Dame du Guesclin bit her lip.
“Why did the fool come with us? I knew how it would be.”
She glanced round towards where Tiphaïne had been seated, but the child had slipped away from her father’s side, and was on the top step of the stairway leading to the grassland at the back of the lists.
“Olivier, the child! Stop her! She is mad!”
Olivier sprang towards Tiphaïne, but her flashing eyes sobered him. She went slowly down the stairs, keeping her face towards him, her toy poniard naked in her hand, a sting that Olivier did not relish. He laughed, and turned back to the Vicomte and Dame Jeanne.
“The lady will have her way,” he said, setting his cap a little more jauntily on his head, and affecting surprise when Stephen de Bellière frowned at him.
“Leave the child alone, lad,” said her father, quietly, “she has more wit than most wenches of twenty.”
Bertrand, ready to weep with wrath and vexation, was backing Yellow Thomas out of the crowd, when he felt a hand laid upon his bridle. Glancing down, he saw Tiphaïne standing beside him, looking up with deep color on her brown-skinned face, her eyes shining under their dark lashes.
“Tiphaïne!”
She held out her hands to him.