“Take it for the food; God’s blessing go with it. You have done me good, child; now let me sleep.”
And sleep he did, like one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.
The dawn was breaking when Bertrand woke beside the peasant’s fire and heard the birds singing in the thickets. A soft haze of light filled the east, and there were mottlings of crimson above the trees. Bertrand lay still awhile, watching the gold glint of the sunrise through the crowded trunks, while the dew glittered on the green turf and the birds sang lustily. He found that the peasant folk had covered him with an old cloak, and that simple touch of sympathy went to Bertrand’s heart.
The girl Marie came out of the woods singing a Breton song and carrying a bundle of sticks in her bosom. She threw them on the fire, and looked at Bertrand as he sat up and felt his wounded thigh. The night’s rest had put new strength and courage into him. He was no longer the fatalist drugged with the opiate of despair. The golden splendor of the woods, the blue sky, the glistening dew gave a sparkle to life and stirred the joy of being in him.
Scrambling up, he thanked the girl for the cloak, and, looking round him, asked for his horse. Marie of the Marshes pointed to where the beast was tethered, under the shadow of a great beech. Some fifty yards away Bertrand saw a stream flashing through clumps of rushes and tufts of waving sedge. He went down to it and dashed water over his face and neck, finding his wound less painful and the muscles less stiff and sore.
As he walked back to the fire the two peasants came out of the woods with a couple of rabbits they had snared. Bertrand turned to them like an old campaigner and helped the fellows to skin the rabbits and sling an iron pot over the fire. They lost their shyness as he worked with them, for there was a frankness in Bertrand’s manner that appealed to these men of the soil.
They were in the middle of the meal, seated round the fire, with the girl Marie next to Bertrand, when they heard a shout from the woods and saw a bandy-legged old fellow, very ragged and dirty, running towards them over the grass. He had a holly-wood cudgel in his hand, and was followed by a dog that looked more like a wolf, with its long snout, lean build, and bristling coat. The girl started up and kissed the old man on the mouth, a duty that Bertrand did not envy her. After bobbing his head to Bertrand, he came and sat himself down by the fire, while Marie fished a rabbit’s leg out of the pot for him.
When he had gnawed away the flesh in very primitive fashion, he threw the bone to the dog and wiped his greasy beard on the back of his hand. The dog, after crunching the bone, came snuffing round Bertrand, his ears back, his tawny eyes fixed suspiciously on Du Guesclin’s face.
“Ban, you devil, down! down! Pardon, lording, the dog must have his smell at strangers.”
Bertrand held out his hand to the beast, snapping his fingers and looking straight in the dog’s eyes. His absolute fearlessness satisfied the animal, for he gave a wag of the tail, grinned, and wrinkled up his snout, and curled himself complacently against Bertrand’s legs.