“Thank the saints, Jacques, that they took nothing else. Croquart’s men! The devil! And how long have they been gone?”
The man pulled the hairs in his shaggy beard.
“Maybe an hour, maybe less.”
“We saw nothing of them. They are ahead of us, eh?”
“No, lording, they went west.”
“And we rode east. Well, what do you know, anything?”
There was more hair-pulling, more screwing up of the peasant’s sleepy but cunning eyes, as though he were trying to tune his wits to Bertrand’s temper.
“I heard something, lording, of the business they have in hand.”
“You did! Tell us.”
“When they were kicking me and making me burn my own stools and table I heard Monk Hanotin talking. They are for the Vicomte de Bellière’s tower, the Aspen Tower we call it in these parts. I reckon they mean to pluck it as they plucked my poor hens.”