“Lord help us, what has come to the captain? Did ye ever see such a meek gentleman?”
The men chuckled. Bertrand whipped round with a devil’s look in his eyes, and made at them, making mighty sweeps with his sword.
“Out! out!”
His wrath sobered them. There was something terrible in it, something so grim that they quailed and went back before him, pushing one against another. Few of the men were cowards, but none wished to tempt the whistling fierceness of Bertrand’s sword.
“Out! out!”
They crowded through the doorway, flinching, and covering their faces with their arms. In a minute the chapel was empty, but Bertrand still followed them. He drove them through the solar and down the stairway into the hall, thrusting Arletta out last, and barring the door. Huddling together like a flock of silly sheep, they stood gaping at the blank wall and the closed door.
Bertrand lingered a moment in the solar, listening, one hand gripping the handle of his sword, the other stroking his strong chin. It was even as though this great, grim-faced fellow, who had driven twenty men before him by sheer strength of will, shrank from facing the woman waiting for him in the chapel. After pacing the solar, he shook himself and recrossed the threshold. Tiphaïne was standing where he had left her. Her eyes looked straight at Bertrand as he moved towards her, trying not to slouch or shirk her gaze.
“Well, messire?”
She challenged him curtly with those two words. It was no mere question, but the call to an ordeal that he could not shirk.
“I am sorry—” he began.