Chapter XIII: Book III: “the Oak of Mivoie” (7)

The windows of the gallery that led from Tiphaïne’s room towards the chapel and the great solar looked out westward over the main court. The sun beat full upon these windows, and Tiphaïne, as she passed, had a blurred vision of Jeanne du Guesclin’s men, in their red jupons slashed with green, crowding round some of the La Bellière servants. They appeared to be arguing and chaffering over some piece of news. In fact, Madame Jeanne’s men were in the process of being enlightened as to that truth of which their mistress was most unmotherly in her ignorance. Tiphaïne loitered a moment at one of the windows. She had an instinctive antipathy for the haughty-mouthed lady of Motte Broon. The two strong natures were in contrast, and Tiphaïne was in no mood for uncovering her heart for the edification of this woman, whom she had distrusted ever since the days at Rennes.

To Girard, Tiphaïne had given orders that the Vicomte was not to be disturbed, for she had taken the cares of the household on her own shoulders; nor was her father in a fit state to be afflicted with the irresponsible sympathy of inquisitive friends. The honor of the château was with Tiphaïne, and it was this same honor that brought Girard to the door of the state solar ten minutes after his mistress had entered. Girard’s fist was about to knock, when the pitch of the voices from within suggested suddenly that any intrusion would be indiscreet.

Girard stood there stroking his chin and knowing not for the moment whether to enter or to retire. Tiphaïne was speaking, not loudly, but with that intensity of self-restraint that made each word ring like the clear stroke of a bell. Girard, who had known her since a child, and had grown familiar with every modulation of her voice, could see her, even though the door was shut. She would be standing at her full height, her head thrown back a little, her eyes looking straight at the face of the woman to whom she spoke.

Soon a harsher, sharper voice broke in at intervals, questioning, criticising, snapping out short sentences with too evident a twinge of temper. Madame Jeanne had lost her haughty poise, and Girard, smiling a shrewd smile, thanked Heaven that he did not wear the Du Guesclin livery. From time to time a thinner and less aggressive voice would interpose, drawling out a few half-apologetic syllables—Messire Olivier trying to play the part of the wise and conciliating man of the world.

Girard was in the act of turning to retreat when he heard footsteps sweeping towards the door.

“Madame,” said Jeanne du Guesclin’s voice, harsh and metallic with inexpressible impatience, “you need not twit me with having blundered. What I heard I heard, and we credulous mortals are very human. Olivier, your arm.”

The door swung back, and Girard, caught before he could scramble round the corner, flattened himself against the wall. He had a glimpse of Jeanne du Guesclin’s face shining like a red sun through a thunder cloud, her lower lip pinched by her strong, white teeth. She came sweeping out on Olivier’s arm—Olivier, who looked like a wet chicken trying to appear worthy of an incensed and fluffed-up hen.

Jeanne du Guesclin saw Girard flattened like a pilaster against the wall, and recognized him as the man in office who had ordered the trumpets to blow a fanfan in her honor.

“Fellow, my horses!”

Girard contrived to bend at the hips.

“Order my men to be ready to return to Dinan in ten minutes.”

“It shall be done, madame.”

And Girard disappeared like a flitting shadow down the stairs.

Fate, however, reserved a more scathing ordeal for the chastening of Jeanne du Guesclin’s pride. Probably she never realized in life how insolent the truth could be till that moment when she came out from the doorway of the hall, and, standing at the top of a flight of steps, looked down upon the crowd of servants in the castle court.

The crowd was divided into two parties, distinguishable in the bulk by the contrasting colors of their liveries. Before the great gate the red and green of the Du Guesclins had huddled itself into a sullen and silent knot, while the blue and silver of La Bellière fluttered more cheerily across the court. But the dramatic energy of the scene seemed centred in two shabby, swaggering figures footing it to and fro under the noses of Jeanne du Guesclin’s men.

Messires Hopart and Guicheaux were taking their revenge, arm in arm, with a flourish of swords and the happy arrogance of a pair of heroes. The La Bellière servants appeared to be applauding their bombast and their swagger. Not so Jeanne du Guesclin’s men, whose toes were being trodden on and whose ribs had suffered from the ironical raillery of the mighty Hopart’s elbows. Bertrand’s rapscallions were top dogs for the moment.

“Hallo, sirs!”—and Guicheaux spread his fingers at one of Olivier’s grooms who had taken part in the “scourging” at Cancale, “—who said Messire Bertrand did not fight at Mivoie? They swallow strange tales at Gleaquim, eh?”

A figure in red and green growled out:

“God have pity on these two fools!”

“Fools?” and Hopart stopped dead in front of a little man who had ventured the insult. “So it is you, Jacques, my little pig, eh? I have always heard that swine are unclean brutes in the matter of food. Did you say ‘fools’?”

Hopart, bulking big, with a face like a devouring fire, stared at the little man and shook a huge, brown fist.

“Did you say ‘fool,’ little pig?”

“Let Jacques be, bully Hopart.”

“So!” and Hopart set his hoof on the great toe of the second man who had spoken, and emphasized the rebuke by a sounding smack across the mouth.

“Come out and fight,” he said; “we are not in madame’s piggery now.”

The crowd roared. Hopart’s swagger neared the sublime, his great, fiery face making the men in red and green blink like a brood of startled owls. Hopart was too big and threatening to be taken by the beard. No one answered his challenge, and the two heroes strutted to and fro again like a couple of prize cocks.

Jeanne du Guesclin, standing at the top of the stairway leading from the hall, saw all this in the compass of a moment. Nor had her coming been lost upon Hopart and Guicheaux. They doffed their caps to her with exaggerated gestures of respect, a display of mock homage that turned all eyes upon the proud figure of the lady.

Jeanne du Guesclin’s face was white with anger.

“Olivier”—and she bit her words—“go down and give those swine a beating with your sword.”

“Madame mother, leave the men to me.”

It was not Olivier who had answered her, and Dame Jeanne started as though a snake had fallen at her feet. She turned and saw Bertrand standing on the threshold of the hall, his face impassive, his arms folded across his chest.

For the first time in her life Jeanne du Guesclin faltered before her son. There was a peculiar look in Bertrand’s eyes, a look that shamed her, leaving her speechless and at his mercy.

“Guicheaux! Hopart!” And he went down the steps into the court.

The two worthies had discarded all swagger and were meek as lambs.

“Yes, captain?”

“We are here, captain.”

Their innocence was sublime. No school-boy could have equalled it. Bertrand struggled hard to hide a smile.

“You are too noisy, you two. Stand back and remember your manners.”

They stood back, yet ready to wink at the first chance.

“Certainly, captain. We were amusing ourselves a little.”

“Cease to be amused.”

And for the life of him Bertrand could not bully them further when they looked at him like a pair of rough and mischievous dogs ready to come and lick his hands.

Two men in red and green were leading Madame Jeanne’s roan horse forward. She was still standing at the top of the steps, looking at Bertrand and biting her lower lip. All the prejudices of twenty years seemed shadowed forth upon her face. Even the cherished Olivier was afraid to meet her eyes.

Jeanne du Guesclin saw Bertrand take the roan’s bridle from the hands of one of the grooms. To those who watched her closely it seemed that some great struggle was passing behind the proud and full-lipped face. Her eyes had the strained look of an imperious nature to whom the bitterest ordeal may be the forgiving of defeat.

“Madame.”

Bertrand was before her, holding the bridle of her horse. His face appeared cold and impassive, and yet there was a slight softening of the stubborn mouth. Olivier, a mere pawn in this pageant of pride and passion, stood to one side, playing with his sword.

“Madame mother, may I help you to mount?”

Jeanne du Guesclin came down the steps like one under compulsion, and suffered Bertrand to take her hand. A strange thrill swept through her at the touch. It was as though she had realized with a flash of intuition that it was possible for a woman to be despised by her own son.

“Bertrand.”

He saw her lips tremble, saw her color and then go pale.

“Mother.”

It was as though the word struck her on the bosom—over her heart. She flashed an indescribable look at him, a look half of defiance, half of awe.

“Bertrand—”

He bent his head.

“You will come to us at Cancale?”

The words were half whispered, but Bertrand heard them, and felt all that was passing in Jeanne du Guesclin’s heart.

“Mother, you can command.”

He saw her draw a deep and hurried breath, and felt her grasp tighten upon his hand. Her eyes, full of the stormy instincts of a woman’s soul, betrayed a half-hunger for something that she could not name.

“Then—you will come? I ask it.”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. You are generous—more generous than I deserve.”

Thus far her pride would bend itself, and Bertrand, as he helped her to the saddle, felt her hand close again spasmodically on his. He knew the iron of his mother’s will, and understood how much those few words meant.

He walked beside her to the gate. And there, like a woman whose true instincts break through the ice of years, she looked long at him, and touched his forehead with her hand.

“Do not forget us at Cancale.”

“No, I shall not forget.”

“You have given us great honor.”

“Madame, remember, I am still Bertrand, your son.”

XLV

BERTRAND was astir next morning, with the reconciliation of yesterday still vividly before his mind. He began to dress and to arm himself, sitting on the edge of the bed in his room in one of the turrets, his hands dawdling at their work as though their master were too much enthralled by the importunity of his own thoughts. He had been moved by the sudden surrender of his mother’s pride, and the element of shame in her recantation had roused in him a new instinct of tenderness, a tenderness that overflowed perhaps from a subtle and more human source. The indifference of years had been broken by a few halting, yet inevitable, words. Bertrand had given Jeanne du Guesclin no idle promise. He would turn his horse’s head towards Cancale that very day.

Bertrand could hear Hopart and Guicheaux talking together in the little anteroom that opened from the turret stair. The fellows had lain like a couple of dogs outside his door, happy in the promise that he had given them that they should be his men from that day forth. The murmur of their voices came up to Bertrand as he armed, bringing back many a wild memory of wild nights spent on the moors and in the woods.

He buckled on his arm-pieces, using teeth and hands to clinch the straps, and, picking up his sword, went to the turret window and looked out. A thin mist hung over the meadows and the woods, a mist shot through like some silvery cloth with the gold threads of the morning sun. Above the haze the tops of the aspen-trees glimmered towards the deepening blue, and the jackdaws, whose nests were in the tall chimneys, were croaking and wheeling about the castle.

From the turret window Bertrand could see into the garden, where the mist clung about the orchard trees and dimmed the pool where the water-lilies spread their cups of ivory and of gold. Early though it was, Tiphaïne walked in the garden, with the Vicomte’s dog following at her heels. Bertrand had hoped for some such chance of speaking to her alone before he sallied to Cancale.

“Saddle the horses in an hour,” he said, as he passed Hopart and Guicheaux on the stairs and went clashing down in his well-worn harness. The men watched him down the first gray curve of the winding stair, silent, whimsical, mysteriously wise. Hopart nodded; Guicheaux bobbed his hatchet face in turn. A long, red tongue darted out momentarily between a thin and humorous pair of lips.

“The captain has it, God bless him.”

Hopart looked solemn.

“And something of a scold, too!”

Guicheaux’s bright eyes were dull suddenly, as though he were thinking of the Aspen Tower in far Broceliande, and of the grim happenings there that had shocked even his war-hardened soul.

“The devil’s in the women,” he said, with reflection, “and yet—not the devil, brother Hopart, for the devil, I guess, would never have bearded the captain and made him humble, as she did, in Broceliande.”

Hopart nodded.

“A brave lady.”

“Our Lord keep them”—and the rascal crossed himself with the gravity of a fanatic—“she’s just the captain’s match, just as stout in the heart as he. I’ll wager she’s waiting for him in the garden.”

The giant chuckled.

“If she’s a lady of sense.”

“Which she is. Come up; we’ll peep.”

And in they went to the window of the turret-room, and by the affectionate grin on Hopart’s face it was plain that Guicheaux’s prophecy had not flown wide.

Tiphaïne and Bertrand were standing beside the pool, she in her green gown with the violets thereon, he in his harness, belted and spurred for the road to the sea. He had told her the preceding night of the last melting of his mother’s pride. Tiphaïne had known, when she rose with the dawn, that Bertrand was leaving La Bellière for Cancale that morning.

But it was not of his own home that Bertrand thought as he stood beside Tiphaïne in the mist-wrapped garden. Life had taken for him a deeper tone. No more would he be the free lance, the man of the moors, who fought like an outcast for the law of his own hand.

“So you will go to Cancale?”

She spoke softly, like one who thinks. Bertrand was standing with his shoulders squared, looking at the water, his arms crossed upon his breast.

“To Cancale, my old home.”

“And then—?”

“To the wars again.”

“It is always war with us.”

“It will always be war with us till the English are driven into the sea.”

“You will share—in that.”

“God helping me”—and he bowed his head—“and some day—”

He paused, a man weighing his words.

“Some day—I shall come to La Bellière again.”

He turned and looked at her, as though wondering whether the woman in her understood.

“Bertrand.”

She was gazing at the pool, with its floating lilies and the swallows skimming.

“Bertrand. My father is going towards the grave. He looks to me for a double love, now that Robin is no more his son. Can you blame me for remembering this?”

He looked at her honestly, and answered:

“No.”

They were standing close to each other, so close that Bertrand’s hand touched Tiphaïne’s arm.

“It is not easy to give up—all.”

She felt that he was trembling.

“Bertrand, I have one word for you.”

“And that word?”

“Wait.”

Her hand touched his. He held it, and stood looking down into her face.

“To serve you, honor you, to bide my time,” he said.

It was not the half-shamed face of a girl that he gazed at, but the inspired face of a brave woman.

“Bertrand, take troth from me; are you content?”

He threw his head back with a great intake of his breath.

“Content,” was all he answered.

From the turret window overhead Hopart and Guicheaux had drawn back with curiously stolid and solemn faces. It was as though each of these ragged sworders were attempting to disavow any trace of feeling by assuming a staring obtuseness that scorned anything so mawkish as sympathy with Bertrand and the lady. Hopart yawned behind his hand, looking at his comrade the while out of the corners of his slits of eyes.

“Borrowed that grease-pot, brother?” he asked, abruptly, as though fixing on a sufficiently unemotional topic.

Guicheaux stared. He was not without sentiment.

“Grease-pot?”

“For the captain’s stirrup leathers; they’re stiff as boards. I told you to get it from the cook, eh?”

“Wipe them round your neck, brother,” said the thin man; “’twill serve.”

Hopart yawned again, and glanced reflectively towards his stomach.

“Honest service once more,” he said, with a fat and complacent sigh; “a roof over a man’s head, and clean straw to lie in; good food and plenty. Brother, I have pricked two holes to let out my belt.”

It was the distant braying of a trumpet and the floating-up of a haze of dust among the poplar-trees on the Dinan road where the mist had cleared that brought the alert, hawklike glint back into Guicheaux’s eyes. He rested his elbows on the window-sill and craned his head forward, his mouth open as though it helped him to take in sound.

“Hst!”

Hopart leaned his hands on Guicheaux’s shoulders and flattened the thin man against the wall as he peered out in turn.

“Trumpets and banners, God a mercy!”

Guicheaux gave an expostulatory heave.

“Push me through the wall, hogshead! Eyes alive, but here’s a brave show—pennons by the score.”

Hopart’s heavy breathing grew yet heavier as he craned his head forward over Guicheaux’s shoulder.

“The Ermine, the Ermine, or I’m a bat!”

“Beaumanoir! Beaumanoir!”

“All for the love of the captain, I’ll swear. All the cats in Brittany coming to purr and rub against his legs.”

Guicheaux, in his excitement, continued to heave Hopart back a little, and to draw himself up so that he lay like a bolster doubled over the sill.

“Beaumanoir! Bully Beaumanoir, by God’s grace! Phew!”

He kicked out suddenly and began to writhe and wriggle under Hopart’s weight.

“Get back, great fool! Let me in.”

“What ails you, little one?”

“The captain!” And Guicheaux spluttered. “Get off my legs, oaf. He’ll break my head.”

Hopart’s obtuseness seemed as bulky as his body.

“What’s the captain doing, eh?”

Guicheaux cursed him, and contrived to squeeze back into the room.

“Was not madame there, fool?” he asked, looking hot and flattened.

“Madame?”

“Yes.”

And Guicheaux smacked his lips on the back of his hand.

XLVI

THE Breton chivalry flowed into La Bellière that day, a gaudy torrent that carried much pomp and panoply in the resonant splendor of its coming; trumpets blew, dogs barked, servants tumbled hither and thither, each man ordering and instructing his neighbor. Jehan, the porter, was fastening his best jerkin as pennons, two by two, came dipping under the arch of the gate. Heralds, trumpeters, lords, and knights poured in, till to the jackdaws on the chimneys the court-yard must have looked like a magician’s pit crammed with all manner of strange beasts, glittering dragons, and grotesque centaurs.

Of the knighting of Messire Bertrand du Guesclin in the great hall of La Bellière that same morning, Hopart and Guicheaux had many things to tell in the years to come, when they were rusty, bent-backed figures declaiming to open-mouthed youth on the settles before the winter fires: How Bertrand was taken in the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s arms; how the Breton lords crowded about him, offering him, one a horse, another a chain of gold, another a signet ring set with rubies; how Madame Tiphaïne stood on the great dais, looking down upon her man’s triumph with eyes that shone, even through brimming tears; how Beaumanoir’s sword touched Bertrand’s shoulder, and how the rafters rang with the shout that went up at his knighting; and how Messire Bertrand said little, and looked sly, as though ready to laugh over the time all these fine gentlemen had taken in discovering that he was not a fool.

But to leave Hopart and Guicheaux in their inglenooks with the firelight twinkling on their wrinkled old faces and their tongues wagging over the days that were no more.

For Bertrand’s sake Tiphaïne would have made a great feast that night for the Breton lords at La Bellière, but Bertrand, drawing the Sieur de Beaumanoir aside, told him the tale of Robin Raguenel. It was not in his heart to hear the trumpeting of his own triumph in the place while old Stephen Raguenel sat like a man stunned and thought of his son in the abbey of Lehon. There would have been mockery, gross mockery, in such a festival. And Beaumanoir, great lord and honest gentleman, gathered his pennons, his heralds, and his trumpeters, and returned by the road to Dinan that same day.

“I am for England, messire,” he said to Bertrand before he sallied forth. “We go to bring Count Charles back to his own land again. Come with me and see the English court.”

Bertrand flushed at the Marshal’s words.

“I have a promise that must be kept,” he answered.

“Here?” And Beaumanoir looked at him hard and smiled.

“No, to my mother—at Cancale.”

“Keep it, messire. It may be a month before we sail—if that is time enough.”

“Then, sire, I will come with you.”

“Brothers in arms—for the memory of Mivoie.”

Hopart and Guicheaux, trudging behind Bertrand’s horse as they followed him over the bleak lands towards the sea, glanced often at each other like two men most wise; for their lord rode as though he were alone with his own thoughts, a smile on his lips, and in his eyes the light of a brave desire.

For Tiphaïne had given him one long kiss at parting, and a lock of her hair, that he should wear under his armor—over his heart.

“Wait,” her eyes had said.

And Bertrand had answered:

“Until death.”

THE END

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Contents at the beginning of the book has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note.

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[End of _Bertrand of Brittany_, by Warwick Deeping]