"Sir, why thus? Methinks that all have safe conduct here this day."
"List to him," laughed the soldier. "Doth a peasant lad talk thus? His speech betrayeth him."
"I myself heard him cry encouragement to the Englishman," said another soldier.
"Ay, and he called him father," added a third.
"Ah, is that so? Guard the lad carefully. We must bring him before Sir Denis. Answer me—is Sir Oliver thy sire?"
Geoffrey kept silence. He was in sore straits, yet he resolved to bear himself right manfully. His arrest had been carried out without attracting attention from the outgoing throng, and even had he appealed for aid his words would have fallen upon deaf ears.
In the centre of a ring of steel the lad was urged against the press of departing spectators, and conducted to a groined room in the inner ward, where Sir Denis was lying stripped of his harness.
The discomfited knight was in a sorry plight, for, in addition to the partially-healed burns sustained at Taillemartel, he had been bruised from head to foot by the fall from his horse. Added to his bodily injuries, the fact that he had been vanquished by an opponent whom he had regarded with disdain did not improve his temper. The iron of humiliation had eaten into his soul.
"Parblieu! 'Tis well that ye have laid the young viper by the heels," he exclaimed. "Did I not hear him shout words of encouragement to the Englishman? More than that, he called him father."
"Ay, mon seigneur, I also heard him speak thus," added one of Geoffrey's captors.