And Bertrand and Tiphaïne sat down together and drank wine out of the same cup.
III
Bertrand was astir early the following morning. He scrambled up from his truss of straw in one corner of the great hall, shook himself, and looked round at the Vicomte’s men who were still snoring on the rushes and dry bracken. The sunlight was streaming in through the eastern window, falling on the polished surface of the high table and the crimson tapestry threaded with gold. One of Olivier’s favorite hawks was bating on its perch under the window. Bertrand whistled softly to the bird, and glanced at the place by the fire where he had talked with Tiphaïne the night before. The three-legged stool was still lying where he had left it, but from the spot where Tiphaïne had throned herself amid the rushes the stertorous and gaping face of the Vicomte’s farrier saluted the rafters from a bundle of heather.
Bertrand’s eyes twinkled. He passed out of the hall into the court-yard, walking with the slightest suggestion of a swagger that seemed to betray unusual self-satisfaction. Tiphaïne’s comradeship had lifted him suddenly out of his sullen hopelessness, and Bertrand’s pride was ready to try its wings. In the yard one of Sieur Robert’s grooms was seated astride a bench polishing his master’s war harness. He grinned at Bertrand as though a mere showing of the teeth was sufficient salutation for the unfavored son.
Bertrand walked straight up to the man, and with one sweep of the hand knocked him backward off the bench.
“Hello, where are your manners?”
The fellow’s heels were still in the air, his astonished face visible to Bertrand between his legs.
“Get up, and make your bow, friend.”
Bertrand left the fellow to settle his impressions, and, opening the wicket that led into the garden, stood looking round him and whistling softly through his teeth. The sky was blue above the apple-trees, whose snowy canopies hid groins of spreading green. Bluebells were hanging in the long, rank grass of the orchard, and the boughs of the aspens glittered in the sunlight.
In the centre of the lawn lay the Lady Jeanne’s vivarium, a little pool, clear as rock crystal, ringed round with a low wall of stone. Three steps led down to the water, and under the lily leaves fish shimmered to and fro. Bertrand crossed the grass, leaned over the low wall, and looked at the reflection of his face in the water. Even the owner could not forbear a grimace at the ugliness thereof. It was no mirror of Venus as far as Bertrand was concerned, and the water would serve him better for a morning wash than for the recording of snub noses and a stubble of coarse black hair. Bertrand, kneeling on the steps, plunged his head into the pool and sluiced the water over his neck and arms. The fish went darting into the depths, unused to such desecration and to such troublings of the public peace.