"She said nothing else?" The seigneur's voice was dangerously calm.
The Jew faltered. He knew the gossip of the town.
"She said—she said she wished two things, my lord. To become a boy and—to see her mother."
Then Charles lifted his face to where the stars were growing dim before the uprising of the dawn, and where, as far away as the eye could reach and as far again, lay the castle of his cousin Philip of the Black Beard. And the rage was gone out of his eyes. For suddenly he knew that, on that feast of mother and child, Clotilde had gone to her mother, as unerringly as an arrow to its mark.
And with the rage died all the passion and pride. In the eyes that had gazed at Joan over the parapet, and that now turned to the east, there was reflected the dawning of a new day.
The castle of Philip the Black lay in a plain. For as much as a mile in every direction the forest had been sacrificed against the loving advances of his cousin Charles. Also about the castle was a moat in which swam noisy geese and much litter.
When, shortly after dawn, the sentry at the drawbridge saw a great horse with a double burden crossing the open space he was but faintly interested. A belated peasant with his Christmas dues, perhaps. But when, on the lifting of the morning haze, he saw that the horse bore two children and one a girl, he called another man to look.
"Troubadours, by the sound," said the newcomer. For the Fool was singing to cheer his lack of breakfast. "Coming empty of belly, as come all troubadours."
But the sentry was dubious. Minstrels were a slothful lot, averse to the chill of early morning.