It was curious to watch Jeanne du Guesclin’s eyes change their expression—like water that seems hardened by the passing of a cloud.
“Remember, you have taken Bertrand’s place,” she said.
“Poor Bertrand!” and he showed his teeth; “if Beaumanoir catches him, he will most assuredly be hanged.”
“Let them hang the traitor. I can have no pity for a turncoat and a coward.”
Tiphaïne was in her brother’s room, looking through the hundred and one things that had belonged to Robin: his whips and hunting-spears; the jesses, hoods, and gloves he had used in hawking; a few books; a great press full of perfumed clothes. On a peg by the window hung the surcoat that Bertrand had worn at Mivoie. The room was much as the lad had left it on the night of his flight to the abbey of Lehon. None of the servants had dared to touch the room. The care of all these treasures of a young man’s youth had been left to Tiphaïne like some sacred trust.
It was in this room that Girard found her, kneeling before the great carved chest, her brother’s helmet in her lap. She was burnishing the armor that Robin should have worn at Mivoie, and whose sheen displayed the scars gotten from the English swords. The light from the window fell across her figure as she knelt, her hair aglow, her eyes deep with the pathos of the past.
“Madame.”
To Girard it seemed that she had been praying, and perhaps weeping, over her brother’s arms. His voice startled her, for she had not heard the opening of the door.
“Girard?”
The old man bowed to her as she rose with Robin’s helmet in her hands.