“Whoa ho, Dobbin! to Josselin we go,
To hang the marshal and his Bretons in a row.”
The men took up the snatch and went bawling down the street, the mock horse prancing and curvetting with the rhymester on his back. Such peace-loving people as were abroad went scuttling down alleys, and into corners like mice running from a cat. Bertrand watched the gentry disappear down a passage that led into the market square. Their drunken shouting had given him a cud to chew, for, if Croquart struck a blow at Josselin, he—Bertrand du Guesclin—might yet have a part to play.
At La Bellière the Sieur de Tinteniac sat at the window of the great solar, looking out upon the orchard-trees, whose boughs were white against the blue. He had ridden in about noon from Dinan, to find an atmosphere of tragic awe filling the house, a sadness that seemed strange when the woods and meadows blazed with the spring. Dinner had been set for him at the high table, yet to his questions the old major-domo had given short and vague replies: “The Vicomte kept his bed, and Madame Tiphaïne was anxious for her father. Craving the seigneur’s patience, she would speak with him in the solar when he had dined. No, Messire Robin was not at home.” Tinteniac had forborne to question the old man further, for there were tears in the man’s eyes, and the very servants looked like mutes, going about their work as though death were in the place. Tinteniac had finished his meal in silence, feeling the shadow of some great sorrow over the house. Stephen of Lehon had been at La Bellière that morning, and had ridden back on his white mule to the abbey, shocked at heart by what he had seen and heard.
The curtain of green cloth, embroidered with gold martlets, that covered the door leading to the Vicomte’s bedchamber was swept aside by the white curve of a woman’s hand and wrist. Tinteniac, drumming on the window-ledge with his fingers, turned with a start and rose to make a very stately kissing of madame’s hands. Tiphaïne, upon whom the brunt of the day’s bitterness had fallen, looked white of face and shadowy about the eyes.
“I am glad, Sieur de Tinteniac, that you have come, for you can help me more than any man on earth.”
She was looking straight into Tinteniac’s eyes, liking their quiet braveness and the almost ascetic refinement of his face. He was verging on middle age, and carried himself with that simple stateliness that comes to men who have moved in high places and taken the measure of the world.
“Madame, I have been reproaching myself for burdening you at such a time. Your father is ill; yet you say that I can help you; good. I had ordered my horses out for Dinan, but if you would have me stay—”
“Stay, sire,” she said; “I have such a tangle to unravel that I shall need your wisdom to help me through.”