For an instant, the watchers stood as though petrified, and then Bertrade de Montfort, tearing herself from the restraining hand of her father, rushed to the side of the lifeless body of the man she loved. Kneeling there beside him she called his name aloud, as she unlaced his helm. Tearing the steel headgear from him, she caressed his face, kissing the white forehead and the still lips.
“Oh God! Oh God!” she murmured. “Why hast thou taken him? Outlaw though he was, in his little finger was more of honor, of chivalry, of true manhood than courses through the veins of all the nobles of England.
“I do not wonder that he preyed upon you,” she cried, turning upon the knights behind her. “His life was clean, thine be rotten; he was loyal to his friends and to the downtrodden, ye be traitors at heart, all; and ever be ye trampling upon those who be down that they may sink deeper into the mud. Mon Dieu! How I hate you,” she finished. And as she spoke the words, Bertrade de Montfort looked straight into the eyes of her father.
The old Earl turned his head, for at heart he was a brave, broad, kindly man, and he regretted what he had done in the haste and heat of anger.
“Come, child,” said the King, “thou art distraught; thou sayest what thou mean not. The world is better that this man be dead. He was an enemy of organized society, he preyed ever upon his fellows. Life in England will be safer after this day. Do not weep over the clay of a nameless adventurer who knew not his own father.”
Someone had lifted the little, grim, gray, old man to a sitting posture. He was not dead. Occasionally he coughed, and when he did, his frame was racked with suffering, and blood flowed from his mouth and nostrils.
At last they saw that he was trying to speak. Weakly he motioned toward the King. Henry came toward him.
“Thou hast won thy sovereign’s gratitude, my man,” said the King, kindly. “What be thy name?”
The old fellow tried to speak, but the effort brought on another paroxysm of coughing. At last he managed to whisper.
“Look—at—me. Dost thou—not—remember me? The—foils—the—blow—twenty-long-years. Thou—spat—upon—me.”