perfecting the self-mastery that was to make of him a man.
Bertrand mounted his rough pony and rode homeward that March day with the sun going down amid a mass of burning clouds. His heart was tranquil in him despite the wailing of the wind, the moaning of the trees, and the bleak stretch of moorland and of waste. He saw the peasants returning from their labor, and smiled at the sight. The patience of these lowly tillers of the fields seemed to comfort him. He had begun to think more of them of late than the mere pomp of chivalry and the glamour of arms. They suffered, these brown-faced, round-backed peasants, and Bertrand’s heart went out to them as he thought of their hard lives and the heaviness they bore.
The servants were trooping into supper when Bertrand rode into the old court-yard and saw the hall windows warm with torch-light. He stabled his pony, fed the beast with his own hands, and washed at the laver in the screens before going in to supper. Sieur Robert and his wife were already at the high table, with Olivier, the young fop, lolling against the wall. His lips curled as he saw Bertrand enter, for he hated his brother, and feared him in his heart.
Bertrand went to serve and carve at the high table. He had taken the task on him of late with that quiet thoroughness that made him what he was. It was proper, he thought, for him to serve before those who had begotten him, even though he had known no great kindness at their hands. Olivier would sneer and smile at Bertrand’s newly inspired filial courtesy. He was a selfish fool himself, and loathed stirring himself, even for the mother who would have given him her head.
“Hallo there! those roast partridges look fat. Bring the dish, brother; this north wind blows hunger into a man.”
Bertrand brought the dish without a word, and Olivier helped himself, pleased with the honor of being waited on by his brother.
“Give us some Grenarde, Bertrand. Thanks. And the spice-plate. Ah, madame, you keep to ypocrasse. Bertrand, my mother would drink ypocrasse.”
Olivier had long lorded it over both his parents with the easy insolence of a favored son. Bertrand poured out a cup of ypocrasse for Dame Jeanne, and, having carved for his father, and given him a tankard of cider, sat down to eat in turn. Olivier, who was greedy despite his daintiness, left Bertrand in peace awhile, only deigning to talk when he had ended his hunger.
“Well, Brother Bertrand, how are the pigs to-day?”
This question had become a nightly witticism with Olivier since a certain morning two weeks ago, when he had found his brother helping the swineherd to drive his hogs.
Bertrand kept silence and went on with his supper. Olivier, after staring at him, took a draught of wine, wiped his mouth, and called for water and a napkin that he might wash. Bertrand rose and brought them from the buffet below the great window.
“Thanks, good brother.”
The patronage would have set Bertrand’s face aflame not many months ago. He left Olivier waving his white hands in the air, and carried the bowl and napkin to his father, and then to Dame Jeanne, who thanked him with a slight nod of the head.
“Mother, I am thinking of joining the Countess at Rennes this year.”
Olivier was forever on the point of sallying on imaginary quests, and thrilling his mother’s heart with the threat of daring untold perils. He had been to the wars but once in his life, when an English spear-thrust had excused many months of unheroic idleness.
“They must miss you,” said Jeanne, with a jealous look.
Olivier spread his shoulders but did not see that Bertrand smiled.
“True,” he confessed, with divine self-unction; “I am a good man at my arms. This cursed spear-wound still smarts a little and chafes under the harness. How many men, mother, can you spare me in the spring?”
Jeanne du Guesclin considered the demand with the fondness of an unwilling fool. Olivier’s vaporings never rang false in her maternal ears. Like many a shrewd, cold-hearted woman, she was deceived pitifully by the one thing that she loved.
“Wait till the summer, child,” she said.
“Child!” And Olivier stood upon his dignity and showed temper. “You are blind, madame; you never see that I am a man. You women are made of butter. We men are of sterner stuff.”
His mother’s meekness was wonderful in one so proud.
“Ah, Olivier, you have the soldier’s spirit! I must not try to curb your courage.”
The hero smoothed his diminutive peak of a beard, and deigned to suffer her carefulness, like the inimitable peacock that he was.
“Honor is honor, madame. We men cannot sit at embroidery frames and make simples. It is the nature of man that he should thirst for war.”
A sudden stir among the servants at the lower end of the hall drew Bertrand’s attention from his brother’s boasting. His ear had caught the sound of hoofs and the pealing of a trumpet before the court-yard gate. The clattering of dishes and the babbling of tongues ceased in the great hall, for Plessis-Bertrand was a lonely house and travellers rarely came that way. Hopart and Guicheaux, taught caution by long, experienced exposure to all manner of hazards, took down their swords from the wall and went out into the court-yard, followed by some of Olivier’s men with torches. Olivier scoffed at the free companions’ carefulness.
“Some dirty beggar,” he said, “or a couple of strolling friars. Hi, Jacques, if they are players—and there be any wenches—show them in.”
Bertrand, who was wiser, and had no vanity to consider, saw that his sword was loose in its sheath.
They could hear Guicheaux shouting and a voice answering him. Then came the unbarring of the gate and the ring of hoofs upon the court-yard stones. The men were shouting and cheering in the court. Hopart’s hairy face appeared at the doorway of the hall. He so far forgot his manners for the moment as to bawl at his master on the dais.
“Beaumanoir’s herald, Messire Jean de Xaintré. They are going to maul the English at Mivoie’s Oak. The eagle must look to his claws!”
In came the servants, shouting and elbowing beneath a flare of torches, old Jean, the butler, flourishing his staff and trying to keep order and clear a passage. Hopart and Guicheaux were treading on the toes of Olivier’s men, spreading their fingers and grinning from ear to ear. Bertrand saw the flashing of a bassinet, the gay colors of a herald’s jupon, the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s arms quartered with those of Brittany. Some dozen men-at-arms followed in full harness, shouldering back the cook-boys and scullions.
The herald, an esquire of the Marshal’s, Jean de Xaintré by name, marched up the hall and saluted those at the high table.
“Greeting, madame and messires all; God’s grace be with you. I come from the Sieur de Beaumanoir, Marshal of Brittany. Thirty champions are to fight thirty English at the Oak of Mivoie on Passion Sunday. We need the Sieur de Guesclin’s son with us.”
Dame Jeanne looked at Olivier and beckoned him forward.
“Here is your champion, herald,” she said. “Olivier, the Sieur de Beaumanoir needs your sword.”
Jean de Xaintré stared at the lady and glanced, with a grim twinkle, at Olivier, who looked as though he were not so ready to deserve his mother’s pride.
“Your pardon, madame”—and Xaintré laughed—“Bertrand du Guesclin is our man. Greeting, old friend; you have not forgotten Jean de Xaintré.”
Jeanne du Guesclin bit her lips.
“What—Bertrand!”
“Madame, who but Bertrand, the best son you ever bore!”
Bertrand had risen and was standing with one hand on his father’s shoulder, knowing that his chance had come at last. The hall, with its crowd of faces, seemed blurred to him for the moment. Yet he saw Hopart and Guicheaux squealing and flapping their caps in the faces of Olivier’s men.
“I am here, old comrade. Give me the Marshal’s orders.”
Jeanne, white and angry, glared at him, and put her arm about Olivier.
“To choose the clumsy fool!” she said.
Jean de Xaintré had drawn his sword, and was holding the hilt crosswise before him.
“Swear, brother in arms, swear on the cross.”
“Ay, Jean, give me the oath.”
“Swear by Christ’s cross. The Oak of Mivoie on Josselin Moors, to fight Bamborough and his English on Passion Sunday.”
Bertrand lifted his hand, crossed himself, and took the oath.
“Before God—and our Lord—I swear,” he said.
Xaintré thrust his sword back into its sheath.
“Bertrand du Guesclin will not fail.”
Sieur Robert, sleepy and querulous, sat staring about him, and looking weakly at his wife. Jeanne du Guesclin had sunk back heavily in her chair, and was still biting her lips, and looking bitterly at Bertrand. Olivier had tossed down a cup of wine, and was braving it out as though the whole matter were the choicest farce. Guicheaux and Hopart were still stamping and shouting till Dame Jeanne started up in a blaze of fury, and shouted to her men, who crowded by the door:
“Take the fools out and have them whipped!”
But Bertrand cowed his mother for the once, and swore that no one should lay hands upon his men.
“Quiet, dogs,” he said, shaking his fist at them, “you have barked enough; let us have peace.”
He sprang down from the dais and gripped Jean de Xaintré’s hands.
“Old friend, you have not forgotten me?”
“No, no. Come, give me wine. Here’s to you with all my heart.”
Itwas seven in the morning on the day of his riding to join the Marshal of Brittany at the Oak of Mivoie, and Bertrand stood warming himself before the great hall fire. He was in full harness—harness that he had burnished lovingly with his own hands, and the raised vizor of his bassinet showed a calm face and the eyes of a man who listened. Bertrand had broken fast alone in the hall, after keeping a vigil in the chapel with his sword and shield before him on the altar steps. He was to ride towards Dinan that day, for Xaintré had told him that Robin Raguenel had been chosen among the thirty, and Bertrand rode to seek him at La Bellière, and perhaps win a glimpse of Tiphaïne herself. His heart felt full of joy that morning, the joy of a man to whom life offers stirring days again.
Jean, the old butler, appeared at the door that closed the stairway leading to the private rooms. He looked half timidly at Bertrand, a tower of steel before the fire, and came forward slowly, coughing behind his hand.
“Well, Jean, how long will they keep me waiting? The days are short in March.”
“Your servant, messire—”
“Well?”
“My master has bidden me carry you his good grace—and blessing—”
“What! My father is not out of bed?”
“He prays you to pardon him, messire. He feels the cold, and these raw mornings—”
Bertrand silenced him with a gesture of the hand. His face had lost its brightness for the moment, and there was a frown as of pain upon his forehead.
“Ah, of course, Jean, say no more. And madame?”
“Madame, messire, is at her devotions; she would not be disturbed. In an hour—”
Bertrand turned with a shrug of impatience, picked up his sword, and buckled it on.
“My time is God’s time, Jean,” he said; “carry my respects to my father and my mother—”
He winced over the words, frowning, and looking sorrowful about the eyes.
“Tell them I could not tarry. And my brother Olivier? Curling his pretty beard?”
“I will go and see, messire.”
“No, no; never trouble the sweet lad. It is a mere nothing, man, to the parting of his hair. Good-bye, Jean; forget the mad tricks I played you as a boy.”
He turned, took up his shield, and strode out from the hall, a sense of forlornness chilling his ardor for the moment. Hopart and Guicheaux were waiting for him in the court-yard, holding his horse and spear. Bertrand had refused to take the men with him, preferring solitude, content with his own thoughts. Guicheaux and Hopart ran up to him, still hoping that he would change his purpose.
“Ah, lording, you will crack the English bassinets!”
“Good luck, good luck!”
“Take us, too, messire. We can live on rust and leather.”
Bertrand was glad even of their rude affection. He took out an old brooch and a ring of silver from his shrunken purse, and thrust the largesse into their hands.
“No, no, sirs, I ride alone. Keep these things, and think of Bertrand du Guesclin if he comes not back again.”
They hung round him like a couple of great children, eager and devoted.
“Messire, courage, you are too tough for the English dogs.”
“Keep up your heart, captain, and give them the clean edge.”
They ran for a mile along the road beside him, holding his stirrup-straps and looking up into his face. And theirs was the only heartening Bertrand had when he rode out to fight for the Breton poor at the Oak of Mivoie on Josselin Moors.
Bertrand’s courage warmed again as he mounted the moors and felt the blue sky over him and the broad Breton lands before his face. He forgot Olivier’s sneers and his mother’s coldness, and the way they had let him go uncheered. The truth remained that Beaumanoir had chosen him, and that the chance had come for which he had waited. That day, also, he might see Tiphaïne again, give her the good news, and tell her of the change that had been working in his manhood.
Bertrand was in fine fettle by the time he struck the windings of the Rance, and saw the river flashing below the cliffs and glimmering amid the green. He tossed his spear and sang as the towers of Dinan came in view, the gray walls girding the little town, with the Ranee running in the narrow meads below. All the thickets were purpling with the spring. The bare aspens glittered, the clouds sailed white over the wind-swept Breton town.
But Dinan had no call for Bertrand that March day. He rode on, still singing, happy at heart, watching for the tall chimneys of the Vicomte’s house, finding a quick, strange joy at the thought of seeing Tiphaïne again. Bertrand was not a Provençal rhapsodist. He could not write love songs to a woman’s lips, but look bravely into her face he could, and crown her with the homage that only great hearts know.
Soon the turrets and carved chimneys rose up amid the trees, smoke floating with the wind, the Vicomte’s banner slanting from its staff. Bertrand rode up amid a swirl of March-blown leaves and blew his horn before the gate. The servants who came out to him knew the eagle on his shield, and Robin himself met Bertrand in the court.
“Messire du Guesclin, welcome indeed!” and he held out his hands to take Bertrand’s spear and shield, his beaming face a greeting in itself.
“Xaintré told me you were chosen.”
“To be sure, he passed this way on the road to Concale. Mother of God, but I am glad you are come! Tiphaïne is above, playing chess with my father.”
Robin gave the spear and shield to one of the servants and embraced Bertrand when he dismounted. There was something comforting to the lad in having this strong man to bear him company.
“It will be a grim business, Bertrand. Croquart is to fight on Bamborough’s side, and Knowles and Calverly. Pssh! but who is afraid of the Flemish butcher? Come to my room; I will help you to disarm.”
He led Bertrand through the garden to his bedchamber joining the chapel, chattering all the way, with a restless smile on his boyish face. There was an exaggerated fervor in the lad’s gayety, and his eyes looked tired as though he had not slept. Bertrand saw that his hands trembled as he helped to unbuckle the harness, and that his mouth drooped when he was not talking.
“What a day for us, brother in arms!” he babbled, drawing out Bertrand’s sword and feeling the edge thereof with his thumb. “Croquart is a terrible fellow. But then Beaumanoir is as brave as a lion, and Tinteniac a powerful smiter, and you, Bertrand, are as good a man at your weapons as any.”
Bertrand looked hard at Robin, and forced a smile.
“We shall hold our own,” he said.
“You think so?” and the lad’s face brightened. “I have been running two miles each morning to better my wind. Look at my new armor, yonder. It is the cleverest German work. See the kneecaps, and the pallets to guard the armpits. It will take a good sword, Bertrand, to pierce it, eh?”
He seemed so eager to be cheered, despite his vivacity, that Bertrand felt troubled for the lad, and pitied him in his heart. He was wondering why Beaumanoir had chosen young Raguenel. He was tall and strong enough, but he had not the dogged look of a born fighter.
“You will do bravely enough, Robin,” he said. “Why, I have seen these English beaten many a day. We Bretons are the better men.”
“Good, good indeed! Why, man, you are thirsting for Passion Sunday to come round.”
“Because we shall win,” said Bertrand, quietly, smiling at the lad and eager to hearten him.
Bertrand had finished his disarming, and, having washed his face and hands in Robin’s laver, stood for him to lead on to the Vicomte’s room. He was troubled now that he was to meet Tiphaïne again, wondering how she would greet him, and whether her father knew what had passed within the Aspen Tower. He followed Robin through the oriel, stroking his chin and bracing his manhood for the meeting.
Tiphaïne was seated before the solar window, with the chess-board between her and the Vicomte. She rose up at once when Bertrand entered, and held out her hands to him with a readiness that made him color.
“Messire, we meet again.”
To Bertrand her voice brought back a hundred memories that gave him pain. He winced a little as he took her hand and felt her clear eyes searching his face. It meant more to Bertrand to meet those eyes than an enemy’s sword would cost him at Mivoie.
“God grant madame is well,” and he bowed to her clumsily and turned to Stephen Raguenel, who had pushed back the chess-table and was rising from his chair.
“Well met at last, Messire du Guesclin. I can thank you with my own lips for the great debt we owe your sword.”
Bertrand guessed that Tiphaïne had saved his honor. He flashed a look at her, and saw by the smile and the shake of the head she gave him that the Vicomte knew nothing of the first spoiling of the Aspen Tower. Bertrand blessed her, yet felt a hypocrite.
“If I have served you, sire, say no more of it.”
The Vicomte de Bellière, stately seigneur that he was, kissed Bertrand’s cheek after the quaint fashion of those days.
“My house is your house, lad,” he said, “my servants your servants. I hold myself your debtor.”
For Bertrand, La Bellière had a strange and saddened sense of peace that night as he sat before the log fire and talked to the Vicomte of the combat at the Oak of Mivoie. La Bellière contrasted with the memories of his own home, for here they loved one another and knew no discords. The solar, warm with the firelight, had something sacred and beautiful within its walls. Bertrand felt the quiet dignity of the Raguenels’ life, the charm, the mellowness that made home home.
Tiphaïne sat opposite to him, her embroidery in her lap—a mass of green and gold—her eyes shining in the firelight, her hair coiled above the curve of her shapely neck. Her father’s chair was turned towards the fire, and he could see both his children, for Robin stood leaning against the chimney-hood, his face drawn and pinched when in repose.
It was pathetic the way the old man gloried in his son. He did not grudge him to the Breton cause, but let his pride soar over the lad’s honor. He told Bertrand the deeds of his own youth, beneficently garrulous, and swore that Robin would outshine his father. His handsome face mellowed as he sipped his wine and looked from one child to the other. Bertrand, silent, yet very reverent, watched Tiphaïne’s hands, too conscious all the while of Robin’s strained and jerky gayety. The lad’s heart was not happy in him, of that Bertrand felt assured.
“Come, messire, you have not seen Robin fight as yet.”
Bertrand smiled, a little sadly, and shook his head.
“He had his christening when our Countess retook the castle of Roche-D’Errien. You were one of the first in the breach, Robin, eh? Yes, yes, and Beaumanoir heard of the spirit you showed in that tussle down in the south, Ancenis—was it? What a head I have for names!”
Tiphaïne looked up from her work and gave her father the word.
“Aurai, to be sure, where that rogue Dagworth had his quittance from Raoul de Cahours. Robin won his spurs there. You shall see how the lad can fight, messire, at the Oak of Mivoie.”
Robin laughed, blushed, and frowned at the fire. Tiphaïne was looking at him with almost a mother’s love in her eyes. Her brother’s restless gayety had no sinister significance for her sister’s pride in him. It was a solemn evening; Robin might be unnerved by the pathos of it, but nothing more.
“Robin will play his part,” she said, quietly.
“God’s grace, of course, he shall! More wine, messire; let us drink to brave Beaumanoir and to Brittany.”
Before the hour for sleep came round, Tiphaïne drew Bertrand aside towards the window, and stood looking keenly in his face. His eyes were happier than of old, and the sullen discontent had left him since Arletta’s burying in the garden of the Aspen Tower.
“Bertrand.”
“Yes, Tiphaïne?”
“How is it with you?”
He looked at her frankly, yet with a saddened smile.
“I am learning my lesson—letter by letter,” he answered.
“I am glad of it. We are the firmer friends, and—”
She hesitated, with a troubled light shining in her eyes. Bertrand saw her glance wistfully at Robin and her father.
“Bertrand.”
“I stand to serve you.”
“Take care of Robin for us, Bertrand; it would kill my father to lose the lad. And he is so young, though brave and strong enough. If—”
Bertrand reached for her hand and held it, his face transfigured as he looked into her eyes.
“Trust me,” he said.
“Ah!—”
“I will stand by the lad, and take the blows from him even with my own body. Tiphaïne, I have not forgotten.”
And Bertrand did not sleep that night with thinking of Tiphaïne and the Oak of Mivoie.
Bertrandand Robin Raguenel rode southwest from Dinan, holding towards Montcontour, so that they should come on Josselin from the west. All about Ploermel, and even to the walls of Rennes, Bamborough’s English and Croquart’s ruffians were still burning and plundering, and driving the wretched peasantry like sheep before them. Montfort’s English had been very bitter against the Bretons since Dagworth’s death, vowing that he had fallen through treachery, and that Brittany should pay the price in blood.
The sun was setting on the Friday before Passion Sunday, when Bertrand and Robin came to the little town of Loudéac and sought out a lodging for the night. They were guided to an inn on the north of the market square, and given a private chamber, as befitted young Raguenel’s rank. The lad had shown a strange temper all the way from Dinan, his face like an April sky, now all sunshine, now all gloom. Moments of gusty gayety alternated with morose and restless silence. Bertrand had done what he could to humor the lad, without letting him suspect that he was troubled for the part he would play at the Oak of Mivoie.
Robin drifted into a reckless mood that night at Loudéac. He called for much wine and showed the innkeeper an open purse. The servants stirred themselves to honor “my lord,” who was to fight for Brittany on Josselin Moors. The innkeeper, a shrewd old pimp, who wished his guests to be amused, sent up a couple of dancing-girls to the chamber after supper. Bertrand looked black when the girls came in to them, giggling and twitching their bright-colored skirts. It was customary at many inns to keep such ladies, and young Robin laughed at them, his head half turned with wine.
“Hallo, wicked ones! Come and sit by me. You can dance and sing for a gentleman, eh? To be sure, Mistress Red-stockings, you have a pretty pair of ankles. Who calls for muscatel and good Bordeaux? Bertrand, fill up your cup.”
The women were ready enough to make play for Robin, seeing that he was a handsome fellow and two parts drunk. Bertrand, however, had no desire to see the lad preyed upon by such a pair of harpies. Ignoring their oglings and their tittering, he went to the door and shouted for the innkeeper, and gave the man a look that did not miscarry.
“None of your tricks, my friend; we have no purses to be picked. What we have ordered we have ordered, but these delicacies are not to our taste.”
The man looked at Robin, who had taken the girl with the red stockings on his knee.
“But, my lord yonder—seems satisfied.”
“Robin, let the girl go.”
The lad quailed before Bertrand’s eyes, and surrendered to him sheepishly, yet not without some show of spite.
“Now, Sir Shepherd, out with your sheep.”
The innkeeper saw that Bertrand was in no mood to be trifled with, and that he was the master of the situation so far as Robin was concerned. He beckoned the women out, pulling a wry face, yet outwardly obsequious as any son of Mammon. The women followed him, tossing their ribbons and looking saucily at Bertrand, whose ugly face was like a block of stone. Their insolence was nothing to him, for he had drunk the dregs of recklessness and thrown the cup away.
Robin was sitting sulkily before the fire, biting his nails and glancing at Bertrand out of the corners of his eyes. He knew that the elder man was in the right, and yet Bertrand’s mastery chafed his pride.
“You meddle rather much, messire,” he said.
Bertrand went up to him with the air of a brother, a good-humored smile softening his face.
“Nonsense, Robin; you are a little hot in the head. No more wine, lad; I ask it as a favor. Who kissed you last—was it not your sister?”
Robin shuddered, and sat staring at the fire.
“You are right, Bertrand,” he said. “By God, I was going to Mivoie with a harlot’s kisses on my mouth!”
“No, no, lad, you have the true stuff in you. Come to bed; we must not waste our sleep.”
It was some time after midnight when Bertrand woke with a start and lay listening in the darkness of the room. A voice was babbling in the silence of the night, making a hoarse whispering like dead leaves shivering in a frosty wind. Bertrand’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and he could see Robin half kneeling, half lying upon the bed. The lad was praying like a man in the extremity of terror.
“Oh, Lady of Heaven, pardon all my sins. I am young, and I have erred often, and often I have prayed with a cold heart. Mea culpa! mea culpa! Lord Jesu watch over me at the Oak of Mivoie. It is terrible, very terrible, to be afraid, but I have taken the oath, and all men will mock me if I fail. St. Malo, hear me; I will build a chapel to thee if I come back safe from Mivoie.”
To such whimperings Bertrand listened as he lay motionless in bed. Robin’s whispering terror troubled him; he grieved for the lad, yet knew not what to do. If Robin had his sister’s heart, there would be no quailings, no shivering prayers at midnight, no grovelling on the floor. Bertrand lay listening, half tempted to speak to the lad. He held his words, however, and watched till Robin climbed back with chattering teeth to bed. Bertrand betrayed nothing of what he had seen or heard when they rose to dress and arm that morning, though his heart misgave him when he saw the lad’s red eyes and drooping mouth. He began to be keenly afraid for the lad’s courage, lest it should fail utterly and bring shame on Robin and on those who loved him.
They rode out through Loudeac after paying the reckoning at the inn. Robin’s spirits revived somewhat as they went through the narrow streets and the townsfolk cheered them and waved their caps.
“Grace to the Breton gentlemen!”
“God bless ye, sirs, at the Oak of Mivoie!”
The glory of it all brought a flush to Robin’s cheeks. He looked handsome enough in his new armor, his horse going proudly, with trappings of green and gold. His manhood stiffened; his blood came more blithely from his heart. Had he not a part to play, a cause to champion? Men looked for great things from him, trusted to his word. Robin’s pride kindled as he rode through the streets of Loudeac, and Bertrand, watching him, felt glad.
It was when they were free of the town and plunged into the woodlands that Robin’s courage began to wane once more. Loudeac had been full of life and the stir thereof, but here in the deeps of the mysterious woods there was nothing but silence and loneliness about him. The wind sighed in the beech-trees; the firs waved their solemn boughs. The damp grass and the sodden leaves were as yet unbrightened by many flowers. The pitiful thinness of the lad’s courage grew more plain as the hours went by.
Bertrand talked hard, and tried to make young Raguenel more ready for the morrow. He told him of the tussles he had come through unharmed and of the many times that he had seen the English beaten. And Croquart—what was Croquart the Fleming that they should talk so much of him? The fellow was only a butcher’s brat; he had learned to use the knife and the cleaver, and boasted the insolence of a scullion. Brittany had as good men as Croquart, Calverly, and all the gang of them. Bertrand took no heed of Robin’s frailty, but held forth strenuously, as though fired by his own convictions. Yet the more he talked the deeper grew the lad’s depression.
About noon they halted beside a stream where moor and woodland met, watered their horses, and made a meal. Robin ate but little, and seemed to have no heart to talk. Bertrand ignored his restless manner and the weak twitching of his lower lip. He gave the lad little time for reflection, feeling that Robin’s courage leaked like wine out of a cracked jar.
“Come, we must make Josselin before dark.”
Robin dragged himself up from the foot of a tree. He went slowly towards his horse, walking with no spring at the knees, his chin down upon his chest. Bertrand’s back was turned for the moment, for he was tightening his saddle-girths, that had worked slack since the morning. Robin glanced at him, with the look of a hunted thing in his eyes. He stooped, lifted up his horse’s left fore foot, and plunged the point of his poniard into the frog.
Bertrand turned to find Robin’s horse plunging and rearing, with his master hanging to the bridle.
“Hallo, lad, what’s amiss?”
Robin, fearful lest Bertrand should guess his treachery, patted the beast’s neck and coaxed him back into control.
“By the saints, Hoel is dead lame!”
He tugged at the bridle and walked the horse to and fro, gloating inwardly at the way the poor brute hobbled.
“What’s to be done?”
Bertrand marched up without a word, lifted the beast’s fore foot, and saw the bleeding hoof. His mouth hardened as he turned on Robin, grim but very quiet.
“Show me your poniard.”
The lad stared at him, his lower lip a-droop.
“My poniard?”
“Yes.”
“Upon my soul, messire—”
He had flushed crimson, and was shaking at the knees, nor did Bertrand need to press his guilt. He stood looking at Robin, contemptuous, yet moved to pity, debating inwardly what he should do.
“Well, messire, a nice trick this, laming your own horse! I will get you to Josselin to-night, even if I have to carry you.”
“Bertrand, I—My God, I cannot go, I am not fit!”
He broke down utterly of a sudden, and threw himself upon the grass, burying his face in his arms, and sobbing like a girl. Bertrand had never seen such cowardice before; it was new and strange to him, and the very pitiableness of it shocked his manhood.
“Come, lad, come,” and he bent down and tried to turn him over.
Robin squirmed away like a frightened cur.
“I can’t, I can’t! Don’t jeer at me; let me be!”
“What! You will break your oath?”
The lad’s shoulders only twitched the more, and he buried his face yet deeper in his arms.
“For God’s sake, lad, stand up and play the man. What will they say of you at Dinan?”
It was all useless, useless as trying to turn milk into wine. Robin lay snivelling on the grass, all the manhood gone from him, his fine armor a veritable mockery, his whole body palsied by abject fear. Even Bertrand’s taunts could sting no courage into him. Robin Raguenel was a coward; Bertrand knew the truth.
He stood looking at the lad, disgust and pity warring together on his face. Was this the brother Tiphaïne loved, and for whom he had promised to risk his life! Once more in despair he tried to rouse the lad, yet doubting in his heart that any good would come of it.
“So, Robin”—and he spoke gently—“you will let your father know that you are a coward?”
Robin groaned, but did not stir.
“Well—and your sister, she is proud of you?”
“Mercy, have mercy!” And the taunts only brought forth more snivellings and tears.
“Then you will break your oath to Beaumanoir, messire?”
“Yes, curse him, why did the fool choose me?”
Bertrand turned from Robin with a half-uttered oath, picked up his spear, and moved towards his horse. There was no help for it; he must leave the coward to his shame. They needed men, not girls, at Mivoie.