Bertrand of Brittany. Warwick Deeping

the contention.

      “Messire de Beaumanoir, he has conquered his own father with courtesy.”

      Therewith Du Guesclin put spurs to his horse, and, cantering up to Bertrand, held out his hand to him.

      “Lad,” he said, “forgive me; I will keep your secret.”

      And they shook hands and saluted each other in the eyes of all.

      Bertrand was not kept tarrying for further rivalry. A Norman knight, Sir Guy of Lisieux, came cantering into the field, having sworn to discover the name of the man who had sent so many gentlemen hurrying out of their saddles. Bertrand took ground against him, and they were soon galloping over the smoking grass. The Norman aimed for Bertrand’s bassinet, Bertrand for Sir Guy’s shield. The spear-head struck the Breton lad full and firmly on the visor. He staggered for an instant, recovered himself, and found the cool wind playing upon his face, and his bassinet, with the laces broken, rolling behind him on the grass. As for the knight of Lisieux, he had shared the fate of his predecessors, and was lying on his back, half stunned, while his horse galloped riderless towards the barriers.

      The people were shouting and pointing to Bertrand, the ladies leaning from the galleries. All eyes were fixed upon him as he sat his horse in the middle of the field, looking round him a little sheepishly, his face aglow, his eyes turned towards the Raguenels’ benches.

      Every one was asking the same question of his neighbor.

      “Who is he?”

      “God knows! A boy.”

      “And an ugly one—to boot.”

      For a moment Bertrand appeared dazed by the thousand faces that were turned on him, the fluttering kerchiefs, the shouts and counter-shouts of the crowd. It was all strange to him, he who had been scowled into a corner and treated with contempt by his own kinsfolk. The glare of triumph puzzled him. Then, as by instinct, he picked up the bassinet on the point of his spear and rode slowly towards the place where Tiphaïne sat beside her father.

      “Bertrand!—see, it is Bertrand!”

      She sprang up, clapping her hands, her face glorious, her eyes sparkling with delight. Dame Jeanne sat like one smitten dumb, staring at Bertrand as he drew near on his cousin’s horse. No illusion flattered the good lady’s malice. It was Bertrand without doubt, Bertrand the unbeautiful, Bertrand whom she had mocked and ridiculed. Jeanne du Guesclin’s pride seemed to return with a clatter upon her head. She flushed a hot crimson as she caught Stephen Raguenel’s eye. The Vicomte was twinkling, palpably tickled at the way madame had overreached herself.

      “Bertrand!” she said, mouthing the words with hardly a sound.

      She glanced at Olivier. The sweet fellow had a scowl upon his pretty face.

      “Who would have dreamed of it?” he muttered. “Bertrand must have been praying to the devil.”

      Tiphaïne was leaning over the balustrading, clapping her hands and smiling till her eyes seemed filled with light. Bertrand had ridden close to the gallery. His face was transfigured as he lifted the bassinet to her on the point of his spear. The child took it between her hands, kissed it, and stood smiling at Bertrand, her hair turned into tawny gold by the sun.

      “Was I not right, Bertrand?” she said.

      “Yes,” he answered her, “we have earned our triumph, Tiphaïne, you and I.”

      And catching sight of Olivier’s sulky face, Bertrand burst out laughing. Tiphaïne turned and saw the reason of his mirth. Her eyes sparkled, her mouth curled with childish triumph.

      “Never look so sour, little Olivier,” she said; “some day your brother shall teach you how to play the man.”

      And thus it was that the buffoon and the beggar overset the prejudices of the mighty, and that the rough and unpolished pebble changed under Dame Fortune’s wand into a precious stone of splendor and of worth. Bertrand was crowned Lord of the Lists that day. He sat beside Jeanne de Penthièvre at supper, with Tiphaïne laughing and sharing the red wine in his cup. Before them on the board stood the swan of silver, with rubies for eyes, that Bertrand had won at the tourney. He had given it to Tiphaïne, even because she had found his soul for him, and had stood by him when others mocked.

      BOOK II

       Table of Contents

      “HOW A MAN MAY FIND HIS SOUL AGAIN”

VI

       Table of Contents

      An autumn evening, with a flare of red and gold in the west, white mists rising in the hollows, and a sky above streaked and banded with burning clouds. On every hand the rust-red slopes of a wild moor, gilded with dwarf gorse and splashed with knots of tawny bracken. Everywhere emptiness and silence, a raw and pungent solitude that seemed to welcome the coming of the night.

      Straggling along a ridge of the moor and outlined against the sky-line came a company of “spears,” with one solitary rider twenty paces in the van. The sunlight glittered on their shoulder-plates and bassinets, and beamed a last benediction on their baggage-cattle hobbling in the rear. They were rough gentlemen, shaggy and none too clean, with an air of devil’s philosophy about them that spoke of rough living and of rougher speaking.

      Several pack-horses followed the main body, and a couple of peasants, who trudged along as though they lived in constant fear of a whip or a spear-staff falling across their shoulders. Many of the riders carried sacks slung across their saddle-bows, one the carcass of a dead pig, a second a couple of stone bottles, another some half-dozen loaves of rye bread, strung together on a cord like beads. Last of all came three tired hacks, stumping along over the tough heather and ridden by three gaudily dressed women, who were laughing and chattering like starlings on a chimney. One, black of hair and black of eye, with a red mouth and a patch of color on either cheek, wore a garland of bracken, and seemed to consider herself of more worth than the others. She wore a red cloak, and a green tunic laced loosely over her plump bosom. A girdle of leather covered with gold filigree work ran about her hips, with a poniard buckled to it in a silver sheath. She was a Norman, Arletta, a smith’s daughter, and had run away from Ancenis when the French army had passed through it seven years before on the march for Nantes.

      Some twenty paces ahead of this company of vagabonds rode their captain, a man with immense shoulders, long arms, and an ugly and dogged face. His bassinet hung at his saddle-bow, his spear was slung behind him, and the shabbiness of his blue surcoat and the rust on his armor suggested that personal vanity had no great hold on him. He had a hunch of brown bread in his hand, and was munching it solemnly as he rode along, keeping an alert watch upon the darkening moor. He had thrust the last corner of the loaf into his mouth, when an outrider came cantering back towards the troop, bawling a tavern song, as though to keep himself in humor on such a raw and hungry evening. He drew near over the heather, and, saluting the man in the blue surcoat, broke at once into petulant cursing.

      “Pest on it, captain, I can see no stick of a house and not the trail of a chimney; nothing but the moor and thickets of Broceliande.”

      The man in the rusty harness received the news sullenly.

      “Ives swore he knew these parts,” he said.

      “He knows them, Messire Bertrand, about as well as he knows the inside of a missal.”

      “Then have him hided for being a liar.”

      “With a good grace, captain.”

      And, cantering off, he joined the main company, their spears black against the evening sky; and, pouncing upon one of the wretched peasants, drubbed him mercilessly till the fellow lay flat and would not move.

      Bertrand