AtPontivy, Croquart the Fleming had established himself in the best hostel the town could boast, his free lances and adventurers swarming in the streets and quartering themselves at will on the townsfolk, who dared not grumble. Half the mercenaries in Brittany seemed to have poured into the place, drawn thither by the high pay Croquart offered. The Fleming had sworn to avenge the fight at Mivoie, boasting that he would wipe out Breton treachery with the spoil of Breton towns. He had offered a hundred gold-pieces to any man who would bring William de Montauban to him alive, threatening to strangle the esquire and set up his head over one of the gates of Pontivy.
To the townsfolk it might well appear that the Sieur de Beaumanoir had only wounded and not scotched the devil, and made him madder than of yore. Bamborough of Ploermel was dead, and the rabble of English, Gascons, and Flemings were not likely to abide by the shadowy oaths that Bamborough had sworn before the fight at Mivoie. All the sweat and strife of the struggle at the Oak had not bettered the prospects of the Breton poor. The Sieur de Beaumanoir was still at Josselin, wroth at the thought that Breton blood had been spilled for nothing, knowing too well that they of the Blois party were not strong enough to drive Montfort’s English into the sea.
Pontivy was at Croquart’s mercy, a truth that the townsfolk took bitterly to heart. The little place was like a sponge in the Fleming’s hand; he could squeeze what he would from it, till every hole and purse were dry. And the mercy of a captain of free lances meant also the mercy of his men, and what such mercy meant a hundred towns in France learned to their cost through those grim English wars so full of “chivalry.” After the Poitiers fight the Black Prince served King John as cupbearer at Bordeaux, yet for the picturesque princeliness of that single deed there were a thousand miseries hidden from the pages of romance. A king may pick up a lady’s garter at a dance, and great fame come of it, and live in the pageant of the world. Yet behind the dawn-flash of some such splendid trifle a multitude of the dead lift their white hands in the night of the unknown. The blood of the common folk sinks down into the earth they tilled, but the froth from a prince’s wine-cup clings to the lips of men.
It was late one April day when Bertrand rode towards Pontivy, meeting many who had turned their backs on the place rather than live at Croquart’s mercy. The gates were well guarded, for the Fleming was no fool, and knew that he was as well hated as any man in Brittany. Bertrand, who rode as a common free-lance, and looked the part, with his rusty harness and battered shield, was suffered to pass with a few questions, and directed to the hostel where Croquart’s captains were enlisting men. Bertrand, knowing Pontivy well, made his way up a narrow street to the house of a merchant named Pierre Gomon, but found the gate barred and all the windows closely shuttered.
After thundering at the door awhile, he heard the sound of footsteps in the passage and the harsh grating of the rusty grill. A face showed behind the iron-work, peering at him suspiciously, for it was growing dark, and the narrow street caught but little light.
“Who’s there? What may you want?”
Bertrand asked for Pierre Gomon, and discovered that it was Pierre Gomon himself who looked at him through the iron lattice.
“Hello, sir, have you a quiet attic for Bertrand du Guesclin?”
The voice was familiar to the merchant, but, like his neighbors, he lived in perpetual terror of Croquart’s men. Anything that walked the streets with a clank of steel made the burghers of Pontivy shiver behind their bolted doors.
“I will wager, sir, that Messire Bertrand du Guesclin is not within ten miles of Pontivy.”
“How, Pierre Gomon, will you tell me I am not myself? Come, I am here on my own errand, and heed a quiet hole to sleep in. Here is my hand, with the ring I had from you two years ago.”
He put his hand close to the grill, but Master Pierre Gomon was not to be satisfied with any such cursory inspection. He left Bertrand standing outside the gate, and, bringing a lantern, flashed the light upon the ring Du Guesclin wore.
“Yes, it is the same. And your face, messire?”
Bertrand had put his visor up.
“Ugly enough to be remembered,” he said, with a laugh. “Come, Pierre Gomon, we are both Breton men. Do you think I am here in Pontivy to screw money out of you with Croquart and his rabble?”
The merchant’s face betrayed ineffable relief. He unbarred the gate and let Bertrand in, shooting back the bolts again with the feverish haste of a man shutting out some wild beast.
“Pardon, messire,” he said, taking the bridle of Bertrand’s horse; “we are being bled to death by these English barbers. Twice that devil Croquart has sent men to me for food and money. They broke open my strongbox and half emptied my cellars. God bless the day when we of Pontivy see the last of them!”
Bertrand could have laughed at Pierre Gomon’s lugubrious face had he not known what war was and what manner of wolves herded round Croquart in the town.
“Lend me one of your attics, friend,” he said, “and give my horse a stall in your stable.”
“They’ll take the beast, messire, as sure as I’m a ruined man.”
“Let well alone,” said Bertrand, unbuckling his sword.
When night had fallen, Bertrand found himself in one of Pierre Gomon’s attics, with food and a flask of wine on a table near him. The moon’s light shone full upon the dormer-window, so that he had no need of the candle the merchant had brought him. Bertrand stripped off his harness and made a meal, and then, drawing the stool up to the window, sat leaning his arms on the low sill and looking out over the little town.
From amid the jumble of roofs, sharp-peaked, like waves in a choppy sea, Bertrand could hear the shouting of the soldiery who idled in the streets. In the east a full moon was rising, a huge buckler of burnished bronze, its light glimmering on the little river that wound about the town, and making the roofs and steeples white like glass. Between two houses Bertrand could get a glimpse of the market square and of the hostel where Croquart had his quarters. The fretted windows were red with torchlight, and Bertrand could see figures moving to and fro in the rooms within. Croquart and his comrades in arms were making merry, while in the market square a crowd of soldiery drank and warmed themselves about two great fires.
Bertrand’s thoughts went back from Pontivy, lighted by the moonlight, to his home and to La Bellière by the northern sea. He was wondering whether Jeanne, his mother, had heard the news of Mivoie. How Olivier would curl his dainty mustachios, shrug those padded shoulders of his, and dismiss his brother from all creditable remembrance with a sneer! Bertrand’s thoughts turned from his own home, where they loved him little, to La Bellière and to Robin. They would know now that he had failed to keep troth at Mivoie, and he would have given much to learn whether Tiphaïne believed him worthless and without honor. Unconsciously Bertrand had come to set much store on the girl’s goodwill. He judged his thoughts by the fearless purity of her face, and kept her words locked in his heart.
Bertrand heard loud shouts and a burst of laughter as a knot of half-drunken English came staggering and shouldering along the street. They were shouting a catch-cry that Croquart had given them, and singing some doggerel that had the Sieur de Beaumanoir for its victim. Bertrand leaned out and watched them pass, lusting greatly to throw the stool down on their heads.
One fellow gave a loud screech, jumped on to a comrade’s back, and began to thump him with his heels.
“Whoa ho, Dobbin! to Josselin we go,To hang the marshal and his Bretons in a row.”
“Whoa ho, Dobbin! to Josselin we go,To hang the marshal and his Bretons in a row.”
“Whoa ho, Dobbin! to Josselin we go,To hang the marshal and his Bretons in a row.”
“Whoa ho, Dobbin! to Josselin we go,
To hang the marshal and his Bretons in a row.”
The men took up the snatch and went bawling down the street, the mock horse prancing and curvetting with the rhymester on his back. Such peace-loving people as were abroad went scuttling down alleys, and into corners like mice running from a cat. Bertrand watched the gentry disappear down a passage that led into the market square. Their drunken shouting had given him a cud to chew, for, if Croquart struck a blow at Josselin, he—Bertrand du Guesclin—might yet have a part to play.
At La Bellière the Sieur de Tinteniac sat at the window of the great solar, looking out upon the orchard-trees, whose boughs were white against the blue. He had ridden in about noon from Dinan, to find an atmosphere of tragic awe filling the house, a sadness that seemed strange when the woods and meadows blazed with the spring. Dinner had been set for him at the high table, yet to his questions the old major-domo had given short and vague replies: “The Vicomte kept his bed, and Madame Tiphaïne was anxious for her father. Craving the seigneur’s patience, she would speak with him in the solar when he had dined. No, Messire Robin was not at home.” Tinteniac had forborne to question the old man further, for there were tears in the man’s eyes, and the very servants looked like mutes, going about their work as though death were in the place. Tinteniac had finished his meal in silence, feeling the shadow of some great sorrow over the house. Stephen of Lehon had been at La Bellière that morning, and had ridden back on his white mule to the abbey, shocked at heart by what he had seen and heard.
The curtain of green cloth, embroidered with gold martlets, that covered the door leading to the Vicomte’s bedchamber was swept aside by the white curve of a woman’s hand and wrist. Tinteniac, drumming on the window-ledge with his fingers, turned with a start and rose to make a very stately kissing of madame’s hands. Tiphaïne, upon whom the brunt of the day’s bitterness had fallen, looked white of face and shadowy about the eyes.
“I am glad, Sieur de Tinteniac, that you have come, for you can help me more than any man on earth.”
She was looking straight into Tinteniac’s eyes, liking their quiet braveness and the almost ascetic refinement of his face. He was verging on middle age, and carried himself with that simple stateliness that comes to men who have moved in high places and taken the measure of the world.
“Madame, I have been reproaching myself for burdening you at such a time. Your father is ill; yet you say that I can help you; good. I had ordered my horses out for Dinan, but if you would have me stay—”
“Stay, sire,” she said; “I have such a tangle to unravel that I shall need your wisdom to help me through.”
Tinteniac, grave and restrained, put a chair for her before the window and turned the shutter so as to keep the sun from shining on her face.
“You do me honor,” he said; “if I can help you, show me how.”
He moved back to the cushioned seat in the broad window, the sunlight shining on the richness of his dress and showing the silver in his hair. He was a man who a woman would come to when in trouble, for, of all the knights of Brittany, Tinteniac held the noblest record.
“Sire, let me tell the truth to you: my father lies half dead in the room beyond us, and my brother Robin has hid himself in the cloisters of Lehon.”
She was looking steadily at Tinteniac, trying to read how much he knew, but his face was a sympathetic blank to her, devoid of subtlety or pretended innocence.
“Pardon me, madame, you seem to think me wiser than I am.”
“You fought, sir, at Mivoie.”
“True, and your brother Robin saved my life.”
“It was not my brother, sire.”
Tinteniac started.
“No, but Bertrand du Guesclin, who fought in my brother’s arms.”
They looked at each other in silence for a moment, each trying to shadow forth the other’s thoughts. To Tinteniac there was a magnetic strength shining in the eyes of the girl before him. He felt that each word meant a stab of the heart to her, and that she suffered, though pain was hidden by her pride.
“Madame, what are you telling me?”
“Telling you the truth of this great sorrow that has come upon us. My brother Robin played the coward, God help the lad! for the shame of it has driven him to take the vows. Bertrand du Guesclin had promised me to care for the lad. He took Robin’s arms and fought at Mivoie in his stead, bearing the shame to save a coward.”
She confessed the truth with a strength that mingled pride with pathos. Tinteniac had risen, and stood leaning against the window-jamb, conscious of the trust she was laying upon his manhood. Her words had astonished him, yet he showed no fluster over her confession, respecting her pride too much to wound her with useless questions.
“Madame,” he said, gravely, “what can I say to you but that I am here to help you—if it is possible.”
Her heart went out to him for the delicate courtesy of his restraint.
“Sire, the truth must be told.”
Tinteniac turned away his head.
“We are too proud, pray God, to let a brave man suffer for one we love. Bertrand has done for us what few men would ever do. I know the bitterness of the sacrifice to him, and those who would slander him shall have the truth.”
Tinteniac’s eyes flashed as she spoke.
“Madame, I am glad,” he said, “that I stood out for Du Guesclin at the Oak of Mivoie, and you are right in telling me the truth. Both men were friends to me, and I know not how to place my pity.”
“Sire, Robin is dead to us, poor lad! God has taken him; he will not see the scorn that Bertrand might have borne.”
Even her great strength failed her for the moment, and she rose, turning aside, with one hand covering her face. Tinteniac, touched to the heart, remained by the window, suffering her bitterness to pass in silence. The pathos of life seemed very keen to him, held as it was in the proud walls of this noble house. He thought of Robin as he had known the lad of old, and pictured him now, cowering in the cloisters of Lehon.
“Sire, I have one more thing to ask of you.”
She had mastered her weakness, and her eyes shone out on him from the determined pallor of her face.
“Take me to Beaumanoir; let there be no delay. Bertrand du Guesclin shall be cleared from shame.”
Tinteniac went to her and took her hands.
“Child,” he said, “you have chosen the nobler part. Would to God that I could mend this sorrow.”
He kissed her hands and stood back, looking sadly into her face.
“The marshal is at Josselin,” he said.
“Then, sire, I shall ride to Josselin. I shall not rest until the truth is told.”
The next dawn saw them on the road, while at La Bellière an old man sat before the fire, dazed and stricken, muttering the name of his only son. And amid the aspens on the Lehon lands young Yeolande wept at the window of her room, looking towards the tall towers of the abbey, and wondering why God had stricken Robin’s heart and taken his love from her to make of him a priest.
Croquartthe Fleming had marched from Pontivy to take Josselin by surprise at the breaking of a summer dawn. The little town, with its gate-houses and spires, its high roofs and timber-capped turrets, had stood black and silent against the gold of the east when Croquart’s stormers crept up to set their ladders against the walls. Unluckily for the Fleming and his men, the Sieur de Beaumanoir had been forewarned as to their coming, and their welcome that May morning came in the shape of stones, molten lead, pitch, and a rain of quarrels from the walls. They had been beaten back, to flounder, many of them, like great black cockroaches in the mud of the town ditch. And, to complete the thoroughness of the repulse, the gates of Josselin had opened wide to pour columns of armed men into the town meadows.
The cocks of Josselin were still crowing when Geoffroi Dubois and his Breton gentlemen and men-at-arms rode through and through the disordered companies of the Fleming’s “horse.” Many debts were waiting for dismissal on the green slopes under the walls of Josselin town. Every man who could carry a sword or bill swarmed out by the gates to strike a blow against these plunderers of Breton towns. Butchers with their cleavers, smiths with their hammers, armorers’ apprentices with arms fresh from the forge followed in the track of the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s columns of steel. There was no taking of prisoners that morning in the Josselin meadows. The townsmen rushed in among the disordered free-lances, stabbing the horses and bringing the men-at-arms to earth. John Hamlin, an Englishman, and the Fleming’s brother in arms, was battered to death by the hammers of two smiths as he lay helpless in his heavy harness. Before the sun had topped the steeples the broken companies were streaming for the open moors, with Geoffroi Dubois and his Bretons in pursuit.
It was past noon that same day when Croquart reined in his black horse on the last sweep of moorland beneath the crests of the Loudeac woods. The Fleming wore a red surcoat covered with gold diapering, carried a fox’s brush in his gilded bassinet, and was armed in harness that any great lord might have coveted. The coxcombry of the adventurer showed itself even in the trappings of his horse, for the butcher-boy of Flanders, gay as any popinjay, had the love of a risen man for jewels, color, and the pomp of life.
Croquart stood in the stirrups and scanned the moorland under his hand. Hard galloping alone had saved him from the glitter of Dubois’s spears, and, as for his own mercenaries, he had left the fellows to look after their own souls. Three solitary riders were forcing their jaded horses up the slope towards him, the last and best mounted of his free lances, who had been able to keep sight of the black stern of Croquart’s horse.
Though still young, the Fleming had the coarse and florid features of a man whose appetites had been pampered by success. Vulgar, vain, supremely cunning, with a chest like a barrel, hands and throat like an Esau’s, he looked a heavy man, even on the big horse he rode. His broad, flat face mingled a snub-nosed audacity with the cheerful arrogance of sensual strength. The cheek-bones were high, the eyes small, deep set, and quick with the glint of a bird of prey. Even in defeat the man’s unbounded impudence had not deserted him, and his eyes twinkled as he watched the laboring approach of the survivors of his “free company,” a company that had dwindled to the ludicrous muster-roll of three.
“Hallo, sirs!” and he laughed in their faces; “Beaumanoir has made us hurry a little. Why, Tête Bois, you have the lives of a cat. Pluck up heart, man; why so white about the mouth?”
He raised himself again in the stirrups and scanned the moors for any showing of pursuit. Save for a solitary figure on horseback that had appeared like a black speck on the brow of a low hill, the moorland appeared innocent of Dubois’s pursuing spears.
Croquart sat back in the saddle with a grunt of relief, and turned his eyes to the faces of his men. He had had sufficient experience of such gentry to know that he could trust their loyalty just as long as he could rely upon his purse.
“Tête Bois, my sweet scoundrel, tell me how much Beaumanoir has promised to any man who shall bring him my head. You heard of it at Pontivy, eh?”
The man looked uneasily at the Fleming. There was an ironical glint in Croquart’s eyes that was disconcerting to a fellow with so sensitive a conscience.
“I never heard of the money, captain.”
Croquart’s lids contracted a little.
“Well, how much was it?”
“Sang de Dieu, captain—”
The Fleming laughed.
“Speak up, dear comrade. I see by your snout that you know as much as I do. Was it not five thousand crowns?”
He watched the men narrowly, yet with the cool confidence of one sure of his own strength.
“Five thousand crowns, sirs, for the head of Croquart the Fleming! Come, friend Tête Bois, five thousand crown-pieces would give you many merry months in the taverns, eh?”
The tanned war-dog looked restless, as though Croquart’s raillery was too cunning to be pleasant.
“We are your men, captain.”
“Good fellows! good fellows! You love me about as well as a whore loves a gentleman with a pocketful of gold. I shall take care, sirs, not to sleep till we unsaddle in the west. Five hundred gold pieces are easily earned by a stab in the dark, Tête Bois, eh? And, then, I am such a gay devil—my rings are worth a duke’s ransom,” and he glanced at his huge hands and then at the faces of his men.
“By St. George, captain—”
“Hallo, you are wondering how much money I have in my coffers at Morlaix. Good lads! I will remember to be generous.”
He understood the men and they him. It was a matter of money between them, a bribe that should out-bribe Beaumanoir’s bounty. Given fair play, the Fleming was more than a match for the three of them, and they knew it.
“No rat’s tricks, captain; we’ll take our oath on it.”
Croquart laid a hand significantly on his sword.
“The woods will serve us best,” he said. “We will take the forest way towards Loudeac. Dubois will not press too far into the west. After Loudeac we can take our time, for young Bamborough is at Guingamp.”
Croquart turned his head with a last backward look over the moors. The solitary rider who had topped the hill had dropped again from sight. Probably, so thought the Fleming, it was only another of his men who had escaped from the bloody Josselin meadows.
“Forward!” and he gave the word with gusto, as though he still commanded five hundred spears.
His men waited for him to lead the way.
“No, by my blood, gentlemen!” and he laughed. “Go forward. I prefer to take care of my own back.”
The popinjay is known by his gay colors, and it was Croquart’s love of gaudy trappings that betrayed him to the Breton rider whom he had seen poised for a moment on the brow of the next hill. The man had reined in his horse, craned forward in the saddle, and scanned with the keenness of a hawk the four steel-clad figures covered by the shadows of the Loudeac woods. Messire Croquart’s red surcoat, with its gold diaperings, and his gilded bassinet showed clearly against the green. It was for such a chance as this that Bertrand had played the spy at Pontivy. And for such a boon he had loitered on the moors near Josselin, coveting Dubois his battle-cry, and yet believing in his heart that Croquart would break free. The thing had happened even as Bertrand had desired it should. He was on the track of the Fleming, the taking of whose head would bless Brittany more than the fight at Mivoie had ever done.
“Brother Croquart, Brother Croquart, you think too much of the women, my friend!” and yet Bertrand forgot the fact that he himself thought each hour of the day of a pair of brown eyes and hair that changed in the sunlight from bronze to ruddy gold.
The champion of the fox’s brush rode towards Loudeac, with Bertrand on his heels, and at Loudeac the Sieur de Tinteniac’s shield hung in the guest-hall of the little abbey of St. Paul. Tinteniac and Tiphaïne had ridden by Montcontour, following the same road that Bertrand and her brother had taken not a month before. They had passed the first night at Montcontour, the second at Loudeac, and at Loudeac they had heard that Croquart had escaped from Josselin and was enlisting men on the banks of the Blavet. Refugees had fled to Loudeac from Pontivy, and the little town already trembled amid its woods, dreading to hear the Fleming’s trumpets sounding a challenge at the gates.
Tinteniac’s two esquires were making the final moves in a game of chess in the guest-hall oriel, while Tiphaïne and her serving-woman were dressing in their bedchamber for the day’s journey. Horses and palfreys stood saddled in the court, Tinteniac’s men and the two La Bellière servants strapping such baggage as they had on the backs of a couple of bony and ill-tempered mules. It was not known at Loudeac that Croquart had made his dash on Josselin from Pontivy, and that he and his men were scattered in flight over the Breton moors.
In the abbey garden the Sieur de Tinteniac leaned over the rail of the abbot’s fish-pond and threw pieces of bread to the fat carp that teemed in the waters of the “stew.” His pose was one of reflection, of dignity upon the pedestal of thought, as he watched a dozen silvery snouts clash together for each white morsel of bread. The high forehead and the meditative eyes, the stateliness of many stately generations, made of Tinteniac a figure of mark among the Breton nobles who followed the banner of Charles of Blois. The very hands that fed the fish were typical of the seigneur’s nature, clean, refined, sinewy, virile. His manner had that simple graciousness that makes beauty in man admirable even to his uglier fellows.
The ladies of Jean de Penthièvre’s household had long despaired of making the Sieur de Tinteniac blush for them, yet a most palpable deepening of color overspread his face that morning as the mistress of La Bellière came towards him between the herb-beds of the abbot’s garden. Thyme, marjoram, lavender, basil, rosemary, and balm crowded about the lithe lightness of her figure. As she stood before Tinteniac in her gray riding-cloak, lined with crimson silk, her hair burning in the sunlight about her face, she seemed to recall to him the troubled tenderness of a green yet stormy June, long grass weary with the rain, pools brimming with the sunset, silent trees wrapped in a mysterious glory of gold. Beauty in woman should fire all the best beauty in the soul of man. And to such as Tinteniac, whose natural impulses towards nobleness were above mere religious and chivalric ordinances, the girl’s brave charm was a mystery and a romance.
“Are the horses ready?”
“Ready, if you are not afraid of being snapped up by some of Croquart’s plunderers.”
“No, I am not afraid,” and her eyes showed Tinteniac that she spoke the truth; “but your wounds, sire? How one’s own trouble makes one selfish towards others!”
Tinteniac looked at her as though he might imagine other woundings than those he had earned at the Oak of Mivoie.
“I am myself again, though I wear half-armor. We had better take the forest road.”
“As you will; I trust to you.”
She began to fasten her cloak with its loops of crimson cord, her hands moving slowly, her eyes looking past Tinteniac as though he were mere mist to her for the moment. She was thinking of Robin, her brother, buried in the abbey of Lehon, and of the old man, her father, sitting alone before the fire. From La Bellière her thoughts swept over Brittany with an impatient pity for the land that suffered.
“I had hoped that Mivoie would have ended all this misery,” she said.
Tinteniac was watching her as though her beauty had more meaning for him than her words.
“Montfort and Blois have the poor duchy by the horns and tail, while such a fellow as Croquart steals the milk.”
She looked at him with a slight frown and an impatient lifting of the head.
“Croquart, the butcher-boy from Flanders! And you nobles of Brittany, with all your chivalry, cannot match this fellow in the field.”
Tinteniac shrugged and smiled at her.
“What would you?”
“Why, were I a man—”
“Well—”
“And a Breton man—”
“Yes.”
“I should not rest till I had freed Brittany from such a brute.”
The seigneur spread his hands.
“But when the brute has a few hundred men behind him!—”
“Well, and no matter; Croquart is vain enough to take a challenge from a Breton noble.”
Tinteniac smiled, as though any mood of hers had magic for him.
“You trouble too much about this butcher-boy,” he said; “he will feel the rope like most of his brother thieves.”
“Ah, sire, I see, your hands are too white—”
“Too white?”
“To soil themselves with such as Croquart.”
Tinteniac’s stateliness appeared unruffled by the impatience in her voice. An aristocrat, he saw no great glory in hunting down this Flemish butcher-boy, who robbed towns and fed his men on the peasants’ corn, a fellow whose head was rancid with grease and whose breath stank of the nearest tavern. He would be taken and hanged in due season by the providence of God; but as for making an adventurous romance out of Croquart’s capture, Tinteniac, with his refined breeding, was not inspired to such a quest.
“The true chivalry”—and he spoke without haughtiness—“is of the heart, not of the arm.”
“They tell me Croquart has a giant’s arm.”
“Yes, from handling the butcher’s cleaver.”
“Then, sire, a gentleman would shame himself by taking blows from Croquart’s arm?”
Tinteniac’s eyes expressed amusement at the vehemence with which she spoke. It was good to see the child, so ran his stately reflection, flame up over the wrongs of the Breton poor.
“Madame, would you have me search from Dol to Nantes in order to break a butcher-boy’s skull?”
“Are you sure you would break it, sire?”
“No”—and he laughed with a generous frankness that could not be quarrelled with—“the butcher-boy might prove himself the better man. At Mivoie he was the best champion the English had.”
Tiphaïne flashed a look straight into Tinteniac’s eyes.
“Well, sire, I should honor the man who put an end to Croquart’s savagery.”
Tinteniac colored and gave her one of his most stately bows.
“Your words set a new price upon the fellow’s head.”
Thewalls of Loudeac melted away amid the green as the Sieur de Tinteniac’s party turned eastward along the forest-way to Josselin. They had taken a Loudeac shepherd with them as a guide, for there were many branching ways amid the woods, and it was easy to go astray amid that wilderness of oaks and beeches. Tinteniac sent his two esquires forward with the three men-at-arms, the two La Bellière servants coming next with the mules, and Tiphaïne’s woman upon her palfrey, while Tinteniac, the tall carack of the fleet, sailed beside the Vicomte’s daughter, his shield flashing gold and gules towards the morning sun.
No healthy male is without vanity, and Tinteniac, despite the serenity of his pride, had taken some of Tiphaïne’s words to heart. It was peculiar to her, this power of hers of establishing her ideals in the minds of others—foreign gods in a foreign sanctuary. A gesture, an expression of the eyes, a few movements of the lips, and her own intensity of soul poured out its inspiration upon others. She had all the passionate enthusiasm of youth, that fine fire that will not be damped by the cynicism of experience. And yet when she spoke it was without any intrusion of prejudice or self-will. Her heart force, her peerless sincerity, gave her this influence over the world about her.
Tinteniac was not a man to be dictated to by the tongue of a mere girl, and yet there was something so compelling in Tiphaïne’s nature that he discovered himself questioning the aristocratic niceness of his opinions. It was her courage, her great-heartedness, that had struck Tinteniac from the hour he had first spoken with her in the solar at La Bellière. Few women would have chosen so straight a path as Tiphaïne. Her courage appeared to brush formalities aside. When trouble came she might have sat dazed beside her father in the great house at La Bellière, or hurried to Lehon to reproach Robin, or taken to her room and made sorrow selfish by refusing to be comforted. One clear thought appeared to have dominated her mind, the thought that a brave man had sacrificed himself, perhaps because she was Robin’s sister. Tinteniac envied Bertrand the part he had played at Mivoie.
They spoke of Robin that morning as they rode towards Josselin through the dewy woods. The Sieur de Tinteniac would have made an admirable confessor, for he had the sympathetic self-effacement of the ideal priest, with the strength and sincerity of the soldier. Tiphaïne found him easy to trust. He helped her with his knowledge of the world without uncovering her sense of humiliation and regret.
“A lively imagination may be a treacherous blessing,” he confessed to her. “I remember being saved from playing—from forgetting my manhood—once.”
“You, sire, a coward!” and she used the word that he had avoided.
“All men are human—nerve, muscle, and blood. We build up character as our monks build a church. One loose stone in the tower arch and half the place may be in ruins.”
“How did it happen?”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes.”
And he gave her the tale without affectation and without reserve.
Tiphaïne was silent when he had ended, watching the winding woodways of the forest. She was thinking of her brother Robin, and how Tinteniac’s trial compared with his. The one man had failed in the ordeal, the other risen to greater strength above the sense of his own self-shame.
“It was, then, your mother, sire?” she said, at last.
“Yes, my mother who saved me—”
“I can understand.”
“That a man would be a miserable rat who would play the coward under his mother’s eyes.”
Tiphaïne’s silence showed that she was thinking.
“And Robin had no mother, sire,” she said; “if I had been wiser—”
“And the lad less reticent.”
“My love would have sent him like a man to Mivoie.”
Tinteniac looked ahead between the dark boles of the trees.
“It is the waiting for danger that tires the courage,” he said. “Like the sounds of wolves following at night, when one can see nothing.”
“And the wolves?”
“May be a man’s own thoughts. Most of us are brave when we plunge into peril with no time given us to think.”
Had Tinteniac been able to see five furlongs through the forest, he might have put his philosophy to the test by watching the champion of the fox’s brush cantering on the same road towards Loudeac. About them were the quiet glades and woodways of the forest, green with the glamour and the mystery of spring. Wind flowers fluttering white as swan’s-down; wild hyacinths like the dust of lapis lazuli scattered on emerald cloth; the cuckoo flower with its lilac crosslets; primroses brilliant in the green gloom of coppice and of dell. The winding glades were paved with color and arched with tremulous foliage bathed in the sunlight. Through many a green cleft could be seen the golden splendor of the gorse in bloom, the white clouds moving over the azure of the sky.
Tinteniac and Tiphaïne had loitered as they talked, and the rest of the troop, with the two esquires leading, had disappeared round the shoulder of a beech wood, the great trunks rising out of the bronze flooring of leaves to spread into a delicate shimmer of green above. In a thicket of birches to the south of the road a cuckoo was calling, while the sunlight played on the white stems of the trees.
Tiphaïne was still thinking of all that Tinteniac had told her, her eyes looking into the distance, a sad smile hovering about her mouth. The wild woods and the brown birds darting and fluttering in the brakes made her pity the poor lad who was shutting himself in Lehon against such life as this. She was roused from her reverie by the sound of men shouting on the road beyond the beech wood. Tiphaïne’s horse pricked up its ears. The birds, those spirits of the solemn woods, came scudding fast over the tree-tops.
Tiphaïne’s eyes were turned to Tinteniac’s face. His fine profile, with its alert lines, showed that he had spoken of panic with the quiet smile of a man remembering a weakness long since dead.
“Listen, they are at blows yonder. Let us push forward. Hallo, what have we here?”
Round the edge of the beech wood came the two La Bellière men, whipping up their horses, with Tiphaïne’s woman on her palfrey between them. Hard at their heels cantered the two baggage mules, with halters dangling, a fair omen of an unquestionable rout.
Tinteniac’s sword was up. He put his horse across the road, a hint that the La Bellière men seemed too scared to accept.
“Steady! steady!!”
“Fly, sire, fly—”
They were up and past, maugre the seignorial sword, Tinteniac barely escaping the indignity of being rammed by the near man’s horse. To shout at them was as useless as hallooing after a rabble of frightened sheep. Tiphaïne had caught a glimpse of her serving-woman’s scared face as she was whirled past, clinging to the saddle with both hands. The woman had opened her lips to call to her mistress, but an inarticulate cry alone came from them. The two mules went cantering past with their packs slipping down under their bellies. In the taking of ten breaths the woods had swallowed men, woman, and beasts.
Tinteniac gave a contemptuous laugh.
“It seems that I am something of a prophet. What are we to look for next?”
He was as cool as though exchanging courtesies with a guest in the great hall of his own castle. Tiphaïne saw his lips grow thin, the pupils of his eyes contract like the eyes of a hawk on the hover for a stoop. He glanced this way and that into the woods, setting his shield forward and balancing his sword.
“What do you make of it, sire?” and she matched him for composure.
“Gilles and Gilbert are fighting. Listen! They are falling back towards us. Look, who goes there?”
There was a crackling of the underwood near them, and they had a glimpse of the white face of a man pushing through the brushwood into a little glade. He seemed to see neither Tiphaïne nor the knight on the great horse. And with the flash of a helmet he was gone, the green boughs closing on him like water over a diver’s body.
Tinteniac bit his lip.
“A bad omen”—and he reached for Tiphaïne’s bridle—“that fellow of mine has taken to his heels. Perhaps he is discreet. We, too, can take cover.”
He had already dragged Tiphaïne’s palfrey half across the road, when a man in red, riding a black horse, swerved round the beech wood into the sunlight. Three others followed him at a canter, shields forward, swords out. Tinteniac saw himself caught in the open. He wheeled briskly, covering Tiphaïne with his horse.
“Keep close to me, child.”
“Thanks, sire; do not risk anything for my sake.”
He answered her with a look that it was impossible for her to parry.
Croquart drew rein when he saw nothing more terrible on the forest road before him than a knight and a lady without escort and without servants. The Fleming had taken the two esquires and their men for the advance-guard of a company pushing forward to help in the defence of Josselin. He had not waited to ask questions, but had charged without a parley, and, since the two poor youngsters had made a gallant stand against him, the Fleming had used his tusks in his hurry to break through.
The first thing that Croquart noticed was the gold and gules upon Tinteniac’s shield; the second, Tiphaïne’s figure with its gray cloak lined with crimson silk, and the glitter of her hair under the boughs of the trees. Now Croquart was one of those insufferable creatures whose vanity takes fire at the first flash of a woman’s gown. Ugly and illiterate rascal that he was, he had conceived a fashionable fury for the French romances, and had even taken to modelling his behavior upon that of their aristocratic heroes. A renegade is always doubly bitter against the party he has deserted; so Croquart, hating the past, aspired to be the gay and flamboyant gentleman, tender and irresistible to women. Hard and grim in the business of life, the sex feeling made a fool of him, even so much as to make him one of those fulsome fops who cannot refrain from displaying their feathers to the poorest draggle-tail be she beneath the age of fifty. His gaudy clothes would have seemed wasted but for the women, and his successes among the bourgeoisie had made him ambitious of flying for nobler game.
When Croquart recognized the Sieur de Tinteniac by his shield, and also saw the lady beside him with hair that took a sheen from the sun, he dropped his ferocity as though it had been his butcher’s cleaver and assumed an air which he believed to possess all the aristocratic gentleness of those sentimental heroes who never existed.
“Halt, sirs!”
He waved his men back with his sword and rode on at a trot towards Tinteniac and the Vicomte’s daughter. The spirit of ostentation pervaded even the salute he gave them.
“God’s grace to you, madame, and to you—sire. Am I to be honored by taking you as my prisoners?”
Tinteniac was trying to fathom the new-comer’s identity, for Croquart carried no proper device upon his shield.
“There has been no word spoken of surrender,” he said.
The Fleming bowed in the saddle.
“Then the Sieur de Tinteniac will honor me by meeting me with his sword.”
Tinteniac’s handsome face betrayed no hesitation.
“I am known to you, messire?”
“I remember your shield, sire. I saw enough of it at Mivoie to make me respect its master.”
“At Mivoie?”
“Certainly, sire.”
“And you—your name?”
The Fleming threw up the visor of his bassinet with the unction of a hero discovering himself at the dramatic moment. He looked at Tiphaïne as though to watch how she received the impression of his magnificence.
“Sire, I am Croquart the Fleming.”
“Croquart! So; this is fortunate.”
Tinteniac’s face could express haughtiness with the perfect calmness of the aristocrat. Croquart had more looks for the lady than for the man. He saw her color deepen a little and a peculiar shadowiness pass across her eyes.
“No doubt, sire, you have heard of me,” and the fat hand seemed to insinuate the glitter of its rings into Tiphaïne’s notice.
“The Flemish butcher-boy.”
Tinteniac’s tone had the whistle of a whip.
“Sire, William the Norman’s mother was a tanner’s daughter, and yet he became a king.”
“I said, sir, the Flemish butcher-boy.”
Croquart’s eyes gleamed for the moment like a cat’s. Tinteniac’s face roused the plebeian passion in him.
“By your grace, sire, we will see whether the Sieur de Tinteniac or the Flemish butcher-boy is the better man.”
“That, perhaps, is too great an honor.”
“An honor, sire, that my sword will compel you to confer.”
Tiphaïne looked anxiously at Tinteniac. He was but half armed, because the wounds he had won at Mivoie would not yet bear the weight of heavier harness, nor would his pride suffer him to confess the disadvantage. It was Tiphaïne who read his thoughts and said what Tinteniac would not say.
“Sire, you are but half armed, and Messire Croquart is in his battle harness.”
She glanced at the Fleming, and he felt the fearless influence of her eyes.
“Messire Croquart is gentleman enough to respect fair play.”
“Madame, you have read me right,” and he fell to her flattery without a question. “Hi, Tête Bois”—and he climbed out of the saddle—“take off my breastplate and my cuishes. The butcher-boy of Flanders will take no man at a disadvantage. Madame, I most reverently kiss your hands.”
Tiphaïne’s heart misgave her for Tinteniac, as she watched the man Tête Bois at work upon his master under the shadows of a great beech. The Fleming’s girth of chest and limb seemed almost monstrous when compared with Tinteniac’s Grecian stateliness. The one was like a Norman pillar, massive and ponderous, giving a sense of uncrushable strength; the other like a fluted shaft of a more decorative age, its lines the lines of well-balanced beauty, its power concealed by perfection of design. The faces of the men were as vividly in contrast as their bodies. The butcher had the face of a butcher, and, as Tiphaïne watched him, the very insolent superfluity of his strength made him appear as the champion of the brute world against the nobler ideals of the soul.
“Sire, shall we fight mounted or on foot?”
Tinteniac, with the courtly composure of an aristocrat, stood leaning on his sword.
“As you please.”
“On foot, then.”
“I am ready.”
They engaged each other on a broad strip of grass clear of the roots and the sweeping branches of the trees. Croquart had lived by his sword; the noble had drawn his only when the serenity of the seignorial honor was embroiled. From the first the Fleming had the upper hand. Tiphaïne could see his grinning mouth, the glint of his eyes as though insolently sure of his own strength. Tinteniac never flinched from him, despite his wounds, taking Croquart’s blows with shield forward and head thrown back.
In the first minute Tinteniac was wounded in the thigh; Tiphaïne could see blood on his green surcoat, but to have meddled would have been an insult that no true man would have forgiven. His own blows seemed to lack power against the Fleming’s greater bulk. He felt the wounds crack that the English had given him at Mivoie, and he was short in the wind, like a man who has been a week in bed.
Three minutes’ fighting found Croquart playing with his man. Tinteniac had not so much as flustered him. Strength and condition were all to the Fleming’s honor.
“Come, sire, surrender,” and he gave Tinteniac time to breathe.
The noble had faltered, more from faintness than from any failing of his courage. He saw Tiphaïne watching him and read the misgiving in her eyes. The pride of such a man was very sensitive. To be beaten, and to be beaten before her, by a butcher!
“Who asks for surrender?”
“In faith, sire, not I!”
“Come, then.”
And they went at it again with exuberant good-will.
An unparried blow on the right shoulder brought Tinteniac to earth at last. He struggled to his knees and tried to rise, but Croquart rolled him backward with a mere touch of the sword-point on the breast.
“Surrender, sire; I am in luck to-day.”
Tinteniac, with a last effort, turned sideways and broke his sword across his knee.
“You can take the pieces, Fleming,” and he dropped on his elbow, his face but a hand’s-breadth from the tangled grass.
A strong man’s anguish of exhaustion and defeat has some of the agony of hell in its expression, and to Tiphaïne the shock of Tinteniac’s dramatic overthrow was as vital as though he had been her brother. It wounded her woman’s pride to see this man of the finer fibre crushed at the feet of this brute mass of insolence and strength. She was out of the saddle and facing Croquart before that gentleman had had leisure to exult.
“Messire Croquart”—and her courtesy was sublime, the most perfect weapon she could have chosen—“a Tinteniac can never surrender, a woman can. We are your prisoners.”
The Fleming dropped his battle humor and made her a fat bow.
“I am at your service, madame.”
“That is well spoken, sir. There are wounds to be looked to.”
“Tête Bois, my saddle-bag.”
The man brought it. Croquart, who, despite his undoubted courage, had a peculiar loathing for seeing his own blood flow, always carried wine, oil, and linen with him in the wars.
“Thanks, messire.”
“Madame, it is a privilege to please.”
Tiphaïne understood the possible significance of the privilege, and hated the fawning bully with all the energy of her distrust. He gave her the wine and linen with his own hands, making the exchange slowly, that he might touch her fingers and discover the color and temper of her eyes. The self-same eyes were brown and full of flashes of sunlight, flashes that made Croquart mutter “vixen” under his breath.
Tinteniac was still lying propped on one elbow and hanging his head like a man bleeding in pride as well as in body. That one of the first knights in Brittany should have been trampled under foot by a butcher-boy from Flanders was an indignity that needed superhuman courage to rescue it from contempt. And yet the fine fortitude of the man triumphed. He retrieved his respect by meeting Tiphaïne with a smile.
“You see, child, the boaster has had his beating.”
She knelt down by him, knowing how much that smile and those few words had cost him.
“It was your wounds from Mivoie.”
“Perhaps,” and he looked at his broken sword, “I am beaten for the moment. Wine and linen! My shoulder feels like a piece of red-hot iron. Child, listen,” and he spoke in a whisper, “we are in this fellow’s power.”
Croquart had turned and moved away a few paces to shout orders to his men. Tiphaïne was supporting Tinteniac’s head and holding the wine-flask to his lips. As she bent over him he continued his whisperings in her ear, taking a drink from the wine-flask between each few words.
She colored and looked at him unwillingly, yet reading the honorable purpose in his eyes.
“I know this whelp’s ways, child. You are Tiphaïne de Tinteniac. Remember. It will make for your safety.”
“But, sire—”
“Let Croquart think you are my wife.”
“I have no ring.”
“Take this.”
And the exchange was made while the Fleming’s back was turned, the circlet of gold slipping along the girl’s finger.
Croquart had turned on them, and Tinteniac’s discretion prompted him to show no temper to the Fleming. His natural serenity returned. He even smiled at Croquart as he knelt beside him.
“You have broken me, sir, and now you must help to mend me for madame, my wife—here. We had heard that you were at Pontivy.”
Croquart was busy with Tiphaïne uncovering Tinteniac’s wounded shoulder. Gilded bassinet and golden head were nearly touching. At the word “wife,” Tiphaïne felt the Fleming’s breath upon her cheek. She knew that he was looking at her, but she kept her eyes on Tinteniac’s face.
“I was at Pontivy, sire.”
“Grace de Dieu, you are everywhere. We thought the Josselin road safe to-day.”
Croquart grinned, but said nothing of his defeat.
“And my two esquires, Messire Croquart?” and Tinteniac tried not to wince as the wound smarted.
“I have sent two of my men, sire, to bury them.”
Tinteniac started, but restrained any show of feeling. He had caught the shocked pity in Tiphaïne’s eyes, and, though the poor lads were dead, he remembered for Tiphaïne’s sake the need for dissembling.
“Thanks, Messire Croquart,” he said, vowing many solemn things in his heart.
“The lads fought well, sire. It was a pity.”
“A pity, most certainly a pity. Poor Gilbert!—poor Gilles! We cannot have war, sir, without death. Madame—wife, you look troubled; leave us awhile. Messire Croquart will feel for you over these poor lads’ death.”
Tiphaïne understood him, and, rising, moved away with her face between her hands. It was no mere piece of acting, for there were tears upon her cheeks—tears of pity and of passionate impatience that all this brutal work should be done under God’s sun.
Croquart looked after her with a glint of the eyes. He noticed the fineness of her figure, despite her riding-cloak; the sweeping curves of bosom and of hips were not to be hid. He began binding up Tinteniac’s wound, thinking the while that the aristocrat had excellent taste.
“Come, my friend, let us be frank. How much do you want from me?”
Their eyes met. Croquart laughed.
“Ten thousand crowns.”
“What, sir?”
“For you, sire. Also ten thousand for madame.”
“Twenty thousand crowns!”
The Fleming’s eyes were full of cunning impudence.
“You are the Sieur de Tinteniac,” he said.
“True.”
“And courtesy would not permit you, sire, to value yourself more highly than madame—your wife.”
Tinteniac looked at his broken sword.
“Well, friend, you will have to wait.”
“Content, sire, content.”
“What road do you take us?”
“The road to Morlaix, sire. I shall join young Bamborough there.”
Inthe underwood that topped a high bank overhanging the road where it swept round the beech wood a man in black harness crouched behind the twisting roots and stems of a clump of hazels. The black shell of steel was almost indistinguishable in the shadows. Snakelike it had crawled through a bank of gorse and reached the hazels overhanging the road.
Bertrand, with his sword naked at his side, had lifted his head cautiously and looked down into the road through a loop left by the twisting roots. The first glance had shown him Tiphaïne seated on her palfrey under the trees, watching Tinteniac weakening before the Fleming’s sword. Bertrand was not a man easily astonished, but his heart gave a great leap in him as he saw the Lady of the Aspen Tower with the sunlight shining through the branches on her face. Bertrand’s thoughts were in a tangle for the moment. The Sieur de Tinteniac fighting with Croquart the Fleming, and the Vicomte de Bellière’s daughter waiting to be claimed as the better man’s prize! Bertrand felt dazed for the moment by the utter unexpectedness of the scene before him. The whole tone of the adventure had changed on the instant. Had a miracle been performed before him the man amid the grass and hazels, with bluebells nodding about his body, could not have been more struck than by this strange interweaving of the threads of fate.
When Tinteniac fell, Bertrand was on his knees, teeth set, sword ready, on the brink of a battle with the Fleming. The three men-at-arms watching the fight had not seen the black figure poised amid the hazel boughs. It hung there a moment as though hesitating, and then dropped back again into the grass and leaves.
Tiphaïne was facing Croquart, while Tinteniac grovelled on his elbow, and this new grouping of the characters had sent Bertrand back to cover. He lay like a fallen bough, almost invisible, his body sunk in the dead leaves and the grass tussocks, hearing Tiphaïne speak, yet unable to catch her words. Her face, clear before him in the sunlight, had that look that was peculiar to her when her courage was in arms. She was speaking for Tinteniac, and Bertrand watched her, noting the play of feeling on her face with the intentness of a man who watches the face of one he loves. It hurt him to see her speaking for Tinteniac, so sensitive is the strongest heart when a woman’s eyes have power to wound or heal. The old blind feeling of bitterness that had been bred in him at Motte Broon rushed up to tantalize him with the imagined meaning his instinct set upon the scene.
Croquart gave her the wine-flask and the linen, and she knelt beside Tinteniac, one arm about his shoulders, her face very close to his. Bertrand winced, drove one knee into the grass, and yet cursed himself for a credulous fool. Would any woman stand by and see a wounded man bleed to death, and would that woman be Tiphaïne of La Bellière?
Croquart had moved away, and was shouting orders to his men. Bertrand heard them, though his eyes never left Tinteniac, with his head upon Tiphaïne’s knee. They seemed to be speaking together in low tones, and watching the broad back the Fleming had turned to them for the moment. Bertrand saw their hands touch, and looks that were alive with a subtle significance pass between them. Bertrand would have given all he had to have heard the words they had spoken.
The little picture was broken at last, though it seemed to the man among the hazels that Tinteniac had had hours at his disposal. They were binding up the wounded shoulder, and there was blood, Tinteniac’s blood, on Tiphaïne’s hands. With some trick of the memory the sight of it brought back to Bertrand the vision of Arletta dying with red hands in that dark tower amid the beeches of Broceliande. It was as though God’s voice had called to him—a still, small voice amid the silence of the mysterious woods. The perfervid selfishness went out of him like the lust out of the man who remembers the womanhood of his mother.
Bertrand’s hands gripped the blade of his sword as he lay with it crosswise under his throat. He saw Tiphaïne rise, draw aside, her face hidden by her hands. Bertrand felt numb at the sight of it, yet very humble. If she wept for Tinteniac, then Tinteniac was of all men the most to be honored. Honored? And Bertrand’s face burned with the hot memories of many unclean years—years when he had bartered his manhood for harlots’ kisses.
He drew back slowly from under the hazels, and, crawling through the gorse and underwood, reached the place where he had left his horse. A dead tree lay there that had fallen in a winter gale, and Bertrand sat down on the trunk with his drawn sword across his knees. He was humbled, but the struggle was not over with him yet. His heart was still full of the bitterness of the man who covets what he imagines another man to possess.
Bertrand sat on his tree-trunk with the sword across his knees and stared at his horse, that was trying to crop the grass, though the bridle was hitched over the bough of a tree. The oak bough would not bend, nor would the grass spring up to the hungry beast’s muzzle. Bertrand, with a wry twist of the mouth, saw that he and his horse were the victims of a somewhat similar dilemma.
Jealousy is the great distorter of justice, and Bertrand had the devil at his elbow for fully ten minutes on the trunk of the dead tree. The imp shouted every imaginable grievance in his ear, exaggerating possibilities into facts and creating reality from conjecture. Had not he, Bertrand du Guesclin, sacrificed himself for Robin Raguenel’s sake, and accepted shame to save a coward? If Tiphaïne was so tender for Tinteniac’s sake, then, by God, let Tinteniac look to the guarding of his own petticoats!
But that great advocate whose irony slashes to shreds the special pleading of the meaner spirit, the sense of chivalry, that great chastener of manhood, took up the argument in Bertrand’s cause. All ethical struggles are fierce in powerful natures, fierce in their climax, but sure in their decision. Bertrand’s honesty was not to be cajoled. He sat in judgment on himself, the self-asking of a few pitiless questions baring that sincerity that makes true strength.
When he carried Robin’s arms at Mivoie, had he not hoped that some day Tiphaïne might know what he had done?
Had Tiphaïne ever given him the promise of any deeper thing than friendship?
Whose past was the cleaner, the Sieur de Tinteniac’s or his own?
Bertrand knotted his brows over these accusations, and confessed that the spirit of justice had him at its mercy.
He rose, stood irresolute a moment, and then moved towards his horse. The imp of jealousy made a last leap for his shoulders. Bertrand shook them, and was a free man, breathing in new inspiration for the days to come.
Now Croquart had ordered two men-at-arms to go and cover the bodies of Tinteniac’s esquires, who lay dead together in the middle of the forest road. Bertrand was no hot-headed fool. He knew enough of the Fleming and his men to realize that a mere free lance such as he seemed would be treated to no such courtesy as had been given to Tinteniac. He was worth no ransom. If worsted, the point of a spear or the edge of a sword would give him his quittance in the Loudeac woods.
Bertrand knew, also, that he would have no chance with Croquart and his three men, one against four, and that Croquart would not trouble to engage him singly as he had engaged Tinteniac. For one moment Bertrand thought of returning towards Josselin, in the hope of meeting some of Dubois’s men. But the plan did not please him. He had marked down Croquart as his own stag.
Unhitching his bridle from the bough of the tree, he took his spear, that rested against the trunk, and, making a détour through the woods, bore towards the place where the two esquires lay dead.
Croquart, meanwhile, was preparing to resume his march on Loudeac. He had dressed and bound Tinteniac’s wounds, and lifted that gentleman back to the saddle.
“I take your word, sire, as a knight—and a Breton.”
“Be easy, friend, I have not enough blood in me to give you trouble.”
Croquart turned to hold Tiphaïne’s stirrup. She had ceased her anger of weeping, and her face had the white sternness of one whose courage has cooled from the heat of passion. Croquart’s smile was as powerless as a feeble sun upon the winter of her face. She mounted, took the bridle, and looked into the distance to avoid meeting the Fleming’s eyes.
Croquart and Tête Bois got to horse. The two men who were covering the dead bodies with sods and leaves were to follow the Fleming as soon as their work was done. Croquart placed himself between Tiphaïne and Tinteniac. He had rearmed himself in all his heavy harness. No more courtesies were to be expected from him that day.
They had hardly gone a hundred yards when a cry came stealing through the silence of the woods. It held a moment, quivered, to end in a last up-leap like the last flash of a gutted candle. Croquart reined in and set his hand upon his sword. His face, ugly in repose, grew doubly sinister as he glanced back under the boughs of the trees.
A single man-at-arms came cantering over the grass, crouching in the saddle and looking back nervously over his shoulder. Croquart swore at him as he pulled up his horse.
“Hallo, cur!—where is Guymon?”
The man straightened in the saddle and pointed towards Josselin.
“A fellow ran at us out of the woods, struck down Guymon with his spear—”
“And you used the spurs.”
The man agreed, as though Croquart’s anger was preferable to the stranger’s spear.
“Well, what next?”
“The man turned back into the woods, captain.”