“You will come to us at Cancale?”
The words were half whispered, but Bertrand heard them, and felt all that was passing in Jeanne du Guesclin’s heart.
“Mother, you can command.”
He saw her draw a deep and hurried breath, and felt her grasp tighten upon his hand. Her eyes, full of the stormy instincts of a woman’s soul, betrayed a half-hunger for something that she could not name.
“Then—you will come? I ask it.”
“Yes.”
“Thanks. You are generous—more generous than I deserve.”
Thus far her pride would bend itself, and Bertrand, as he helped her to the saddle, felt her hand close again spasmodically on his. He knew the iron of his mother’s will, and understood how much those few words meant.
He walked beside her to the gate. And there, like a woman whose true instincts break through the ice of years, she looked long at him, and touched his forehead with her hand.
“Do not forget us at Cancale.”