At La Bellière the Vicomte’s trumpeters stood in the great court betwixt the hall and the gate-house, and set the walls and turrets ringing.
“Mivoie! Mivoie! Mivoie!” the echoes wailed. “Mivoie! Mivoie!” croaked the jackdaws that roosted in the great octagonal chimneys. “Mivoie!” cried the serving-men, as they carried the lavers and napkins into the hall. La Bellière kept festival in Robin’s honor, and every scullion in the kitchen had pieces of silver in his pocket.
The Vicomte’s neighbors, unlike the folk in Biblical history, had ridden in to give the old man joy of his son. There was much washing of hands in the great hall, where the basins were being carried round before the meal by the Vicomte’s servants. The tables were covered with white napery, the walls hung with rich cloth and embroidered hangings, the floor strewn with fresh rushes, primroses, wind flowers, and wild violets. Robin, dressed in a surcoat of green stuff threaded through with gold and with a posy of bay leaves tucked into his girdle, sat in the place of honor at the high table. Tiphaïne, in white samite worked with gold, had come down the stairway from the solar, looking joyous and splendid, with the dames and maidens following in their silks and sarcenets. There were lute-players and men with viols and citherns in the gallery. The trumpets rang out as the servants came in from the screens, bearing the dishes garnished with bays and herbs to the tables.
The Breton gentry had pressed about Robin and his father, pleasing old Stephen in the praising of his son. Robin, feeling like a thief, had made light of the whole matter, meeting almost with impatience the flattery they gave him. He was glad when Father Guillaume stood up to say grace, pattering out his Latin to the edification of few. Stephen Raguenel stood with his hand upon Robin’s shoulder. When Father Guillaume had blessed the puddings—and craved a lively appetite from heaven—the Vicomte lifted his son’s shield, and showed the battered fesse of silver with all the pride of a paternal Jove.
“The grace of our Lady and the blessings of the saints be with you, kinsmen and friends,” he said. “Look at this shield, and you may see how God has blessed me in sending my lad safe through such a shower of blows.”
Robin, fidgeting from foot to foot, felt the eyes of all fixed upon his face. What a terror it was to fear the glances of his fellows and to imagine doubt in every heart! He passed for a modest fellow by reason of his blushes, the men liking him no less because he seemed not to relish the way the Vicomte trumpeted his valor. Robin frowned when his father called for the mazer bowl, enamelled with the arms of the De Bellières and banded with silver. Stephen Raguenel held it in both hands and pledged Robin, and sent the mazer round the tables that the guests might drink good luck to his son. On the silver band of the mazer were engraved the words, “Keep troth,” and Robin remembered them, to his cost.
The devil mocked Robin Raguenel that day, taunting him even from his father’s happy face, and turning to scorn the pride in Tiphaïne’s eyes. “Mivoie! Mivoie! Mivoie!” screamed the trumpets in the court, till Robin sent a servant to tell the men to cease their din. Wine came to him, and he drank it, feverishly, fiercely, yet feeling his tongue dry with the lies he had poured into his father’s ears. Behind him, held by a man-at-arms, shone the shield that Bertrand du Guesclin had carried.
Yeolande of Lehon, Robin’s betrothed, sat next him at the high table and ate from the same plate. The girl was very proud of her man before them all, and took no pains to disguise her pride. Her very enthusiasm refined Robin’s torture, for she could not hear enough of the fight at Mivoie, and pestered the lad till he could have cursed her to her face. “How many men had he killed?” “Who were the bravest among the Bretons?” “Who were knighted?” “Would the Sieur de Beaumanoir die of his wounds?” Robin, half mad with inward terror and vexation, described twenty things he had never seen, and tangled his wits in a veritable web of fiction.
The great “ship” was rolling along the table on its gilt wheels, ladened with sweetmeats and spices, when Sir Raoul de Resay, a kinsman of Robin’s, leaned forward across Yeolande’s bosom, and touched Robin’s arm with the silver handle of his knife.
“Messire, a word with you,” he said.