Bertrand looked at him, and then rolled the fellow backward with a thrust of the foot.
“Stand up, fool!” he said, sharply. “Stand up—like a man! Guicheaux, give him twenty cuts with your belt. We will let him off easily. Next time it shall be the rope.”
They took Pierre, stripped his back, and trounced him till the blood flowed. It was Arletta who pleaded with Bertrand for the lad, and saved him ten strokes out of the twenty, for Guicheaux would have beaten him till he fainted. They piled wood on the fires and retethered the horses, for there would be no more sleep for the free companions that night. Squatting round the fire, they talked and gossiped together, and shouted songs to frighten the wolves.
As for Bertrand, he lay his head on Arletta’s knees, staring at the flames, and listening to the howling of the beasts as they still padded round them in the darkness. He was thinking again of Tiphaïne, of the counsel she had given him, and of the cross he had cut on the high table with his poniard. What would she make of his remorse if she could see him lying with his head in Arletta’s lap? And yet the girl was as loyal as a dog, patient and gentle when her jealousy had no prick of passion.
Bertrand, as he lay, felt her hands upon his forehead.
“Sleep, lording,” she said, as she bent over him. “Nothing can harm you while I am watching.”
XI
They had been on the march an hour next morning, following the winding forest ways under Guicheaux’s guidance, when Hopart and several others who held the van came plump upon a couple of peasants squatting beside a miserable fire. In the centre of a clearing stood a rude hut built of logs and thatched with whin and heather. The grass was all trampled and muddy about the place, as though a number of horses had been tethered for the night.
At the first glimpse of the free lances and Hopart’s red face under its iron war-hat, the men by the fire skipped up like rabbits and bolted for the woods. The free companions gave chase, hallooing to the peasants to stop, and spattering them with maledictions as they still continued to run. The slimmer of the two gained the undergrowth and dived into it like a bird into a bush. Hopart, however, came thundering down on the other, who was lumbering along on a lame leg, toppled him over by thrusting his spear between his knees, and, rolling from the saddle, had the gentleman in hand. He was a stupid, hairy-faced clod, with a pendulous lower lip and a scar across one cheek. They brought him to Bertrand, who had ridden in with Arletta, and set him in the midst before the captain’s horse.
Bertrand, who had been struggling with his conscience since the rising of the sun, looked round the clearing, noticed the trampled grass, and promptly fell to questioning the lame boor Hopart had brought to earth.