“I thought the Sieur de Beaumanoir had the fellow safe for a while,” he said.
“Ah, no doubt, lording, but Croquart is at Pontivy, and mad as an old wolf dam that has lost her cubs.”
The sun was well up when Bertrand took leave of the peasant folk, and, learning the way from them, mounted his horse and rode off into the woods. He had given the girl Marie a kiss before going, feeling grateful to her, even though she had seen him weep. New courage stirred in his heart, and his eyes were keen as he rode under the great trees, thinking of what the old man had told him concerning Croquart. A curious smile hovered about his mouth. Presently he dismounted, tethered his horse, knelt down on the grass, and prayed.
When he had ended his praying he took his shield upon his knees, and, drawing his poniard, began to batter at it with the hilt. The blows rang out through the silence of the woods till the eagle of the Du Guesclins was beaten from the shield.
XXIV
The sun was setting at La Bellière when a couple of men-at-arms wearing the Sieur de Tinteniac’s badge upon their sleeves came cantering along the road from Dinan. They wound through the poplar-trees and the beech thickets, flashing back the sunlight from their harness and raising a slight haze of dust that was turned to gold by the glow from the west. Riding up to the bridge, they hailed the porter who was closing the great gate and asked whether Sir Robin Raguenel had returned from Mivoie.
“For,” quoth the bulkier of the twain, “we are the Sieur de Tinteniac’s men, who has sent us jogging all the way from Montcontour with the news that he will try your master’s wine to-morrow.”
And so the Vicomte’s porter put back the gate for them, and Tinteniac’s men smelt the savory scent of the La Bellière kitchens. Nor was the news long in reaching the great salon where Tiphaïne and her father were playing chess, with Robin reading at the window. The lad went white when he heard the news and slunk out into the garden, sick at heart.
Heaven curse Tinteniac! What possessed him to come to La Bellière! Robin marched up and down under the apple-trees, biting his nails and smoothing his weak, round chin with the palm of his hand. The incubus of dread and remorse had grown heavier for him day by day he had lost both flesh and color, though a restless and feverish cheerfulness simulated the hectic confidence of a man who refuses to believe that death has him by the throat. And now the Sieur de Tinteniac was coming to La Bellière, and the lad’s guilty conscience fluttered like a girl in terror of a ghost.
At supper Robin saw the two men-at-arms seated among his father’s servants. They stared at him in all innocence, even as men stare at a fellow-mortal who has been blessed with the attributes of a hero. But to Robin, scared and suspicious, and ready to tread upon a snake in every corner, their interest in him suggested thoughts more sinister. Had Bertrand betrayed him, or had Beaumanoir and his lords discovered how the fesse of silver had played a double part? Robin sat in spiritual torment all through the meal, watching Tinteniac’s men much as a rabbit in the grass watches a falcon hovering for a swoop. When it happened that the fellows whispered together, he created their words out of the terror of his heart, and figured them out into ignominy and shame. Stephen Raguenel could make nothing of his son that night, and Tiphaïne, who had watched Robin jealously for many days, set the news of Tinteniac’s coming beside her brother’s moody face. The lad’s look troubled her, and she was filled with a vague dread of something she could not yet foreshadow.