“By the revelation of God,” said Michael, solemnly. “Fare thee well, my son; be thou strong to do thine appointed work, and to curb thine own rebellious spirit; for he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. As for thee, my child,” added he to the half-witted lad, who had watched this strange scene with ever-growing wonder, “come with me; I have somewhat to say to thee.”
The wood-boy obeyed like a child; and the next moment boy and monk vanished amid the trees, while Bertrand remained standing like a statue on the spot where they had left him, deep in thought.
CHAPTER III
A Mysterious Message
The sunset of that memorable evening, as it faded from the scene of the wolf-fight, sent its last rays streaming through the small, narrow, loophole-like window of a plainly furnished upper room in Motte-Brun Castle (which stood two miles away on the edge of the wood), lighting up the face and figure of a tall, stately, grey-bearded man of middle age—whose plumed cap and rich dress showed him to be a noble—as he paced restlessly to and fro.
He was still strong and active for his years, and so markedly handsome that no one could guess him to have the unenviable renown of being father to the ugliest lad in Brittany. Yet such was the case, for this man was the Seigneur Du Guesclin himself, the lord of Motte-Brun.
The temper of a feudal lord of that age was usually anything but sweet; and Messire Yvon du Guesclin thought nothing of flinging a knife at his son or wife in the middle of dinner, or knocking out the teeth of some unlucky vassal with his sword-hilt. But, on this particular evening, his bent brows, his short, fierce step, and the very strong language that came growling through his set teeth, told that he was in an even worse temper than usual, or (as an observant man-at-arms of his poetically said) “as ill at ease as a fat friar in Lent.”
For this ill-humour, however, there was really some excuse. In the first place, Sir Yvon’s bandaged right arm showed that he was, for the present at least, disabled from taking part in the constant fights which were then so recognizedly the chief amusement of a gentleman, that when no foes were to be had, men would fight their friends just to keep their hand in. Secondly, he seemed likely to be kept waiting for dinner (no trifle to the fourteenth-century barons, who had the appetite of other wild beasts as well as their ferocity), for his wife, Lady Euphrasie du Guesclin, had not yet returned from her afternoon visit to a neighbouring convent; and though (like most gentlemen of that “chivalrous” age) the good knight would have had no scruple about laying his whip lustily over the shoulders of his lady-wife when she happened to displease him, he would never have dreamed of offering her such an affront as sitting down to dinner without her.
But the worthy knight’s third cause of complaint was of a higher and more lasting kind.
Rumours had long been afloat (vague and doubtful at first, but growing ever clearer and more defined) of an impending breach between France and England, and a renewal of that never-ending conflict which seemed to have become the recognized state of things betwixt the two warlike races. When the war did break out, the Duke of Brittany, as one of the great vassals of the French crown, must, of course, take the field for the King of France with all his Breton knights and nobles, among whom Sir Yvon du Guesclin, the representative of one of the oldest families in the Duchy, must appear with a meagre train of but thirty men-at-arms, instead of the five hundred spears that had followed his more fortunate ancestors.
Never had the stout old warrior so bitterly regretted the poverty and decay of his once formidable house; and a yet keener pang shot through his bold heart as he looked down into the courtyard from the balconied platform of the bartizan, and saw his three stalwart nephews trying their strength with blunted swords, amid the applauding murmurs of a ring of watching men-at-arms.