“The woods will serve us best,” he said. “We will take the forest way towards Loudeac. Dubois will not press too far into the west. After Loudeac we can take our time, for young Bamborough is at Guingamp.”
Croquart turned his head with a last backward look over the moors. The solitary rider who had topped the hill had dropped again from sight. Probably, so thought the Fleming, it was only another of his men who had escaped from the bloody Josselin meadows.
“Forward!” and he gave the word with gusto, as though he still commanded five hundred spears.
His men waited for him to lead the way.
“No, by my blood, gentlemen!” and he laughed. “Go forward. I prefer to take care of my own back.”
The popinjay is known by his gay colors, and it was Croquart’s love of gaudy trappings that betrayed him to the Breton rider whom he had seen poised for a moment on the brow of the next hill. The man had reined in his horse, craned forward in the saddle, and scanned with the keenness of a hawk the four steel-clad figures covered by the shadows of the Loudeac woods. Messire Croquart’s red surcoat, with its gold diaperings, and his gilded bassinet showed clearly against the green. It was for such a chance as this that Bertrand had played the spy at Pontivy. And for such a boon he had loitered on the moors near Josselin, coveting Dubois his battle-cry, and yet believing in his heart that Croquart would break free. The thing had happened even as Bertrand had desired it should. He was on the track of the Fleming, the taking of whose head would bless Brittany more than the fight at Mivoie had ever done.
“Brother Croquart, Brother Croquart, you think too much of the women, my friend!” and yet Bertrand forgot the fact that he himself thought each hour of the day of a pair of brown eyes and hair that changed in the sunlight from bronze to ruddy gold.
The champion of the fox’s brush rode towards Loudeac, with Bertrand on his heels, and at Loudeac the Sieur de Tinteniac’s shield hung in the guest-hall of the little abbey of St. Paul. Tinteniac and Tiphaïne had ridden by Montcontour, following the same road that Bertrand and her brother had taken not a month before. They had passed the first night at Montcontour, the second at Loudeac, and at Loudeac they had heard that Croquart had escaped from Josselin and was enlisting men on the banks of the Blavet. Refugees had fled to Loudeac from Pontivy, and the little town already trembled amid its woods, dreading to hear the Fleming’s trumpets sounding a challenge at the gates.
Tinteniac’s two esquires were making the final moves in a game of chess in the guest-hall oriel, while Tiphaïne and her serving-woman were dressing in their bedchamber for the day’s journey. Horses and palfreys stood saddled in the court, Tinteniac’s men and the two La Bellière servants strapping such baggage as they had on the backs of a couple of bony and ill-tempered mules. It was not known at Loudeac that Croquart had made his dash on Josselin from Pontivy, and that he and his men were scattered in flight over the Breton moors.
In the abbey garden the Sieur de Tinteniac leaned over the rail of the abbot’s fish-pond and threw pieces of bread to the fat carp that teemed in the waters of the “stew.” His pose was one of reflection, of dignity upon the pedestal of thought, as he watched a dozen silvery snouts clash together for each white morsel of bread. The high forehead and the meditative eyes, the stateliness of many stately generations, made of Tinteniac a figure of mark among the Breton nobles who followed the banner of Charles of Blois. The very hands that fed the fish were typical of the seigneur’s nature, clean, refined, sinewy, virile. His manner had that simple graciousness that makes beauty in man admirable even to his uglier fellows.