Bertrand, in no mood for their rough pleasantries, had drawn apart towards what had been the dais. The hall was full of smoke and the stench of cooking, while through the shutterless windows the bats flew squeaking in and out. He sat on a worm-eaten bench, bread and dried meat from a wallet on his knees, a pilgrim’s bottle, with a strap through the handles, hanging from a peg in the wall. He had his sword lying naked on the bench beside him, for he was ever forearmed against the fellows who followed him. Any one of them when drunk would have used his poniard against the pope.
Bertrand was under a cloud that night. He looked grim and heavy about the eyes as he watched the fellows at their food, tearing the meat with their knives and stuffing their fingers into their mouths. What rough beasts they were! Bertrand was no courtier, but even he discovered some disgust at the men who called him “brother.” Arletta sat alone against the wall, crumbling a piece of bread and watching Bertrand with her restless eyes. The other two women were of the same temper as the men. They chattered, gobbled, wiped their mouths on the backs of their hands, hiccoughed, drank, and swore. Presently one of them stood up to sing. She was hot in the head, and her gown had been slit from the neck by the hand of one of the rough fellows who had been romping with her by the fire. She stood up, giggling and leering, a streak of grease upon one cheek. It was a low and bawdry ballad that she sang, one of the loose catches popular with the begging musicians who bawled in the common taverns. She felt no shame in the singing of it, and the men applauded her, hardly ceasing masticating to shout for more.
Bertrand grew weary of the scene—this poor drab with a dirty kirtle showing under her red gown, her face flushed and coarsened, her cheap trinkets shining in the light of the fire. He picked himself up from the bench, took his sword with him, and went out into the darkness of the yard. The men would probably be drunk before midnight; it was useless to meddle with them, and some one must needs keep guard.
A young moon was sinking in the west, and all about the ruined house rose the outstanding beech-trees of Broceliande. Their autumn panoply of gold was masked under the thousand stars, and even, the black slopes of the moor spread like a strange and night-wrapped sea. No wind was moving. In the manor court grass was growing ankle deep, and weeds and brambles flourished everywhere. The night air was sweet and pure after the sweat and beat of the crowded hall.
Bertrand stood leaning on his sword, his eyes fixed on the dim outline of the moor. A savage discontent was at work in him that night, a fierce melancholy that lay heavy upon his shoulders. The past rose up and spoke to him, spoke to him like some fair girl who had known neither sin nor shame. Purity and honor, what was he that he should think of such things? Had he not lost all the pride of life, that emulative madness that turns men into heroes? He was a thief, a bully, the lover of loose women, and for months he had been content to be nothing more. And yet the old youth cried in him at times, and a child’s face haunted him, half lost in a mist of shimmering gold. He remembered the pride he had taken in his armor, the nobleness he had striven for, the brave creed he had cherished. Great God, how he had changed since he had plucked Tiphaïne a white May-bough in the meadows at Motte Broon! She would be a woman now, and a great lady, and no doubt she had forgotten him, even as he had almost forgotten her.
There was a rustling of feet in the rank grass growing about the door. A hand touched Bertrand on the shoulder. He started, glanced round, and saw the girl Arletta standing by him.
“Lording,” she said, still touching him with her hands, “I am tired, and the beasts are drunk; they frighten me.”
Bertrand frowned and put away her hands.
“Let me be, Letta,” he said.
The girl was peering at him, her eyes dark and questioning; but there was no smell of wine upon her breath.
“See, lording, I have not touched the bottle. There is a room above; I have been there; there is dry bracken to make a bed.”
She tried to lay one hand upon his shoulder and to lean against him, but Bertrand shook her off and would not look into her face.
“I must keep watch,” he said. “Go up, child, and sleep.”
“You are wrath with me?”
“No, no; let me be, Arletta. I tell you I have the black-dog on my shoulders.”
She drew away from him, half fierce, half humbled, and, sitting down on the threshold, drew her skirts about her and curled herself against the door-post. Bertrand still leaned upon his sword. He paid no heed to the girl as she lay and watched him, jealously, yet with some of the homage of a dog within her eyes.
Bertrand turned on her at last, almost with an oath.
“Go up and sleep.”
She shivered, but did not stir.
“Lording, what is good enough for you is good enough for your servant.”
Bertrand tore his cloak from his shoulders and threw it to her, peevishly.
“Take it; cover yourself up.”
“But, lording—”
“Cover yourself up, I say! Am I to let you catch your death cold because you are a little fool?”
Arletta took the cloak and wrapped it about her body. Bertrand began to pace the court, his steel clogs ringing on the stones, his sword slanting over his shoulder. And thus they passed the night together, Bertrand on guard, the girl sleeping upon the threshold.
VII
In the deeps of the forest of Broceliande stood a castle known in those parts as the Aspen Tower, from the trees that grew about the moat. The Lord of Tinteniac, who had held it long in fee, had surrendered it to the Sieur de Rohan in exchange for a manor near the western sea. The Sieur de Rohan had used the castle as a hunting-tower till some grim thing had happened in the place and a woman’s blood had dyed the flagstones of the chapel. The chattering aspens, the black moat, the rolling leagues of dark Broceliande had worked upon De Rohan’s conscience and smitten him with a dread of the lonely place. He had offered it to Stephen Raguenel, to whom he owed a certain favor. The Vicomte had taken it gladly, and garrisoned and regarnished the Aspen Tower when the Blois and Montfort wars began.
The aspen leaves were turning to gold, and their melancholy whisperings seemed to fill the valley, as though all the ghosts within Broceliande were flitting and shivering about the tower. The broad moat lay black and stagnant, reflecting the tall trees, streaked here and there with sunlight and dappled with showers of falling leaves. Though the sun was at noon, mists were hanging about the forest, a haze of faint gold dimming the red splendor of the beeches and the tawny magnificence of the oaks. A damp and melancholy stillness weighed upon the valley; even the trees seemed cold, as their gorgeous samites fluttered to decay.
There was something that suggested tragedy in the loneliness of the castle with its walls reflected in the black water and the woods rising like flame beyond its battlements. The spirit of autumn seemed to breathe in it, the spirit of sadness and of death, of mystery and of shadow. The gate was closed, the bridge up, the great grid, with its iron teeth, resting on the stones. No life stirred in the place. Nothing told that there were folk within save one thin plume of smoke that climbed feebly into the air.
Sadness and the sighing of the aspen-trees! Black water, mist-drenched grass, towering woodlands desolate under the blue! A melancholy that might have seemed beautiful had not the place been cursed with something more than sorrow! Such silence, such emptiness! The Black Death had supped in the Aspen Tower. That was why the place seemed terrible.
Many years had passed since the tournament at Rennes, and as for Tiphaïne of the May-bough—well, Bertrand would hardly have remembered her as she bent over the fire in the lord’s solar and stirred some concoction of herbs and wine