"Nay, beau sire! I speak not for them," replied Jodelle. "Yet what can the poor devils do? Here, in time of war, they spend their blood and their labour in the cause of one or other of the parties; and then, the moment they are of no further use, they are cast off like a mail-shirt after a battle. They have no means of living but by their swords; and when no one will employ them, what can they do? What could I have done myself, beau sire, if your noble valour had not induced you to take me into your train? All the money I had got in the wars was spent; and I must have turned routier, or starved."
"But would you say, fellow, that you have been a coterel?" demanded De Coucy, eyeing him from head to foot, as a man might be supposed to do on finding himself unexpectedly in company with a wolf, and discovering that it was a much more civilised sort of animal than he expected.
"I will not deny, beau sire," replied Jodelle, "that I once commanded two hundred as good free lances as ever served king Richard."
"Where are they now?" demanded De Coucy, with some degree of growing interest in the man to whom he spoke. "Are they dispersed? What has become of them?"
"I do not well know, beau sire," replied the coterel. "When Peter Gourdun's arblast set Richard, the lion-hearted, on the same long, dark journey that he had given to so many others himself, I quarrelled with count Mercader, under whom I served. Richard with his dying breath, as you have doubtless heard, fair sir, ordered the man Gourdun, who had killed him, to be spared and set free; and Mercader promised to obey: but, no sooner was king Richard as cold as king Pepin, than Mercader had Gourdun tied hand and foot to the harrow of the drawbridge of Chaluz, and saw him skinned alive with his own eyes."
"Cruel villain!" cried De Coucy.
"Ay! fair knight," rejoined the coterel. "I ventured to say that he was disobedient as a soldier, as well as cruel as a knight; and that he ought to have obeyed the king's commands, just as much after he was dead, as if he had lived to see them obeyed. What will you have? There were plenty to tell Mercader what I said:--there were high words followed; and I left the camp as soon as peace was trumpeted. I had saved some money, and hoped to buy a haubert feof under some noble lord; but, as evil fortune would have it, I met with a menestrandie, consisting of the chief menestrel, and four or five jongleurs and glee-maidens; and never did they leave me till all I had was nearly gone: what lasted, kept me a year at Besançon; after which I was glad enough to engage myself for hire, to ride your horses from Vic le Comte to Paris."
"But your troop!" said De Coucy. "Have you never heard any news of all your men?"
"I have heard, through one of the minstrels," said the coterel, "that soon after I was gone, they repented and would not take service with king John, as they had at first proposed; but came to offer themselves to the noble king Philip of France, who, however, being at peace, would not entertain them; and that they are now roaming about, seeking some noble baron who will give them protection, and lead them where they may gain both money and a good name."
"By the rood! they want the last, perhaps, more than the first," replied De Coucy, turning to enter the château.