The walls of Loudeac melted away amid the green as the Sieur de Tinteniac’s party turned eastward along the forest-way to Josselin. They had taken a Loudeac shepherd with them as a guide, for there were many branching ways amid the woods, and it was easy to go astray amid that wilderness of oaks and beeches. Tinteniac sent his two esquires forward with the three men-at-arms, the two La BelliÈre servants coming next with the mules, and TiphaÏne’s woman upon her palfrey, while Tinteniac, the tall carack of the fleet, sailed beside the Vicomte’s daughter, his shield flashing gold and gules towards the morning sun.

No healthy male is without vanity, and Tinteniac, despite the serenity of his pride, had taken some of TiphaÏne’s words to heart. It was peculiar to her, this power of hers of establishing her ideals in the minds of others—foreign gods in a foreign sanctuary. A gesture, an expression of the eyes, a few movements of the lips, and her own intensity of soul poured out its inspiration upon others. She had all the passionate enthusiasm of youth, that fine fire that will not be damped by the cynicism of experience. And yet when she spoke it was without any intrusion of prejudice or self-will. Her heart force, her peerless sincerity, gave her this influence over the world about her.

Tinteniac was not a man to be dictated to by the tongue of a mere girl, and yet there was something so compelling in TiphaÏne’s nature that he discovered himself questioning the aristocratic niceness of his opinions. It was her courage, her great-heartedness, that had struck Tinteniac from the hour he had first spoken with her in the solar at La BelliÈre. Few women would have chosen so straight a path as TiphaÏne. Her courage appeared to brush formalities aside. When trouble came she might have sat dazed beside her father in the great house at La BelliÈre, or hurried to Lehon to reproach Robin, or taken to her room and made sorrow selfish by refusing to be comforted. One clear thought appeared to have dominated her mind, the thought that a brave man had sacrificed himself, perhaps because she was Robin’s sister. Tinteniac envied Bertrand the part he had played at Mivoie.

They spoke of Robin that morning as they rode towards Josselin through the dewy woods. The Sieur de Tinteniac would have made an admirable confessor, for he had the sympathetic self-effacement of the ideal priest, with the strength and sincerity of the soldier. TiphaÏne found him easy to trust. He helped her with his knowledge of the world without uncovering her sense of humiliation and regret.

“A lively imagination may be a treacherous blessing,” he confessed to her. “I remember being saved from playing—from forgetting my manhood—once.”

“You, sire, a coward!” and she used the word that he had avoided.

“All men are human—nerve, muscle, and blood. We build up character as our monks build a church. One loose stone in the tower arch and half the place may be in ruins.”

“How did it happen?”

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes.”

And he gave her the tale without affectation and without reserve.

TiphaÏne was silent when he had ended, watching the winding woodways of the forest. She was thinking of her brother Robin, and how Tinteniac’s trial compared with his. The one man had failed in the ordeal, the other risen to greater strength above the sense of his own self-shame.

“It was, then, your mother, sire?” she said, at last.

“Yes, my mother who saved me—”

“I can understand.”

“That a man would be a miserable rat who would play the coward under his mother’s eyes.”

TiphaÏne’s silence showed that she was thinking.

“And Robin had no mother, sire,” she said; “if I had been wiser—”

“And the lad less reticent.”

“My love would have sent him like a man to Mivoie.”

Tinteniac looked ahead between the dark boles of the trees.

“It is the waiting for danger that tires the courage,” he said. “Like the sounds of wolves following at night, when one can see nothing.”

“And the wolves?”

“May be a man’s own thoughts. Most of us are brave when we plunge into peril with no time given us to think.”

Had Tinteniac been able to see five furlongs through the forest, he might have put his philosophy to the test by watching the champion of the fox’s brush cantering on the same road towards Loudeac. About them were the quiet glades and woodways of the forest, green with the glamour and the mystery of spring. Wind flowers fluttering white as swan’s-down; wild hyacinths like the dust of lapis lazuli scattered on emerald cloth; the cuckoo flower with its lilac crosslets; primroses brilliant in the green gloom of coppice and of dell. The winding glades were paved with color and arched with tremulous foliage bathed in the sunlight. Through many a green cleft could be seen the golden splendor of the gorse in bloom, the white clouds moving over the azure of the sky.

Tinteniac and TiphaÏne had loitered as they talked, and the rest of the troop, with the two esquires leading, had disappeared round the shoulder of a beech wood, the great trunks rising out of the bronze flooring of leaves to spread into a delicate shimmer of green above. In a thicket of birches to the south of the road a cuckoo was calling, while the sunlight played on the white stems of the trees.

TiphaÏne was still thinking of all that Tinteniac had told her, her eyes looking into the distance, a sad smile hovering about her mouth. The wild woods and the brown birds darting and fluttering in the brakes made her pity the poor lad who was shutting himself in Lehon against such life as this. She was roused from her reverie by the sound of men shouting on the road beyond the beech wood. TiphaÏne’s horse pricked up its ears. The birds, those spirits of the solemn woods, came scudding fast over the tree-tops.

TiphaÏne’s eyes were turned to Tinteniac’s face. His fine profile, with its alert lines, showed that he had spoken of panic with the quiet smile of a man remembering a weakness long since dead.

“Listen, they are at blows yonder. Let us push forward. Hallo, what have we here?”

Round the edge of the beech wood came the two La BelliÈre men, whipping up their horses, with TiphaÏne’s woman on her palfrey between them. Hard at their heels cantered the two baggage mules, with halters dangling, a fair omen of an unquestionable rout.

Tinteniac’s sword was up. He put his horse across the road, a hint that the La BelliÈre men seemed too scared to accept.

“Steady! steady!!”

“Fly, sire, fly—”

They were up and past, maugre the seignorial sword, Tinteniac barely escaping the indignity of being rammed by the near man’s horse. To shout at them was as useless as hallooing after a rabble of frightened sheep. TiphaÏne had caught a glimpse of her serving-woman’s scared face as she was whirled past, clinging to the saddle with both hands. The woman had opened her lips to call to her mistress, but an inarticulate cry alone came from them. The two mules went cantering past with their packs slipping down under their bellies. In the taking of ten breaths the woods had swallowed men, woman, and beasts.

Tinteniac gave a contemptuous laugh.

“It seems that I am something of a prophet. What are we to look for next?”

He was as cool as though exchanging courtesies with a guest in the great hall of his own castle. TiphaÏne saw his lips grow thin, the pupils of his eyes contract like the eyes of a hawk on the hover for a stoop. He glanced this way and that into the woods, setting his shield forward and balancing his sword.

“What do you make of it, sire?” and she matched him for composure.

“Gilles and Gilbert are fighting. Listen! They are falling back towards us. Look, who goes there?”

There was a crackling of the underwood near them, and they had a glimpse of the white face of a man pushing through the brushwood into a little glade. He seemed to see neither TiphaÏne nor the knight on the great horse. And with the flash of a helmet he was gone, the green boughs closing on him like water over a diver’s body.

Tinteniac bit his lip.

“A bad omen”—and he reached for TiphaÏne’s bridle—“that fellow of mine has taken to his heels. Perhaps he is discreet. We, too, can take cover.”

He had already dragged TiphaÏne’s palfrey half across the road, when a man in red, riding a black horse, swerved round the beech wood into the sunlight. Three others followed him at a canter, shields forward, swords out. Tinteniac saw himself caught in the open. He wheeled briskly, covering TiphaÏne with his horse.

“Keep close to me, child.”

“Thanks, sire; do not risk anything for my sake.”

He answered her with a look that it was impossible for her to parry.

Croquart drew rein when he saw nothing more terrible on the forest road before him than a knight and a lady without escort and without servants. The Fleming had taken the two esquires and their men for the advance-guard of a company pushing forward to help in the defence of Josselin. He had not waited to ask questions, but had charged without a parley, and, since the two poor youngsters had made a gallant stand against him, the Fleming had used his tusks in his hurry to break through.

The first thing that Croquart noticed was the gold and gules upon Tinteniac’s shield; the second, TiphaÏne’s figure with its gray cloak lined with crimson silk, and the glitter of her hair under the boughs of the trees. Now Croquart was one of those insufferable creatures whose vanity takes fire at the first flash of a woman’s gown. Ugly and illiterate rascal that he was, he had conceived a fashionable fury for the French romances, and had even taken to modelling his behavior upon that of their aristocratic heroes. A renegade is always doubly bitter against the party he has deserted; so Croquart, hating the past, aspired to be the gay and flamboyant gentleman, tender and irresistible to women. Hard and grim in the business of life, the sex feeling made a fool of him, even so much as to make him one of those fulsome fops who cannot refrain from displaying their feathers to the poorest draggle-tail be she beneath the age of fifty. His gaudy clothes would have seemed wasted but for the women, and his successes among the bourgeoisie had made him ambitious of flying for nobler game.

When Croquart recognized the Sieur de Tinteniac by his shield, and also saw the lady beside him with hair that took a sheen from the sun, he dropped his ferocity as though it had been his butcher’s cleaver and assumed an air which he believed to possess all the aristocratic gentleness of those sentimental heroes who never existed.

“Halt, sirs!”

He waved his men back with his sword and rode on at a trot towards Tinteniac and the Vicomte’s daughter. The spirit of ostentation pervaded even the salute he gave them.

“God’s grace to you, madame, and to you—sire. Am I to be honored by taking you as my prisoners?”

Tinteniac was trying to fathom the new-comer’s identity, for Croquart carried no proper device upon his shield.

“There has been no word spoken of surrender,” he said.

The Fleming bowed in the saddle.

“Then the Sieur de Tinteniac will honor me by meeting me with his sword.”

Tinteniac’s handsome face betrayed no hesitation.

“I am known to you, messire?”

“I remember your shield, sire. I saw enough of it at Mivoie to make me respect its master.”

“At Mivoie?”

“Certainly, sire.”

“And you—your name?”

The Fleming threw up the visor of his bassinet with the unction of a hero discovering himself at the dramatic moment. He looked at TiphaÏne as though to watch how she received the impression of his magnificence.

“Sire, I am Croquart the Fleming.”

“Croquart! So; this is fortunate.”

Tinteniac’s face could express haughtiness with the perfect calmness of the aristocrat. Croquart had more looks for the lady than for the man. He saw her color deepen a little and a peculiar shadowiness pass across her eyes.

“No doubt, sire, you have heard of me,” and the fat hand seemed to insinuate the glitter of its rings into TiphaÏne’s notice.

“The Flemish butcher-boy.”

Tinteniac’s tone had the whistle of a whip.

“Sire, William the Norman’s mother was a tanner’s daughter, and yet he became a king.”

“I said, sir, the Flemish butcher-boy.”

Croquart’s eyes gleamed for the moment like a cat’s. Tinteniac’s face roused the plebeian passion in him.

“By your grace, sire, we will see whether the Sieur de Tinteniac or the Flemish butcher-boy is the better man.”

“That, perhaps, is too great an honor.”

“An honor, sire, that my sword will compel you to confer.”

TiphaÏne looked anxiously at Tinteniac. He was but half armed, because the wounds he had won at Mivoie would not yet bear the weight of heavier harness, nor would his pride suffer him to confess the disadvantage. It was TiphaÏne who read his thoughts and said what Tinteniac would not say.

“Sire, you are but half armed, and Messire Croquart is in his battle harness.”

She glanced at the Fleming, and he felt the fearless influence of her eyes.

“Messire Croquart is gentleman enough to respect fair play.”

“Madame, you have read me right,” and he fell to her flattery without a question. “Hi, TÊte Bois”—and he climbed out of the saddle—“take off my breastplate and my cuishes. The butcher-boy of Flanders will take no man at a disadvantage. Madame, I most reverently kiss your hands.”

TiphaÏne’s heart misgave her for Tinteniac, as she watched the man TÊte Bois at work upon his master under the shadows of a great beech. The Fleming’s girth of chest and limb seemed almost monstrous when compared with Tinteniac’s Grecian stateliness. The one was like a Norman pillar, massive and ponderous, giving a sense of uncrushable strength; the other like a fluted shaft of a more decorative age, its lines the lines of well-balanced beauty, its power concealed by perfection of design. The faces of the men were as vividly in contrast as their bodies. The butcher had the face of a butcher, and, as TiphaÏne watched him, the very insolent superfluity of his strength made him appear as the champion of the brute world against the nobler ideals of the soul.

“Sire, shall we fight mounted or on foot?”

Tinteniac, with the courtly composure of an aristocrat, stood leaning on his sword.

“As you please.”

“On foot, then.”

“I am ready.”

They engaged each other on a broad strip of grass clear of the roots and the sweeping branches of the trees. Croquart had lived by his sword; the noble had drawn his only when the serenity of the seignorial honor was embroiled. From the first the Fleming had the upper hand. TiphaÏne could see his grinning mouth, the glint of his eyes as though insolently sure of his own strength. Tinteniac never flinched from him, despite his wounds, taking Croquart’s blows with shield forward and head thrown back.

In the first minute Tinteniac was wounded in the thigh; TiphaÏne could see blood on his green surcoat, but to have meddled would have been an insult that no true man would have forgiven. His own blows seemed to lack power against the Fleming’s greater bulk. He felt the wounds crack that the English had given him at Mivoie, and he was short in the wind, like a man who has been a week in bed.

Three minutes’ fighting found Croquart playing with his man. Tinteniac had not so much as flustered him. Strength and condition were all to the Fleming’s honor.

“Come, sire, surrender,” and he gave Tinteniac time to breathe.

The noble had faltered, more from faintness than from any failing of his courage. He saw TiphaÏne watching him and read the misgiving in her eyes. The pride of such a man was very sensitive. To be beaten, and to be beaten before her, by a butcher!

“Who asks for surrender?”

“In faith, sire, not I!”

“Come, then.”

And they went at it again with exuberant good-will.

An unparried blow on the right shoulder brought Tinteniac to earth at last. He struggled to his knees and tried to rise, but Croquart rolled him backward with a mere touch of the sword-point on the breast.

“Surrender, sire; I am in luck to-day.”

Tinteniac, with a last effort, turned sideways and broke his sword across his knee.

“You can take the pieces, Fleming,” and he dropped on his elbow, his face but a hand’s-breadth from the tangled grass.

A strong man’s anguish of exhaustion and defeat has some of the agony of hell in its expression, and to TiphaÏne the shock of Tinteniac’s dramatic overthrow was as vital as though he had been her brother. It wounded her woman’s pride to see this man of the finer fibre crushed at the feet of this brute mass of insolence and strength. She was out of the saddle and facing Croquart before that gentleman had had leisure to exult.

“Messire Croquart”—and her courtesy was sublime, the most perfect weapon she could have chosen—“a Tinteniac can never surrender, a woman can. We are your prisoners.”

The Fleming dropped his battle humor and made her a fat bow.

“I am at your service, madame.”

“That is well spoken, sir. There are wounds to be looked to.”

“TÊte Bois, my saddle-bag.”

The man brought it. Croquart, who, despite his undoubted courage, had a peculiar loathing for seeing his own blood flow, always carried wine, oil, and linen with him in the wars.

“Thanks, messire.”

“Madame, it is a privilege to please.”

TiphaÏne understood the possible significance of the privilege, and hated the fawning bully with all the energy of her distrust. He gave her the wine and linen with his own hands, making the exchange slowly, that he might touch her fingers and discover the color and temper of her eyes. The self-same eyes were brown and full of flashes of sunlight, flashes that made Croquart mutter “vixen” under his breath.

Tinteniac was still lying propped on one elbow and hanging his head like a man bleeding in pride as well as in body. That one of the first knights in Brittany should have been trampled under foot by a butcher-boy from Flanders was an indignity that needed superhuman courage to rescue it from contempt. And yet the fine fortitude of the man triumphed. He retrieved his respect by meeting TiphaÏne with a smile.

“You see, child, the boaster has had his beating.”

She knelt down by him, knowing how much that smile and those few words had cost him.

“It was your wounds from Mivoie.”

“Perhaps,” and he looked at his broken sword, “I am beaten for the moment. Wine and linen! My shoulder feels like a piece of red-hot iron. Child, listen,” and he spoke in a whisper, “we are in this fellow’s power.”

Croquart had turned and moved away a few paces to shout orders to his men. TiphaÏne was supporting Tinteniac’s head and holding the wine-flask to his lips. As she bent over him he continued his whisperings in her ear, taking a drink from the wine-flask between each few words.

She colored and looked at him unwillingly, yet reading the honorable purpose in his eyes.

“I know this whelp’s ways, child. You are TiphaÏne de Tinteniac. Remember. It will make for your safety.”

“But, sire—”

“Let Croquart think you are my wife.”

“I have no ring.”

“Take this.”

And the exchange was made while the Fleming’s back was turned, the circlet of gold slipping along the girl’s finger.

Croquart had turned on them, and Tinteniac’s discretion prompted him to show no temper to the Fleming. His natural serenity returned. He even smiled at Croquart as he knelt beside him.

“You have broken me, sir, and now you must help to mend me for madame, my wife—here. We had heard that you were at Pontivy.”

Croquart was busy with TiphaÏne uncovering Tinteniac’s wounded shoulder. Gilded bassinet and golden head were nearly touching. At the word “wife,” TiphaÏne felt the Fleming’s breath upon her cheek. She knew that he was looking at her, but she kept her eyes on Tinteniac’s face.

“I was at Pontivy, sire.”

“Grace de Dieu, you are everywhere. We thought the Josselin road safe to-day.”

Croquart grinned, but said nothing of his defeat.

“And my two esquires, Messire Croquart?” and Tinteniac tried not to wince as the wound smarted.

“I have sent two of my men, sire, to bury them.”

Tinteniac started, but restrained any show of feeling. He had caught the shocked pity in TiphaÏne’s eyes, and, though the poor lads were dead, he remembered for TiphaÏne’s sake the need for dissembling.

“Thanks, Messire Croquart,” he said, vowing many solemn things in his heart.

“The lads fought well, sire. It was a pity.”

“A pity, most certainly a pity. Poor Gilbert!—poor Gilles! We cannot have war, sir, without death. Madame—wife, you look troubled; leave us awhile. Messire Croquart will feel for you over these poor lads’ death.”

TiphaÏne understood him, and, rising, moved away with her face between her hands. It was no mere piece of acting, for there were tears upon her cheeks—tears of pity and of passionate impatience that all this brutal work should be done under God’s sun.

Croquart looked after her with a glint of the eyes. He noticed the fineness of her figure, despite her riding-cloak; the sweeping curves of bosom and of hips were not to be hid. He began binding up Tinteniac’s wound, thinking the while that the aristocrat had excellent taste.

“Come, my friend, let us be frank. How much do you want from me?”

Their eyes met. Croquart laughed.

“Ten thousand crowns.”

“What, sir?”

“For you, sire. Also ten thousand for madame.”

“Twenty thousand crowns!”

The Fleming’s eyes were full of cunning impudence.

“You are the Sieur de Tinteniac,” he said.

“True.”

“And courtesy would not permit you, sire, to value yourself more highly than madame—your wife.”

Tinteniac looked at his broken sword.

“Well, friend, you will have to wait.”

“Content, sire, content.”

“What road do you take us?”

“The road to Morlaix, sire. I shall join young Bamborough there.”