A desolated homestead in a valley among the northern hills gave Croquart and his prisoners shelter the same night. The house, built of unfaced stone and thatched with straw and heather, had been plundered by some of Bamborough’s English, whose passion for thoroughness in their thieving moved them to burn what they could not carry.
Croquart rode into the grass-grown yard, where all the byres and out-houses had been destroyed by fire, nothing but a few charred posts rising above the weeds and nettles. The Fleming dismounted, after sounding his horn to see whether any of the farm folk still loitered about the place. They found the house itself to be full of filth, for the birds had roosted on the rafters, and the English used it as a stable, the droppings from their horses rotting upon the floor. It held nothing but the hall, a cellar, and the goodman’s parlor under the western gable—the last room being a little more cleanly than the hall, its single window, with the shutter broken, looking down upon the orchard. Pears and apples piled up their bloom above the rank splendor of the grass—a sea of snow flecked and shaded with rose and green. To the east of the orchard a great pool shimmered in the sunlight, its waters dusted with blown petals from the trees.
Tinteniac was so stiff and sore with his wounds after the day’s ride that Croquart had to help him from his horse. The Fleming, who had examined the house, took Tinteniac in his arms, and carried him to the upper room, where there was some mouldy straw piled in a corner. He laid Tinteniac on the straw, having made a show of his great strength by carrying a man taller than himself with the ease that he would have carried a child of five. Croquart had recovered his self-complacency since his skirmish with Tiphaïne in the morning, and she had had nothing to charge him with save with his insufferable boasting.
Tinteniac was so utterly weary that he had not sufficient mind-force left in him to resent his being treated as a dead weight for the exhibition of the Fleming’s strength. He drew a deep breath of relief when he felt his body sink into the straw—too faint to care whether the bed was one of swan’s-down or of dung. In five minutes he was fast asleep.
Harduin had watered the horses and stabled them in the hall, lit a fire, and slung the cooking-pot over a couple of forked sticks. In a little hovel at the end of the orchard Croquart had found some clean straw, and carried a truss into the goodman’s parlor to make Tiphaïne a bed. She met him with a finger on her lip, and pointed to Tinteniac, whose tired body drank in sleep as a dry soil drinks in rain. How much alone she was, how wholly at the Fleming’s mercy, she only realized as she watched him spread the straw in a far corner of the room.
“You will sleep softly enough,” he said, turning on his knees, and looking at her with an expression of the eyes she did not trust.
“It is not likely that I shall sleep,” and she moved aside towards the window.
“No bedfellow, eh?” And he got up with a chuckle, leaving her alone with the wounded man upon the straw.
Presently he returned with a pitcher full of water, some brown bread, and a few olives. He set them down on a rough bench by the window, and loitered foolishly at the door.
“I trust madame has forgotten the quarrel we had this morning?”