He smote his heels into Yellow Thomas’s ribs, and, waving his hand to Tiphaïne, went cantering over the meadows towards the town. The child watched him till he had almost reached the walls, and then, turning, she went back slowly up the stairway, and creeping close to her father, clasped her hands about his arm.
“Well, what of Bertrand?”
“Wait and see,” quoth Tiphaïne, with an air of mystery, gazing defiantly at Dame Jeanne.
Bertrand rode into the nearest gate, and, meeting two esquires with fresh horses for Sir Ives de Cadoudal and Sir Geoffrey de Spinefort, hailed them and inquired whether they knew where Olivier de Manny lodged. Bertrand’s rough exterior seemed to amuse the young gentlemen not a little. They gave him the news he needed, however, and disappeared under the arch of the gate, laughing together at “the black brigand on the yellow horse.”
Olivier de Manny’s hostel stood in a narrow street branching from the cathedral close. Bertrand recognized the sign the two esquires had described to him, a large gilt buckle on the end of a beam. Dismounting and hitching Yellow Thomas’s bridle over a hook in the door-post, he plunged into the guest-room on the ground floor, and found his cousin sitting in a carved chair with a cup of Muscadel beside him on the table. Olivier de Manny was using the empty guest-room as his robing-chamber. His heavy tilting bassinet and vambraces lay on the table, and a servant was kneeling and unbuckling the greaves from off his master’s legs.
“Olivier, lend me your armor and a horse.”
De Manny looked up in astonishment, and recognized in the half-threatening and dogged-faced pleader his cousin from Motte Broon.
“Bertrand, what brings you to Rennes?”
“Ask me no questions, but lend me your armor and a horse.”
“St. Ives, my dear coz, why should I grant you so great a favor?”