Bertrand frowned at him.
“Come, leave your fooling. What place is it? Do you know this valley?”
“Pardon, lording,” and Guicheaux grinned till his creased face looked longer than ever; “I left a wife here once. I should know it.”
“Get on, get on.”
“It was the Sieur de Rohan’s hunting-tower, and many a good stag has he pulled down in these thickets. He loved the place, lording, and the ladies in it. I was a beater, and yet beaten in those days, for of all the washerwomen who ever handled a mop-stick my wife was the strongest in the arm.”
The men laughed; Guicheaux had flown his jest, and smirked as he gathered up the applause.
“Your servant, sires; and, seigneurs, you will not betray me if the woman is still alive?”
“No, no, Guicheaux; she has consoled herself, or swallowed her own stick.”
Bertrand had halted his company on the edge of the wood, the great trees towering above them in their amber and green. Before them grass-land sloped, even to the thousand aspens that stood crowded about the tower. It was a desolate scene, even for Broceliande. Three days had Bertrand and his men been wandering in the forest, till they chanced upon the path that led to the Valley of Aspens.
Bertrand was smiling and stroking his chin, as though tickled by some thought that had occurred to him. He half wheeled his horse and looked keenly at the brown and wind-tanned faces drawn up before him under the trees.