“I had to leave him. On my soul, Tiphaïne, I am not a prophet. I cannot tell you what I do not know.”
They heard the Vicomte’s voice calling them from the house, and Robin, trembling like a man saved from death, clutched at the reprieve, and walked back through the orchard. Tiphaïne followed him, slowly, thoughtfully, playing with her silver-sheathed poniard, her eyes fixed upon the ground. Some instinct warned her that Robin had not given her the truth, and she was troubled for Bertrand, wondering what had hindered him from keeping troth with Beaumanoir.
It was the third night after he had left Robin that Bertrand, who had eaten nothing all day, saw the flicker of a fire shining through the trees before him. The cloud of fatalism had thickened about him as the night came down over the tangled woodways of the forest. All the past had risen up before him: the savage sorrows of his boyhood, the coming of Tiphaïne the child, the tournament at Rennes. The years of rough adventure he had spent had seemed only to taunt him with failure and with bitterness. He had thought also of dead Arletta, and how the poor child had died in the autumn deeps of dark Broceliande. Brooding on the past, he had come to think that God’s wrath was heavy on him, and that he was cursed, like Cain, because of his stubborn heart. He had ridden on and on, letting his horse bear him where it would, feeling neither thirst nor hunger nor the weight of his heavy harness. He had drawn out his poniard and felt the point thereof calmly, sullenly, with a balancing of the evils of life and death. He still held the knife in his hand when he sighted the fire, the flames upcurled like the petals of a great flower.
Bertrand reined in and sat motionless in the saddle, his eyes fixed upon the fire. Possibly there was something elemental in the red and restless play thereof, something that flashed comfort into Bertrand’s heart. He clapped his poniard back into its sheath and rode on slowly, his jaded horse pricking up his ears and tugging at the bridle as though scenting water.
Three figures started up from about the fire as Bertrand rode out from under the shadows of the trees. He could see that they were peasants, two men and a girl, and that they were as shy and timid as hunted deer. The younger of the two men brandished a short cudgel, but there was no fight in the poor devils; the English wars had broken the spirit of the Breton poor.
Bertrand shouted to them and waved his hand, wondering at the hoarseness of his own voice.
“A friend! a friend!”
He rode up towards the fire, the light flashing on his armor and weaving giant shadows about his horse. The peasants kept their distance, dread of the mailed fist inbred in their hearts.
Bertrand showed them the eagle on his shield.