“Ha! what! The son of a peasant, say you, and you take your choice of the pretty girls of the village?”
“Seigneur, pardon me. I did not choose this maiden; God gave her to me.”
During this parley Annaïk stood by, trembling violently. She had heard of the Marquis of Guérande, and was only too well aware of the evil and reckless character he bore. The Clerk tried to calm her fears by whispered words and pressures of the hand, but the wicked Marquis, observing the state of terror she was in, exulted in the alarm he was causing her.
“Well, fellow,” said he, “since you cannot wrestle with me perhaps you will try a bout of sword-play.”
At these words Annaïk’s rosy cheeks became deathly white; but the Clerk of Garlon spoke up like a man.
“My lord,” he said, “I do not wear a sword. The club is my only weapon. Should you use your sword against me it would but stain it.”
The wicked Marquis uttered a fiendish laugh. “If I stain my sword, by the Saints, I shall wash it in your blood,” he cried, and as he spoke he passed his rapier through the defenceless Clerk’s body.
At the sight of her slain lover the gentle heart of Annaïk broke, and a great madness came upon her. Like a tigress she leapt upon the Marquis and tore his sword from his hand. Without his rapier he was as a child in the grasp of the powerful Breton peasant woman. Exerting all her strength, in a frenzy of grief she dragged the wretch to the green where the dance was in progress, haling him round and round it until exhausted. At last she dropped his senseless body on the green turf and hastened homeward.
And once again we encounter the haunting refrain: “My good mother, if you love me make my bed, for I am sick unto death.”