CAP-DU-LOUP
The giant was a Saint Christopher to Jael and Elias. He was great of height and bulk, feared for his strength and liked because of a broad simplicity and good-nature, apparent when he was not angry or hot in the midst of allowed slaughter and rapine. For the saffron cross and the jongleur he proved, this day, the right convoy.
Cap-du-Loup had two hundred knights and a thousand fighting men. The knights’ encampment they did not approach; it lay to the west, neighbouring the Lord of Chalus’s quarter. But they went by, they went between, the tents and booths of the thousand men.
These shouted to them, these stopped them, these ran from farther tents. “Game! Game!” Cap-du-Loup’s men cried. “Leveret! leveret! leveret!”—then saw the cross that the woman wore. It was a weapon to halt snatching hands, a spell to wither the lust in men’s eyes. And when the heat turned to cold, and where, as twice again happened, another zeal sprang up and there threatened stoning, came in the giant’s voice and arm, making room for the jongleur’s voice and hand upon the strings.... Thrice-guarded, the two from Roche-de-Frêne threaded the camp of Cap-du-Loup. It was noon now, and autumn sunshine thick about them. In broad day they passed the folds of the dragon, and then by a ruined house, cold and vacant as clay, they met with suddenness Cap-du-Loup.
The giant was afraid. “Little Mother of God, take care of us!” he said and caught his breath.
Cap-du-Loup was neither tall nor stout of build; he was rusty-red and small, but he could fright the giant, hold him knock-kneed. “What are you doing, Jean le Géant, wandering with hellfroth such as these?”
Jean le Géant answered like a child, telling all the why and wherefore.
“Begone where you kennel!” said Cap-du-Loup, when he had made an end. “You two, who came from Burgundy, what talk is made there of this war?”
He sat on a stone in the noon light, behind him a black and broken wall, and questioned the jongleur. He had looked once at the figure wrapped in frieze whereon was sewed a saffron cross. The woman seemed young, but the mantle was hooded, and that and the black hair astream about her face—She appeared dark as a Saracen and without beauty, and the cross did put a ring about her and a pale, cold light ... Cap-du-Loup, who came from Burgundy,—though that had never interfered with the sale of his services to any high-bidding foe of Burgundy,—turned to the jongleur. “What talk is there?”