“Bertrand!”
Her tones were sharp, hard, and incisive. The lad nodded, slouching his shoulders, and looking surly and ill at ease.
“Bertrand, can you serve or carve at table?”
“No.”
“Can you sing or play the lute, dance, or make courtly speeches?”
“No.”
“Can you amuse a great lady?”
“No.”
“Where are your fine clothes, your armor, and your horse?”
“Mother, you know I have none.”
Dame Jeanne’s eyes were fixed with a malicious glitter upon his face. She knew how to crush the lad, to sting into him the realization of his unfitness for the polite pageantry of life.
“Listen to me, Bertrand: you will never make a gentleman.”
He winced, and looked at his mother sulkily under his heavy brows.
“How can such as you mix with the lords and ladies of France and Brittany—you, who herd with ploughboys and scuffle with scullions? Bah, you fool! they would only laugh at you at Rennes, and take you for a groom who had sneaked in from the stables! Go to Rennes, indeed—to Jeanne de Penthièvre’s wedding! Who ever heard such nonsense! Where are your manners, Messire Bertrand? Where are your fine clothes, your airs and graces? Where are you going to find a horse? No, no; the honor and fortune of the family must be remembered.”
Bertrand stood gnawing his finger nails in humiliation. He knew that he was ugly, rough, and violent, and he half suspected that his mother’s words were true. And yet what chance had she ever given him to show his mettle? He had been the spurned dog since he could remember.
“Well, Bertrand, what have you to say to me?”
“Nothing,” he growled, hanging his head and staring at the grass.
Suddenly, as though to end the lad’s torture, there came the cry of a trumpet from the road across the meadows. Dame Jeanne heard it, and turned her head. Sieur Robert had risen from the seat, and climbed the stairway leading from the garden to the solar. He looked out over the palisading above the moat towards the meadows, sheeted in the sunlight like cloth of gold.
“The banner of the De Bellières!” he cried, beckoning to his wife. “Come, Jeanne, leave the lad; we must be ready to make them welcome.”
II
Bertrand did not follow his mother, but stood watching her as she crossed the garden, the evening sunlight shining on her gown of yellow sarcenet. He saw her halt for a moment, and glance up at the window of the solar that overlooked the garden. Olivier was leaning out over the sill, waving his cap, and watching the Vicomte de Bellière’s company as it wound along the road through the meadows. Bertrand knew that Dame Jeanne was smiling at Olivier—smiling at him in that fond, proud way that Bertrand had never known.
He slunk away behind the trees, for Olivier was calling to him from the window.
“Hi! Bertrand, old bandy-legs! What will you do for a new surcoat? Here are the De Bellières on their way to Rennes! You had better hide among the grooms when you come in to supper!”
The younger lad had a spiteful tongue, and the wit to realize that he held his brother at a disadvantage. Of old Bertrand would have broken out into one of his tempests, but he had learned the uselessness of avenging himself upon Olivier.
He retreated behind the yew-trees, and, going to a palisading that topped the moat, stood watching the Vicomte de Bellière’s company flashing towards the château. Poor Bertrand, he had set his heart on going to Rennes! Had not his old aunt Ursula, at Rennes, persuaded her husband to give the lad a spear and a coat of mail! By stealth Bertrand had built himself a rough quintain in a glade deep in the woods about the castle. Many a morning before the sun was up he had sneaked into the stable, harnessed his father’s horse, and ridden out with spear and shield to tilt at the quintain in the woods. Old Hoel, the gate-keeper, who was fond of the lad, had winked at the deception. And then as the sun came glittering over the woods, and the grass gleamed with the quivering dew, Bertrand would thunder to and fro on Sieur Robert’s horse, grinding his teeth, and setting the quintain beam flying round like a weather-cock in a squall.
Great bitterness overcame Bertrand’s heart that evening. He knew that he was of no great worth in the eyes of his father and Dame Jeanne, but he had never fully grasped the truth that they were ashamed of him because he was their son. Olivier was all that a vain mother might desire—pert, pretty, straight in the limbs, with a fleece of tawny hair shining about his handsome face. Bertrand supposed that it was an evil thing to be ugly, to be the possessor of a snub nose and a pair of bandy legs.
And yet he could have loved his mother had she been only just to him. What had driven him to herding and fighting with the peasant lads? The Lady Jeanne’s indifference—nay her too candid displeasure—at his presence in the house. What had made him rough and sullen, shaggy and obstinate, violent in his moods and uncertain in his temper? His mother’s sneers, her haughty preference for Olivier—even the way she shamed him before the servants. Bertrand believed that they wished him dead—dead, that Olivier might sit as their first-born at their table.
All these bitter thoughts sped through Bertrand’s heart as he leaned against the palisading, and watched the line of horses nearing his father’s house across the meadows. There was the Vicomte’s banner—a blue chevron on a silver ground—flapping against the evening sky. Stephen de Bellière rode a great gray horse all trapped in azure with silver bosses on the harness. Beside him, like a slim pinnacle towered over by the copper-clad steeple, for the Vicomte’s armor and jupon were all of rusty gold, rode a little girl mounted on a black palfrey, her brown hair gathered into a silver caul. On the other side, a boy, young Robin Raguenel, cantered to and fro on a red jennet. Behind the Vicomte came two esquires carrying his spear and shield, and farther still some half a dozen armed servants, with a rough baggage-wagon lumbering behind two black horses. The little girl had a goshawk upon her wrist, and two dogs gambolled about her palfrey’s legs.
Bertrand watched them, leaning his black chin upon the wood-work, and waxing envious at heart over a pomp and glamour that he could not share. The Vicomte’s horse-boys were better clad than he. And as for Stephen Raguenel, he seemed to Bertrand, at a distance, a very tower of splendor. To boast such a horse, such arms, and such a banner! The Vicomte must be a happy man. So thought Bertrand, as he gnawed his fingers and beat his knee against the fencing.
Robert du Guesclin and the Lady Jeanne had come out from the gate-house, and were standing at the head of the bridge to welcome their guests. Dame du Guesclin had her arm over Olivier’s shoulder. They were laughing and talking together, and the sight of it made poor Bertrand wince. He turned away with an angry growl, and, sitting down on a bench under an apple-tree, leaned his head against the trunk, stared at the sky, and whistled.
Half an hour passed, and the Vicomte and his two children had been taken into the hall to sup. Bertrand could hear the grooms and servants chattering in the stable-yard as they rubbed down the horses. From the hall came the sound of some one playing on the cithern. Bertrand could see the window to the west of the dais from where he sat, alive with light as with the flare of many tapers. He heard Olivier’s shrill laugh thrill out above the cithern-playing and the rough voices in the yard. They were very merry over their supper; nor did they miss him. No. He was nothing in his father’s house.