“Thank God for Brittany—we have seen his head.”
XXXVI
While Dubois, Bodegat, and the rest poured into the orchard to gaze at Croquart’s headless body, Tiphaïne led back her palfrey to the house, where the horses of the dead Fleming and his men still waited in the hall to be fed and watered. The beasts turned their heads to look at her, their eyes seeming to ask what had befallen their masters in the night. Croquart’s own horse was strangely restless and uneasy, ears laid low, the whites of the eyes showing, and an inclination to kick very evident in his heels.
Leaving her palfrey stalled in the dirty hall, where the embers of the fire, harness, and baggage littered the floor, she mounted the stairs to the room in the gable, meeting Tinteniac at the open door. His wounded shoulder had given him a ludicrous but painful contest with his clothes, and he appealed to a woman’s hands for the righting of his wrongs. There was a characteristic distinction in the way the pale and imperturbable patrician stood to be brooched and buckled without squandering a fragment of his dignity. Head held high, the sunlight touching the silver in his hair, a sensitive smile softening his mouth, he felt a youth’s tremor at the nearness of her hands, and feared to look at her because she seemed so fair.
“The flies are buzzing about the dead dog,” and he pointed to the Bretons who were crowding and elbowing about Croquart’s body.
“How pitiful his boastings seem to me now!”
“Yes, mine was the last notch he cut upon his spear.”
Tinteniac seemed the grand seigneur again—tall, gracious, a man whose face had the quality of command. Tiphaïne felt that his manner had changed towards her, as though he were too honorable to prolong their supposed intimacy, however pleasant the playing of the part might seem. And yet she discovered more than mere gentleness in his eyes towards her, a posture of his manhood that betrayed homage and desire.
She fastened the brooch at his throat, and stood back from him, looking aside towards the window, where the iron men trampled the long grass under the orchard trees.
“Sire, I have much to thank you for.”