"As I passed through Thouars on my way from Poitou—you know Thouars,
Uncle?"
"Yes; go on."
"Then you know its market-place with the little shops all round and the church of St. Laon to the side: a cobble-paved space where the children play? At the one end there was a ring of black and white ashes with the heat still in them, and in the middle a Thing which hung by chains from an iron stake. It had been a man that morning, but there it hung by the spine with the chains through its ribs; a man no more, only blackened bones and little crisped horrors here or there. Round it two or three score, white-faced women and children mostly, stood and gaped, or talked in whispers, pointing. Presently the little children will play there, and shout and sing and laugh, and the women gossip or buy and sell."
"A coiner," said Commines. "The King must see that the silver is full weight."
"Yes, Uncle: but I have heard that sometimes the King himself has coined——"
"Hush, boy: the King is King."
"Then at Tours, as I rode through the Rue des Trois Pucelles, there was a house with a fine bold front. One would say that a man with the soul of an artist lived in it. There were brave carvings on the stout oak door, carvings on the stone divisions of its five windows, strong iron bars of very choice smith-work, twisted and hammered, to keep the common folk from tumbling into the cellars, and in the peaked roof of fair white plaster were driven great nails from which hung fags of rope, and from one something which was no rope, but a poor wisp of humanity staring horribly aslant above a broken neck."
"Yes," said Commines, "Tristan's house. He is the King's
Provost-Marshal and—and——"
"Yes, I know, Uncle. He carries out the justice of the King. But to hang a fellow-Christian over one's own hall-door is a strange taste."
"Stephen, take my advice and have naught to do with Tristan by word or deed. And no doubt the fellow deserved his hanging."