“What! He did not follow you?”
“No.”
“How was he armed?”
“Rusty harness that had been oiled and looked black.”
“And both of you ran away—he from you, and you from him.”
“Yes, captain.”
Croquart laughed, and turned again towards Loudeac.
“You must have looked fiercer than you are, fool, or else your brother coward has stopped behind to take the dead men’s rings.”
The free lance accepted the explanation. As a matter of fact, he had taken the dead men’s rings himself, but he did not trouble to tell Croquart so.
Thethrushes were singing on the glimmering spires of the oaks as the crimson banner of the sunset waved to pale gold. In the deepening azure of the east the moon had lost the filmy thinness of a cloud and stood out in splendor over the black hills and the valleys faint with mist. Night came, and with it the bent figures of Croquart’s men, gathering sticks and kicking leaves together to make a fire.
The very brilliance of the night made the woods cold, and Tinteniac, stiff with his wounds, sat propped against a tree, trying to pretend that he was neither in pain nor cold. Tiphaïne stood near him, her eyes seeming to catch the melancholy of the dying afterglow.
Croquart turned his hands everywhere to help his men. Whistling, as he might have whistled as a boy when splitting carcasses in Flanders, he looked to the horses, cut down underwood, the fresh, green foam of the woods in spring, and built a screen between the trunks of two great oaks. A horse-cloth stretched across two poles gave some sort of shelter. Business was brisk and money forthcoming, despite the rout at Josselin and the loss of all his baggage. A ransom of twenty thousand crowns was not to be counted on every day of the week, and with the Sieur de Tinteniac as a hostage he could bargain with Beaumanoir should the marshal be discourteous enough to continue offering bribes for his head.
Croquart plunged down the slope of the hill where he had chosen ground for the night, to reappear with a bundle of freshly cut broom, which he tossed down under cover of the screen of boughs. His men’s cloaks were purloined to cover the litter; the fellows could go damp when a Tinteniac was to be kept dry. Tête Bois had already persuaded the fire to blaze, and Croquart turned to his prisoners with a smile that suggested supper.
“A bed, sire, for you and for madame.”
They saw, and avoided each other’s eyes. Croquart, officious in his courtesies, picked up Tinteniac and laid him on the pile of broom, with a saddle on which he might rest his shoulders.
“Room for two, sire,” and he looked at Tiphaïne as though it would have pleased him to lift her as he had lifted Tinteniac. Her immobility discouraged him, and the dusk covered the color on her face. She was watching the flames leap up through the crackling wood, and thinking of poor Gilbert and poor Gilles, left to be spoiled of their rings in the lonely Loudeac woods. Only that morning she had seen their two heads, tawny and black, bowed over the chess-board as they made, little knowing it, the last moves in the game of life. Croquart had killed them, yet stood there offering her the impertinences of his butcher’s tongue. The two lads might have been two sparrows caught in a trap and left with their necks wrung, for all the reflection the deed caused the Fleming.
She went and sat with Tinteniac on the bed Croquart had made for them. Her mock husband felt the unwillingness of her nearness to him, an antagonism, that he would have found in few ladies of the court.
“I remember we have a part to play,” she said, when the Fleming had moved away some paces.
“You trust me, child?”
“Yes, at all times. Yet to lie to this fellow makes me despise myself. I cannot forget the Breton blood he has upon his hands.”
“We shall remember it,” and his eyes grew alive with the firelight. “Mother of God, does a Tinteniac forget such things!”
Supper came, with Croquart ready to serve as their esquire. The man Tête Bois had been sent into a hamlet to the north of Loudeac, with orders to get food, wine, a horse-cloth, flint, steel and tinder, and an iron pot. A boiled chicken, eggs, brown bread, and a flask of cider had resulted from Tête Bois’s marketing. Hunger is a great leveller of prides and prejudices, yet Croquart, ravenous as he was, set his reputation for gallantry before the cravings of his stomach, and carved the chicken and broke the bread.
On a square manchet the white slices of the bird’s breast were proffered to the lady. Tiphaïne saw the two great hands loaded with rings. She thought of the dead esquires, and the food disgusted her, given by those butcher’s hands.
“Madame will eat?”
She took the bread and meat as though they smelled of blood. Tinteniac, less sensitive, and a veteran in the art of concealing his feelings, drew his knife and betrayed no disgust.
“Keep the fool in a good temper,” ran his counsel to Tiphaïne in a whisper.
“Must I eat this food?”
“Yes, though it choke you.”
Croquart watched her, as though his cunning had uncovered her pride. He came to her with the wine-flask, saw her touch it with her lips and hardly taste the wine. Tinteniac was less scrupulous. Croquart’s turn came next. He took a long pull, wiped the mouth on a corner of his surcoat, and smiled a smile that made his small eyes glitter.
“Madame, more wine?”
“Thanks to you, sir, no.”
He saw the repugnance on her face, as though the slime of some unclean reptile could not have made the flask more nauseous to her lips.
“Madame will not drink after me?”
“I am not thirsty.”
“And you do not eat? Well, as you will,” and he treated her as though she were a sulky child. “Sire, I drink to you, the champion of Mivoie.”
Tinteniac laughed.
“Women never know what is pleasant,” he said.
Croquart sprawled beside the fire.
“The battle makes men friends,” and he sucked at the flask till the wine dribbled down his chin.
“I remember, sire, when the Countess de Montfort gave me her own cup after the first taking of Roche d’Errien.”
“Ah, yes.”
“A great lady, sire, who can set courage before birth. I had this ring from her,” and he held a hand up in the light of the fire.
Tinteniac humored him.
“Rubies! I have no such stones in my strong-box.”
“Ah, sire, Jeanne de Montfort knows the value of a brave man when she is served by him. What say you, madame?”
Tiphaïne swept the crumbs from her lap with a quick gesture of the hand.
“No doubt the Countess had need of you,” she said.
Croquart’s watch-fire was the red eye of the night to Bertrand, the black shadow on the black horse stealing through the greenwood on the Fleming’s heels. Bertrand saw the flames waving through the trees as he sat amid the crooked roots of a great oak, cutting slices from a loaf of bread he had bought on the road, his bassinet full of brackish water that he had drawn from a woodland pool. Bertrand was not a sentimentalist, and he broke his dry bread in the dusk as though hungry from a sense of duty, knowing that Croquart was not the man to starve on the march, and that a full stomach makes a better soldier than a head stuffed full of Southern songs. Bertrand carried an amusing matter-of-factness into the current of his adventures. It was not that he did not feel or suffer, but rather the obstinacy of his strength that insisted on coolness and lack of flurry. Thoroughness was a passion with him, even to the masticating of a loaf of bread.
When the dusk had deepened into the white mystery of a moonlit night, Bertrand braced on his bassinet, saw that his horse was securely tethered, and began his advance on Croquart’s fire. Slipping from trunk to trunk and bush to bush, he made a mere moving shadow amid the trees. Croquart had chosen his ground on the slope of a low hill, a ridge of forest hiding the fire from the main track running to Loudeac town. Bertrand, by crawling along the farther slope of the knoll, got within twenty yards of the fire, and lay where a tree threw a black patch on the grass like a piece of ebony set in silver.
The figures were easily distinguishable to Bertrand. Tiphaïne, head held high, lids drooping, the whiteness of her throat rising out of the crimson stuffs beneath. Tinteniac, propped against a saddle, his handsome face looking thin and tired, his eyes restless like the eyes of a man in pain. Croquart, a burly patch of angry red, bassinet off, tanned throat showing, a wine-flask in one hand, a charred stake in the other for stirring the fire. The two men-at-arms stretched half asleep on the far side of the flames.
The setting of the picture gave Bertrand the chance of testing the sincerity of his renunciation. He saw the rough bed, the canopy, the screen of boughs; Tiphaïne close to Tinteniac, a space between them and the Fleming, as though the two were one by courtesy and by desire. Bertrand gnawed at his lips, despite the sternness of his self-repression. The group seemed typical of his own luck in life. Tiphaïne and the Sieur de Tinteniac shared the fire, while he, as ever, lurked in the dark, alone.
“I would say, sire, without making a boast of it, that I have found none of your Breton men a match for me in arms.”
Bertrand heard the words as a man who is half asleep hears a voice that wakes him in the morning. Croquart had been telling a few of his adventures, poking the fire with his stick and brandishing it like the baton of a master musician marshalling the lutanists and flute-players at a feast. The vanity of the Fleming was so inevitable a characteristic that one was no more surprised by it than by seeing a toad spit. Innocent egoism may be a delicate perfume, an essence that adds to the charm of the individual, admirably so in women when they are deserving of desire. But with Croquart his intemperate arrogance was a veritable stench, an effluvium of the flesh, a carrion conceit that nauseated and repelled.
To Bertrand, Tiphaïne’s face seemed tilted antagonistically towards the moon. Her throat lengthened, her lids drooped more over her eyes. She looked impatient over the bellowings of this bull. Tinteniac leaned on his elbow and watched the fire. His contempt, deep as it was, found no expression on his face.
“You cut a notch on your spear,” he said, “for every gentleman you have beaten in arms.”
Croquart prodded the embers with his stick.
“I have cut twenty notches, sire, already.”
“You will have no wood left to your spear soon, eh?”
“Room for more yet,” and he laughed. “I will tell you the names: Sir John de Montigny, Sir Aymery de la Barre, Geoffroi Dubois, Sir Gringoir of Angers, Lord Thomas Allison, whom I challenged at Brest—” And he ran on, mouthing the syllables with the air of a gourmet recalling the dishes at some great feast.
Tiphaïne drew her cloak about her as though she felt the cold.
“And to-day, sir, you have cut another notch,” she said.
“Ah, madame, it shall be one of the deepest, I assure you.”
Tinteniac was able to laugh.
“You flatter me, Fleming. We shared the fame at Mivoie.”
“Sire, madame your wife would break my spear at this last notch if she could.”
His eyes challenged Tiphaïne, and she did not deny him.
To the man lying in the shadow of the tree these words came like the blows of a passing bell. It seemed to him that he had heard all now that he could ever know, and that the silver swan of Rennes would be but a memory and a lost desire. He lay very still in the wet grass, looking at Tiphaïne with a dull aching of the heart, as a man might look at a lost love who has risen to trouble him beyond the waters of the river of death.
Croquartyawned behind his arm. He rose, threw a bundle of sticks upon the fire, and called Tête Bois aside towards the horses. The free lance was a little bowlegged, brown-faced Gascon, very tough and wiry, with eyes like a hawk’s and a sharp nose and beard.
“Hello! can you keep awake to-night?” and Croquart shook him by the shoulder. “We are in the way of earning a lapful of crowns. I will give you a thousand crowns if we bring the Sieur de Tinteniac to Morlaix.”
Tête Bois’s eyes lost their sleepiness and twinkled like the eyes of a rat.
“A thousand crowns, captain?”
“I say it again. Take this ring as a pledge. No tricks, or I shall pay you in other coin.”
“Trust me,” and he took the ring; “you can go to sleep in peace. Madame and her gentleman are safe by the fire. Go to sleep, captain,” and he assumed the responsibility with an alert swagger.
“No tricks, little one.”
“A thousand crowns, captain!” and his eyes twinkled. “Curse me, I love you.”
Bertrand saw the Fleming turn back towards the fire, where Tiphaïne was helping Tinteniac to wrap himself in his cloak for the night. Bertrand buried his face in the grass, as though unable to watch them at such an hour as this. Tiphaïne, upon her bed of golden broom, had a sacredness for him, even though she slept at another man’s side. She was pure, irreproachable, herself still, and no carnal thoughts made his happier memories bleed.
When Bertrand lifted his face again from the grass, Tinteniac, muffled in his cloak, lay full length upon the bed of broom; while Tiphaïne, leaning against the screen of boughs, had unloosed her hair and was combing it with a little silver comb. Croquart, a mass of dusky red, sprawled by the fire, his naked sword under his arm and his shield propped against the saddle under his head. Tête Bois’s short and bow-legged figure went to and fro with a shimmer of steel, his shadowy face and the polished back of his bassinet turned alternately towards Bertrand as he kept his guard.
Bertrand, forgetting Croquart and the sentinel, watched Tiphaïne as she combed her hair. Her cloak, turned back a little, drew with its crimson lining rivers of color from the whiteness of her throat. Tossed by the comb, her hair glimmered in the firelight, rich whorls of mystery moving about her face. To Bertrand her eyes seemed to look far into the night, but what her thoughts were he could not tell.
He saw her put her comb away at last, turn and look at Tinteniac, who seemed ready to forget his wounds in sleep. She stretched a hand towards him, slowly, tentatively, but drew back sharply as Croquart found his bed uncharitable and shifted his body with much heaving of the shoulders. Tête Bois’s keen profile showed against the firelight, mustachios upturned, nose beaking out from under the rim of his open bassinet.
“Madame had better sleep. We travel early.”
The fellow had seen her stretch out her hand towards Tinteniac, and the words warned her that the Gascon was not to be cajoled. His strut was independent and alert as he turned his back on her abruptly and resumed his marching to and fro.
Tiphaïne lay down on the bed, so that, though her face was hidden from Bertrand, he could see the glitter of her hair. There was the length of a sword between her and Tinteniac, three feet of flowering broom between the green cloak and the gray. Bertrand in his heart thanked God that he could see her so, separate, untouched under the moon. He could not have looked at Tiphaïne if she had lain wrapped in Tinteniac’s arms. Twice he saw her lift her head and look at Croquart and the rest. An hour passed before weariness seemed to overpower distrust, and her stillness showed him that she was asleep.
Tête Bois, tired of pacing to and fro, had come to a halt some ten paces from the fire, and now leaned heavily upon his spear. The Gascon was amusing himself by calculating how far a thousand crowns would go to making him the master of a troop of horse. The pieces kept up a fantastic dance before his eyes. He handled them lovingly in anticipation, letting them slip through his fingers in glittering showers, pouring them upon a table and listening to the joyous clangor of the metal. The moon was but a great crown-piece so far as Tête Bois was concerned. He took off the ring Croquart had given him as a pledge, and held it out towards the fire to watch the flashing of the stones.
Unfortunately for Tête Bois, greed dulled the keenness of his senses, and he neither saw nor heard the stealthy and sinuous moving of a black shape across the moonlit grass. The Gascon might have swallowed his thousand crowns for supper to judge by the nightmare that leaped on him out of the mists of the silent woods.
Dawn came, and Croquart the Fleming was the first to wake. He yawned, stretched himself, and sat up sleepily, his red face suffused, his surcoat wet with the heavy dew. Gray mist hung everywhere over the forest, though in the east there was a faint flush of rose and of gold. The birds were piping in the thickets. Tinteniac and the lady were still asleep.
Croquart smiled at them as a farmer might smile over the fatness of two prize beasts. He scrambled up and looked round him for Tête Bois, thinking that the Gascon might have gone to cut fodder for the horses. The bow-legged paladin was nowhere to be seen. The watch-fire was out, though the embers still steamed in the cold air of the morning.
“Hallo, there, Tête Bois!”
The deep voice, resonant from the Fleming’s chest, woke echoes in the woods and silenced the birds singing in the thickets. Harduin, the second free lance, sat up and rubbed his eyes like a cat pawing its face. Tinteniac turned from sleep to find his wounds stiff and aching under the sodden bandages. Tiphaïne, propped upon one elbow, her hair falling down to touch the flowering broom, saw Croquart striding to and fro, flourishing a stick, restless and impatient.
“Tête Bois, rascal, hallo!”
A few rabbits scurried down the misty glades, and a couple of partridges went “burring” into cover. The Fleming’s voice brought back nothing.
Croquart looked grim.
“The little Gascon devil!” he thought. “That ring was worth a hundred crowns, and a ring on the finger, Messire Tête Bois, is worth a thousand crowns in my strong-box, eh? If I ever catch you, my friend, I will break your back. Let us see whether you have taken your own horse.”
But Tête Bois’s horse was standing quietly with the rest, and the frown on the Fleming’s face showed that he was puzzled. What had happened to the fellow? And if he had deserted, why had he left his horse?
Tête Bois’s disappearance opened the day ill-humoredly for the Fleming. The natural roughness of his temper broke to the surface, and he was sullen and abrupt, his affectations of refinement damp as his own finery with the night’s dew. Tiphaïne and her champion had never a smile from him as they made their morning meal and Croquart bustled them to horse, impatient as any merchant afraid of losing his silks and spices to footpads ambushed in the woods. Such baggage as they had was tied on the back of Tête Bois’s horse, and before the sun had been up an hour they were on the road towards Morlaix.
The mists rolled away, leaving a dappling of clouds over the blue of the May sky. The grass glittered with dew, and the scent of the woods was like the scent of some cedar chest filled with the perfumed robes of a queen. The beech-trees, with their splendor of misty green, towered up beside the embattled oaks, whose crockets and finials seemed of bronze and of gold. The grass was thick with many flowers, the robes of the earth wondrous with color.
Yet beauty cannot save a man from pain, and before they had gone two leagues that morning Tiphaïne saw that Tinteniac suffered. From white his face had changed to gray, and his eyes had the wistful look that one sees in the eyes of a wounded dog. He had lost much blood and needed rest, for his harness and each jolting of the saddle gave him pain. Pride kept Tinteniac silent—the pride of the man unwilling to ask favors in defeat. The cool air of the morning had its balm, but when the sun rose above the trees the heat of the day made his forehead burn.
Tiphaïne, looking up at him with pitying eyes, saw how he suffered, though he told her nothing. Croquart, sullen and out of temper, had forged on ahead, feeling the smart of the rout at Josselin. The man Harduin, leading Tête Bois’s horse, followed leisurely in the rear.
“Your wounds are too much for you.” And she drew her palfrey close to the great horse.
“No, child, no.”
“Tell the Fleming you must rest.”
Tinteniac straightened in the saddle with a slight shudder of pain.
“I can bear it longer,” he said, quietly.
“Why, sire, why? Croquart must let you rest.”
“Upon my soul, I will ask him no favor.”
“And upon my soul, sire, in ten minutes you will fall from your horse.”
She pushed past him without further parley and overtook the Fleming, who was biting his beard and looking as ill-tempered as it is possible for a man with an ugly jowl to look. Tiphaïne caught a glimpse of his solid and pugnacious profile before he turned to her with an impatient glint of the eyes.
“Well, madame, what now?”
“The Sieur de Tinteniac’s wounds are still open; he cannot travel farther without a rest.”
“Rest—a soldier asks for rest!”
Tiphaïne’s color deepened. The very arrogance of the man’s impatience fed her hate. She could have laid a whip across Croquart’s face with immense comfort to her self-respect.
“You answer me—that?”
“I command here, madame.”
“Then call a halt.”
“The Sieur de Tinteniac must hold on to the saddle till we reach the hills.”
“You have no pity!”
“I have no time to waste.”
“And I—no words.”
She reined in her palfrey, slipped from the saddle, and, leading the beast aside by the bridle, began to pick the flowers that grew in the long grass, as though she were at home in the La Bellière meadows. Croquart pulled up his horse, looking as black and threatening as a priest out-argued by a heretic. Tinteniac, guessing what had passed between them, reined up in turn and let his horse crop the grass.
Croquart’s veneer of chivalry cracked under the heat of the sun. Tiphaïne’s eyes had flattered him too little to persuade him to be pleased with a woman’s whims. He heeled his horse across the road, to see the Vicomte’s daughter retreating from him at her leisure, singing to herself and stooping to pick flowers.
“Madame!”
Tiphaïne went on with her singing.
“Devil take the woman!” And he pushed on after her, not knowing for the moment how to meet her tactics.
Tiphaïne stood in a pool of waving grass, where bluebells touched the hem of her gray gown. Great oaks, with tops of burnished gold, swept up beyond to touch the clouds. She reached out a white arm for the flowers, seeing the shadow of Croquart’s horse loom towards her over the grass. He was quite close before she turned and faced him, keeping her palfrey between her and the Fleming.
“Well, Messire Croquart,” and she gave him the title with a curl of the lip, “am I to believe that you have no manners?”
“A truce to this foolery.”
“I tell you, I am tired, sir, and I am going to rest.”
Croquart bit his beard.
“I shall have to dismount to you, madame.”
Her eyes blazed out at him, their splendor more visible now that she was angry.
“Dismount to me, you butcher boy from Flanders! No, that would be too gracious of you. Please continue to forget your manners.”
“Madame, I shall lose my temper with you.”
“It is lost already, Messire Croquart. Try the flat of your sword, or the edge thereof if it pleases you. I am not afraid.”
“I shall have to put you up into the saddle.”
“You cannot keep me from falling off.”
“Hands and feet can be tied, eh?”
“Yes, and I have a knife.”
“Pah, madame, am I a fool? I tell you I am in no temper to be bated.”
“Get down, then, sir, and see if you can run in your heavy harness. Meanwhile the Sire de Tinteniac might have his rest.”
Croquart opened his mouth to swear, but mastered himself with an effort, as though realizing that the species of dictatorship was not crowned with too much dignity.
“Come, madame, be reasonable.”
“Is it unreasonable, Messire Croquart, for a wife to fear that her husband may die of his wounds?”
“Oh—you exaggerate.”
“The weight of your blows? They were not too feeble.”
“Grace de Dieu, madame, have your way, or we shall be quarrelling here till midnight!”
“Then we rest for an hour?”
“I grant it.”
And he capitulated sulkily, with the air of a man giving way to the foibles of a woman.
Of all this by-play Bertrand had a distant view as he followed Tiphaïne through the green mystery of May. What were the golden meads to him, the winding woodways wonderful with spring, the dawn song of the birds, the scent of the wild flowers rising like incense out of the grass? To Bertrand that silent and unseen journey towards Morlaix seemed like a pilgrimage for the humbling of his heart. He followed, watched, planned, yet felt himself forgotten, reading into every incident that passed a woman’s tenderness for a man whom he himself could easily have loved.
Through the long watches of the night and the shining of the east at dawn Bertrand had wrestled with his loneliness. It was not easy for him to renounce so much, to accept forgetfulness, to look upon the past as a mere memory. And yet the very obstinacy of his new self-discipline helped him to throw his jealousy aside. What kind of creature would he find himself if he deserted Tiphaïne at such a pass, standing upon a mean punctilio, refusing to be generous save for his own ends? If he was to suffer, then let him serve and suffer like a man, remembering the old days when Tiphaïne had saved him from his shame.
A desolatedhomestead in a valley among the northern hills gave Croquart and his prisoners shelter the same night. The house, built of unfaced stone and thatched with straw and heather, had been plundered by some of Bamborough’s English, whose passion for thoroughness in their thieving moved them to burn what they could not carry.
Croquart rode into the grass-grown yard, where all the byres and out-houses had been destroyed by fire, nothing but a few charred posts rising above the weeds and nettles. The Fleming dismounted, after sounding his horn to see whether any of the farm folk still loitered about the place. They found the house itself to be full of filth, for the birds had roosted on the rafters, and the English used it as a stable, the droppings from their horses rotting upon the floor. It held nothing but the hall, a cellar, and the goodman’s parlor under the western gable—the last room being a little more cleanly than the hall, its single window, with the shutter broken, looking down upon the orchard. Pears and apples piled up their bloom above the rank splendor of the grass—a sea of snow flecked and shaded with rose and green. To the east of the orchard a great pool shimmered in the sunlight, its waters dusted with blown petals from the trees.
Tinteniac was so stiff and sore with his wounds after the day’s ride that Croquart had to help him from his horse. The Fleming, who had examined the house, took Tinteniac in his arms, and carried him to the upper room, where there was some mouldy straw piled in a corner. He laid Tinteniac on the straw, having made a show of his great strength by carrying a man taller than himself with the ease that he would have carried a child of five. Croquart had recovered his self-complacency since his skirmish with Tiphaïne in the morning, and she had had nothing to charge him with save with his insufferable boasting.
Tinteniac was so utterly weary that he had not sufficient mind-force left in him to resent his being treated as a dead weight for the exhibition of the Fleming’s strength. He drew a deep breath of relief when he felt his body sink into the straw—too faint to care whether the bed was one of swan’s-down or of dung. In five minutes he was fast asleep.
Harduin had watered the horses and stabled them in the hall, lit a fire, and slung the cooking-pot over a couple of forked sticks. In a little hovel at the end of the orchard Croquart had found some clean straw, and carried a truss into the goodman’s parlor to make Tiphaïne a bed. She met him with a finger on her lip, and pointed to Tinteniac, whose tired body drank in sleep as a dry soil drinks in rain. How much alone she was, how wholly at the Fleming’s mercy, she only realized as she watched him spread the straw in a far corner of the room.
“You will sleep softly enough,” he said, turning on his knees, and looking at her with an expression of the eyes she did not trust.
“It is not likely that I shall sleep,” and she moved aside towards the window.
“No bedfellow, eh?” And he got up with a chuckle, leaving her alone with the wounded man upon the straw.
Presently he returned with a pitcher full of water, some brown bread, and a few olives. He set them down on a rough bench by the window, and loitered foolishly at the door.
“I trust madame has forgotten the quarrel we had this morning?”
“I am ready to forget it, Messire Croquart.”
“Thanks,” and he gave her an impudent bow, “we shall be better friends before we reach Morlaix.”
When he had gone she closed the door on him, and found to her delight the wooden bar that was used in lieu of a latch. The staples were firm in the oak posts, yet not so firm that she could abandon her distrust. The rough bench at the window, a cup of water, olives, and bread; with such comforts she was content, so long as the door parted Croquart and herself. While Tinteniac slept she watched the sun sink low behind the woods that broke like green waves upon the bosoms of the hills. Below her lay the orchard trees, smothering the old house with beauty under the benisons of eve. Swallows were skimming over the still waters of the pond, and the mist in the meadows covered the sheeted gold of May.
In the dirty cobwebbed hall Croquart was making his plans for the coming night. The house door, studded with iron nails, lay wrenched from its hinges in the yard, and through the open windows the birds and bats could come and go. Croquart, sitting on a saddle by the fire, his sword across his thighs, called Harduin to him, and offered him the same bribe as he had given Tête Bois the night before.
“Well, my friend, are you in a hurry to desert?”
The fellow fidgeted under the Fleming’s eyes.
“Come, let us understand each other; I have a mind to be generous. Will you stand by Croquart the Fleming or follow Tête Bois, who preferred a ring to a thousand crowns?”
Harduin, who had already stolen the rings from Tinteniac’s dead esquires, appeared even more greedy than the Gascon.
“When shall I finger the money, captain?”
“At Morlaix.”
“Call it a bargain.”
“And easily earned, eh? Keep guard in the orchard near the Sieur de Tinteniac’s window.”
Harduin nodded.
“The house shall be my affair. Whistle if you see anything strange.”
“Right, captain.”
And taking his spear and shield with him, he went out into the orchard to keep watch.
About midnight Tinteniac awoke, and turned on his straw with the confused thoughts of a man whose surroundings are strange to him. Tiphaïne, seated by the window, where the moonlight streamed in upon the floor, went to him quietly, and knelt down by the bed.
“You have slept well,” and she felt his forehead; “there is food here if you are hungry.”
“Asleep! Selfish devil that I am! You must be tired to death.”
“No, I am not tired.”
He looked at her steadily, propping himself upon one arm. Sleep had cooled the fever in him, freshened his brain, and strengthened the beating of his heart. The room lit by the moonlight, the perfumed coolness of the night, the white face of the woman by the bed, filled him with a sense of strangeness and of mystery.
“It is my turn to watch.” And he touched her arm, thrilling, man of forty that he was, at Tiphaïne’s nearness to him in the moonlight.
“There is no need for it; I have barred the door.”
“And Croquart?”
She did not tell him of her great distrust.
“Croquart has left us as man and wife. I have too much to think about to wish to sleep.”
Tinteniac sank back on his straw, watching her as she brought him the water-pot, bread, and olives.
“I am afraid I am a broken reed,” he said, with the smile of a man contented to be ministered to by a woman’s hands.
“You must gain strength, sire, for both our sakes.”
“Yes, true.”
“Therefore, you must sleep again.”
“I would rather talk.”
“We can talk to-morrow.”
“Have we not changed our parts? Well, I will obey your orders.”
And in half an hour his breathing showed that he had forgotten the world and such subtleties as the glimmer of moonlight on a woman’s hair.
Tiphaïne had returned to her seat by the window, her sense of loneliness increased now that Tinteniac was asleep. The night, with all its infinite uncertainty, its vague sounds and distorted shadows, filled her with restlessness and with those imaginings that people the world with half-seen shapes. The bravest of us are but great children when a wind blows the boughs against the window at midnight, and the moon, that magician of the skies, brings back the childhood of the race, when man trembled before Nature, filling the forest, the desert, and the marsh with goblin creatures born out of his own vivid brain.
Before Tiphaïne at her window stood the orchard trees, pillars of ebony spreading into carved canopies of whitest marble, each chisel-mark perfect as from the touch of a god. The deep grass looked black as water in a well, the wooded slopes of the silent valley steepled with a thousand shimmering spires. Under an apple-tree stood Croquart’s sentinel, leaning lazily against the trunk, the moonlight sifting through the apple bloom and dappling his harness with silver burrs. Tiphaïne had discovered Harduin there, and knew that he had been set there to watch the window. Twice she saw Croquart enter the orchard to assure himself that Harduin was awake at his post.
An hour later she heard the Fleming mount the stairs, stealthily and with the deliberation of a man fearing to wake a household as he creeps to an intrigue. She could hear his breathing as he stood and listened, while the rats scuffled and squeaked under the wood-work of the floor. His hand tried the door, shaking it cautiously with tentative clickings of the wooden latch. Tiphaïne thanked God for the good oak-bar that gave Messire Croquart the lie for once. He turned at last and went back to the hall, where she could hear him swearing and throwing wood upon the fire. There would be no thought of sleep for the mock wife that night.
Now whether Tiphaïne was very quick of hearing, or whether the tension of her distrust had turned up the sensitiveness of her ears, she heard some sound in the moonlit orchard that seemed lost upon Harduin as he leaned against his tree. The noise resembled the faint “tuff—tuff” of a sheep cropping at short grass. Sometimes it ceased, only to commence again, nearer and more distinct to her than before. Tiphaïne strained her ears and her conjectures to set a cause to the approaching sound. She wondered that Harduin had not heard it, and judged that his bassinet might make him harder of hearing than herself.
A suggestion of movement, a vague sheen in the grass showed in the moonlight under the apple-trees, as of something crawling towards the house. Slowly, noiselessly, a figure rose from the grass behind the trunk of the tree against which Croquart’s sentinel was leaning. There was a sudden darting forward of the stooping figure, a flinging out of a pair of arms, a curious choking cry, a short struggle. Tiphaïne saw Harduin drop his spear, writhe and twist like a man with a rope knotted about his neck. In the moonlight she could see the violent contortions of his body, his hands tearing at something that seemed to grip his throat, his feet scraping and kicking at the soft turf. The man’s struggle reminded her of a toy she had had as a child, a little wooden manikin, whose legs and arms flew into grotesque attitudes on the pulling of a string. Before she realized what had happened, Harduin’s muscles relaxed, his hands dropped, and he hung against the trunk of the tree like a man nailed there through the throat. The body slid slowly to earth, doubled upon itself, was seized and heaved up over the shoulders of the other, and carried away into the deeps of the orchard.
A shudder of superstitious terror passed through Tiphaïne. It had been done so swiftly, with such unhuman silence, that Harduin might have been pounced upon by some ogre out of the woods. The patch of grass under the apple-tree fascinated her; her eyes remained fixed on it, her heart going at a gallop, the blood drumming in her ears. With a sudden flash of intuition she remembered Tête Bois’s disappearance the preceding night, and the way the man Guymon had been stricken down over the bodies of the dead esquires. Some grim and inexorable spirit seemed tracking Croquart through the woods, a fierce shadow that seized its prey under cover of the night.
She lifted her head suddenly with a quick-drawn breath of eagerness and fear. Something was moving in the orchard, for she heard the same peculiar sound that had heralded its first coming. A faint glimmer of harness under the white boughs, and a figure drew out of the mists of the night and halted under the tree where Harduin had stood a few minutes ago. A half-luminous band ran from the man’s breast to the rank grass, the long blade of a sword like a beam of moonlight slanting through a chink in a shuttered window at night. The figure remained motionless, leaning upon the sword, as though it stood on guard in the orchard and waited for the dawn.
Bertrandkept watch in his black harness under the apple-tree, knowing that his time would come when Croquart should find him there, an enemy in Harduin’s place. Whether it was the last night-watch he would ever keep, Bertrand du Guesclin could not tell. He knew Croquart’s great strength and the little mercy he might expect from him; he knew that he was to match himself against a man who had never taken a beating in single combat. Bertrand put the chances of victory and defeat beyond the pale of thought. He was to fight Croquart for his head and for the two prisoners pent up in the ruined house. For his own life Bertrand had no particular greed. He would kill Croquart or be killed himself.
Cool, calm-eyed, firm at the mouth, he watched the night pass and the dawn come up out of the broadening east. He saw the color kindle on the apple-trees, the wet grass flash and glitter at his feet, the dim woods smoking with their silvery mists. He heard the birds begin in the great orchard, thrush and robin, blackbird and starling, piping and chattering as the sky grew bright.
“Bide by it! bide by it!” sang a thrush in the tree above his head.
“Thanks, my brown fellow,” he said, with a grim smile; “wait and see whether Bertrand du Guesclin runs away.”
He stretched his arms and the muscles of his chest and shoulders, tossing his sword from hand to hand. The flash of the steel seemed reflected to him for the moment from the narrow window of the solar in the western gable. Bertrand stood still. He had seen the white oval of a face framed by the inward darkness of the room, as though some one watched him without wishing to be seen. He knew that it was Tiphaïne by the faint gleam of her coiled hair. How coldly she would be looking at him with those eyes of hers, taking him for Croquart’s man, a shabby fellow who fought for hire. His carcass and his destiny could concern her little.
“Hallo, a whistle! Now, Brother Croquart, let us get to work.”
He whipped round, closed his visor, and looked quickly to the buckles of his harness, and to see that his dagger was loose in its sheath. His shield, that he had hung on a bough of the apple-tree, dipped down and changed the fruit bough for his arm. The taut grip of the strap gave Bertrand a kind of comfort. He had two friends left him, his battered shield and his old sword.
Round the corner of the house came Croquart, his bassinet half laced, his scabbard bumping against his legs, the creases in his red surcoat showing that he had been asleep. He saw the man leaning lazily against the tree, and promptly cursed him for not answering his whistle.
“Harduin, blockhead, water the horses!”
The sentinel moved never an inch.
“Hallo, there, hallo, have you got maggots in your brain?”
Croquart’s hail might have cheered on a troop of horse in the thick of a charge home. He came striding through the grass, with his fingers twitching, a buffet tingling in the muscles of his arm.
“Hallo, you deaf fool—”
His mouth was open, the lips a red oval, empty for the instant of more words. It was not Harduin under the tree, but the man in the black harness who had stricken down Guymon in the woods. Croquart looked staggered, like some fat grandee charged in the pit of the stomach by a small boy’s head.
The repulse was but momentary. He leaped full six feet from where he stood, sweeping his gadded fist forward with good intent for the stranger’s head. Bertrand, every muscle on the alert, was quicker far than Croquart. The Fleming’s fist smashed the bark from the tree, leaving him bloody knuckles despite his glove.
“Good-day, Brother Croquart”—and a sword came to the salute—“they have offered five thousand crowns for your head at Josselin.”
The Fleming began tying the laces of his bassinet.
“And who are you, sir, that you are such a fool to think of earning the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s money?”
“I am a Breton, Brother Croquart, and that is the reason why I am going to have your head.”
Tinteniacwas still asleep upon his straw, nor did Tiphaïne wake him, but stood at the window and watched the drama that was taking shape under the apple boughs. The man in the black harness was leaning on his sword, waiting for Croquart, whose fingers fumbled at the laces of his bassinet. There was something familiar to Tiphaïne in this attitude of his, the attitude of a man whose heart beat steadily and whose eyes were quick and on the alert.
Croquart’s sword was out. He looked at the window where Tiphaïne stood, and guessed by her face that she did not wish him great success.
“Guard, Breton.”
They sprang to it with great good-will, Bertrand keeping careful guard, and never shifting his eyes from the Fleming’s face. He had learned his lesson off by heart, to let Croquart think that he had an easy bargain and that a few heavy blows would end the tussle. The butcher-boy of Flanders fell to the trick; he had met so few men who could match him in arms that he had grown rash in his methods, forgetting that guile is often more deadly than muscle and address. He had seen that Bertrand was a head shorter than himself; he soon suspected that he was clumsy, and not the master of his sword.
Bertrand gave ground, puffing and laboring like a man hard pressed. He let the Fleming’s blows rattle about his body harness, half parrying them with a concealed adroitness, continually retreating, or dodging to right and left. He was playing for an opening in Croquart’s attack, luring him into rashness, tempting him to hammer at him without thought of a dangerous counter in return. Croquart would soon stretch himself for thecoup de grâce, thinking his man tired, and that he had trifled with him over-long.
Still Bertrand bided his time. He faltered suddenly, made a pretended stumble, tempted Croquart with an unguarded flank. Down came the Fleming’s open blow, given with the rash vigor of a man imagining the victim at his mercy. Bertrand bent from it like a supple osier, rallied, and struck out with a swiftness that caught Messire Croquart off his balance and off his guard. Steel met steel on the vambrace of the Fleming’s sword-arm. Tiphaïne had a vision of a lopped limb swinging by its tendons, of a falling sword, of a second blow heaved home on the Fleming’s thigh.
The loss of his right hand sent Croquart mad. He picked up the fallen sword, and flew at Bertrand like any Baersark, the one lust left in him to wound, to mutilate, and to kill.
The din of their fighting had wakened Tinteniac, and he had dragged himself from the straw to join Tiphaïne at the window. They stood shoulder to shoulder, silent, and half awed by the fury of these two men, who neither desired nor craved for mercy. Tinteniac had seen such battles before, but to the woman there was something horrible and repulsive in its animal frenzy, a reversion to the brutal past, when the lusts of man made him an ape or a bull. She shuddered at Croquart’s dangling hand, and at the mad biting of his breath as he lashed at Bertrand with his sword. Shocked by the brute violence, the physical distortions of the scene, she turned back into the room, unwilling to watch the ordeal to the end.
Soon she heard a hoarse cry from Tinteniac. The men had closed and gone to earth, and were struggling together in the long grass. Croquart was losing blood and strength, and in such a death-grapple under the trees the cunning of the wrestler gave Bertrand the advantage. Though the lighter man, he was tougher and more sinewy than the Fleming, and fit in the matter of condition as a lean hound who has worked for his food.
“By God, he has the fellow down!”
Tinteniac was biting his lips in his excitement, and shivering like a dog on leash waiting to be let loose upon the quarry. Bertrand, with a twist of the leg and a hug of the Fleming’s body, had turned Croquart under him and won the upper hand. The Breton’s fist flew to his poniard. Croquart, who knew the meaning of the act, kicked like a mad horse, twisting and turning under Bertrand’s body. With a heave of the arm he rolled half over, and, lifting Bertrand, struggled to his knees. Before he could shake the Breton off the misericord was splitting the plates of his gorget. Croquart, with a great cry, fell forward upon his face, dragging Bertrand with him into the grass, as a sinking ship drags down the enemy it has grappled hulk to hulk. Slowly the black figure disentangled itself from the red, rose up, and leaned for a moment against the trunk of a tree.
“An end to Croquart!”
The words came from Tinteniac in a half whisper, but Tiphaïne heard them where she stood in the deep shadow against the wall.
Croquart dead! And she seemed to feel the great breath of gratitude the Breton folk would draw for such a death. Guymon, Tête Bois, Harduin, and the Fleming, all had fallen to the sword of this one man who had dogged them through the woods past Loudeac. Tinteniac had taken his shield, and was holding it from the window so that the hero of the orchard should see the blazonings. Tiphaïne still leaned against the wall, watching Tinteniac and the blur of green woodland and blue sky above his head.
Bertrand was bending over Croquart and unlacing the bassinet that still bore the fox’s brush. He saw Tiphaïne’s face beside Tinteniac at the window. Her presence did not hinder him, but rather urged him to despatch the work in hand.
“Sieur de Tinteniac,” he shouted, “make me one promise and I give you back your liberty.”
The aristocrat made the man in the black harness a very flattering bow.
“The conqueror of Croquart can ask what he pleases.”
Bertrand, with Tiphaïne’s face looking down on him like lost love’s face out of heaven, broke the laces of Croquart’s bassinet.
“Sire”—and his voice needed no disguising—“I ask you and madame, your wife, not to leave that room till I have made an end.”
Tinteniac gave the promise, turning with a smile to Tiphaïne, who promised nothing.
“Granted, sir. And in return, will you trust us with your name?”
Bertrand had turned his back on them and was bending over the body.
“Sire, you ask me what I cannot answer.”
“We will hold it sacred.”
Bertrand shook his head.
Tinteniac pressed him no further, and Bertrand, forcing off Croquart’s bassinet, broke away the plates of the gorget from the bleeding throat. Picking up his poniard he slit the Fleming’s surcoat from breast to knee, dragged it from the body, and spread the stuff upon the grass. Two sharp sweeps of the sword served to sever the neck. The dead thing was wrapped up in the red surcoat, and the ends of the cloth knotted together.
Tinteniac watched all this from the window, mystified in measure as to what the man in the black harness purposed next. He had not noticed that Tiphaïne had left him, had lifted the bar from the staples, and was hurrying down the stone stairway into the hall.
Bertrand ran the blade of his sword under the knotted ends of the surcoat, slung it over his shoulder like a bundle, and picked up his shield. He gave a last look at the window, saluted Tinteniac, and marched off briskly into the orchard. His black harness had already disappeared beyond the apple-trees before Tiphaïne’s gray gown swept the grass.
She looked round her with a slight knitting of the brows, seeing only Tinteniac at the window, the white domes of the trees, and the headless body in its gaudy harness lying prone in the long grass.
“Where?” and her eyes questioned Tinteniac, who stroked his chin and appeared puzzled.
“Our Breton champion has left us with our liberty.”
“Gone?”
“Like a beggar with a bundle. Let the man alone. He has his reasons and the advantage of us.”
“And yet—”
Tinteniac laughed.
“The woman in you is inquisitive,” he said.
Tiphaïne went a few steps nearer to Croquart’s body. It seemed difficult to believe that this lifeless, weltering thing had raised in her but an hour ago all the passionate hatred that great love of her home land could inspire. Now that it was mere carrion she conceived a scornful pity for the thing as she recalled the man’s arrogance, his bombast, his supreme and coarse self-adoration. Truly this was the proper rounding of such a life, to be bred a butcher, fattened with the blood of a noble province, and left a mere carcass for the crows and wolves. She turned from Croquart’s body with a sigh half of pity, half of disgust.
Tinteniac watched her from the window, his mind moved by the same reflections, the religious instinct in him pointing a moral. In the distance he had seen a figure on a horse pass through the morning mists in the meadows and vanish into the sun-touched woods.
“Our Breton has gone,” and he lifted up his shield, “I would have given half that ransom to have had a glimpse of his face.”
Tiphaïne looked at him with eyes that mused.
“Why should he have deserted us?”
“I am no reader of riddles. And our plans? What are they to be?”
“I am thinking of your wounds,” she answered.
“They are nothing. This fellow has given me new strength. Shall we still say, ‘to Josselin’?”
“Thanks, sire. I remember that I have the truth to tell.”
Nota league from the Breton homestead, where Croquart the Fleming had made his end, the gyron of Geoffroi Dubois, vert, a bend between two buckles argent, came dancing along the road from Loudeac. With Dubois were Carro de Bodegat and some score more who had sworn on the crosses of their swords to overtake Croquart before he could find sanctuary with an English garrison in the west. By luck they had struck upon his trail near Loudeac where the fox’s brush and the red surcoat had been seen, and recognized; and at Loudeac, also, Dubois had found Tinteniac’s men-at-arms and the La Bellière servants, ready to affirm on oath that the Fleming could muster at least a hundred men. Dubois and his gentlemen had wasted no time scouring the country towards Morlaix, and doubtless they would have won the credit of taking the Fleming’s head had not the man in the black harness been more forward in the adventure.
Geoffroi Dubois and Carro de Bodegat were pushing on with their troop at a brisk trot that morning, when the very fellow who had cheated them of the prize loomed up against the sky-line, on the crest of a moor. The morning sun shone in Bertrand’s eyes, and he was seen by Dubois’s men before he caught the flutter of their pennons down in the hollow where the moorland touched the woods. Half a dozen riders had broken away to right and left, and were cantering over the heather to make a capture certain.
Bertrand showed no concern at the measures taken to secure the pleasure of a parley with him. He reined in his horse to a walk, and approached Dubois’s troop, reading their pennons and the devices upon their shields. If the green gyron of Dubois did not please him hugely, the tawny and blue of De Bodegat’s pennon was even less welcome to Bertrand’s eyes. These two Breton knights had been no friends to him in the Montfort wars. Dubois was a man jealous for his dignity, a good hater, and not over magnanimous or honest where his own interests were concerned. Carro de Bodegat had a grudge against Du Guesclin, an old wound, and an unpaid score. They would be ready to throw the troth-breaking at Mivoie in his face, the more so he thought now that he had forestalled them in the taking of Croquart’s head.
Bertrand, on his raw-boned horse, looked for all the world like a needy free lance riding from town to town in search of hire. The green gyron came to a halt on a hillock, Dubois, gentleman of distinction that he was, refusing to drag his dignity aside to catechise a fellow who made so indifferent a show. The humble rush-light should approach the baronial torch, and Bertrand, knowing Dubois’s nature, kept his visor down, and prepared to be hectored by the noble.
“Hallo, my man, you are on the road early.”
Bertrand saluted the Breton gentlemen as their tall spears gathered about him like the striding masts of as many ships. He had the red bundle before him on the saddle, and answered Dubois in broad Breton patois, posing as the common soldier in search of pay.
“God’s grace to you, sire, I ride towards Josselin; they tell me men are needed under the Marshal’s banner.”
Dubois studied him with the leisurely impertinence of a great lord criticising the patched clothes of a servant.
“So you go to Josselin, my little fellow, eh? Have you had news hereabouts of Croquart the Fleming?”
Bertrand looked stupidly at Dubois’s green plume.
“Croquart! To be sure, sire, Croquart is dead.”
“How! Croquart dead!”
There was a slight swaying of the spears like the swaying of tall ash-trees in a wind.
“Sire, if it please you I saw Croquart’s body lying unburied in the orchard of a farm-house not three miles farther west.”
Dubois was not pleased; nor were De Bodegat and the rest.
“Be careful, my friend, how you tamper with the truth. How did you know that it was Croquart you saw dead?”
Bertrand did not hesitate.
“Sire, by the fox’s brush.”
“Yes.”
“And the ugliness of the Fleming’s face.”
Carro de Bodegat, tempted to quarrel with the nature of the news, leaned towards Dubois, and pointed out the red bundle Bertrand carried on his saddle.
“I’ll swear the fellow is playing tricks with us.”
“Well, try him.”
“Let him open that bundle.”
Carro de Bodegat’s sharp eyes had picked out the gold thread-work on the scarlet cloth, and a patch of purplish ooze on the under side thereof.
“Friend, do you carry your food there?”
“Where, sir?”
“There, in that bundle.”
Bertrand held the thing up by its knotted ends.
“Devil take it, the cider bottle has had a knock!”
Bodegat pouted his lips, and sniffed.
“Do you carry your brown bread in ciclaton and your cider bottles in silk?” he asked.
“God’s mercy, sirs, what’s there to quarrel with in the stuff?”
Dubois exchanged a glance with Bodegat.
“Let us see what you have in that cloth.”
Bertrand made a show of hesitation.
“Open it, I say.”
“But, sirs—”
“Open it, or—” and at a sign from Dubois half a dozen spears were slanted at Bertrand’s body.
Persuaded, he fumbled at the knots, flung out his arm suddenly, holding the surcoat by a corner.
“Have your way, Messire Geoffroi Dubois. Look and see whether this is Croquart’s head.”
That which but an hour ago had held the conscious soul of a man was tossed from the red surcoat at the feet of Dubois’s horse. The beast reared and backed some paces. Twenty figures were craning forward in their saddles to get a glimpse of the thing that had half hidden itself in a clump of heather.
Carro de Bodegat was the first to earth. He threw his bridle to a trooper, and, picking up the Fleming’s head by the hair, looked at the face, with its closed lids and gaping mouth, and, turning with a sharp, inarticulate cry, held up the head before Dubois.
“It is Croquart’s.”
“Should I not know it?”
“Who killed him?”
“Bertrand du Guesclin.”
Bodegat turned sharply on the man in the black harness.
“And you?”
“I am Bertrand du Guesclin, Messire Carro de Bodegat. Has my face changed since I fought with you at Quimperlé?”
He put up his visor and let Dubois and the Bretons see his face. Many of them knew him; but there was no comradely cheering, no out-stretching of the hand.
Dubois had touched Bodegat on the shoulder with his spear, and they were speaking together in low tones, glancing from time to time at the man who had robbed them of Croquart’s head. Bertrand liked neither their looks nor their whisperings; the hedge of spears about his horse raised his impatience and filled him with distrust.
“Messire Dubois, I am waiting for that head.”
The pair ignored him, and still chattered together, their faces nearly touching, like a pair of lovers poking confidences into each other’s ears. Bertrand was spreading the red surcoat for the return of Croquart the Fleming’s head, watching the two whisperers with gathering impatience.
“We make a virtue of waiting,” he said to the three Bretons nearest to him; “these two gentlemen seem very enamoured of each other’s tongues.”
Dubois’s figure straightened suddenly in the saddle. Carro de Bodegat turned, with an unpleasant smirk hovering about his mouth.
“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, we have not finished with you yet.”
“So!”
“There is a matter which concerns us all.”
“Messire, I ask you to give me back that head.”
“Gentlemen, close round; I order you to arrest a traitor.”
Bertrand’s hand went to his sword. Carro de Bodegat had already seized his bridle.
“Bertrand du Guesclin, surrender.”
“Surrender! In God’s name, no!” and he struck at Bodegat with his fist, broke loose, and made a plunge forward to be free. Half a dozen men closed round him like Saracen galleys about a sturdy ship. His sword was struck down, the shaft of a spear thrust between the hind legs of his horse, bringing the beast to earth, with Bertrand pinned by the right knee. Before he could break loose De Bodegat and four others heaped themselves on him and soon had him helpless and flat upon his back.
“Off, fools!—I surrender.”
“Let him up, sirs!” and Dubois bent forward in the saddle, still holding Croquart’s head by the hair.
The men rose from him, and Bertrand, sullen and angry, scrambled slowly to his feet.
“Which of you calls me a traitor?” and he swung round and looked from man to man. “Answer me; I am to be heard. You, De Bodegat? By Heaven, you have not the courage!”
Dubois’s mounted figure, haughty and splendid with its opulence of armor and sweeping plume, moved forward and overtopped Bertrand with an air of towering and seigniorial strength.
“Messire du Guesclin, what of the Oak of Mivoie?”
Dubois’s horse overshadowed him, but Bertrand held his ground.
“Well, what of Mivoie?”
“You broke troth, sir.”
“And if I did?”
“You stand to be judged by any two of those whom you deserted; so run the Marshal’s orders. As for this head—well, it is Croquart’s, and it has been noised abroad that you were Croquart’s man.”
“I Croquart’s man! By Heaven, a lie!”
His sturdy scorn flew full in the face of Geoffroi Dubois. It was then that Carro de Bodegat stood forward, precise, courteous, and insolently suave.
“By your leave, gentlemen, I will ask Messire Bertrand du Guesclin a few questions.”
“Ask on.” And Bertrand held his head high and squared his shoulders.