But as the falling-off of the broken helmet showed Bertrand whom he had smitten, the sight seemed to wither his strength, and he let fall his terrible axe, while his foes, seeing him disarmed, closed fiercely round him.
“Back, fellows!” cried Hugo, sternly, as he thrust himself between. “Yield, good Sir Bertrand—yield to Hugo de Claremont.”
“I yield me, rescue or no rescue, sith better may not be,” said Bertrand, hoarsely. “But thy brother—lives he yet? If I have slain him, I shall ne’er have the heart to wield weapon more.”
“Vex not thyself, fair sir,” said Alured, faintly, as he tried to raise his bruised and aching head. “I am but somewhat dazed. Marry, thy blows are not such as a man can jest with.”
“Now, God be praised my stroke slew thee not,” cried Du Guesclin, raising him from the earth. “I ever thought we should meet again, but I deemed not it should be thus.”
But neither the admiration of the whole army, nor the praise of grim old Chandos himself, nor the thanks and rewards heaped on them by the Black Prince (who welcomed their prisoner as if Du Guesclin had been his best friend instead of his most redoubtable foe), could chase from the brows of the twins the gloomy foreboding that clouded them; and, as they entered their tent that night, Alured said sadly—
“My mind misgives me, brother, that God is not with us in this work, and that it will not prosper.”
He spoke but too truly. History has told how their gallant host melted beneath the blighting breath of pestilence and famine—how its great leader saw his men perish round him while waiting in vain for the fulfilment of the promises that his faithless ally had never meant to keep—how he was forced to drain his own coffers to feed the men whom the crowned ruffian who owed his throne to them had left to starve and die—and how he finally repassed the Pyrenees with the wreck of his splendid army, heavy and sick at heart, bearing with him the seeds of the fell disease that was to doom him, only a few years later, to an untimely grave, while the royal cut-throat whom he had championed, within a twelvemonth of his restoration, lost crown and life.
CHAPTER XXXII
News of an Old Friend
Years rolled by, and brought many startling changes.