Tiphaïne turned her face away, her right hand caressing Dame Jake’s head, her left fingering the moss and lichen on the stone.
“But you will come to Rennes,” she said, suddenly. “You are braver than Olivier. I don’t like Olivier; he is a conceited fellow.”
Bertrand stood twisting the bridle round his wrist.
“I am eighteen,” he said, “and there is no man here—nor in Rennes, for that matter—who can wrestle with me. But I have no armor and no clothes.”
“Are you ashamed, Bertrand?”
“Ashamed!” and he flushed. “I would fight any man who made a mock of me.”
Tiphaïne held out her hand to him, looking up steadily into his face.
“I like you, Bertrand,” she said; “you are strong, and you can tell the truth. I will speak to Madame Jeanne—no, I will go to Sieur Robert.”
Bertrand stared at her in blank astonishment.
“You, Tiphaïne!”
The child seemed perfectly sure of her own dignity, though there was no ostentation in her confidence.
“If I ask your father, he will give you a horse.”
“Yellow Thomas, perhaps.”
“Who is Yellow Thomas?”
“The old cart-horse,” quoth Bertrand, with a grin.
Mistress Tiphaïne was as good as her word, and the child’s serene lovableness made her a power even at the age of seven. When the trumpet blew for dinner that morning, and the Vicomte and Sieur Robert had washed their hands in the basin that young Olivier carried, Tiphaïne set herself before Du Guesclin at the high table, and held out her hands to him across the board.
“Messire, I—Tiphaïne Raguenel—would ask of you a boon.”
Du Guesclin’s sleepy but good-tempered face beamed with amusement as he looked into the child’s eyes.
“Well, Lady Tiphaïne, I grant it you without a bargain.”
Tiphaïne spoke out calmly, with a slight deepening of the color on her warm brown cheeks.
“Bertrand must come to Rennes with me.”
“Bertrand!”
“Yes, messire, for I have chosen him my bachelor.”
IV
The bells pealed in Rennes, and the narrow streets were hung with banners and with tapestry, gay squares of color falling from the windows, making the old town blaze like some magic forest in autumnal splendor. The Mordelaise gate had been covered with May-boughs, and the streets strewn with rushes and with flowers. Duke John had ridden into the town with Charles of Blois—that lean and godly youth—beside him, and all the Breton nobles and seigneurs at his back. There were the Rohans, the Châteaubriants, the Beaumanoirs, and many score more, the bishops of the seven sees, the great abbots, and even Jean de Montfort from Laval. Jeanne de Penthièvre was lodged in the abbey of St. Melain within the town, and already her ladies were about her with the bridal silks and jewels, ready to braid her hair for the wedding mass in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
By ten the wedding mass was over, and the lords of Brittany had sworn fealty to Charles of Blois as heir to the duchy on Duke John’s death. By noon the feasting was over also, and the whole town went crushing and elbowing to the meadows without the walls, where the tournament was to be held in honor of Charles and of Jeanne de Penthièvre, his lady. Many pavilions were pitched in the meadows, and there was a brave clanging of clarions, and a fluttering of pennons and streamers in the wind. The green fields were swamped with color, a carpet of green and gold checkered with scarlet, azure, and white. Hither came the Sieur de Rohan and his company, yonder Olivier de Clisson, with his wife, Jane de Belleville, at his side. (Poor lady, she would remember Rennes when she avenged her husband’s death with blood, and saw Galois de la Heuse, with his eyes torn out, writhing in agony at her feet.) The Sieur de Beaumanoir was to be the Marshal of the Lists that day. He and the heralds were already at their posts, waiting for the gentry to take their places in the galleries. Duke John and Charles of Blois, with Jeanne de Penthièvre and her ladies, were seated on the dais that had been built under a canopy of purple cloth. Charles had the arms of Brittany embroidered upon his surcoat, the fatal minever, that was to bring him death at the battle of Auray.
The Raguenels and the Du Guesclins had held together in Rennes, dining together at the Duke’s house and riding in one company through the streets. And now the Vicomte, who was fat and too lazy to joust, had established himself with the Lady Jeanne at the southern end of the great gallery and near to the pavilion of the Sieur de Rohan. Robin Raguenel and Tiphaïne were beside their father, while Olivier lolled over the balustrade and grumbled at his mother because she had implored him not to join his father in the tilting, and he, noble fellow, had sacrificed his prowess to her fears. Messire Olivier was just sixteen. He looked a handsome slip of a lad in his embroidered surcoat and with his mother’s jewels in his cap. He had been striving to win Tiphaïne’s favor from his brother, chiefly because he was jealous that any creature should set Bertrand above himself. As for Tiphaïne, she had no patience with the fop, but sat very quiet beside her father, looking a little shy and sad.
And what of Bertrand? Bertrand was walking Yellow Thomas to and fro at a good distance from the crowd, gnawing at his finger nails, and cursing himself in that he had been fool enough to come to Rennes. It had been one long moral martyrdom for the lad, an ordeal that had tried his patience to the core. His kinsfolk were ashamed of him; he had known that from the first. Nor had it mended matters when some of the ribalds in the streets of Rennes had singled him out for their taunts and jeers, and belabored him with mockery till the lad had been ready to weep.
“Ho, for the lad on the primrose horse!”
“Did ye ever see a prettier face, messieurs?”
“Mother of Mercy! Why, he’ll frighten the old cathedral out of the town, and she’ll go and split herself in the meadows!”
Poor Bertrand. He had caught Olivier’s savage sneer when certain of the young grandees had seen fit to jest at dinner at the shabbiness of Bertrand’s clothes. Sieur Robert had looked as though his shoes pinched him; nor could Bertrand forget the gleam of resentment in his mother’s eyes. Even Tiphaïne’s companionship had galled the lad’s pride, for it was bitter for him to see her share his shame.
Thus Bertrand walked Yellow Thomas to and fro over the grass, keeping at a distance from the lists, and eating out his heart with wrath and humiliation. His ears still tingled with the jeers of the ribalds and the insolent persiflage of the smart bachelors and gaudy squires. What a blind fool he had been to come to Rennes! Yet if only he had a horse and harness he would show these butterflies that he could fight. And Tiphaïne? Surely Tiphaïne must be laughing at him with the rest. Perhaps she had been mocking him all the while, and yet—no—even in his anger he could not suspect the child of that.
Already the tilting had begun in the lists. Bertrand could hear the thunder of the horses, the crackling of the spears, the loud shouts of the crowd, the braying of the trumpets. He was alone in the deserted meadow, for even the grooms and horse-boys had crowded to see the play, and the press was thick about the barriers. Pride and a fierce eagerness to watch the spear-breaking warred together in Bertrand’s heart. He edged Yellow Thomas nearer to the lists, and, gaining boldness as no one heeded him, he drew towards the southern end of the gallery, where hung the Vicomte de Bellière’s shield.
The Lord of Clisson and Sir Hervè de Leon had just run a course, and were taking new spears from the squires who served them. Bertrand’s face kindled at the sight. He pushed his nag closer to the crowd, watching everything that passed with the alertness