“Take it, Bertrand, and I will pray for you.”
Bertrand was binding the black and bronze together, smiling to himself sadly, and thinking of Tiphaïne when she was a child.
“I shall not forget,” he said, simply.
“Nor I,” she answered, throwing the flowers and crucifix she had brought into Arletta’s grave.
And so Tiphaïne left him, and Bertrand turned to end his work. He covered Arletta with dead leaves, and threw in the few flowers he could find in the garden. Then he thrust back the earth very gently into the grave, growing ever sadder as the brown soil hid Arletta’s face from him forever.
And that same noontide young Robin Raguenel came riding in with twenty spears bristling at his back and English plunder on his pack-horses. Broceliande had given back Tiphaïne her own at last, after weeks of peril and despair. As for Bertrand, he took young Robin’s thanks in silence, and told the truth rather than play the hypocrite. The lad’s pleading could not hold him. Bertrand saw Tiphaïne alone no more, and, marching his men out, plunged into the deeps of Broceliande.
BOOK III
“THE OAK OF MIVOIE”