The abbot looked at him aslant, then spoke with a golden voice. “Did you tell the count’s herald that it was your esquire?”
“Not I! I said that it had a sound of Aimeric of the Forest’s men.” Aimeric of the Forest was a lord with whom Raimbaut was wont to wage private war.
The abbot murmured “Ah!” then, “Did any in your castle betray him?”
“No,” said Raimbaut. “Only Guilhelm, and Hugonet heard surely and knew for certain. Six-fingered we may be and rude, but we wait a bit before we give our esquires to other men’s deaths!” Again he covered with his stride the space before the wide hearth. He was as huge as a boar and as grim, but a certain black tenseness and danger seemed to go out of the air of the hall. Turning, he again faced the abbot. “So I think, now the best wit that I can find is to say ‘Aye’ twice where I have already said it once, and speed this same Garin the fighter into Church’s fold! Let him as best he may convoy himself to the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius. There he may be turned at once into Brother Such-an-one. So he will be as safe and hid as if he were in Heaven and Our Lady drooped her mantle over him. By degrees Montmaure may forget, or he may flay the wrong man—”
The abbot covered his mouth with his hand and looked into the blaze that mistral drove this way and that. Foulque came close, with a haggard, wrinkling face; but Garin, having risen from Raimbaut’s buffet, made no other motion.
The abbot dropped his hand and spoke. “Do you not know that last year the Count of Montmaure became Advocate and Protector of the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius? As little as Lord Raimbaut do I will openly to offend Count Savaric.”
“‘Openly,’” cried Foulque. “Ah, Reverend Father, it would not be ‘openly’—”
But Abbot Arnaut shook his head. “I know your ‘secret help,’” he said goldenly. “It is that which most in this world getteth simple and noble, lay and cleric, into trouble!” He spread his hands. “Moreover, our Squire-who-fights-knights hath just declined the tonsure.”