Hanotin’s men were the better armed, but Bertrand, who had the advantage of numbers, kept his fellows together, and broke Hanotin’s ranks at the first charge. It was rough-and-ready scrimmaging enough in the gathering darkness of the narrow court. Men shortened their swords, used poniards and gadded fists, grappling together, squirming and wriggling on the stones. Bertrand hunted out Hanotin, and hammered him while the sparks flew. The bully labored with his mace, puffing and grunting as he gave each blow. Twice wounded, he closed with Bertrand and tried to bear him down beneath his weight. Hanotin would have been wiser had he shirked the bear’s grip that had given Bertrand many a victory over the Breton wrestlers as a lad. The Monk went down with a crash that startled even the men who were struggling in the death grips round him. He lay still a moment, and then, heaving himself upon his hands and knees, wriggled away like a huge lizard into the thick of the press.
Bertrand sprang after him, but a sudden rush of his own men and a weakening of the Montfort party threw him sideways against the wall. Hopart, who was close at hand, helped Bertrand to his feet.
“Hurt, lording?”
“Hurt? Not a bit of it! On; they are losing heart!”
They were losing ground also, and had been driven back under the tower gateway. With the grid down there was no escape save into the guard-room, or up the newel stairway leading to the lesser solar, and by the gallery to the lord’s solar and the chapel. Hanotin, who had recovered his feet and picked up a fallen sword, shouted to his men to take to the stairway. There was a rush for the narrow entry, Hanotin and three others holding their ground while the rest tumbled pellmell up the stairs.
This was the very move Bertrand had dreaded, for he knew that Tiphaïne must be hidden somewhere in the rooms above. He had seen her head on the tower for an instant when he and his men had first charged for the gate. Hanotin’s free lances would be like wild beasts brought to bay in the place. They might kill the girl, or harm might come to her with men hunting one another through the darkening rooms. Calling off ten of his own fellows, he left Hopart and the rest to force the stairs, and doubled across the court-yard for the hall.
It had grown so dark that the great room was like a cavern. Bertrand groped through it, and climbed the stairs towards the solar. The door was slammed against him from within, and his shout of “Tiphaïne!” answered with curses. Setting his teeth, he threw his weight against the door, broke it, and went sprawling, with rattling harness, into the blackness of the room.
In an instant two of Hanotin’s men were on him, trying to stab him in the dark. Bertrand kicked out right and left, caught one gentleman by the ankle and brought him down backward with a crash. There was a rush and a great shouting of “Lights!—lights!” The room seemed full of tumbling, struggling shapes. Furniture was overturned, whirled away, and broken. Men were grappling and stabbing haphazard in the gloom, cursing the darkness and calling to one another.
Light streamed in suddenly. The chapel door had been burst open by two men who had fallen against it, and were now wrestling together on the floor. Bertrand, scrambling up, with a poniard wound in his forearm, stood back against the wall and looked round him. Three men were struggling on the bed, a confused tangle of arms and legs, while at the far end of the solar Guicheaux and several more were holding back the fellows whom they had driven into the gallery leading to the tower. Bertrand could hear Hopart and the rest fighting their way up the stairway to the lesser solar above the gate.
A den of horror, brute force, and death the place seemed as Bertrand leaned against the wall and recovered his breath. He turned and saw the two men struggling by the chapel door. The bigger of the pair had the other under him, and was driving his dagger into the agonized wretch’s throat. The victor scrambled up from the body, shook himself, and looked round with his teeth a-gleam like a dog at bay. Bertrand recognized Hanotin by the beard.