The one pure thing in that little chapel, TiphaÏne, stood there on the altar steps, looking down on Bertrand, the swan of silver in her hands. Behind her burned the candles, above rose the eastern window with its painted glass: azure, purple, and green. She seemed strangely high above them all, a being apart, one in whom no selfish cowardice dimmed the glow of her woman’s scorn. For the common herd, the mere pawns in the game of plunder and of war, she had no remembrance for the moment. It was at Bertrand that she looked, sternly, wonderingly, yet with a sadness that shadowed her whole face.

As for Bertrand, he stood with his sword held crosswise in his hands, his head bowed down a little, his brows contracted like a man facing a cloud of dust. He looked at TiphaÏne as though confident that he had no cause for shame, but failed in the deceit, as a man who was not utterly a blackguard should. The girl’s eyes made him feel hot from head to heel. She was so calm, so proud, so uncompromising, so pure. To Bertrand she was as a being who had stepped by magic out of a golden past. He found himself shuddering at the thought of what might have befallen her had Hopart and the rest laid their rough hands upon her body.

“Messire Bertrand du Guesclin, have you nothing to say to me?”

Bertrand was squaring his shoulders and trying to look her frankly in the face.

“We took this for the Sieur de Rohan’s place,” he said.

TiphaÏne’s eyes held his.

“How much honor is there in the excuse, messire?”

“Honor?”

“To take the castles of one’s friends, castles that have no garrisons, where the Black Death conquered before you came?”

The men and women were crowding the far end of the chapel, grinning and giggling, and not a little astonished at the way that Bertrand had his tail between his legs. It was a new thing for them to see their captain bearded, and bearded successfully, by a mere woman.

The truth was plain to TiphaÏne as she looked at the man’s sullen and silent face, and at the rough plunderers who called him leader. She had no fear either of Bertrand or his men. The plague had taught her to look on death without a tremor.

“Then you are no longer of the Blois party, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin.”

“I—madame?”

“Yes.”

He gnawed his lip, with the air of a man wishing himself saved from some merciless scourging.

“The Sieur de Rohan is for the Count of Blois.”

“It is so.”

“Therefore, messire”—and she looked down at him from her full height—“therefore—I do not understand.”

The woman Gwen, who had torn her skirts on the trunk of the tree, began to laugh and declaim:

“Lord help us, what has come to the captain? Did ye ever see such a meek gentleman?”

The men chuckled. Bertrand whipped round with a devil’s look in his eyes, and made at them, making mighty sweeps with his sword.

“Out! out!”

His wrath sobered them. There was something terrible in it, something so grim that they quailed and went back before him, pushing one against another. Few of the men were cowards, but none wished to tempt the whistling fierceness of Bertrand’s sword.

“Out! out!”

They crowded through the doorway, flinching, and covering their faces with their arms. In a minute the chapel was empty, but Bertrand still followed them. He drove them through the solar and down the stairway into the hall, thrusting Arletta out last, and barring the door. Huddling together like a flock of silly sheep, they stood gaping at the blank wall and the closed door.

Bertrand lingered a moment in the solar, listening, one hand gripping the handle of his sword, the other stroking his strong chin. It was even as though this great, grim-faced fellow, who had driven twenty men before him by sheer strength of will, shrank from facing the woman waiting for him in the chapel. After pacing the solar, he shook himself and recrossed the threshold. TiphaÏne was standing where he had left her. Her eyes looked straight at Bertrand as he moved towards her, trying not to slouch or shirk her gaze.

“Well, messire?”

She challenged him curtly with those two words. It was no mere question, but the call to an ordeal that he could not shirk.

“I am sorry—” he began.

“Sorry! That is generous—indeed! See, there lies my best friend, my dog Brunet, slashed to death by the swords of your men. My castle gate has been broken by you, my father’s house pillaged!”

Her words came quickly, yet with the clear ring of an armorer’s hammer upon steel. She was still wroth with him, and, with good reason, grieved also by the falling of his manhood into such a life.

Bertrand could not meet her eyes.

“What can I say to you, madame?”

She dropped her arm and looked at him in silence, her face aglow, her breath drawn deeply.

“Messire Bertrand! Messire Bertrand!”

The change of tone was wonderful, piercing through to the man’s heart. He hung his head, knowing too well what was passing in her mind.

“I am what I am,” he said, sullenly.

“Yet—you remember Rennes?”

“What good is it, madame, to remember what one cannot keep.”

“What good, messire! Have you, then, fallen so much from your own heart?”

He flung back his head suddenly and looked her in the face.

“Why should I shirk it?” he said. “I am what I am—a captain of free companions, a beast, a ruffian—God knows what! Where is my honor? Ask those great lords who made me what I am.”

He seemed to recover his dignity of a sudden, a dignity that, though bitter and rebellious, boasted sincerity and truth. He rested his sword-point on the floor, crossed his two hands on the pommel, and waited like a man who has thrown down the gage.

TiphaÏne stood above him on the altar steps.

“Then you have forgotten Rennes?” she said.

“I—madame?”

“How, then, should Bertrand du Guesclin have fallen to leading these poor fools to the plunder of Breton homes? I should not have dreamed it when—I was a child—at Rennes.”

Her words moved him, and he bent his head.

“Men fail—sometimes,” he said, sullenly.

“Sometimes; but you—”

“I?”

“You—who were so strong, messire; you—who feared nothing!”

He stretched out his arms before her, the sword sweeping the air.

“Before God—the whole fault was not mine!”

“And why not yours, Bertrand du Guesclin?”

“They were against me—those great captains; what was I to them?—a dog to be kicked when the meat scorched on the spit.”

“And then?”

“They took my honor from me. Was not that enough?”

“No man need lose his honor, even though the whole world calls him liar.”

He looked at her steadfastly a moment, noting her queenliness and the sadness of her eyes.

“I am what I am; the how, or why, neither mends—nor matters. Give me your commands.”

She turned to the altar, and, lifting the silver swan, held it out to him with both her hands.

“Take it, messire.”

He glanced up at her and frowned.

“Not that!”

“And yet you remember Rennes?”

He caught her meaning, and understood—to his own cost—the significance of the thing she wished.

“You strike hard, but the blows are true,” he said. “I have lost what once was mine; I acknowledge it; a man can do no more.”

He sheathed his sword and took the swan from TiphaÏne, looking at her hands and nothing else. For Bertrand there was a bitter symbolism in the scene. The few pure memories he had given to the past were flung back to him like the dry petals of a cherished flower.

He thrust the silver swan under his surcoat, so that it was held there by his belt.

“And now?”

She stood silent a moment, as though considering.

“Am I to be obeyed?”

He crossed himself.

“Before God, yes.”

He looked up at her and waited.

“These are my commands,” she said: “return your plunder; bury the two dead men—in the hall. Mend the gate that you have broken; then leave us to our liberty.”

“Here—alone?”

“I have said it.”

“But—madame!”

“Madness—you would say?”

“Only command me, and I will see you safe to Rennes, or Josselin, or Dinan.”

She was calm and determined, for she had made her plans.

“Messire, I have said it. I am not alone,” and she drew back the hangings and showed him Jehanot, cowering against the wall.

Bertrand looked at her, baffled, yet realizing that she wished to be obeyed.

“I would have had it otherwise, madame.”

“And I—had it been different.”

He turned and pointed towards Brunet’s body.

“And the hound?”

“Ah, poor Brunet, leave him; Jehanot and I will bury him. But for the rest—”

“You shall be obeyed.”

She turned suddenly, as though she had ended her meeting with him, and knelt down before the altar, her hands folded over her bosom. Jehanot was kneeling also, while from poor Brunet’s body the blood still curled across the stones. Bertrand stood motionless for a moment at the chapel door, looking at TiphaÏne as though he were being banished from light and warmth into the night. Perhaps she did not trust him. Why should she? Had he not broken the child’s faith she had kept for him from the past?

He went out into the solar and closed the chapel door. A fierce gloom had fallen on him, the gloom of a proud man who has had the cold truth flung in his face. Great God, was he so vile a fellow that TiphaÏne held the Black Death’s terror to be more merciful than his kindness? Yes, he was a beast, a bully, a common thief. Bertrand humbled himself with all the passionate thoroughness of his nature.

TiphaÏne had given him her commands. Good! He would at least show her that he could obey. Striding through the solar and down the stairs, he found his fellows still loitering in the hall. They were whispering together with the restless air of men vaguely afraid of the days before them. Some were counting money on one of the long tables, others gloating over the spoil they had taken, and making coarse jests at Bertrand’s lingering in the chapel.

Bertrand came down into the hall, his naked sword over one shoulder, his mouth set. He looked the men over with that searching stare that seemed to fix itself on every one in turn. Bertrand was in one of his silent, tight-lipped moods. The men waited, watching him and wondering what was to follow.

“Guicheaux, hither!”

The words were sharp and vicious. Guicheaux started, colored, and came forward nimbly.

“You have a silver mug under your surcoat.”

The quipster would have lied had he dared, but Bertrand’s eyes were on him.

“Come, do you hear me? Disgorge, all of you. Guicheaux, put your mug down on the floor at my feet.”

They began to murmur, to grumble, to nudge one another. Guicheaux hesitated. Bertrand’s lion’s roar set the rafters ringing.

“Come, all of you; let me have no grumbling! Hopart, you have money on you. Bring it here, I say, or, by God, I will break your neck!”

The men had seen him fierce, but never in such a mood as this before. They obeyed, grudgingly, sullenly, each man knowing Bertrand for his master, and fearing to be the first to feel his wrath. Cups, money, ewers, a silver “ship,” a rich girdle or two were lying in a heap at Bertrand’s feet. His face softened as he took the swan of silver from under his surcoat and added it to the pile of spoil.

“Men,” he said, with a keen look.

They stood watching him; no grumbling was to be heard.

“I have sought a favor from you, and you have obeyed me. I give you thanks.”

Guicheaux grinned at the coolness of the speech. He had an inveterate love of insolent address, and he could have licked Bertrand’s shoes for homage at that moment.

“Men, I have some share of plunder on the pack-horses. Divide it among yourselves. I make a gift of it.”

The change that swept over the rough faces was significant. Satisfaction succeeded surliness, and they cheered him as though he had won some great fight and driven the English into the sea.

Bertrand, who knew their hearts, held up his sword for silence. How different the applause of the fellows seemed to him from what it would have seemed an hour ago.

“Guicheaux, take ten men, find tools and timber, and repair the gate.”

Guicheaux grimaced, but prepared to see the whim obeyed.

“The rest of you go out over the moat and pile your arms in the aspen wood. We shall march as soon as the gate is mended.”

Never had Bertrand’s free companions met with such strange strategy before. To take plunder—only to return it; to break down a gate—only to rear it up again! They could make nothing of the riddle, save that the lady in the chapel had bearded Bertrand as though she had been a queen of France. They poured out from the hall, leaving Bertrand standing before the pile of metal, the silver swan glistening in the sunlight that slanted from one of the narrow windows. He stood there a long while, leaning on his sword, his face dark and expressionless, his eyes sad. At last he turned to the penance he had taken upon himself, the burying of the bodies that lay stiff under the straw.

Alone he buried them, digging a shallow grave in the orchard, while Guicheaux and his comrades hammered at the gate. There was heroism in the deed, but Bertrand hardly felt it at the moment. The responsibility was his, and he took it, lest his men should suffer.

The gate was patched and firm upon its hinges, Richard and the lad Berart stretched in their last resting-place under the apple-trees. The “free companions” had built a fire in the aspen wood, and were cooking meat and making a meal. They had joined their sagacities in unravelling the mystery of their captain’s orders, but none save the women came near discovering the truth.

“I will tell ye how it is,” and fat Gwen wiped her mouth and looked at Arletta, of whom she was jealous: “madame, yonder, was once the captain’s lady love; that is why the brave fellow looked so meek.”

Meanwhile Bertrand had passed once more into the empty hall, and was standing staring at the swan of silver crowning the untaken spoil. No sound came from the chapel, where TiphaÏne and old Jehanot kept sanctuary till the troop had gone. Bertrand was smiling sorrowfully and fingering his chin. Suddenly he took his poniard from its sheath and went to the high table on the dais. Bending over it, he carved a rude cross thereon, and, taking the swan of silver, set it on the board beside the cross.

Then he saluted the closed door of the solar and went out of the Aspen Tower to join his men.