Tinteniac confessed that he was as ignorant as the rest, nor did the two knights enlighten him, since the spirit of jealousy strengthened the promise they had made.
To Tinteniac the news of the rout at Josselin explained Croquart’s inordinate hurry to put twenty leagues between him and Pontivy. Dubois and De Bodegat were ready with many questions, and he in turn had much to hear from them. On neither side was Bertrand’s name mentioned; Tiphaïne’s wishes were tending towards his doom.
In a few minutes they had made their plans, Dubois still swearing at the teeth-marks in his arm. Tinteniac, who felt his wounds, desired them to let him rest for a day, and neither Dubois nor Carro de Bodegat demurred at the suggestion. The delay would enable them, in the name of Justice, to vent their ill-humor upon the traitor who had cheated them of Croquart’s head. Dubois had left the bloody trophy hidden in the hovel where Bertrand sat and brooded on the past. The three guards had been ordered to let no one pass, and the whole troop warned against divulging Bertrand’s name.
Tinteniac, knowing nothing of the prisoner in the hovel, returned to the solar to rest on his bed of straw.
It was past noon, and Tinteniac lay asleep, when Tiphaïne, weary of the four walls of the room, went out alone into the orchard. Geoffroi Dubois and Carro de Bodegat were sitting as judges over a wrestling-match that the Breton soldiery had started in the yard. She slipped out almost unnoticed, catching a glimpse of two sturdy troopers hugging each other in the middle of the ring. The white-topped trees and the deep aloneness of the rich green grass were very pleasant to her, for with Croquart’s death and the return of freedom she had a great hunger for her home and for the face of her father, whom she had left in sorrow and unrest. The human consciousness, like the sky, is rarely untraversed by a cloud, the azure days serving only to part one gray noon from another. And to such a heart as Tiphaïne’s solitude called from the deeps of nature where the warm sap spread into the quiet faces of the flowers.
The Breton soldiers were shouting and exchanging wagers in the yard, their loud voices bringing discords where she sought for silence; nor was the orchard bereft of horror, seeing that Croquart’s body, naked and mutilated, lay near the house, with a stake trust through it. Tiphaïne could see the glint of the golden meadows sweeping towards the arches of the trees. It would be good, she thought, to wander away into the fields, to let her gown sweep the waving grass, to watch the larks soar, and to hear them sing.
The desire led her towards the hovel where Bertrand waited for the end, the three guards gossiping together and leaning on their spears. A mere passing curiosity stirred in her like a thought suggested to a wayfarer by some grotesque tree beside the road. She had no vision of Bertrand sitting upon the pile of faggots, his head bowed over his roped hands.
The three men saluted her, and she turned aside to ask why Messire Geoffroi Dubois took such trouble to guard a mere stack of sticks.
“A prisoner, madame,” said the tallest of the three.
“A prisoner?”