“The marshal is at Josselin,” he said.
“Then, sire, I shall ride to Josselin. I shall not rest until the truth is told.”
The next dawn saw them on the road, while at La Bellière an old man sat before the fire, dazed and stricken, muttering the name of his only son. And amid the aspens on the Lehon lands young Yeolande wept at the window of her room, looking towards the tall towers of the abbey, and wondering why God had stricken Robin’s heart and taken his love from her to make of him a priest.
XXVI
Croquart the Fleming had marched from Pontivy to take Josselin by surprise at the breaking of a summer dawn. The little town, with its gate-houses and spires, its high roofs and timber-capped turrets, had stood black and silent against the gold of the east when Croquart’s stormers crept up to set their ladders against the walls. Unluckily for the Fleming and his men, the Sieur de Beaumanoir had been forewarned as to their coming, and their welcome that May morning came in the shape of stones, molten lead, pitch, and a rain of quarrels from the walls. They had been beaten back, to flounder, many of them, like great black cockroaches in the mud of the town ditch. And, to complete the thoroughness of the repulse, the gates of Josselin had opened wide to pour columns of armed men into the town meadows.
The cocks of Josselin were still crowing when Geoffroi Dubois and his Breton gentlemen and men-at-arms rode through and through the disordered companies of the Fleming’s “horse.” Many debts were waiting for dismissal on the green slopes under the walls of Josselin town. Every man who could carry a sword or bill swarmed out by the gates to strike a blow against these plunderers of Breton towns. Butchers with their cleavers, smiths with their hammers, armorers’ apprentices with arms fresh from the forge followed in the track of the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s columns of steel. There was no taking of prisoners that morning in the Josselin meadows. The townsmen rushed in among the disordered free-lances, stabbing the horses and bringing the men-at-arms to earth. John Hamlin, an Englishman, and the Fleming’s brother in arms, was battered to death by the hammers of two smiths as he lay helpless in his heavy harness. Before the sun had topped the steeples the broken companies were streaming for the open moors, with Geoffroi Dubois and his Bretons in pursuit.
It was past noon that same day when Croquart reined in his black horse on the last sweep of moorland beneath the crests of the Loudeac woods. The Fleming wore a red surcoat covered with gold diapering, carried a fox’s brush in his gilded bassinet, and was armed in harness that any great lord might have coveted. The coxcombry of the adventurer showed itself even in the trappings of his horse, for the butcher-boy of Flanders, gay as any popinjay, had the love of a risen man for jewels, color, and the pomp of life.
Croquart stood in the stirrups and scanned the moorland under his hand. Hard galloping alone had saved him from the glitter of Dubois’s spears, and, as for his own mercenaries, he had left the fellows to look after their own souls. Three solitary riders were forcing their jaded horses up the slope towards him, the last and best mounted of his free lances, who had been able to keep sight of the black stern of Croquart’s horse.
Though still young, the Fleming had the coarse and florid features of a man whose appetites had been pampered by success. Vulgar, vain, supremely cunning, with a chest like a barrel, hands and throat like an Esau’s, he looked a heavy man, even on the big horse he rode. His broad, flat face mingled a snub-nosed audacity with the cheerful arrogance of sensual strength. The cheek-bones were high, the eyes small, deep set, and quick with the glint of a bird of prey. Even in defeat the man’s unbounded impudence had not deserted him, and his eyes twinkled as he watched the laboring approach of the survivors of his “free company,” a company that had dwindled to the ludicrous muster-roll of three.
“Hallo, sirs!” and he laughed in their faces; “Beaumanoir has made us hurry a little. Why, Tête Bois, you have the lives of a cat. Pluck up heart, man; why so white about the mouth?”