Bertrand of Brittany

by Warwick Deeping

XVII

One March day a man wrapped in a heavy riding-cloak with the hood turned back over his shoulders sat looking out over the sea from the cliffs of Cancale. Behind him a shaggy pony was cropping the grass, lifting its head to gaze ever and again at its master, motionless against the gray March sky. A northeast wind blustered over the cliffs, the sea, sullen and venomous, running high about the islands off Cancale. The great waves came swinging in to fly in white clouds of spray over the glistening black rocks that came and went like huge sea-monsters spouting in the water. Across the bay St. Michael’s glimmered beneath a chance storm-beam of the sun, while the shores of Normandy were dim and gray between sea and sky.

It was Bertrand, throned like some old Breton saint, with the waves thundering on the rocks beneath him and the gulls wailing about the cliffs. He sat there motionless, fronting the wind, his sword across his knees, as though watching and waiting for some sail he knew would come. The strong and ugly face might have caught the spirit of the granite land. Rock, sea spume, and the storm wind everywhere; a few twisted trees struggling in the grip of the wind. Bertrand, solemn, gray-eyed, motionless, akin to the rocks that lay around.

Two months had passed since Bertrand had come to Gleaquim by the northern sea, where his kinsfolk had kept Christmas in the old house where the Du Guesclins had had their rise. He had disbanded his free companions at Rennes, maugre their dismay and their unwillingness to leave him. The men’s rough loyalty had touched Bertrand, and taught him that even the saddest dogs could love their master. Guicheaux had even cast himself at Bertrand’s feet, swearing that he would go with him to the ends of the earth. It was with a husky voice that Bertrand had answered them, bade them choose a new captain and fight for Blois. He had left them bemoaning the obstinacy of his will, to discover, some twenty miles from Rennes, that Guicheaux and Hopart were following on his heels. Moved by their homage, he had taken them with him to Plessis-Bertrand, in Hakims valley by the sea.

There had been no great joy in Bertrand’s home-coming. His father, failing in years and health, had grown querulous and miserly, while Dame Jeanne adored Olivier as foolishly as ever. Julienne and the other girls were at a convent in Rennes. Two of the boys were lodged with their aunt in the same town, and Gaheris had gone as a page into the Sieur de Rohan’s household. There had been but a poor welcome for the prodigal, who brought no spoil or honor with him—nothing but a solemn face and two hungry followers. Sieur Robert had received him with no outburst of pride. His mother pursed up her lips, and questioned him as to what he had done with the money he had had to start him in the wars. Olivier strutted and swaggered in his finer clothes, made love to his mother’s serving-women, and sneered openly at his brother, asking him how many ale-houses he had captured and how many millers’ ransoms he had won. Even in the kitchen there were brawlings and discord, for Hopart and Guicheaux drubbed Olivier’s men for lauding up their master and belittling Bertrand’s courage.

As for the Champion of Rennes, he kept a tight mouth and a flinty face, took all the trivial taunts without a word, feeling it good that life should run roughly with him for a season. Vain, vaporing Olivier and proud, cold-eyed Jeanne knew nothing of the deep workings of that quiet man’s heart. He never spoke to them of the near past, and told them nothing of what he had learned and suffered. They thought him sour, surly, dull in the head. Thus, even in a home, kinsfolk are as strangers and outlanders together, and the mother knows not the heart of the son.

A great change was working in Bertrand—one of those uprisings that occur, perhaps, but once in the course of a strong man’s life. The recklessness, the passionate abandonment of youth were past—likewise the first peevish curses of disappointed manhood. Bertrand had learned to humble himself, to look round him, and to think. He had grappled with the truths and falsities of life, and searched out the flaws in his own heart with that dogged devotedness that was part of his nature. No easy and emotional religiosity inspired him, but rather the grim spirit of an old Stoic, striving after the best for the nobleness thereof. Yet the change was not without its tender tones. Almost unconsciously Bertrand had set up Tiphaïne in his heart, while beside her, yet more in the shadow, Arletta’s white and wistful face seemed to plead with him out of the past. Those who had known him of old, saving Olivier and his mother, wondered at the new gentleness, the air of patience, that had mellowed the rough and violent boy whom they remembered.

Bertrand was much alone that winter. It was a season of rest for him, a girding up of the loins, a tightening of the muscles of the heart. Nearly every day, in rain and sunshine, he would ride down to the sea, and sit there on the cliffs, with the ever-changing sky above him and the ever-restless waters at his feet. To Bertrand there was something bracing in this solitude and in the unbelittled magnificence of sea and shore. It was in those lonely days that he learned to know the true courage, that nobler quietude that smiles at defeat. And with the humility that had come upon him a deep and solemn peace seemed poured like divine wine into his mouth. The conviction grew in him that the higher life was yet before his face. Even as the grand old Hebrews trusted in the Eternal One with a faith that made them terrible, so Bertrand believed, with all the simple instinctiveness of his soul, that the powers above had work for him to do. The day would come for him, when or how he knew not yet. He was content to rest and tarry for a season, perfecting the self-mastery that was to make of him a man.

Bertrand mounted his rough pony and rode homeward that March day with the sun going down amid a mass of burning clouds. His heart was tranquil in him despite the wailing of the wind, the moaning of the trees, and the bleak stretch of moorland and of waste. He saw the peasants returning from their labor, and smiled at the sight. The patience of these lowly tillers of the fields seemed to comfort him. He had begun to think more of them of late than the mere pomp of chivalry and the glamour of arms. They suffered, these brown-faced, round-backed peasants, and Bertrand’s heart went out to them as he thought of their hard lives and the heaviness they bore.

The servants were trooping into supper when Bertrand rode into the old court-yard and saw the hall windows warm with torch-light. He stabled his pony, fed the beast with his own hands, and washed at the laver in the screens before going in to supper. Sieur Robert and his wife were already at the high table, with Olivier, the young fop, lolling against the wall. His lips curled as he saw Bertrand enter, for he hated his brother, and feared him in his heart.