I
It had always been said in the Breton lands that Sieur Robert du Guesclin was a brave man, save in the presence of that noble lady, Jeanne de Malemains, his wife.
Now Dame Jeanne was a handsome, black-browed woman with a resolute mouth and a full, white chin. The Norman apple-trees had lost their bloom, so sang the romancers, when Gleaquim by the sea had stolen her as the sunlight from Duke Rollo’s lands. The Lady Jeanne had brought no great dowry to her husband, save only her smooth and confident beauty, and the perilous blessings of a splendid pride. She had borne Sieur Robert children, fed them at her own breast as babes, and whipped them with the stern sense of her responsibility heavy in her hand. It was well in those days for a wife to watch strong sons growing into manhood about her husband’s table. One fist the more, and the surer was the mother’s honor when enemies might speak with her good man at his gate.
Proud, lovely, and masterful, the Lady Jeanne had looked to see her majesty repeated in her children. It had been but the legitimate and expectant vanity of a mother to dower her first-born with all the grace and beauty of a Roland. Poor dame, the thing had seemed as ugly as sin when it first kicked and squalled in her embroidered apron; bristling hair, a pug of a nose, crooked limbs, skin like a pig’s! Every passing month had brought the brat into more obvious disfavor. Its temper appeared as ugly as its body. It would bite and yell with a verve and fierceness that made the nurse vow it was an elf’s child, a changeling, or some such monstrosity. The Lady Jeanne had grieved, prayed to the saints, and yet been at a loss to discover why her motherhood should have been shamed by such a child.
Years passed, and still mother and son were no better accorded. Jeanne, proud lady, had no joy or pleasure in her eldest child. His ugliness increased: he was wild as a passage hawk, rebellious, passionate, yet very sullen. The younger children went in terror of him; the servants felt his fists and teeth; he fought with the village lads, and came home bloody and most whole-heartedly unclean. Sieur Robert might break many a good ash stick over Master Bertrand’s body. His mother might storm, scold, clout, and zealously declaim; the ugly whelp defied her and her gentlewomen. He had no more respect for a lady than for Huon, the miller, whose apples he stole, and whose son he tumbled into the mill-pool.
Poor Jeanne du Guesclin! The fault was with her pride—and with no other virtue. She could not love the child, and nature, as though in just revenge, mocked with the clumsiness of the son the vanity of the mother. Young Bertrand was starved of all affection. His very viciousness was but a protest against the indifference of those who made him. Cuffed, chided, sneered at, he grew up like a dwarfed and misshapen oak that has been lopped unwisely by the forester’s bill. He was slighted and ignored for Olivier, the second son, whose prettiness atoned with Jeanne for her first-born’s snub nose and ugly body. It was Olivier whom the mother loved, the sleek and clean-faced Jacob ousting poor Esau into the cold. Often Bertrand rebelled. The good child would come snivelling to his mother with a wet nose and a swollen cheek.
“See what Bertrand has done to me!”
The sneak! And Bertrand—well, he would be cuffed into the dark cellar under the solar floor, and be left there with bread and water to meditate on the beauty of motherly affection. And yet within a week, perhaps, sweet Olivier would boast another bloody nose, and the whole process be repeated.
Such was Bertrand’s upbringing, with all the fierce instincts pampered in his heart, all the gentler impulses chilled and stunted for lack of love. Bertrand’s figure was a slur on the Du Guesclin shield. He had no manners and no graces, and loved to herd with the peasant lads, and wrestle with ploughmen rather than listen to the romances of chivalry at his mother’s knee. While Olivier had the adventures of Sir Ipomedon by heart, and knew the lays of Marie de France, his brother Bertrand robbed orchards and used his fists, growing into a brown-faced, crab-legged young rascal who looked more like a peasant’s child than the son of Jeanne the Proud of Normandy.