“Come, sweet sir, why should we quarrel? You were not at Mivoie; good; and why?”
Bertrand looked Bodegat straight in the face.
“That is my affair.”
“You will not answer?”
“No.”
“Then we can conclude the reason—some slight sickness, a seductive soul in a tavern on the road. But wait, you have been at Pontivy, eh, with the Fleming’s men?”
Bertrand felt the coils of Bodegat’s cunning, but he was far too stubborn to slip through them with a lie.
“True; I was at Pontivy. Does that make me Croquart’s man?”
Bodegat smiled and gave a shrug of the shoulders.
“Oh, we had our spies there, messire; we are not fools. But bear with me; another question: Why have you beaten out the eagle from your shield?”
Bertrand’s sturdy figure quivered under the unruffled insolence of Bodegat’s pleased cleverness.
“That also is my affair.”
“Of course; these gentlemen will understand. You choose to ride abroad unrecognized. And, doubtless, messire, you were at the fight before Josselin town?”
Bertrand bent his head.
“You did not fight for us.”
“I fought for neither side.”
Bodegat and the listeners laughed aloud.
“Messire du Guesclin, you are a prudent soldier. And yet you had heard that Beaumanoir had offered five thousand crowns for the Fleming’s head.”
“I had heard it.”
“Five thousand crowns, good money, for striking off a Fleming’s head, perhaps while he was asleep.”
This last taunt brought Bertrand’s patience down. He sprang at Bodegat, only to be dragged back and to find a couple of spear-points at his throat.
“Messire Carro de Bodegat”—and he grappled with his wrath and conquered it—“these words of yours shall not be writ in sand. Ask the Sieur de Tinteniac whether Croquart the Fleming was murdered in his sleep.”
Bodegat bowed.
“The Sieur de Tinteniac and the Vicomte de Bellière’s daughter—the Lady Tiphaïne—where are they?”
“Where Croquart’s body lies.”
“And they know that Bertrand du Guesclin killed him?”
“No, messire, they do not.”
Bodegat made a pitying gesture with his hands. There was a grim yet ironical exchange of confidences among the esquires and troopers. Carro de Bodegat had entangled Bertrand in what appeared to them a web of treachery, greed, and double-dealing. They showed no surprise when Dubois ordered Du Guesclin’s hands to be bound behind his back, that he should be set upon his horse, and his feet tied under the beast’s belly.
He suffered the shame of it without a murmur, ignoring the derision and looking steadily at Croquart’s head, that Dubois still carried.
“Forward, gentlemen!”
And, getting to horse, they pushed on for the homestead where Croquart and his prisoners had passed the night.
Bertrand,bound hand and foot, rode between Dubois and Carro de Bodegat, a figure of flint. His eyes seemed to see nothing but the monotonous banking of the clouds across the western sky. Dubois and Carro de Bodegat had never a word from him. They thought him savage and sulky, a rough fellow with a temper of the more sinister sort, who was furious at having been brought so suddenly to book.
Carro de Bodegat and Dubois knew nothing of the agony of loneliness that wounded Bertrand’s heart, nor did they imagine that they were dragging him to a humiliation that he dreaded more than death. Bertrand had a foreshadowing of the ignominies that would soon ensue. In thought he saw himself standing before Tiphaïne, a disgraced man, a traitor, a breaker of solemn promises. He felt death in his heart at the thought of meeting those eyes of hers. What a hypocrite he would appear, what a mean, dastardly fool, whose honor was a mere drab to be debauched shamelessly for the sake of gold! Bertrand du Guesclin, bribed by the English not to fight at Mivoie! Inferences and facts were against him on every side. Robin, poor coward, had confessed nothing; of that Bertrand felt assured.
And now Tiphaïne was Tinteniac’s wife. Had he not seen them whispering together, lying on one bed, passing before him as lover and beloved? The bitterness of his predicament gave jealousy a second opening into Bertrand’s heart. Why should he bear all this for Tiphaïne and for Robin Raguenel, her brother, and what was Bertrand du Guesclin to the Sieur de Tinteniac’s wife, that he should die dangling on a rope to save her and her kinsmen from the humiliation of the truth? Surely his passion for self-sacrifice had made him mad, and he was throwing life and honor away for the sake of an imaginary duty.
Yet of such stubborn stuff was Bertrand’s soul that the fight was fought and won in him before his black horse had carried him a furlong. Like some old pagan martyr, he would rather drink the poison than confess himself a fool and recant from a philosophy that the world might class as madness. He had chosen his part, and it should serve him to the bitter end. Every child in Brittany might be taught to curse him as a traitor, but confess himself beaten—that, before God, he would not do.
Bertrand could meet death, but to meet Tiphaïne—that was another matter. The infinite refinement of such a humiliation, the pitiful injustice of it, modified his pride in that respect alone. What need was there for Dubois and De Bodegat to make a mock of him before her face? If they had any pity, any touch of chivalry nearer their knightliness than the tinctures on their shields, they would spare him this ordeal and let him make his end in peace. At least he could ask them this last favor. They could but refuse it, and then he would know the worst.
“Messire Dubois,” and he opened his lips for the first time since they had bound him upon his horse, “you have called me a traitor. Is my treachery so great that I cannot speak to you as man to man?”
The Breton lord regarded him with the serenity of conscious virtue.
“Courtesy is part of our religion, Messire du Guesclin,” and his sufferance made Bertrand long to smite him across the mouth.
“I ask no great favor.”
“Let us hear it, messire.”
“Quick judging, a long rope, and no witnesses.”
Dubois elevated his eyebrows and returned Carro de Bodegat’s significant smile.
“You do not appear to expect an acquittal from us,” he said.
“I expect nothing, messire, and ask for nothing, save this one thing.”
“Well, and that?”
“That the Sieur de Tinteniac and madame his wife may neither hear my name nor see my face.”
Dubois looked curiously at Bertrand, as though considering what his motives were.
“You have a reason for this.”
“Be easy,” and Bertrand grimaced like a man in pain; “they have had no wrong from me. I tell you, sir, that it is a mere whim of the heart. The Lady Tiphaïne would not rejoice to see me as I am, and for myself I would rather shirk the meeting.”
Carro de Bodegat laughed maliciously.
“Messire du Guesclin, I feel for the lady.”
“Ascribe nothing to her, sir, but sorrow at seeing me condemned as a hypocrite.”
“True chivalry, messire; we can serve a petticoat when we cannot serve a country. What is your judgment, Brother Dubois?”
The elder man reflected before committing himself to an opinion.
“The thing seems reasonable, since it shows consideration for a lady. Then you ask this in all seriousness, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin?”
“Hang me as high as Haman, only grant this favor.”
Dubois smiled, like a man not sorry to avail himself of an advantage. Neither he nor De Bodegat had any love for Du Guesclin, and Tinteniac, more scrupulous, might seize the authority and spoil their retaliation.
“Well, sir, how would you contrive it?”
“Messire Dubois, here are plenty of trees.”
“Trees! But we have to try you first.”
“Try me!” and Bertrand gave a grim laugh; “please dispense with such a formality.”
“We are honorable men, messire.”
“I do not doubt it. Well, if you must drag me to this place you need not have me thrown like a bundle at Madame Tiphaïne’s feet.”
Dubois watched him narrowly.
“In the orchard, hidden by the trees, there is a little hovel that the farm-folk use for tools and wood. Throw me in there, and say nothing. I assure you that for this consideration I will speak well of you in heaven.”
Bertrand’s grim quaintness had its effect upon Dubois.
“Let it be as you wish,” he said; “the Sieur de Tinteniac and his wife need not be told that we have a prisoner.”
“Nor who that prisoner is. My heart’s thanks to you. One last word.”
“Well?”
“I am not a kneeling creature. I shall be ready to be hanged at your earliest chance.”
And Bertrand, having won his point, shut his mouth obdurately and said no more.
Before long they rode down into the valley and saw the apple-trees shining like spray blown from the green billowing hill-side. To Bertrand, who had ceased to look for good in life, those Breton apple-trees seemed to pile their blossoms as for a bridal about the place where Tiphaïne had slept. Great deeps of thought were uncovered in him as he remembered her as a child, taking his part against Dame Jeanne and young Olivier. The sinuous glitter of her hair seemed to have flashed through the strange darkness of his life like some magic river casting a spell through the heart of some mysterious land. He recalled his old hopes and desires, the ambitions that he had thrown aside, his pride of strength and pride of sinew, the ill-luck that had dogged him even to the last. Well, he had kept troth and played the man, even though Tiphaïne might never learn the truth and think of him as a worthless beast whom in her youth she had been foolish enough to pity.
Hardly two hours had passed since Croquart’s death when Geoffroi Dubois crossed the meadows and saw the dark thatch of the homestead sweeping above the orchard trees. True to his promise, he sent Carro de Bodegat forward with the main troop, while he loitered to lodge Bertrand in the hovel that he had chosen for his prison. The rough door was closed on Du Guesclin, and three men-at-arms left on guard to prevent an escape. Bertrand,sanssword and dagger, with roped wrists and a heavy heart, sat down on some fagots in a dark corner and set himself to face the last renunciation he would make in dying to complete a lie.
Up at the homestead Tiphaïne was leading her palfrey to drink at the pool when the thudding of hoofs sounded over the meadows. Carro de Bodegat and his men came into view. Tinteniac, who was in the goodman’s parlor, stripped to the waist and washing his wounds with water Tiphaïne had brought him in a great earthen pitcher, had heard the sound of armed men riding, and, going to the window, recognized De Bodegat by his pennon.
Covering himself with his surcoat, he waved to Tiphaïne, whom he could see standing beside the pool.
“Friends!” he shouted; “have no fear!”
Carro de Bodegat and his Bretons tossed their spears to her as they rounded the orchard at a trot. Two and two they streamed into the deserted yard, De Bodegat riding forward to where Tiphaïne stood under the green boughs of a willow.
“Madame,” and he bent his plume to her, “we had the good news on the road this morning.”
“Croquart is dead, messire.”
“Thank God for Brittany—we have seen his head.”
WhileDubois, Bodegat, and the rest poured into the orchard to gaze at Croquart’s headless body, Tiphaïne led back her palfrey to the house, where the horses of the dead Fleming and his men still waited in the hall to be fed and watered. The beasts turned their heads to look at her, their eyes seeming to ask what had befallen their masters in the night. Croquart’s own horse was strangely restless and uneasy, ears laid low, the whites of the eyes showing, and an inclination to kick very evident in his heels.
Leaving her palfrey stalled in the dirty hall, where the embers of the fire, harness, and baggage littered the floor, she mounted the stairs to the room in the gable, meeting Tinteniac at the open door. His wounded shoulder had given him a ludicrous but painful contest with his clothes, and he appealed to a woman’s hands for the righting of his wrongs. There was a characteristic distinction in the way the pale and imperturbable patrician stood to be brooched and buckled without squandering a fragment of his dignity. Head held high, the sunlight touching the silver in his hair, a sensitive smile softening his mouth, he felt a youth’s tremor at the nearness of her hands, and feared to look at her because she seemed so fair.
“The flies are buzzing about the dead dog,” and he pointed to the Bretons who were crowding and elbowing about Croquart’s body.
“How pitiful his boastings seem to me now!”
“Yes, mine was the last notch he cut upon his spear.”
Tinteniac seemed the grand seigneur again—tall, gracious, a man whose face had the quality of command. Tiphaïne felt that his manner had changed towards her, as though he were too honorable to prolong their supposed intimacy, however pleasant the playing of the part might seem. And yet she discovered more than mere gentleness in his eyes towards her, a posture of his manhood that betrayed homage and desire.
She fastened the brooch at his throat, and stood back from him, looking aside towards the window, where the iron men trampled the long grass under the orchard trees.
“Sire, I have much to thank you for.”
“The thanks should come from the man whom you have trusted.”
“Well, we will exchange our gratitude.”
“And I can swear to being flattered by the bargain.”
He bowed to her, and for the moment she felt herself a mere ignorant girl, uneasy and half abashed under the eyes of a courtier whose manners were too splendid. Tinteniac’s stateliness made her sincerity seem incomplete. It was difficult to repulse a man whose methods were without aggression.
“Sire, I had almost forgotten that I have your ring.”
“My ring?”
“Yes,” and she slipped it from her finger and let the circle of gold lie in her white palm.
Tinteniac looked at her, yet without a stare, and was slow in the stretching out of his hand.
“Can you not keep it?”
Their eyes met, but Tiphaïne’s were the first to fall.
“Sire, I cannot.”
“As a remembrancer?”
“No, for it might be unjust.”
A man of forty may be fired with all the inspired impulses of youth. We live in circumstances and are as old as the freshness of our sensibility to music. The fine candor of Tinteniac’s face warmed to the feelings that his heart had cherished.
“I will not trade upon the trust that you have given me. Yet—these few days—”
“Sire,” and he saw that she was troubled, “I have not the heart to hear this from you now.”
“Then—I may wait?”
“I remember that my father waits for me. For his sake I promise nothing for myself.”
She still held the ring out to him, looking bravely in his face, half hating the sincerity that made her hurt him for the sake of truth.
“Your pardon,” and he took the ring.
“Sire, do not misjudge me.”
“You are too honest, child, to be misjudged.”
His fine spirit of chivalry and self-restraint rescued them both from the discomfort of the moment. He slipped the ring upon his finger, and seemed ready to forget what he had asked.
“There are other things to be remembered,” and he looked thoughtfully at the orchard trees. “What are your wishes as to the secret you have given me to share?”
His self-repression pleased her, with its immediate turning to interests that were hers alone.
“You seem to think for me. I feel my lips close when I see these men.”
“Such a truth is not easy in the telling.”
“It is not that I am afraid. But there are memories—and thoughts.”
“That the best of us hold sacred. Do I not understand? Let the truth wait till you meet Beaumanoir at Josselin.”
Her eyes thanked him, for she was loath to expose her pride to these grim men who were sating their blood-lust with staring at a carcass.
“You do not think me a coward?”
“No, God forbid! Who are Dubois and Carro de Bodegat that you should show your heart to them?”
To Tinteniac her reluctance was natural enough, for when a man loves, his sympathies are quickened till he can behold beauty in the simplest workings of the soul. He left Tiphaïne in the little solar, and went to greet Dubois and his brother Bretons, who were crowding from the orchard into the farm-house. So hot was the blood-hate in them that they had stripped Croquart’s body of its armor, hacked off his feet and hands, and driven a stake through the naked torso. The dead Fleming’s fingers were being treasured like ingots of gold, and some of the rougher spirits of the troop called for the slaughtering of Croquart’s horse.
“Down, you mad dogs!” and Dubois saved the animal from their swords, and had his arm badly bitten as he held the beast’s bridle.
The men laughed at their leader’s savage face, and at the way he abruptly reconsidered his opinion.
“The beast has the master’s devil in him,” and he suffered the rough troopers to have their way.
Tinteniac was seized on when he came down into the hall. The men kissed him like great children, for he had been the idol of the Breton soldiery since the combat at the Oak of Mivoie. He broke free from them at last and joined Dubois, who was sitting snarling on a saddle while one of his men rubbed ointment into the horse bite on his arm.
“The result of mistaken mercy, sire,” and he grimaced with the smart of it. “Steady, you fool, steady! you are not scrubbing the hall floor.”
Carro de Bodegat joined them, smiling ironically at Dubois’s oaths and distortions of the face.
“Courage, brother, courage; the son of a mare has as much gratitude as the son of a woman. Is it true, sire,” and he turned to Tinteniac, “that you do not know the name of the bully who pulled down the Fleming here in the orchard?”
Tinteniac confessed that he was as ignorant as the rest, nor did the two knights enlighten him, since the spirit of jealousy strengthened the promise they had made.
To Tinteniac the news of the rout at Josselin explained Croquart’s inordinate hurry to put twenty leagues between him and Pontivy. Dubois and De Bodegat were ready with many questions, and he in turn had much to hear from them. On neither side was Bertrand’s name mentioned; Tiphaïne’s wishes were tending towards his doom.
In a few minutes they had made their plans, Dubois still swearing at the teeth-marks in his arm. Tinteniac, who felt his wounds, desired them to let him rest for a day, and neither Dubois nor Carro de Bodegat demurred at the suggestion. The delay would enable them, in the name of Justice, to vent their ill-humor upon the traitor who had cheated them of Croquart’s head. Dubois had left the bloody trophy hidden in the hovel where Bertrand sat and brooded on the past. The three guards had been ordered to let no one pass, and the whole troop warned against divulging Bertrand’s name.
Tinteniac, knowing nothing of the prisoner in the hovel, returned to the solar to rest on his bed of straw.
It was past noon, and Tinteniac lay asleep, when Tiphaïne, weary of the four walls of the room, went out alone into the orchard. Geoffroi Dubois and Carro de Bodegat were sitting as judges over a wrestling-match that the Breton soldiery had started in the yard. She slipped out almost unnoticed, catching a glimpse of two sturdy troopers hugging each other in the middle of the ring. The white-topped trees and the deep aloneness of the rich green grass were very pleasant to her, for with Croquart’s death and the return of freedom she had a great hunger for her home and for the face of her father, whom she had left in sorrow and unrest. The human consciousness, like the sky, is rarely untraversed by a cloud, the azure days serving only to part one gray noon from another. And to such a heart as Tiphaïne’s solitude called from the deeps of nature where the warm sap spread into the quiet faces of the flowers.
The Breton soldiers were shouting and exchanging wagers in the yard, their loud voices bringing discords where she sought for silence; nor was the orchard bereft of horror, seeing that Croquart’s body, naked and mutilated, lay near the house, with a stake trust through it. Tiphaïne could see the glint of the golden meadows sweeping towards the arches of the trees. It would be good, she thought, to wander away into the fields, to let her gown sweep the waving grass, to watch the larks soar, and to hear them sing.
The desire led her towards the hovel where Bertrand waited for the end, the three guards gossiping together and leaning on their spears. A mere passing curiosity stirred in her like a thought suggested to a wayfarer by some grotesque tree beside the road. She had no vision of Bertrand sitting upon the pile of faggots, his head bowed over his roped hands.
The three men saluted her, and she turned aside to ask why Messire Geoffroi Dubois took such trouble to guard a mere stack of sticks.
“A prisoner, madame,” said the tallest of the three.
“A prisoner?”
“A common thief we picked up on the road from Loudeac. Messire Dubois will give him the rope anon.”
Tiphaïne passed on, and yet the soldier’s curt and casual words had robbed the meadows of half their restfulness. She found herself repeating those same words: “A common thief. Messire Dubois will give him the rope anon.” It was as though her sorrow had opened the heart of pity to all the world. Death and the pathos of it seemed everywhere—in the woods and fields, in the monk’s cell, and in the castles of the great. Tiphaïne’s heart was full of that deep tenderness that dowers the meanest life with significance and the power of awaking pity. She seemed to hear the whimpering of this poor wretch, caged like an animal awaiting the butcher’s knife. What though he was “a common thief,” a rogue, an outcast, her soul had found something on which to pour the divine dew that God gives to those who suffer. The purpose came to her as she wandered slowly over the fields. One man’s life should be spared that day; she would beg it of Dubois before the sword could spill more blood.
As for Bertrand, he had heard Tiphaïne’s voice, and sat shaking as with an ague, his eyes staring vacantly at the wattled wall of the hovel. It seemed to him of a sudden that he was less strong than he had believed, for the soul in him cried out for life and the joy of being. In a day he would have followed Croquart to the awe of the unknown, the woman for whom he had suffered knowing nothing of his end. The loneliness and the bitter smart of it made him for the moment like a forgotten child. Great tears were wet upon his cheeks, and for once no angry hand dashed them impatiently away.
Ina green corner of the orchard, shaded towards the west by a bank of brushwood, Bertrand stood for his last trial before those Bretons who had hunted Croquart from the walls of Josselin. Behind him the brown gold of the meadows rippled like water at sunset, to touch the gnarled trunks of the flowering apple-trees. A pile of faggots had been thrown down to give Messires Geoffroi Dubois and Carro de Bodegat a seat; their esquires were grouped behind them, bearing their masters’ shields and spears.
Bertrand watched the faces of these two knights; Dubois, brawny, ponderous, black faced and round shouldered as a bear, less to be feared than his sleek and mercurial brother in arms. Carro de Bodegat’s face, narrow and aggressive, with its sharp brown beard and rapid eyes, reminded Du Guesclin of the face of some velvet-capped merchant who had learned to deal with all the greedy littleness of the great. Bertrand hated the man for his high-nostrilled unction, for his insinuating smoothness that was most treacherous when most suave. He knew Carro de Bodegat’s nature too well to hope much from him in the way of magnanimity. He was a creature of courtly astuteness and polished persiflage, who would use a dagger where an honest man would have used a sword.
Carro de Bodegat assumed the authority, Dubois lolling on the faggots, and nursing the arm that Croquart’s horse had bitten.
“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin. Stand aside, gentlemen, and let our friend have room.”
To Bertrand the circle of steel-clad figures seemed like as many pillars of gray granite set up by the folk of old upon the wind-swept Breton moors. The faces were as so many masks, curious and distrustful, crowding upon him like the threatening faces of a dream. He felt as though they kept the air from him, and confused his thoughts with the intentness of their many eyes.
From this mist of faces the countenance of Carro de Bodegat disentangled itself, keen and thin—an axe shining among so many billets of wood. It was with De Bodegat that the ordeal lay, and Bertrand braced himself for the touch of the glowing metal.
“Well, messire, what are we to say of the troth-breaking at Mivoie?”
“Why ask that question? It has been asked and answered.”
The half smile in the man’s eyes, the aggressive tilt of his peaked chin, made Bertrand hate him as he had never hated living thing before. The conviction weighed on him that he was like a sullen boy doomed to be outwitted by this shrewd and cold-brained man.
“Then Messire Bertrand du Guesclin will not accuse another gentleman of treachery?”
“I accuse no one, messire.”
“Nine-and-twenty of us fought at Mivoie, and Guillaume de Montauban took the vacant place.”
“You are well-informed, sir; you say I was not there. Why ask me all these questions?”
“Because,” and De Bodegat hugged his knee, “you cannot answer me, messire, and you show these gentlemen how to escape a lie.”
Bertrand angrily tightened one wrist against the other, so that the straining thongs twisted and bruised the sinews.
“Then, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, we can color our own conclusions?”
“Well?”
“That you took bribes from Bamborough and the English not to fight at Mivoie.”
Bertrand looked at the apple-boughs, and answered:
“That is a lie.”
The merest child could have seen that he was suffering, yet for De Bodegat there was an ungenerous gratification of the ego in prolonging the humiliation of a man who once worsted him in a duel.
“And yet, sir, you were with Croquart at Pontivy?”
“I have already answered that.”
“And you had battered the bearings from your shield.”
“Well, you have seen it.”
“So we may say that you loved the Fleming because of the blood-money that had been offered for his head.”
A few short, sharp laughs, like the yapping of dogs, betrayed the temper of those to whom Carro de Bodegat appealed. Bertrand looked round him with a defiant lifting of the head. His eyes gleamed out at these countrymen of his who seemed so ready to condemn and to disgrace.
“Messires, I tell no lies, neither do I ask for mercy. If I am a traitor—and God himself cannot prove that true—give me my quittance and make an end.”
Carro de Bodegat turned to Dubois, and made some pretence of deferring to his brother’s judgment, feeling perfectly assured that justice would meet with no obstruction in that quarter. It was sufficient for Messire Geoffroi Dubois that his authority had been consulted. A straightforward and rather savage soldier, he had no manner of doubt as to Bertrand’s guilt, and elected to have him hanged on the nearest tree.
Carro de Bodegat called one of his esquires forward.
“Gretry, where is this gentleman’s sword?”
A man-at-arms had taken charge of it, and delivered the sword to Gretry, who brought it to his master. Carro de Bodegat unsheathed the weapon, and held it before him, balanced by the blade across his palm.
“Here, gentlemen, you see the sword of a traitor—a sword that was to be bought and sold, and used for the winning of blood-money in these wars. Such swords must be broken with those who handle them. Come, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, have you anything to say?”
“Nothing, messire.”
His eyes were fixed wistfully upon the sword that had served him for many years—one of the few friends he had ever owned. It had memories for him, had that same sword, and now—like its master—it was to be broken for a lie.
“Gretry!” and De Bodegat called the esquire forward.
“Yes, sire.”
“Take this traitor’s sword and break it across your knee.”
Gretry received it from Carro de Bodegat’s hands, set one foot upon the point, and bent the blade up over his knee. But being a mere youngster and of fragile build, the steel proved too tough for such strength as he possessed.
Carro de Bodegat started from the pile of fagots, and, taking the sword from Gretry, looked insolently into Bertrand’s face.
“It is a pity that such a sword should have been wasted, sir,” he said.
“God knows that it was not wasted, Messire Carro de Bodegat.”
“And God knows that Bertrand du Guesclin has told the truth!”
There was a sharp movement among the crowded figures, a sudden turning of all faces towards the shadows cast by the apple-trees. De Bodegat, with Bertrand’s sword held crosswise across his thigh, swung round on his heel like a man who has been called a liar by some stranger in a crowd.
The circle of armed men broke and parted before his eyes, giving a glimpse of the dark trunks of the apple-trees and the green depths of the orchard grass.
Bertrand, looking like a man in Hades who beholds the shining figure of the risen Christ, saw Tiphaïne standing under the trees, where the sun poured through the white boughs, making her hair glow like a halo of gold.
Forthe moment the figure in the black armor had ceased to be the centre about which the human interest of the scene revolved. All heads were turned towards that more imperious shape sweeping in its cloak of gray from the quiet shadows of the orchard trees.
Queenliness in a woman is the counterpart of courage in a man, and with Tiphaïne the very carriage of her head conveyed more magnetism than the choicest smiles of a woman of meaner presence and address. She walked as though these gentlemen of the sword would fall back before her, and fall back they did, leaving her a pathway through the trampled grass. Dubois, standing beside the pile of fagots, had his expectancy ignored as though his knightliness had no standing in the lady’s eyes. Tall as many of the men who watched her, fearless, and forgetful of all feebler issues, she swept on like one who walks towards God’s altar amid the blurred figures of an unseen crowd.
The fifty odd bassinets turned with the unanimity of so many weather-cocks veering with the wind. Their incontinent curiosity trailed at her heels as though she were St. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins following in her wake. Carro de Bodegat alone had the presence to obstruct the path she chose to tread, and to attempt a parley with this imperious perfection of a queen.
“Madame—”
She looked straight into De Bodegat’s sallow face like a red dawn refusing to be smothered by a cloud.
“Room, messire.”
And Bertrand, into whose heart the blood of life seemed bubbling up, saw Carro de Bodegat step back, hunch up his bony shoulders, and venture a side-thrust as she passed.
“I would ask madame her authority—”
“Have patience, messire, and I promise you you shall hear it,” and she left him grimacing in perplexity at Dubois.
To Bertrand the apple-boughs seemed more white against the blue, the grass more green, the gold of the meadows deeper than golden wine. She came near to him, halted, and looked into his face so steadily, and with such an outflashing of her woman’s soul, that he felt like one dazed by some bright light.
“Messires, it has been spread abroad that Bertrand du Guesclin did not fight at Mivoie.”
She spoke as though flinging a challenge at their feet, her voice slow but very quiet. The eyes of the whole company were fixed upon her face, for the strange stateliness of her manner seemed to promise some great confession.
Dubois and his brother in arms bowed to her like men who were half in doubt as to what attitude to assume.
“Madame, we were with the Sire de Beaumanoir at Mivoie—”
“And you did not see the Du Guesclin eagle?”
They admitted the enigma, and were the more puzzled by the expression of consent upon her face.
“Perhaps, messires, you remember my brother’s arms—a silver fesse on a field of blue, the shield of Sir Robin Raguenel, of La Bellière, near Dinan?”
“Assuredly.” And they waited to hear more.
“And yet, messires, my brother was not at Mivoie. His heart had failed him, and he had broken troth. You would have found him hiding in the woods near Loudeac.”
Her words won a murmur of astonishment from the listening men, her very calmness carrying conviction to the hearts of not a few.
“Impossible!”
Carro de Bodegat’s face was honestly impertinent in its unbelief.
“How impossible, messire? Should I confess this shame without a cause?”
“Madame, we saw your brother’s shield, and heard him answer to his name.”
“Then the deceit was the braver in its thoroughness. Know, gentlemen, and Bretons—all, that it was Bertrand du Guesclin who fought in my brother’s stead!”
Her words fell like stones into a pool, making the waters swing into merging circles that spread and melted into a vague suggestion of unrest.
“Messires,” and she looked round at the listening faces with a brave lifting of the head, “I loved my brother, and I was afraid, for he was young and not stiffened into manhood when the news came of the gathering at Mivoie. It was then that Bertrand lodged at La Bellière with us a night, and since he was my friend I gave my brother to him with these words: ‘Look to the lad, because I love him, and because he is our father’s only son.’ Little did I think that Bertrand du Guesclin would set so great a price upon my words, and bear the shame to save a coward.”
She ceased, and looked round her at the faces of those who listened. Only on Carro de Bodegat’s face did she find the unhallowed glimmer of a prurient sneer.
“If this is the truth—”
It was Dubois, the Breton bear, who came forward several paces from where he stood.
“It is the truth. Ask the Sire de Tinteniac, ask Robin Raguenel, for you will find him among the monks of the abbey of Lehon. Shame drove my brother there when he could no longer bear the burden of a lie.”
Not a man doubted her in the sincerity of his heart. Carro de Bodegat alone remained grudging and ungenerous to the end.
“Madame, we have yet to hear the meaning of this man’s hiding at Pontivy.”
“This man—indeed!” and she let her scorn flash out at him. “Come, Messire Carro de Bodegat, I will ask you a question in return. Who was it killed Croquart and his three men single-handed when you were hunting them with fifty Bretons at your back?”
The laugh was against De Bodegat. The rest had drawn aside from him. He stood alone, and would not suffer his jealousy to be convinced.
“Madame, you have not answered me.”
“I have no wish to answer you, messire. Bertrand, who is no traitor, will answer for himself.”
The Bretons cheered her. De Bodegat, remembering Croquart’s mangled neck, looked sullenly at Bertrand and said nothing.
The pent-up ardor of the men burst out at last. All hands were towards Bertrand, and they crowded about him, strenuous to make amends. It was Dubois who was the first to do a brave man’s penance for a savage wrong. And yet another was before him in the act, for Tinteniac, long a listener, had pushed through the crowd and rushed on Du Guesclin with a great hearted-shout of joy.
“Bertrand, Brother Bertrand, the prize at Mivoie should have been yours—not mine.”
“Sire,” and the strong man’s head was bowed at last so that it rested on Tinteniac’s shoulder—“sire, I am a great fool, but—God help me—I shall play the woman.”
Theystood alone together on the edge of the orchard, nothing but deep grassland before them and the haze of heat that covered the woods. The men who had followed the green gyron from Josselin had slipped away by twos and threes—Tinteniac, with his hand on Dubois’s shoulder; Carro de Bodegat, in sneering solitude and ready to snap at his best friend.
The bees were working in the apple-boughs, and the birds sang everywhere. The green lap of the world was filled with the precious stones from the treasure-chest of spring. Tiphaïne was looking before her with a faint smile playing about her mouth, the sword that Carro de Bodegat had surrendered to her held like a crucifix in her hands.
“Bertrand.”
Now that they were alone together he felt half afraid of her, and shy of the great gulf that her imagined marriage had set between them. Tiphaïne, turning to him, wondered why his eyes looked sad. Her gratitude was more deep than gratitude towards him. Bertrand might have suspected it had he not been so resigned to believing her a wife.
“Do you remember the day when you plucked the white May-bough for me before the tournament at Rennes?”
Bertrand remembered it, and by his face the memory brought him more bitterness than joy.
“You were a child—then.”
“A child, yes. I can see Robin now cantering his pony over the meadows. What a blessed boon it is that we mortals cannot foresee the future! The shame of this thing has broken my father’s heart.”
She began to speak of the past, that past that made the present seem more unlivable and real. She was grateful to him, Bertrand knew. But what was mere gratitude?—a cup of wine to a starving man.
“Tiphaïne,” and the low pitch of his voice startled her, “I am thinking of that poor child’s grave among the beech-trees of Broceliande.”
“Arletta?”
“Yes. You remember the words you gave me then?”
She looked at him steadily, with a transient quivering of her upper lip.
“I remember those words. And—I am thinking they may be forgotten.”
“They can never be forgotten.”
“No?”
“For they have made me something of which I am not ashamed.”
His deep sadness puzzled her, for his eyes were like the eyes of a man who strives to be patient when suffering inward pain. The tragedy of the Aspen Tower had left its shadow on him, and yet it could not explain to her the overmastering melancholy that seemed to humble his whole heart.
“I did my best to save the lad,” he said.
“Can I doubt that? No, no, you kept your promises almost too well. If they had hanged you for a traitor I should not have had the heart to look the world in the face again.”
“What would it have mattered?” and she saw that his bitterness was not assumed.
“Mattered? To lose the bravest man in Brittany, at the end of a rope!”
“Tiphaïne!”
“Did I not dream as a child that Bertrand du Guesclin would do great things. And now this Bertrand du Guesclin is proving the wisdom of my dreams.”
He looked at her so sadly, but with such an air of patient self-distrust, that it seemed that her praise was like wealth to a man dying of some inexorable disease.
“I am glad that I kept my promise,” he began, “and that you can think well of a man who but a year ago was not worthy to touch your hands.”
“But now?”
“Now—also”—and he spoke with a sense of effort—“I am glad—that you have chosen for yourself a man who in these rough times can give you honor and strength—things precious to a woman.”
He made a brave uttering of these words, trying not to betray to her anything of the thoughts that were in his heart. There was a questioning wonder in Tiphaïne’s eyes. Only at that moment did she remember the part that the Sieur de Tinteniac had played.
“Bertrand!”
He looked at her sharply, for her voice had startled him.
“I had forgotten that you had followed us from Josselin. You often watched us with Croquart—was that not so?”
“Yes, I was always on the watch.”
“And perhaps you were near enough to hear some chance words.”
He flushed like an eavesdropper discovered in a seeming meanness.
“I was near you—” he began, “because—”
She broke in on him as though she had read his thoughts. “You believed that I was the Sieur de Tinteniac’s wife?”
“I believed it.”
“You believed that?”
“What else could I believe?”
“It was a mere pretence. Tinteniac knew too well what manner of man Croquart was.”
She told him the whole truth, and Bertrand watched her even as he had watched when she had swept past Carro de Bodegat to set him free. The bonds then had been bonds upon the flesh. Now she was breaking the spiritual fetters that had been riveted so fast about his soul.
“Tiphaïne, it is enough.”
The simplicity of those few words showed her how deep a loyalty had suffered here in silence. Woman that she was, she realized the completeness of his self-abnegation, and honored him the more because he had not grudged his faith to her when he had no hope of a reward.
“Bertrand, come near to me. Do you believe that I have told you the whole truth?”
He looked at her, silent yet very happy.
“I believe whatever you may say to me.”
“Blindly?”
“No—not blindly.”
“And why—not blindly?”
“Because”—and his strong face warmed to her—“because I can swear you are what you seem to be. Because I know what I myself have been. Because I have learned what honor is, and to know the face that cannot give a lie.”
“Then I am the same Tiphaïne who carried the white May-bough into Rennes?”
“Need you ask that?”
His faith was the more precious to her now that she knew what such a faith was worth. She turned aside, still holding the sword, and looked out over the meadows like one who wonders at the mystery of a moonlit sea. Some measure of awe had fallen on her in the presence of this silent and patient man who had learned to suffer—even to the death.
“Bertrand,” she said, at last, “I have a great longing in me for La Bellière and for my home.”
He bowed his head, watched her, and waited.
“The Sieur de Tinteniac and these men will carry the news to Beaumanoir at Josselin. Is it your wish that I should go to Josselin with them?”
“My wish?”
“Yes. For it is your right to ask.”
He drew a deep breath and gave her all his homage.
“If I might take you to La Bellière—”
“Bertrand!”
“You can trust me?”
“I trust you utterly,” she said.
AtLa Bellière an old man walked in the garden of the château, leaning on a servant’s arm and taking short turns to and fro on the stretch of grass bordering the fish-pond, where the sedges rustled and the yellow flags were raising their yellow banners above each clump of spears. The bloom was falling from the fruit trees, and lay turning brown upon the grass. In the wilder corners of the orchard the weeds and wild flowers stood knee-deep, the sunlight shimmering into the waste of green, and making each wild flower seem like a living gem, red, white, and azure, purple and gold.
A dog wandered lazily at the old man’s heels, snapping now and again at an over-zealous fly or watching the blackbirds and mistlethrushes that were foraging for nestfuls of querulous children. Swallows skimmed the surface of the fish-pond, twittering, and touching the still water with their wings between the great green leaves of the water-lilies.
It was Stephen Raguenel, who went slowly to and fro, leaning on the servant’s arm, his steps weak and hesitating, an expression of profound and patient melancholy upon his face. He stooped so much that he seemed to have lost three inches of his stature in a week. His eyes had lost their pointedness and their sparkle; they were fixed and vacant, the eyes of a man who is living largely in the past. From time to time the Vicomte would lift his head and look round him with the half-wistful wonder of a child. The second simplicity of life seemed to be taking possession of him, and the pride of the great seigneur had mellowed into the quiet gentleness of the old man.
The servant, whose head was but a shade darker than his master’s, kept step with him, and did not speak except when spoken to. Nor was his respect a thing of the surface only. He had felt much that the Vicomte himself had felt, and the shadow of humiliation fell also across his face.
“Girard, good fellow, what day of the week is it?”
“The third, sire.”
“Ah, ah, and the swallows are here. It is hardly a year ago since we rode to join Madame the Countess in the south.”
“Yes, sire, that is so.” And the servant, with the discretion of a good listener, contented himself with following where his master led.
“How do the apricots look on the south wall, Girard—eh?”
“They have been full of bloom, sire.”
“Madame Tiphaïne is fond of the fruit. Let me see, Girard—how many leagues is it to Josselin from here?”
Girard pretended to consider, though he was asked the same question twenty times a day.
“Some seventeen leagues, I should say, sire, by Montcontour and Loudeac.”
“And it was Thursday?”
“A Thursday, sire, when madame set out.”
The Vicomte had halted and appeared to be counting the ripples that a swallow’s wings had raised on the quiet waters of the pool.
“Then I shall judge that they reached Josselin on the Sabbath, Girard—eh?”
“I should judge so, sire.”
“And to-day is Tuesday.”
“To-day is Tuesday.”
“Then on the morrow or the next day we should have good news?”
“To-morrow or the next day, sire, we should have good news.”
Stephen Raguenel turned away from the fish-pond with a quiet sigh.
“That is well, that is well. I think I will rest, Girard, on the seat under the Pucelle de Saintongue. Thanks, my good fellow. There is no news to-day from the abbey of Lehon?”
“No news, sire,” and Girard passed a nervous hand across his mouth.
“Abbot Stephen has a good name in Dinan, Girard—eh?”
“A very good name, sire. The country people call him their ‘little father.’ ”
“Their ‘little father’?” and the Vicomte folded his arms. “He will be a spiritual father to my son, my good Girard. Good luck to the lad. He was the only son I had.”
It so happened that while Stephen Raguenel dozed in the sun on the bench under the pear-tree, Stephen, Abbot of Lehon, dealt with two shamefaced mortals who had begged an audience of him that very morning. They were none other than the two La Bellière men-servants who had shown such whole-hearted consideration for Croquart in refusing to hinder him in the capturing of the Sieur de Tinteniac and their lady. Honestly ashamed of the part they had played in the adventure, they had ridden back from Loudeac, only to find that they had not the courage to be the bearers of such news to their lord and master the Vicomte of La Bellière.
Being sensible fellows, they had conceived the plan of shifting the responsibility upon the fatherly shoulders of the Abbot of Lehon.
The Abbot did not thank them in the sincerity of his heart, but, being a conscientious priest, bemoaned the disaster and accepted the responsibility.
He ordered the two men to be locked up safely in two vacant cells.
The Vicomte had lost one child to the Church, and Abbot Stephen concluded that it would be courting a calamity to confess to him that his other child had been stolen by the “Flemish Devil.” Madame Tiphaïne and the Sieur de Tinteniac might be rescued by the Bretons under Messire Geoffroi Dubois, and the Abbot deemed it wise to temporize, in the hope of receiving better news.
Unfortunately the good man’s discretion was nullified by the tongue of an irresponsible woman, and that woman Lisette, Tiphaïne’s bower wench whom the two men had left at Loudeac. A meddlesome but warm-hearted creature, she had made her way to Dinan by begging a place on the back of a pack-horse belonging to a merchant who was returning to that town after disposing of his goods at Loudeac. From Dinan she trudged to La Bellière, carrying her news like a piece of hot pudding on her tongue. To such a woman it was easier to chatter than to think, and after such a journey it was imperative that she should create something of a sensation. She created it by falling in a faint at the Vicomte’s feet as the old man crossed the court-yard from the garden, leaning on Girard’s arm.
The woman was a fool, and Girard, shrewd in his generation, suspecting that she was ready to shriek the news of some calamity into his master’s ears, promptly attempted to smother her indiscretion by whipping her gown up over her face.
“Ah, the little fox! Pierre, Gilbert, carry the baggage into the kitchen and give her a cup of wine.”
He was bending over Lisette and stuffing her gown into her mouth to prolong her fainting fit. Several men ran forward, pounced on her, and prepared to bundle her unceremoniously out of the Vicomte’s sight.
“Who is it, Girard?”
“No one, sire—only a silly chit who has walked too fast in the sun,” and his knuckles showed no consideration for the softness of Lisette’s lips.
The men were lifting her from the flag-stones when she recovered her senses with true hysterical inopportuneness and began to claw at the dress Girard had turned up over her head. The old man saw a scream gathering in the bower woman’s bosom, and did his best to throttle it in her throat.
“Fool! idiot! hold your tongue—”
Lisette wriggled her hands free and clawed at Girard’s face.
“Sire, sire—”
“Devil take the cat!”
The men showed her no great courtesy, but the gown fell away from her face in the scuffle.
“Let me be, fools!”
“Hold your tongue, you she-dog!”
“Sire, sire, they are hiding the truth from you. It is Lisette, madame’s woman.”
The Vicomte’s shadow fell across the flag-stones close to her.
“Lisette!”
He had recognized the girl. Girard stood back and surrendered to the hysterical folly of a woman.
“Let her be, men. Come, what has happened?”
The dishevelled figure fell on its knees at the Vicomte’s feet.
“Sire, sire, a great misfortune.”
“Ah!”
“Madame has been taken by Croquart the Fleming. It was on the road to Josselin.” And she gabbled all she knew, and straightway began to weep.
Stephen Raguenel looked down at her mutely, very gently, yet with a peculiar quivering of the lips. There was nothing foolish in Lisette’s grief to him. The truth was too poignant to suffer him to feel the thoughtless egotism of the woman’s tears.
“Girard.”
The old man was at his side, looking questioningly into his master’s face.
“Girard, help me to my room. I had rather have heard that she was dead.”