The man weeding the onion-bed was Robin Raguenel; those who watched him, Bertrand du Guesclin and Robin’s sister.
The crawling figure, in its brown cassock, hardly suggested the young Breton noble who had ridden out to fight at Mivoie in all the splendor and opulence of arms. Robin had changed the sword for the hoe, the helmet for a basket of osiers. In lieu of cantering to the cry of trumpets over the Breton moors, he crawled across the cabbage and onion beds of the abbey of Lehon, the sun scorching his rough cassock, his nails rimmed with dirt, his sandalled feet brown with the warm earth of the garden. Here was a transfiguration that challenged the pride of the worldly-hearted.
“Pax Dei.”
Abbot Stephen crossed himself, beholding in Tiphaïne’s eyes a certain unpleased pity, as though the crawling figure of her brother had made her set the past beside the present.
Abbot Stephen looked at her steadily and smiled.
“You are offended for your brother’s sake,” he said.
Her eyes were on Robin, who had squatted on his heels to rest, and was staring vacantly into the basket half filled with weeds.
“Offended, father?”
“There is more wisdom, child, in this penance than the mere eye can see.”
She still watched Robin, an expression of poignant pity upon her face.