CHAPTER TEN
FROM RENNES
Lenore’s two hands went up in an agony of entreaty. Courtoise maintained his silence. There was in the great hall a stillness that the rushing of the storm could not affect. Alixe moved back to the door, and barred it once more against the attacks of the wind. At the same time another figure appeared on the stairs. Madame Eleanore, fully dressed, her hair bound round with a metal filet, came rapidly down and joined the little group. Lenore was as one groping through a mist. She knew, vaguely, when madame came; but it meant nothing to her. Now she repeated, in the pleading tone of a child that begs for some sweet withheld from it by its elder,—
“Thou bringest a packet from my lord, Courtoise? Sweet Courtoise, deliver it to my hand. My lord sendeth me a letter, is it not so?”
A low cry, inarticulate, heart-broken, came from the lips of the esquire; and therewith he fell upon his knees before the young Lenore and held up his two hands as if to ward off from her the blow that he should deal. “Madame!” he said; and, for some reason, Lenore cowered before him.
Then Eleanore came up to them, her face milk-white, her eyes burning; and, laying her hand upon the young man’s shoulder, she said softly: “Speak, Courtoise! Tell us what is come to thy lord. In pity for us, delay no more.”
Courtoise looked up to her, and saw how deeply haggard her face seemed. Then the world grew great and black; and out of the surrounding darkness came his voice, “The Seigneur is dead. Lord Gerault is killed of a spear-thrust that he got in the lists at Rennes. They bear him homeward now.”
A deep groan, born of this, her final world-wound, came from Eleanore’s gray lips. Alixe gave a long scream, and then fell forward upon her knees and began to mutter senseless words of prayer. Courtoise huddled himself up on the floor, and let fatigue and grief strive for the mastery over him. Only Lenore uttered no sound. She, the youngest of them there, and the most bereaved, stood perfectly still. One of her hands was pressed hard against her forehead; and she looked as if she were trying to recall some forgotten thing. Presently she whispered to herself a few indistinguishable words, and a faint smile hovered round her lips. Finally, seeing the piteous plight of Courtoise, she laid one hand upon his lowered head and said gently,—
“Courtoise, thou art weary, and wet, and spent with riding. Rise, dear squire, and seek thy bed, and rest. ’Tis very late—and thou’rt so weary. Go to thy rest.”