Brothers-in-Arms

by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur

 

Brothers-in-Arms
A Complete Novelette
^by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur
Author of “Vengeance,” “The Black Thief,” etc.

IT HAS been told how Henry Plantagenet, lord of northern France from Seine of the sea, wedded Aliénor of Aquitaine, and with her won the better part of the south, with its fine towns and fiery fighting men. But how the thing came about makes a better tale, in which Cercamon the troubadour and Pierre Faidit, his friend, played perilous parts.

The two comrades sat in Pierre's chamber, high in the keep of Chinon West Castle, just under the fat bulge of the battlements. Pierre gazed moodily down upon the steep red roofs of the town and the sun-washed plain beyond, through which the broad Vienne wound in gracious contours. Through the one embrasure the April light filtered scantily in past his broad shoulders, and struck fire from the angry eyes of the troubadour.

“It is a graceless thing,” Cercamon cried, “with no good in it!”

Pierre shrugged, and was silent, chewing his bitter thoughts. For some time neither spoke again, their thoughts grappling with the strange things that had happened this fortnight past.

It was 1152, in an early, lush spring; and Henry Plantagenet had moved his court from Caen in the north to Chinon in mellow Touraine. No sooner were his orders given than messengers—swift, secret messengers—stole off by night to take the news where it would be most valued: to London and to Paris. Stephen of England, whose crown Henry claimed, was surprized and joyous at the tidings, having expected his foe to use the fine spring weather for a swift stroke at the Channel ports; but Louis of France ceased to sleep of nights.

Count of Anjou and lord of Maine, Duke of Normandy and Brittany, master of Touraine, Henry Plantagenet coveted a yet wider realm. Being well served, and possessed of the huge frame and dominating temper of his race, he stood every chance of getting what he wanted. It was the full knowledge of these things that made King Stephen bless the Saints when Henry's spears were removed far south of the Channel—and the same knowledge made Louis VII curse the day he had wasted the strength of France in a futile crusade.

In Henry's own court there were those who guessed much, and shrewdly, concerning this journey to Chinon. For not only princes, but barons, had their spies out, knowing that this year was big with the fate of Europe. Every man who boasted noble blood and had swords to fight for him waited on events to fling himself into the mad scramble for lands and power; every prince watched his barons, fearing to read the treachery he suspected in their hearts.

But though some guessed why Henry left the coast across from England just when all was ripe for a second conquest of the island, few were right. For all his youth, his wild Plantagenet temper and his boisterous ways, Henry kept his plans close in his own red head, letting the world whisper itself hoarse.

His brother Geoffrey—a precocious, handsome lad, whom men liked as much as he liked women—was by turns sullen and feverishly excited, ripe for rebellion. He had asked Henry for Touraine and Anjou, and had received only three castles, including the double stronghold of Chinon. Now Henry was his guest in Chinon, and Geoffrey found himself unable to give commands even in his own house. But he, too, was a Plantagenet, ready to take what was re- fused him. Only Henry had brought three times as many men as Geoffrey could muster. So Geoffrey went about, very softly, making friends of dangerous men. By the time the beeches had opened their vivid leaves the soft April air was sultry with conspiracy. The ladies were discontent, for their lovers deserted them to mutter together in corners, or to grind their swords.

All this was bad enough, but to Cercamon the troubadour it was not the worst. Pierre, his dearest friend, his brother-in-arms, had lost the duke's favor. Cercamon himself still kept his place of honor at Henry's table, received generous largesse whenever it pleased him to lift his perfect voice in song and was courted by all who desired the ducal smile; but all this was less than nothing beside the injustice that had been done his friend. Pierre took it well, which but made Cercamon the bitterer.

“Why? Why?” he cried for the fiftieth time. “What have you done to displease him?”

Pierre twisted his big shoulders.

“Nothing. But it is his will.”

“Bah! He is a petulant boy, this duke!” Cercamon was angry, his blue-green eyes blazing in his hot, handsome face.

“Has he forgotten all you have done to serve him? Does he not know it is to you, no less than to Thomas Becket, that he owes his strength in England? Have you not risked your life for him a thousand times, ay, and saved his?”

Pierre got up from his uncomfortable seat in the embrasure and stretched himself to his full height. He towered above his friend, a man in the prime of life, immensely tall, with the strength and grace of a gladiator. His dark, lean face, clear-cut and hawk-like as any Roman Cæsar's, was bitten deep with the fines of care and fatigue; his great dark eyes were heavy with pain. None would have guessed him a year younger than the light-hearted troubadour.

“Look you, lad,” he said quietly, “Henry is our master, and it is a man's duty to serve his master well. I take that to mean without complaining. Think you it will help either of us to rail at him?”

He turned, took down from the wall his baldric and unsheathed his great sword. Squatting on the floor, he laid the beautiful weapon across his knees, and began to rub its perfect edge with a fine hone. The stone whispered against the blue, damascened steel; the sun, slanting in a thick beam, struck fire from the jeweled hilt. As he caressed the blade, the sorrow vanished from his eyes and his thin lips relaxed in a faint smile.

Cercamon watched him with understanding. Pierre de l'Espée—Pierre of the Sword—ay, he was well named. By the sword he lived; he loved his sword; no man in France was his equal in duel or mêlée. His sword was to him what wife and children are to other men: there was comfort in the mere touch of it.

“I ride to Angers within the hour,” Cercamon broke the silence, “on the duke's errand. I am to escort his mother, the Lady Mathilde, to Chinon. That means there is something afoot. He always seeks her counsel when he plans some bold stroke.”

Pierre looked up with interest.

“You do not know? He has not confided in you?”

The troubadour shook his long locks.

“No. And that is strange, too. Till lately you and I both shared his secrets; but for this fortnight past he has taken neither of us into his counsels. I must ride now. Remember this, Pierre: If he wrongs you further, he wrongs me, and I will hold him to account. We are brothers-in-arms.”

Pierre sheathed his sword with a clang.

“Ay, we are brothers-in-arms,” he answered fondly. “For that reason my loyalty is your loyalty, and you shall not act, speak or think against the duke till I do.”

Cercamon laughed dryly.

“That will be never! Well, so be it; I have some name for loyalty myself.”

He departed, his gay crimson-and-blue mantle flaunting behind him.

Pierre hung up sword and baldric and slowly went down the stair. He reached the inner bailey just in time to see his friend spur over the drawbridge, velvet cap ablaze in the sun. A group of Henry's Norman nobles stood gazing after him.

“OUR pretty bird goes to sing in some lady's bower!” sneered one, a tall, lean man in a rich silken robe. “A fine thing, truly, that men of birth must bow to such as he!”

“Ay!” growled a thick-barreled knight in rusty mail. “And our nightingale is but a cuckoo after all. I have heard it said he knows not his own father!”

He who had spoken first turned at the crunch of Pierre's mailed feet on the flags; and at sight of Pierre's eyes his swarthy face paled. He plucked at his companion's sleeve. But Pierre was on them in one long stride. Grasping the big man's shoulder with fingers that stung through the mail, he whirled him about.

“Sir Ormeric D'Orbec,” he said quite softly, “it ill beseems a gentleman to say in another's absence what he dares not say to his face. If Cercamon were here, you would be the first to fawn on him. Since he is not here, I, his friend, tell you you lie!”

D'Orbec started back, his eyes wide with fear. Then, seeing that Pierre wore no weapon, he drew his hard features into a sneer.

“Fine words!” he mocked. “If a gentleman had spoken them, I would make him eat steel. But one does not fight with such as you—the son of a fisherman!” He pinched his nose with his fingers, as if to shut out the stench of rotten herring. The lean man beside him laughed and imitated the gesture.

Pierre understood. Knowing he had lost the duke's favor, the proud Norman nobles, long jealous of his influence at court, now made the most of their chance to humiliate him. The duke would not protect Pierre from insult now—and men who feared to cross swords with him could refuse to give him satisfaction on the ground of his low birth.

“You will insult me—and not fight?” he spoke gently.

D'Orbec drew back a little from the flame in his eyes, but answered insolently.

“I fight only with my equals!”

“Then go bicker with the dogs for bones!” roared Pierre, and drove his fist into D'Orbec's face. The thick Norman crashed to the pavement, and lay still.

The lean man half-drew his sword, but dropped his hands as Pierre advanced on him.

“You shall pay for this!” he snarled, backing away. “Ay, with the last drop of your blood!”

“Strike in the dark, then, Sir Hugo D'Orbec!” Pierre retorted grimly.

THE torches made the great hall stifling, and from every arrow-slot the tapestries were drawn back to let in the cooler outside air. A nightingale sang somewhere in the dark; but the knights and ladies of Henry's court, preoccupied with food and drink and laughter, scarce heard. The merriment was forced. All felt a tension in the air, for the duke was angry.

Henry Plantagenet sat at the head of the table on the dais, as beseemed a man master wherever he lodged. On his right sat his brother Geoffrey; but few had eyes for the lithe, blond boy. Henry, flushed of face, big-limbed, sat with his elbows on the table, chin cupped in his great hands, his eyes glaring like a wounded lion's.

A man appeared in the doorway, and straightway all fell silent. Men paused with tankards halfway to their bearded lips; white-necked women peered over the shoulders of their table-mates to see the better. Geoffrey Plantagenet leaned back in his chair, watching through half-closed eyes. His cheeks grew flushed as his brother's; his hands shook with excitement.

Slowly the man came forward toward the dais, halted and bowed low.

The duke leveled an accusing finger at him.

“Pierre Faidit!” he cried—and his voice was a maddened bellow—“Pierre Faidit! You have struck a Norman knight—you, a man of no birth! By the splendor of heaven, I will make an example of you!”

Pierre's head went up, and his eyes met the angry duke's full.

“There was a time, my lord,” he said with quiet dignity, “when you would have forgiven me more than this. I trust you may forgive me now, when you know the provocation.”

Henry rose, struggling for self-control. His big features worked with passion. At last, every muscle rigid, he spoke; and every face in the hall, save Pierre's, was white and frightened. The duke had seldom been so moved. When men had seen him so before, he had wreaked his wrath with a fury not to be forgotten; nor did innocent onlookers always escape.

But now he was calm—calm as a sultry day, just before lightning strikes.

“We have done you too much honor,” he said, with a gentleness that stung. “You have grown to regard yourself as the equal of better men. We must teach you humility. From this night on you are no longer captain of our guard. Lay no hand on a Norman gentleman again, lest that which befall you be a terror to all France. Go to your chamber, and bide there till I send for you!”

Pierre withdrew, his head higher than ever; but his eyes stung with restrained tears of rage and humiliation. Deus! How he had served this tempestuous boy, ay, loved him! What a reward for his labor, his sacrifice, the blood he had gladly given! Shamed before all the court! When he reached the corridor his proud, firm step faltered; he stumbled up the stair to his chamber.

Ormeric D'Orbec, his face swathed in bandages, glared after him. His brother's eyes met his across the table. Hugo raised his black eyebrows; Ormeric nodded and grinned wickedly. The knights and ladies, seeing the cloud lift from their lord's brow, heaved a great sigh of relief, and fell to food and laughter.

Pierre sat for many hours in his dark chamber, staring out at the stars and the lights of the town mirrored in the dark bosom of the Vienne. He had never known such wretchedness—nay, not since that bitter night, five years since, when he had stumbled over the dead body of his first lord, Alphonse-Jourdain of Toulouse. But there was a bitterness in this. The injustice of it, the cruelty!

His door creaked open, but he scarce heard it, and did not stir. Then a voice—

“Pierre!”

Pierre started to his feet. The voice was stern and hoarse. The door closed, and an unseen hand shot the bolts home.

“Ay, lord!” Pierre answered, the words scarce audible.

“Where are you, Pierre?”

Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw Pierre by the window. Swiftly Henry Plantagenet strode to his officer's side, and flung one thick arm about his shoulders.

“Pierre! Forgive me!”

“My—my lord! You are not angry with me?”

The duke would have knelt at his feet, but Pierre prevented him. He did not understand, but a great gladness flooded his heart. For a moment the duke fought for words, like the awkward boy he was; then they came surging:

“My knights—even my barons—were jealous of the favors I have shown you. They murmur that I take you, a peasant's son, into my secrets, and pay no heed to them, the gentlefolk. They hate you, Pierre. The time draws near when I must strike for England. God knows it is you—you and Becket—who have won me friends there, that your valor and your cunning have gained me adherents without whose aid I should not dare to strike. But from the moment my ships anchor in an English port, it is my barons and their men-at-arms who will win the throne for me. Without their loyal support I can do nothing. To hold them to me, I must sacrifice you. For this reason I have lately denied you my confidence, shamed you, taken away your commission—and it may be that I must wrong you yet more. Can you bear this, Pierre, for me? Knowing that it is only for a little while, and that, as soon as I dare, I will more than atone? Knowing that your lord loves you, Pierre?”

The swordsman groped in the dark for his master's hand.

“All this, and more, will I bear, if it may help my lord.”

“It will not be for long,” Henry resumed. “By midsummer, at least, I shall send you to England again, to make ready for my coming. Now there are other matters which require me to leave England alone for a little. Remember this, Pierre: Whatever I may say to you, whatever I may do, you have my love and trust. Endure, and you shall be rewarded. I have stolen from my bed to tell you this. I dared not let any one see me at your door.”

“As you trust me, my lord, so I trust you,” Pierre responded. “But—it were better that you tell Cercamon what you have told me.”

Henry laughed softly.

“Right! He loves me, I think, but he loves you more. He is as true to you as hilt to hand— Sleep well!”

BARSAND the armorer held the heavy hauberk at arm's length.

“He is a man who can wear this!” he laughed. “Were its workmanship less fine, 'twould burden even you, Pierre! I have pieced it here, where the arbalest bolt went through; but though I take pride in my work, I cannot match the rings. Its maker was a master of craft!”

Pierre Faidit donned the hauberk and told over two gold crowns.

“Your work will turn arrows, Barsand, and that means much. A Cordovan Moor forged those rings. My thanks!”

Leaving the armorer's, where bare blades and shirts of mail hung ghostly in the flare of the forge, he passed out into the narrow street. It was dark as a cavern after the red glow of the smithy; the tall houses, with their projecting eaves, shut out what little light the stars afforded. Peering about him, Pierre took the middle of the cobbled way, which writhed like a snake through the foulest part of the old town. The stink of the marshes stung his nostrils.

His mail made din enough as he strode along; but the town was still as death, save for the faint tink-tink of hammer on steel that pursued him, ever fainter, from Barsand's shop. The armorer worked late on the duke's business, and so was granted leave to labor and burn lights even this late after curfew. All else was dark and silent, for the duke enforced the law with a hard hand.

Of a sudden Pierre, with his soldier's ear, caught the thin grate of steel on stone. Stopping instantly, he clapped hand to hilt and listened. It was nothing to him that other armored men—who might have leave, as he himself had—walked the streets after curfew; but it was much that they walked stealthily. Stretch his ears as he might, he heard nothing more. Treading so softly that his mail scarce rustled, he resumed his way toward the castle.

A casement opened just to the left of him, pouring forth a flood of light that threw him into full relief against the opposite whitewashed wall. This was ill, at an hour when none might lawfully unbar shutter or kindle torch or candle. Acting swiftly as suspicion awoke in him, Pierre leaped back into the protecting darkness, sword out. Even as he did so, a squat figure sprang into the patch of light, ran swiftly after him and was likewise swallowed by the gloom. Something hissed through the air, and a point thudded against Pierre's breast.

Its force weakened by his retreat, the blow glanced off his mail. Pierre drove his sword forward in one swift thrust, felt it tear home through steel and flesh and wrenched it out. Some one fell with a clang of steel and a groan.

The casement slammed shut, blotting out the light; a shutter crashed, and bolts flew home. Plainly he who had opened the window had heard, not seen, and had been satisfied with the groan that bore witness of a man's death. Pierre glided across the lane, flattened himself against the wall of the house opposite and waited.

For a long moment nothing happened; then a hoarse whisper came from somewhere in the shadows—

“Is he dead?”

“There are two, then!” Pierre reflected grimly, his fingers tightening about his hilt.

Then the whisper again, frightened at the silence—

“Ormeric!”

Smiling, Pierre stole forward. Silence again—then the clang-clang-clang of running steel-shod feet. Dashing forward in pursuit, Pierre struck once with his heavy blade, felt it tear through cloth, and brought up crashing against a projecting cornice. The feet ran on, turned a corner and were lost in the long, straight Rue du Grand Carroi that leads straight to the castle.

It was useless to follow farther. The fellow had a fair start, and Pierre was still dazed by his collision with the house wall. He stepped back, and slipped in a pool of blood. Striking flint on steel, he caught a brief glimpse of a distorted face staring up from the pavement.

“Ormeric D'Orbec!” he muttered. “Then he who fled was his brother Hugo. And the duke bade me keep my hands off Norman knights!” With a shrug he resumed his way.

IT WAS very late when he climbed to his room in the western tower, but he spent half an hour putting a fine edge on his sword where it had gone through D'Orbec's hauberk. He sat long reflecting on the night's work. Just after second cock-crow his door swung open, and the duke entered. Henry's face was troubled, but not angry.

“The watch have found Sir Ormeric's corpse in the town,” he said, eyeing Pierre nervously.

Pierre nodded.

“They found it where I left it,” he answered. “Ormeric and one other—Hugo—aided by the folk of the nearest house, laid an ambush for me. Hugo escaped.”

Henry frowned.

“You can prove it was Hugo?”

“Hardly. But the folk of that house can be made to confess.”

The duke shook his head.

“The body was found far from any house, by the quay. Could you tell the house by day? No? Then where is your proof? I bade the watch hold their tongues; but if that other was Hugo, there will be trouble over this. He will swear you slew his brother treacherously.”

“The wound was in front,” Pierre pointed out, “and Ormeric's sword in his hand.”

“Not when the watch discovered him—he was weaponless. You have had to do with cunning men, lad, and they have outmatched you. Even if we find the house, its people will swear to what Hugo says, and how can I prove they He? Nay, Pierre, for your own sake and mine this must not come to trial. I could and would protect you; but then my barons would turn on me. My position is perilous. The Normans, jealous of you already, will cry for your blood. When I refuse, they will rebel. I could deal with them bloodily, but I need their loyalty, as I have told you. And I suspect that Geoffrey conspires against me to wrest Anjou from me.”

“Why not give it to him, and so win his support?” Pierre urged.

“Give a province to that boy, who has never learned to rule himself?”

Henry spoke scornfully, and Pierre knew he was right. Young Geoffrey was a spoiled child, whose tyrannous caprice would do more harm in Anjou than a wise ruler could undo. He chafed at the tight rein his older brother held him on, and his resentment was dangerous; but it would be worse to give him his head.

“I am playing a sharp game for high stakes, Pierre,” Henry resumed. “I cannot tell even you what hangs on the turn of the dice. But to win I must be stronger than my foes. If my barons desert me because you, whom they hate, have slain one of them, I shall lose. I shall lose England, Normandy perhaps, Anjou and Touraine certainly. It means the end of all my high hopes, which you have labored so faithfully to fulfill.”

“What must I do, master?” Pierre asked simply.

Henry laid a hand on his arm.

“Go into exile—this night. When Sir Hugo comes to me to demand revenge for his brother, I will say that I have banished you. In June or July I will send you word to go, secretly, to England. When I join you there, after my triumph over Stephen, then, by ——'s glory, I will see to it that my barons have no more power to weaken me!”

“How?” Pierre asked, his eyes gleaming.

“As soon as England is mine, I will fill my armies with common men—men from the City Guard of London, Oxford, Winchester, and other towns; professional soldiers like yourself, who owe fealty to no baron; and I will raze to the earth every castle not held by a man I can trust!”

“It is good!” Pierre approved. “But in the meantime, where shall I go? Exile means death to me. King Louis has forbidden me to set foot in his realm; Aliénor, his divorced queen, would have me slain if I entered her domain. Between them, those two and you, you hold all France save Champagne and the Languedoc. To reach either I must pass through Louis' lands or through Aliénor's duchies of Poitou and Aquitaine.”

Henry smiled slyly.

“You will never leave Touraine,” he answered. “I shall send you to Tours, with a messenger for the governor, who is faithful to me. He will keep you safe hidden till I send you safe-conduct to England. Thus you shall escape all danger, and at the same time serve me. In the letter to the governor I shall place another, which he will give to one who dwells within the city. This is a most important errand, which must not fail—lest it cost me more than Normandy.”

Pierre began to gather his belongings.

“None will know of this?” he asked.

“None—save my clerk, whom I can trust. He is even now inditing the letters. You cannot send to the stables for your horse, lest your going be known; I will have a swift courser brought to the postern from my own stalls. The guard at the gate is one of your own men. You must leave within the hour.”

Henry vanished into the dark corridor, and made his way swiftly to his own chambers. In the first of has three rooms, his clerk—a lean, pinch-faced man in the gown of a minor canon—was seated at a high desk, writing in a fine hand. Henry watched him a moment; then:

“One left my chamber as I came up, Gerald,” he said. “His face was in the shadow. Who was it?”

The clerk started, his eyes blinking.

“It was Sir Hugo D'Orbec,” he replied, in a dry whisper. “He came to lay a complaint before Your Grace.”

Henry scowled.

“But he passed me by. Why did he not wait?”

Gerald had recovered his self-possession.

“Your Grace has said it was dark. Doubtless he did not know you.”

“Belike,” Henry growled. “You take long to finish a simple letter.”

“Please, your Grace, there were two letters; and Sir Hugo delayed me.”

It was the duke's turn to start.

“He did not see your writing?”

Gerald smiled wryly.

“That he did not, my lord.”

Henry nodded, and summoned his squire from the inner room.

“Fetch me the sergeant Le Balafré from the postern!” he commanded. Bowing, the squire departed, staggering with sleep, and returned shortly with a tall, stocky soldier.

“Fetch the black stallion from my own stable, Balafré!” Henry ordered. “Bring him to the gate. Then resume guard. Deliver the black to him who comes to you with my name on his lips. You will know the man. Say nothing of this, or your head pays for it!”

As Balafré went off, the clerk finished his letters, and gave them to the duke to sign. Taking the pen from him, Henry scrawled his name and titles in an awkward hand, and himself sealed them. Then, placing them in a wrapper of oiled parchment, he sealed this also.

“Go with these to the postern, Gerald, and give them to Pierre Faidit. You shall hang if they go astray!”

Gerald drew a sharp breath, and his face seemed more pinched than ever. Bowing low, he slipped from the room.

IT WAS time for the dawn when Pierre rode down the castle hill with the duke's black courser between his knees; but the sky was black as a pall. An April storm had come up, bringing the soft, steady rain of spring. The roads would be heavy in an hour's time, too heavy for him to make swift work of the ride to Tours. He knew the duke wanted as much distance as possible between him and the court before it should be light enough for any to recognize him.

He dashed through the town guard at the outer port of Chinon with a shout:

“Duke's messenger! Delay me not, at your peril!”

But the duke's orders had been before him, and the gate swung open to pass him through ere he could check his pace. The black bounded out on the straight white road that runs like a bow-shot to Azay-le-Rideau on the way to Tours.

He had left Chinon well nigh an hour behind when the cloud-wrapped sky grew gray, and his beast, tossing its head in the teeth of a rising breeze, neighed shrilly. Pierre loosened his sword in the sheath, and felt of the saddle-bag on his shield-side, where the duke's letters lay. Slackening his pace, he rode on more carefully.

The minutes passed, and he heard nothing; nor were objects yet very clear in the half light. They grew dimmer still as he rode between the aisles of Chinon forest; but knowing the road before him was straight, he pricked the black's flanks. The stallion shot ahead, gathering speed, flinging mud from his hoofs.

Suddenly Pierre felt something smite his breast and sweep him from the saddle. He flew, whirling, over his horse's rump, and crashed full length against the road. For the briefest instant voices sounded faintly in his ears; then he lost consciousness.

It was light when he roused again. He lay by the side of the road, a cluster of armed men standing over him. All wore masks over their helmets; their shields and surcoats were bare of any device. He strove to rise, but one of his captors thrust the point of a sword against his throat.

“Unhelm him, Gui!” ordered a hoarse voice, that was plainly disguised.

One bent down and tore off Pierre's helmet, which was still held in place by the lacings of his cheek-curtains. The man was none too gentle.

“Peste!” growled the leader. “It is the wrong man! Your pardon, good sir; we were after other game. Mount, lads!”

Leading their horses from a screen of undergrowth, the masked men sprang to the saddle. When Pierre rose, painfully testing his bruised limbs, they were already far down the road to Tours.

“Tours!” he meditated. “They speak true, then: they stopped me by mistake. I have no foes in Tours.”

He stood in the middle of the road in a drenching downpour, his head still buzzing from the force of his fall. His horse was nowhere to be seen; his sword and scabbard were gone.

“They were not above plunder, then!” he mused. “But 'twill go ill with him I find wearing my sword in Tours!”

Glancing about him, he discovered the means of his capture: a rope stretched across the road between two trees, at the height of a mounted man's chest. He cut it with his dagger.

“I must walk to Tours, then!” he reflected bitterly, “and without the duke's letters! God grant they be not in the hands of his foes!”

But it was poor comfort that in any case they would not reach the ones for whom they were intended, and that the duke, in his own words, stood to lose more than Normandy if they failed to be delivered. He strode on in the rain, whose freshness revived him; but his head ached wretchedly. The extent of his loss, and the thought of its possible consequences, made him utterly miserable.

He had gone perhaps a hundred paces when a cry of joy burst from his lips. From a clump of alders protruded the rump of his horse, its tail twitching as it munched at the rich grass. He ran forward as fast as the mud and the weight of his armor permitted, and recaptured the beast, whose bridle was tangled in its forelegs. His saddlebags were still there. With trembling fingers he fumbled at the fastenings, got them undone at last, and plunged his hands into the left-hand pouch. His letters were safe! To make utterly sure, he drew out the packet and scanned it closely. It was the same, untouched, the very seal intact.

Rejoicing, he rode on, more charitably inclined toward those who had ambushed him. Had they not left him his horse and his precious burden? Ay, and had made excuse for their mistake, as gentlemen should. But then he thought of his sword, and his heart hardened. He would never forgive, never spare, the man who had stolen that which was dearer to him than all else save friends and honor.

It was high noon when he rode over the hills where the first site of Tours had stood, before the Romans moved it across the river. The clouds were scattering before the warmth of an ardent sun, which already kindled the blue river, swollen with spring floods, and the densely massed roofs and spires of the walled city beyond. It was a glowing jewel, that city, bright and many-colored, in a setting of rich valley and budding flowers—the heart of the garden of France. With a lighter heart he urged his horse across the single bridge that led to the great gate.

The guards eyed him askance, as well they might.

“Who is this that comes garbed in mud, with blood on his face and no sword to his side?” growled the officer of the watch.

Pierre judged it unwise to speak his name, seeing that he was supposed to be in exile. He drew from his pouch the packet with the duke's seal and flourished it under his challenger's nose.

One glance at the arms of his overlord, and the soldier became all courtesy.

“Will it please your Excellence to enter!” he cried. “Verily, we are honored to receive the duke's messenger. Your letters are to the governor?”

“So it appears,” Pierre conceded. “And there is some haste about them.”

The officer detailed four men to escort him under the frowning arch, with its jutting turrets; and through the ill-paved streets they passed in strange procession. The soldiers, eager to show their loyalty to the duke, strutted as if accompanying some grandee; and Pierre, conscious of his battered, befouled appearance, grinned to himself. A tail of curious lookers-on attached itself to them, growing as they advanced, till with their entrance on the wide grain-market a throng ran up from all sides to stare and fling questions. The escort waved the crowd back with their spears, shouting loudly for room for the duke's envoy; and so, a magnet for all the idlers in Tours, they drew up before the square- towered citadel, surrounded by gaping citizens ere they could dismount.

Through the press the soldiers elbowed, forcing a wide path for Pierre to follow. On the stone steps lounged armored men, just relieved by the change of guard, eying the buxom bourgeoisie with more attention than they gave even the duke's messenger. Before the embattled entrace a dozen more crossed pikes.

“PLACE for the duke's ambassador!” howled the escort; and the pikes grounded. Passing between them, Pierre made his way to the Salle D'Armes, where a clerk took his message. In a few moments the governor appeared.

He bowed.

“Sire Marc de St. Martin,” he announced himself; and, in lieu of giving his own name Pierre handed him the sealed packet.

The governor, a tall, somewhat portly man, gazed at him with keen eyes.

“I have not yet heard your name,” he said, courteously, but with emphasis.

“I know not whether my lord duke wishes it known, even to so true a vassal as the Sire Marc,” Pierre countered. “If so, it will stand written in one of his letters, which concerns me. The other is for a person whose identity his Grace did not reveal to me.”

Frowning, the governor scanned the superscriptions, and looked oddly at Pierre.

“It is strange,” he said, “that the duke should make you his envoy without revealing to you the condition of the—the—person to whom this is addressed.”

He broke the seal of his own letter, and read slowly, once and again. When he looked up, his eyes were hard.

“This does not tell your name,” he spoke coldly, “but it does give strict commands concerning you. Be pleased to follow me.”

He led Pierre out again to the entrance hall, and beckoned to a group of soldiers.

“Take this man,” he ordered, “and put him in the dungeon of the North Tower!”

Pierre recoiled and clapped his hand to his side before he remembered that he had no sword. Before he could make a second movement, he was surrounded, seized and hurried away. He was borne swiftly to a wing of the stoutly built castle, dragged down a winding stair in a comer tower, and clapped into a filthy cell. Before leaving him, his captors stripped him of surcoat, mail, and dagger, and left him in his leather jipoun.

He thrust his face to the small, barred aperture in the solid, spike-studded open door, and called after the departing guards:

“What does this mean? Send the governor to me!”

Mocking laughter answered him, as the men-at-arms clattered up the stair.

Peering through the bars, Pierre inspected the vault that contained his cell. The place was hewn out of the solid rock on which the tower was built. It's walls, thick as they were, were damp and slimy. The paved floor was foul, and the air stale with mould. At first he thought himself alone in the dismal crypt, till he heard a groan from some cell near his own. The meaning of the sound was borne in upon him by the sight of a trough-shaped instrument longer than a man, fitted with cords, a windlass and metal wedges, and stained with blood.

His own quarters were comfortless and vile. There was not even a bench—no place to sit or lie save the stone floor, thinly covered with rotten straw. A single barred window high above his head let in a gloomy light from what must be a high-walled court. One side of the cell was hung with rusty chains, fast to the stone.

Pierre stood bewildered, trying to understand what had befallen him. Treachery? What ground was there? He had given the governor the letters entrusted to him. The duke had said that Sire Marc would find him a place of refuge, where he could lie close till he could make his way to England to renew his secret work for Henry there. And now—

He grinned wryly.

“Perchance this is the safe refuge?” he meditated. “I could wish the governor lodged his guests more cleanly!”

It was entirely possible that the duke's letter might have ordered Sir Marc to place Pierre in honorable confinement—under guard in respectable quarters—as the surest way of keeping him from the vengeance of his foes. But to treat him like a criminal, cast him into the most noisome dungeon in the city—that was unthinkable. Anger and despair struggled in his mind as he surveyed his surroundings. Such a fate as this was reserved for traitors.

Had Henry betrayed him? Was his master's friendship but a pretense, and the shame which had been done him in Chinon the true expressions of the duke's feelings toward him? His soul revolted against the thought. During the three years he had served Henry he had never, till a few weeks back, received aught but kindness and honor at the duke's hands; and well had he earned such honor. Yet now, without reason, he was hurled from favor into ignominious captivity. And was this the end? Might there not be worse to follow? He thought of the blood-stained rack and boot he had seen in the crypt, and shuddered.

Weary from his ride, still shaken by the fall of tie night before and faint with lack of food, he leaned against the wall of his prison. He wanted to he down, but a glance at the reeking straw dissuaded him. Dizzy as he was, his thoughts would not focus on his plight. One moment he was convinced of his lord's treachery, the next his mind raced from one improbable explanation to another. But always he came against the blank wall of the letters he had been given to deliver; he had handed them over intact as they had been put into his hands, the seals unbroken. They must represent Henry's will. The governor was the duke's faithful vassal—Henry had said so.

But what if he were not faithful after all? The man's face was honest, even noble; but in the possibility of his dishonesty lay Pierre's only hope of the duke's good faith. The puzzle was insoluble. After some hours, faint and exhausted, Pierre gave it up.

Then the warder came with food, sliding it through a narrow panel in the door. Pierre heard the wooden edges grate, and looked down to see a panikin and a loaf of bread in the straw. He snatched them up, ate and drank, and felt his strength return. As he was munching the last of the bread, a face appeared in the barred aperture of the door. Pierre looked up just as it vanished, but he caught sight of the silken sheen of a woman's hood. Low voices sounded in the crypt; the door screeched on its hinges, and three men-at-arms came in, points leveled at his breast.

As the men advanced, Pierre was compelled to back away before the threatening points till he stood at bay against the wall where the chains hung. One man slipped in, and, protected by the swords of the others, fastened the gyves about Pierre's hands and feet. They were cruel chains, so placed that they held his hands above his head and far apart, close to the stones. He could neither lie down nor stoop, nor touch one limb with another.

Then the woman came in. She was tall, slender, lithe as a cat, her big eyes blue and cold. Her gown, clinging skin-close above the broad, jeweled girdle, was of finest sky-blue silk. One moment she stared at Pierre, then threw back her hood from a glory of spun-gold hair.

“You!” she said in a voice like frozen music.

Pierre caught his breath.

“You!” he echoed. A cruel smile curled the woman's thin, red lips.

IT WAS Aliénor, Duchess of Guienne, Poitou, and Aquitaine—and, until King Louis divorced her, Queen of France. The sight of her called to Pierre's mind the death of his first lord, poisoned by her hands; his own banishment from the French kingdom, after he had exposed her guilt to the king, and so made possible the divorce that followed. And she was here, in Tours—in Duke Henry's realm!

His astonishment amused her.

“Welcome, Pierre Faidit!” she said with smooth irony. “It gives me pleasure that one so famed should be my guest.”

“Your guest?” he repeated in confusion.

“Ay; why not? I have greatly longed for this honor. After all your pains to spread my fame—my ill-fame, I fear—throughout France, your skill in disembarrassing me of a husband and a kingdom, should I not cherish the wish to reward you as you deserve? And now, thanks to your master, I have the opportunity.”

She smiled with dainty irony, showing small, white teeth.

Pierre glared at her.

“My master? What mean you?”

“You do not know?” She shrugged her shapely shoulders. She was still beautiful as he remembered her, the most beautiful woman in Europe; but her face had grown hard with the years.

“You do not know, when you yourself brought his commands to me? See!” She took one hand from behind her back, holding out a sheet of parchment.

“Read it! You should be the first to know, since it concerns you so nearly.”

With mocking solicitude she held the parchment before his eyes, close, that he might read. His eyes widened, first incredulously, then with rage and horror. Addressed to Aliénor, with all her titles and honors set forth at formal length, the letter was a proposal of marriage. It was signed with the hand and seal of Henry of Normandy.

Pierre choked.

“Impossible!” he cried hoarsely. “My lord would never—does he not know you for—”

She clapped her firm little hand over his lips, glanced round to see that the door was shut and laughed in his face.

“For a murderess, you would say? A poisoner? Ay, he knows. Why should he not, when you blazoned my name abroad for all France to scorn and hate? But he also knows me for the mistress of all the rich South, with lands and gold and men-at-arms such as few kings can boast. He wants these things, Pierre—perhaps as much as he wants me.”

“You do not love him!” Pierre stammered.

“What matter, so he loves me—or my dowry? Ah, you think that he values you too much to marry a woman you hate, perhaps? What know you of statecraft? He wants more men and money to conquer England—and perchance a wife who will give him sons as bold, as unscrupulous, as himself!”

“You would never—”

“Ah, but I will! I am but a few weeks divorced, yet already two princes have bid for my hand. They were very great, very strong; but neither of them can match Henry Plantagenet. Our marriage will unite under one rule all the land from the Channel to the Spanish March, from Bordeaux to the Languedoc. I shall be lady of two-thirds France—ay, Queen of England!”

She threw back her dainty chin and laughed, a hard, metallic, yet very lovely laugh.

“And England I shall owe in large part to you, if men say true. It will amuse me to think of that when your head rots on the gate of Tours!”

“You would not dare!” Pierre flung back at her.

Her little teeth ground.

“Would I not? Who forbids me to slay you? Not Henry! See there!” She held a second parchment before his eyes. “This is the letter you brought the governor!”

Pierre read, and turned his eyes away, lest she see his misery. Stripped of its titles and pedantic phrase, the parchment bore to the governor the order to seize the bearer, cast him into bonds, and hold him at the disposal of the Duchess Aliénor, to do with as she would. There could be no doubt of its genuineness; Pierre instantly recognized the sprawling signature of his master.

Aliénor's sweet voice broke through his bitter thoughts.

“But a little more, and I will leave you to your meditations. They will be pleasant, I trust. I shall leave you here four days, that you may taste in full the knowledge that princes value their servants less than the least advantage they may buy. Then, when your reflections have sufficiently prepared you, I will have you gently hanged. I think there could be no better way to repay you for the scorn you have brought on me.”

She was silent for a little, so that he thought she had gone. When he turned his head, he found her still gazing at him mockingly.

“Tell me, Pierre, has my beauty faded with the years?”

His eyes burned on hers.

“Nay,” he groaned, “you are as fair as ever. In all things you are as you always were.”

She swept him a low bow and went out. The guards, returning, freed his limbs again; but in the face of their weapons he could not have broken away from them, had he been mad enough to try. Nor indeed did he greatly care, now, for his life.

Till now he had had the strong man's love of life in more than ordinary measure. Fame, the taste of power, the sharp give and take of battle, had been as wine to him. In the friendship of his comrade Cercamon, in the trust and kindness of his lord, he had known joy that to him surpassed all else on earth. Nor was it prison and the threat of death that broke him now, but the certainty that his lord was false. Ay, false. Henry had sold him for a smile from the woman whose lands he coveted. There was no more truth nor loyalty in life.

Unheeding the filth that had revolted him before, he sank down on the straw. Four days he must five in this misery, four days of solitude with his torturing thoughts, before the hangman came to bring him the release of death. Truly Aliénor was wise in the ways of vengeance!

So he sat till the afternoon sun slanted its last rays through his window, lighting his prison for a few brief moments. It was then that another face, dark, narrow, leering, was thrust close to the bars of his cell. A harsh voice broke in on his wretchedness.

“Ha! Faidit! Have I not well paid the score between us?”

Pierre looked up, but his power of surprize was exhausted. He stared dully into the eyes of Hugo D'Orbec. The Norman laughed, withdrew his head, and held up to the bars something that glowed in the sun's rays—a burning, lambent ruby.

An answering gleam kindled in Pierre's eyes, and D'Orbec laughed again. The thing he held was the hilt of Pierre's sword.

“You slew my brother, dog of a fisherman! Now he laughs at you from hell! Men call you cunning, yet I have played with you as one plays with a child, and brought you to death. Think on me when you dangle in a noose!”

Pierre turned his back on the fellow; but his apathy enraged the Norman.

“Ha! So you do not care! But when you know how I befooled you—It was I and my men who stopped you on your way, and lulled your suspicions with a pretended excuse that we had taken the wrong man! While you lay senseless, I robbed you of your letters, giving you another packet in exchange; and you knew not the difference. If you but understood how cunningly the thing was contrived—”

Pierre cut the jeering voice short.

“You lie,” he said dully. “What you say is impossible.”

“Think you so? Impossible to forge the duke's seal, so that you should not see the deception? To counterfeit his hand well enough to beguile you and the governor both? Impossible for me, ay; but not for—the duke's clerk!”

“Gerald?” Pierre's tone was weary, but incredulous. “He is loyal.”

“LOYAL? Thou fool! No man is loyal beyond his price. The price of Gerald's honesty was fifty gold crowns—a tidy sum, eh? But it was worth as much to avenge my brother. It was Gerald from whom I learned of Aliénor's presence here, Gerald who wrote and signed the forged letter, copying the duke's hand to perfection; and Gerald has access to the great seal. He drew up false and true alike, while you were waiting to take them. I and my men had but to have half an hour's start of you on the road.”

Pierre looked up quickly, a strange light in his eyes.

“You speak of one forged letter,” he said, in a strained voice. “But the letters I bore were two.”

“Ay; the one to the duchess was on matters of state, higher matters than I dared meddle with. We made an exact copy of it, and when I took the true packet from you, I substituted the false. The duchess received a fair copy of that which the duke intended for her; but in place of the orders bidding the governor find you safe lodging, you bore him a message in Gerald's best style, commanding that you be given up to Aliénor. Her hate of you is common knowledge. I knew the death she would contrive for you would be worse than any I could deal; and thus you will die by my cunning while I run no risk of punishment for your murder. She will hang you certainly, perhaps torture you first.”

Pierre thought a moment; then, suddenly, he burst into peal on peal of laughter. D'Orbec, hate in his eyes, stared at him.

“Are you mad?” he cried. “You are to die, and you laugh? I have your precious sword, and you laugh?”

With difficulty Pierre restrained his mirth enough to speak.

“O fool, fool!” he mocked. “You would torment me, and against your will you bring me joy! Begone, that I may laugh my fill at thee!”

D'Orbec turned away, baffled and furious; but Pierre called him back.

“Hunt thyself a safe hole!” he cried. “When I am free, I will search thee out, take my sword from thee, and with it thy life!”

D'Orbec snarled at him.

“Thou canst not escape! The duchess knows she has me to thank for thy presence here, and has made me thy keeper. When thou leavest this cell, it will be on thy way to the gallows!”

Pierre began to stride up and down his cell, thinking. The letter to Aliénor was genuine: Henry had proposed marriage to her, knowing her for a woman wicked as she was beautiful. This was bad enough. But what had been worse, for Pierre, was proved false. His lord had not betrayed him; Henry had kept faith. Pierre's present plight was the work of a cunning rascal; and against such, though they had trapped him, he might find means to fight. He had won free from desperate straits before; he had uncommon strength and uncommon wit to draw on. And now—now that he knew his lord was innocent of wrong to him—life was worth fighting for. Joy flooded his heart, and with it came resourcefulness and vigor. Hugo D'Orbec had frustrated his own revenge.

But the walls of Pierre's prison were as stout, the door as staunch, as ever. And he was unarmed.

THE Lady Mathilde sat in her bower, her wise old eyes very bright as she looked at her two tall sons. She was proud of them both, in different ways, and with a pride that was void of all illusion. She knew them for what they were. Of the two, she loved Henry best. A life full of hardship, of vain struggle, that had aged her before her time, had given her a high regard for men who were men indeed. She loved Henry's strong body, his fierce pride that brooked no rivalry nor opposition, his hot temper and his hard hand. Geoffrey she loved for his courtly manners and his fair face; but her love for him was tinged with pity. Ay, he was cunning; he was not afraid; but there was an instability about him that reminded her of his father. Henry was his mother's child; and Mathilde had been a better man than most men of her day.

Henry gestured to a servant.

“Fetch Cercamon!” he commanded.

“He is here, my lord!” The troubadour's deep voice rang from the doorway.

“My mother would hear a song, lad.”

Cercamon, taking the privilege of his profession, shook his head.

“I am not in the mood for song, my lord. What have you done with Pierre? One of his men has told me that you took away his captaincy. Now he is not here, and none knows whither he has gone.”

Henry hated to be questioned.

“He is on my errands,” he replied shortly.

“It is said you have banished him,” Cercamon pursued relentlessly. “Why? For killing an assassin who would have murdered him? And where has he taken refuge? Is he safe?”

Henry stamped his foot, and the veins swelled in his temples; but Lady Mathilde checked his wrath.

“I see this is something you would keep hidden,” she said bluntly. “Which of us do you mistrust? Geoffrey? Me? Cercamon you can not doubt, for you have always taken him into your counsels.”

The duke was fairly caught, forced into the open. He could not confess, to Geoffrey's face, that it was his brother he mistrusted.

“Pierre has gone to Tours, then,” he admitted. “With letters to the governor. See that ye say nought of it.”

“And to—some one else in Tours?” Geoffrey thrust in slyly. Henry flushed.

“Seek not to know what does not concern you. Pierre is safe—by my order.”

“That is well, my lord,” Cercamon said slowly. “The castle rings with the tale of Ormeric D'Orbec's death, and Ormeric's snake of a brother will plot revenge. Are you sure Pierre is safe in Tours? Hugo D'Orbec is not here in Chinon, and his spies may learn more than they should.”

Mathilde turned her dark eyes on the troubadour.

“Listen to that man, Henry. He is wise—wiser than you or I. Do you know more than you have said, Cercamon?”

Cercamon shook his head.

“Not a jot, my lady. I only know that Pierre is not here, and that his enemy—who should be lurking near him to strike—is also gone. And that Pierre has been publicly rebuked by my lord, and shorn of his honors. All this looks suspicious. I know nothing more—but I smell evil. I also would go to Tours.”

Henry started, and his hot eyes flashed.

“Not you, lad! Pierre is safe there, but you—you would not be!”

“It is said,” Geoffrey observed blandly—but with a covert glance at his mother—“that he has an enemy who hates you also, troubadour.”

Cercamon turned his blue-green eyes full on the boy, as if seeking to probe his heart.

“What mean you, lord Count?” he asked.

Mathilde cut in between them.

“He means nothing, save that he is a fool who will some day die of his folly! Play with the ladies, girl-face; men wear weapons.”

Geoffrey turned scarlet, and rose with a stiff bow.

“If my lady mother, and the duke, my brother, will grant me leave, I will even do as she advises!” he said angrily. Henry nodded curtly, and Mathilde smiled. Geoffrey glided from the room, graceful as a woman. Out of the tail of one eye Cercamon saw him turn slightly at the door, and beckon.

“I crave leave to seek the ladies also,” he said, with a smile; and followed the young count.

As the door closed behind him, Mathilde took Henry's hand in hers.

“Mischief is brewing there, boy!” she said. “So long as you cherish Pierre, Cercamon will follow you to the death; but if aught happens to his friend, 'ware Cercamon!”

Henry started to his feet, but his mother held tight to him.

“Nay, let them be, lest a worse thing happen! If you must question them, question them separately!”

“NOW, touching this matter of the ending of a canzo,” Geoffrey spoke in a loud voice for the benefit of those who stood in the passage, “I hold that the last rhyme should vary, to give greater strength to the whole.”

Cercamon eyed him meaningly. He knew that Geoffrey had some secret word for him; and it was for him to play his part in the game that masked that secret from curious ears.

“Strength can be attained by the wise choice of phrase in the line, my lord,” he countered, “without ruining the harmony of the rhymes.”

“Ruining? Nay! It is my belief—”

And so the fictitious argument ran on, while the two climbed the winding stair to the battlements. Goeffrey was too wise to feed his brother's suspicions further by a private conference with the troubadour in his own chamber. When they emerged into the clear, sweet night, Geoffrey summoned a spearman, a man of Anjou.

“We would speak apart,” he said. “If you would keep my regard, Matthieu, let none come nigh us. And warn us if any man comes up the stair.”

The spearman saluted.

“As my lord wills.” He took his stand at some distance, between Geoffrey and the other sentinels, at a spot whence he could watch the stairhead.

“That man is devoted to me,” Geoffrey whispered in the troubadour's ear. “Now we can speak plainly. Aliénor of Aquitaine is in Tours.”

Cercamon started.

“It is worse than I feared, then,” he said. “I was sure Hugo D'Orbec would dog Pierre's movements, waiting for a safe means to avenge his brother. But the duchess—are you sure?”

Geoffrey laughed bitterly.

“You are no fool, Cercamon. Use your wits. My brother suddenly removes his court from Caen, where he can watch England, to Chinon, where he has usually no great interests. Why?

“This happens but a week after the arrival of a swift courier from Paris, who immediately sought the duke. What had happened in Louis' kingdom to warrant the messenger's haste? Do not all men know that about that same time Aliénor was divorced from the French king? Being divorced, and being the woman she is, she would be ordered to quit France straightway after the divorce. She would then go home—to Aquitaine, or Poitou. The nearest and safest way would lead through Tours. And at this time—at this time, mark you, my lord brother drops his English intrigues and posts to Chinon—which is but four and thirty miles from Tours. Is it not plain?”

“Plain enough,” Cercamon admitted. “But you do not know that she is in Tours? You but surmise it from the facts?”.

Geoffrey snorted.

“I surmise it, and I know it too. I have my spies, though I can not pay them well, thanks to my brother's niggardliness.” He broke off with a curse; then:

“Why can not my brother treat me like a man?” he burst out passionately. “Am I not older now than he was when he succeeded to the dukedom? Am I less wise than he? Yet, of all that he inherited from our father, he gives me but three bare castles! If I am to have honors, lands, money, I must find them for myself! And, thunder of heaven! If he will not give them me, I will find them!”

Cercamon said nothing, looking ostentatiously over the parapet; but his thoughts were busy.

Geoffrey's tone changed to one of kindly solicitude. He laid a hand fondly on the troubadour's shoulder.

“I know your affection for Pierre, my friend. He is a brave man, worthy your regard. I would give much to save him from harm. Now it is in my mind that he is in deadly peril at this moment. Henry knows of the hate Aliénor bears him—yet he sends him to Tours, where she is. What if she discovers his presence there?”

“He is doubtless under the duke's safe-conduct,” Cercamon murmured.

“What avails a safe-conduct against poison, or a knife in the dark?” Geoffrey sneered. “May it not be that Hugo D'Orbec has followed him thither to wield that knife? Or to betray him to Aliénor at the least?”

Cercamon stirred uneasily. Geoffrey's dark hints tallied all too closely with his own fears.

“My lord,” he said slowly, “you can never mean—or think—that the duke sent Pierre to Tours because he knew Aliénor was there—to be rid of him?”

Godfrey cried out in shocked protest. “Never! Though it is true that the duke hath been most unkind to him of late. Yet I do not believe—”

Cercamon understood the cunning insinuation.

“Nay!” he objected. “It can not be. The duke is a hard man, but honest. I think he trusted to Pierre's shrewdness to keep him out of danger. Yet that there is danger if Aliénor learns of his coming, I can not deny. It is very bad that Hugo also has gone—perhaps to Tours.”

Geoffrey, after a moment's hesitation, ventured a bold stroke.

“You are wise, Cercamon. You know Henry's ways. It is not his way to betray his servants. But it is ever his wont to seize what power he can. Do you not see why he has come here, where he can be so near Aliénor?”

Cercamon stared at him.

“You mean?”

“He means to ask Aliénor to marry him!”

“Ah!” Cercamon drew in his breath with a quick hiss. “You are right. It is clear. Evil woman though she is, she would bring him the richest dowry ever woman had. He would do it. Any wise prince would do it. It will more than double his power.”

“But it will imperil his friends—such of them as Aliénor hates,” Geoffrey hinted.

“Perhaps. But I think my lord believes himself man enough to master even such a wife, and compel her to leave his friends alone. I should have no fears for myself—after the marriage. But Pierre, in Tours, now—I see I must ride to Tours.”

“Bide a little,” Geoffrey interposed, “and I will ride with you.”

“You? But my lord—”

Geoffrey nodded thoughtfully.

“I will tel) you something, Cercamon. I need friends, and you will keep my secret. If Henry marries Aliénor, he will be the strongest man in France—stronger than the king. But if—if that should happen which would prevent such a marriage—”

“Stop, my lord!” Cercamon interrupted. “I can hear no more. What you have said I will not disclose to your brother; but I am his vassal, bound to him by the strongest ties of loyalty and regard. I will ride to Tours alone.”

Geoffrey sighed.

“As you will. I am sorry, for you could have helped me—and I you. I fear greatly that your refusal will prevent me from saving Pierre in his dire peril.”

“Peril—” Cercamon began; but the sentinel, grounding his pike with a loud clang, warned him to be silent. Hard on the man's signal Henry appeared at the stair top, his wide shoulders outlined against the light of a torch behind him.

“It grows late, lads!” he growled. “Best go to bed, brother. You are over young to watch so late.”

The mockery in his words jarred on Geoffrey. Smothering a curse, he bowed low, and obeyed the scarcely veiled order. When he had gone, Henry took his place at the troubadour's side.

“What had he to say to you?” Henry demanded. “Nay, good Matthieu! Keep your distance! Overlong ears can be cropped, knave!” The spearman strolled off.

“Half the Angevins in the castle are Geoffrey's spies!” the duke complained. “And I am their ruler! A pretty pass, when a man's own brother plots against him!”

“You keep too tight a rein on him,” Cercamon retorted. “Had you given him more power, he would be your loyal vassal.”

Henry shrugged.

“Mayhap. I have been over-stingy with him. I will make amends, if it be not too late. But I did not think you would conspire with him against me.”

Cercamon removed his belted sword, and handed it, hilt first, to Henry.

“I have not conspired, my lord, nor will I; but if your Grace doubts me, take my sword, and have me put in chains.”

Henry's voice boomed in a hearty laugh.

“Nay, lad, I trust you, but I am out of humor over this affair of Pierre's. I sent him to Tours, as I said, with a letter to the governor, which should ensure his safety. It had to be done. I gave out that he was banished; partly because my barons would deny me their homage if I failed to act after Ormeric's death, and partly because Pierre's own life was in danger from them. If I had more money, I could buy their loyalty. They are all for sale. But I have spent all I have buying the support of the English lords in preparation for the coming invasion.”

“And so,” Cercamon put in boldly, “you plan to raise more money by marrying the Duchess Aliénor?”

Henry stared at him.

“You got that from Geoffrey!” he growled.

“It is plain from the facts themselves,” Cercamon answered lightly. “Here are you in Chinon; there is she in Tours. And—Pierre—is—in—Tours! I mean to go thither myself, my lord!”

“No harm can come to him,” Henry persisted stubbornly. “The governor—”

“Where is Hugo D'Orbec?” Cercamon countered.

“Ha! I understand! But how—”

“My lord, Pierre is my brother-in-arms. His danger demands my aid. Give me a letter to the governor, bidding that he obey me in all things as your deputy. If D'Orbec should get word to the duchess concerning Pierre, she is cunning enough to find ways of destroying a man she hates so bitterly. Knowing her, and armed with your letter, I can defeat any plans she may have against him.”

Henry thought hard, rubbing his fox-mane with stubby fingers.

“If D'Orbec betrays him to' her,” he pondered, “and she strikes against him; if then you present my order for his safety—she will be angered against me—and my plans for a marriage—”

“Would you sell your friends for political advantage?” Cercamon shot at him.

“By the mass! You take too much on yourself, troubadour! Do you dare—”

“For my friends I dare anything, my lord, even as in the past I have dared many things in your service. If I were not true to him, how could I be true to you?”

The duke's anger melted, swiftly as it had arisen.

“I will give you the letter,” he decided. “In the last extremity it will save Pierre. But you are a man of shrewd parts. If you can save him without imperiling my suit for the duchess's hand—and that means without using my letter—you will save me from a ruin as great as ever befell a prince! Her temper is such that she would never forgive me if I forced her to give up her vengeance!”

“I will try,” Cercamon promised. “I pray you, let me have the letter soon, for I would ride tonight.”

“HE WHO rides fast rides to a fall,” muttered Cercamon to himself, as the watch-fires on the crest of Chinon Castle died to yellow patches against the night. The town was well behind him, the highroad before, and a good—but not a handsome—horse between his knees. He had stolen away as secretly as possible; yet, though his anxiety for Pierre tugged at his nerves, he reined his mount in to a dog-trot, his ear inclined down-wind to catch the least sound.

“The road is empty,” he decided, and dismounted. By the wayside he tethered his horse, doffed mantle and spurs, and weighting them with a stone, flung them far into the undergrowth. From a bundle at his saddle-bow he took a shapeless garment, the cowled gown of a canon of St. Martin de Tours which he had purloined from the duke's chaplain, and put it on over his armor. He stood thus in the dark, fumbling at his scabbard to make sure that his short, broad, two-edged sword was wholly hidden by the skirts of his cassock, and smiled to himself. Adjusting the cowl so that it concealed his long locks and almost masked his eyes, he gathered the long gown and carefully mounted.

The morning sun bathed Tours in crimson fire as he rode into the city, troubled at heart, but eyes afire with the joy of action. His ready brain worked best against odds, and here was promise of odds enough. Pierre might be safe, but the chances were against him in a city that held Aliénor of Aquitaine for guest.

Cercamon did not mean to use Henry's all-powerful letter in any way that would compromise his lord's plans. It would suffice to free Pierre from anything but a coffin, but only at great cost to the duke. Having incurred Aliénor's hate himself, the troubadour knew she would sacrifice even a most advantageous marriage to satisfy her vengeance against one who had offended her as bitterly as Pierre. Therefore Cercamon resolved to have full resort to his letter only if all else failed, and first to try the full resources of his own crafty mind.

His religious habit won him entrance past the guard, who were just opening the city gates. At his request a soldier guided him to the citadel, where he cooled his heels for an hour before the governor rose. Once announced, however, he was admitted without difficulty into the governor's presence.

He at once delivered his letter.

“If I mistake not, my son,” he began, speaking in character with his religious garb, “a message has already reached you from the duke our lord.”

The governor nodded.

“But three days ago, holy father. I obeyed the orders it contained.”

“Then you behold here the authority by which I question you concerning them. I have leave to speak?”

“Assuredly, father. This letter commands me to obey its bearer in all things, as the accredited representative of the duke.”

Cercamon's heart was considerably lightened. The governor had obeyed Henry's first letter, which had commanded that Pierre be placed in safety.

“The man who came to you is out of harm's way?” he asked.

Sir Marc smiled grimly.

“As safe as a man can be behind stone walls. Whatever he has done to offend the duke, he will sin no more.”

Cercamon started.

“To offend? Stone walls? What mean you?”

It was the governor's turn to be surprized.

“I received orders,” he explained, “by the letters which the fellow carried, to cast him into prison. I did so. My dungeons will keep any man harmless. To make all sure, he hangs tomorrow morning!”

His previous words had warned the troubadour that all was not well; nevertheless it was with difficulty that Cercamon concealed his consternation.

“I think,” he said uneasily, “I think, my son, that you have not fully comprehended the duke's will concerning this man. May I ask you to show his letter to me?”

Over-sensitive on the point of honor, the governor rose stiffly.

“I regret that I have given the letter to the Duchess of Aquitaine, whose affair it seemed to be,” he answered. “But I assure you there was no mistake. I make no mistakes of that sort. The letter clearly bade me cast its bearer into prison, subject to the duchess's will. I did so.”

Cercamon's worst fears were realized. Nonetheless, warned by his mistake of the moment before, he bowed.

“I crave your pardon, my son. The mistake was not yours, but her Grace's.”

“That is a matter for you to discuss with her Grace. I will inform her of your coming.”

Cercamon held up one hand.

“That you must not! I give you my word, my son, that it would peril the duke's interests on which I have come. He has entrusted me with a task so delicate that the smallest misstep would cost him dear. If you would serve him, let me come before the duchess unexpected and unannounced.”

The governor was impressed.

“A strange pother this, over a single soldier,” he mused. “Yet I marked that he wore fine mail, as if he were one in authority. May I ask his name?”

“Surely, if you will not repeat it. He is Pierre Faidit, whom men call Pierre of the Sword.”

Sir Marc's face for the first time betrayed uncertainty. He tugged nervously at his mustaches.

“I trust,” he said anxiously, “that my zeal to obey my lord's commands—”

“Be at ease, my son. I shall report to the duke that you have in all things punctually obeyed the orders you had from him.”

The governor bowed.

“My thanks, good father. If you would see the duchess, she lodges in the north tower.”

“And the prisoner?”

“In a cell of that same tower, all of which is assigned to her Grace.”

“In what force did the duchess come to Tours?”

“Four knights and twenty men-at-arms.”

Cercamon reflected.

“Then, with your permission, I will see the prisoner first. Alter which—if I may have a chamber as close as possible to the north tower, and a trusty man to attend me, who will not speak of what he sees?”

Sir Marc smiled a puzzled smile.

“You shall have my own squire. He can neither read nor write, and he is by nature a silent man. Ho! Bruyn!”

A short, stocky soldier entered, very quietly. He was mailed, but bare-headed, and a shock of black hair framed his square, swarthy face.

“THIS priest,” the governor explained, “has come on an errand for the duke. He is to come and go as he likes, and to command your services at all times, in all things. Understood?”

The soldier fixed his keen eyes on Cercamon and nodded. The troubadour, with a gesture of benediction, commanded to be led to the dungeons of the tower. But in the doorway he turned.

“It may chance, Sir Marc,” he said meaningly, “that I shall need to issue certain commands which it would be best you did not know of, that you may disavow them if any question you. I shall issue them in your name, and expect to be obeyed; but, being ignorant of them, you may deny them afterward with a clear conscience.”

The governor stared after his broad back in uncomprehending astonishment.

“A strange priest, that!” he muttered. “Yet his letters—”

Cercamon's own thoughts raced as he followed the squire Bruyn across the wide, rough-paved bailley. Pierre's letter to Sir Marc—there was foul play there! But how? The governor was clearly innocent. It was unthinkable that the duke had betrayed Pierre. Had he given him a lettre de cachet, it would account for Pierre's fate—but Henry would never have done such a deed. Nor, had he done so, would the duke have given Cercamon such plenary power to investigate. Somehow, after the letter had left the duke's hands, it must have been tampered with. But by whom? Gerald, the clerk, was surely honest. Cercamon gave the problem up, yet he praised the Saints that he had written with his own hand the authorization Henry had given him, seen the duke sign and seal it and taken it at once from his master's hands. Cercamon suspected no one; but he let no third hand mingle in his affairs if he could help it.

He had not expected to find Pierre lightly enough guarded to warrant a bold attempt at rescue. Descending to the crypt in Bruyn's wake, he was confronted, at the foot of the stair, by a half-dozen soldiers, armed to the teeth. Behind, and a little to one side, stood Hugo D'Orbec.

Cercamon was not surprized. He had been sure, before leaving Chinon, that any harm which might have overtaken Pierre was of this man's contriving. Nor did he flatter himself that D'Orbec would be easy to outwit. He could not show the Norman his letter from the duke—such a course would at once result in an open breach between Aliénor and his master.

He was glad that the semi-darkness of the crypt aided his disguise. Adjusting his cowl the better to conceal his eyes, he asked in a deep voice:

“Your leave to see the prisoner, my son!”

The Norman pointed to the row of cells.

“He is there, father,” he smiled, “but I do not think you will see him. The duchess has ordered that he be allowed to speak with none.”

“But surely spiritual consolation—”

D'Orbec shook his head, with unconcealed delight.

“He is to die without absolution and without the sacrament.”

Cercamon gasped, in consternation at the brutality that would condemn a man to perish with all his sins on his head. D'Orbec naturally interpreted his emotion as that natural to a priest outraged in his most sacred feelings.

“It is not by my order, father,” he explained, “but by her Grace's. Not that I—”

Cercamon nodded, and withdrew up the stair, the governor's squire keeping pace with him in utter silence. The troubadour had noted one thing that meant much: Four of D'Orbec's men were his own vassals, men Cercamon had seen in Chinon. The other two wore the livery of Aquitaine. D'Orbec was, then, definitely in Aliénor's service and doubtless high in her favor. The situation was bad indeed; even if a plan could be contrived, the Norman would die rather than let his enemy slip from his hands. What must be done could be done only through Aliénor herself; and knowing her, Cercamon had scant hope.

“Where is my chamber?” he questioned.

The silent Bruyn halted him at the landing, which gave on a corridor running west from the tower, and pointed to the left; then held up three fingers.

“The third room west of the tower?” Cercamon asked, and the other nodded.

“And where does the duchess lodge?”

The squire turned as if to lead him up the second flight of the winding stair; but Cercamon held him back.

“Nay, it is as well you should not be seen with me near her quarters. As guide to a priest you are not an object of suspicion, but as guide to— Take these!”

He whipped off his cassock, and stood there in full mail; then, stripping away belt and sword, he placed the whole in the squire's hands.

“Hide them under your cloak!” he commanded. “Take them to my chamber, and hide them there. It will be enough to tell me how I may reach her Grace.”

Bruyn rolled astonished eyes at him, and spoke in the swift, curt manner of a taciturn man:

“The next landing. To your right—the second door.”

“Good. Now go—and wait in my chamber till I come.”

The man went swiftly, and as swiftly Cercamon climbed the stair. Emerging on a broad corridor, he found himself halted by three men-at-arms on duty at the landing.

“Governor's orders!” he barked at them, praying that none of them had been in Aliénor's service long enough to remember the days when he had sung in her court.

They passed him through, and he strode to the second door, at which stood a brace of sharp-featured Gascons, none too busy with their watch to bandy jests with a pretty maid-of-honor. They sprang to bar his way just as an officer clattered up the stair and demanded entrance. The men-at-arms parted to let the officer by, and Cercamon leaped in at his heels.

He closed the door behind him, set his back against it, and smiled into the astonished officer's face. He trusted his cast-off disguise was still a secret. A monk had stood on the landing below; and now a courtier in armor, weaponless and so not dangerous, stood, debonair and self-reliant, in the midst of an angry group.

The officer fronted him, hand on sword, while the Gascon guards pushed at the door. A red-faced clerk bustled up, protesting:

“You must knock! None enters her Grace's lodging unknown and unannounced! Such insolence—”

Cercamon, ignoring the knight, turned his blue-green eyes on the clerk. Cold and arrogant, he carried an air of authority that brooked no denial. The clerk cowered, used as he was to be bullied by men of rank; but he stood his ground, and the knight eased out his sword. The clerk edged over to a door giving on an inner room, and set his back against it. Two ladies-in-waiting directed shocked and curious glances at the intruder.

CERCAMON bowed ironically, his long locks brushing the officer's face.

“I am a guest,” he said with a ripple of laughter, “whom her Grace will receive with joy. Say to her that Cercamon the troubadour craves an audience.”

At the name of one whom all France knew for the duchess's enemy, the clerk paled, and one of the ladies uttered a little scream. The officer gently set his point to Cercamon's breast and stood waiting. But the younger of the two women, readier of wit, darted to the clerk's side.

“Open the door, Master Estienne!” she cried. “Nay, open, fool! And do you, Sire Golfier, sheath your weapon. Her Grace will indeed bless the day that brings her such a guest!”

The clerk turned to fumble at the latch; but the sprightly lady thrust him aside and flung the door open wide. Then, turning to let her dark eyes rest mockingly on Cercamon, she curtsied to the very floor, and cried in a ringing voice:

“My lady! An audience—for Cercamon!”

A cry came from the inner room. With a clank of steel, two armed guards burst into the antechamber and laid hands on the troubadour's shoulders, while the knight Golfier slipped nimbly behind him. Between them he advanced, helpless, but very much at his ease, into the presence of the woman who had once put a price on his head.

He bowed before her as gallantly as the clutch of his captors permitted.

“My eyes have been denied the sight of perfect beauty since I left your service, my lady,” he said, with a conviction that drove the anger from Aliénor's eyes. “Now they are blessed again. You inspire me to a song that men will sing when I have become dust.”

The duchess swept him a low courtesy.

“Loose him, messires!” she commanded. “There is neither purpose nor wisdom in holding captive a man unarmed—whose master's anger is more perilous than many swords.”

“Your Grace is magnanimous as ever,” the troubadour smiled. She felt the mockery, and swept him with a swift, challenging glance.

“Why not? I know full well it were dangerous to lay hands on you. You are Henry Plantagenet's man; I am in his territories. There is no man in his realm whom he values as highly as he does you. You knew I should not dare harm you, or you would not have placed yourself in my power. Is it not so?”

“Even so, your Grace. It is true that my master knows I am here, and expects me back—soon. Moreover, I have taken certain precautions with respect to the governor, who would be likely to search for me if I do not return to him within the hour. I do not trust myself rashly in my enemies' hands.”

Aliénor bit her lip.

“Have you come merely to remind me that we are enemies, sir?”

Cercamon smiled winningly.

“Not so, madame. The enmity between us has been my misfortune, not yours. I come to atone for my old offense against you—to give your Grace a great gift.”

Aliénor's fine blue eyes widened to the full.

“What gift can you give me—and—on what terms?”

Cercamon laughed aloud. It was pleasant to fence with this woman, now that his favor with Duke Henry made the pleasure a safe one. Had she not feared the duke and desired to please him, Cercamon would as soon have trusted himself with a viper as with Aliénor.

“You have a prisoner,” he answered easily, “whom I would ransom.”

Aliénor turned one shapely shoulder on him, and spoke with the guards.

“Leave us alone!” she commanded. “Do ye also depart, ye women!”

One of the soldiers protested:

“Your Grace is not safe with this man—”

Aliénor stamped one tiny, satin-shod foot.

“Be off!” she cried. “Think you I stand in any danger from a troubadour and gallant gentleman?”

Sullenly the guards withdrew, the women after them; and long were the glances the ladies-in-waiting cast in Cercamon's direction as they left the room.

“I thank your Grace,” Cercamon said softly, “for that title of gentleman, which my birth scarce deserves.”

The duchess smiled enchantingly.

“You are a gentleman by nature, which is better than the nobility of birth. Being a queen has taught me much, and not all of it pleasant— But you say I have a prisoner?”

“So I am told, your Grace. One who is my friend.” He did not smile now; his eyes were grave, but full of confidence.

Aliénor nodded, tapping thoughtfully with her slipper.

“You mean?” she parried.

“Pierre Faidit. You mean to have him hanged tomorrow.”

Aliénor turned her eyes to his, but he could read nothing in them.

“You are come, then,” she spoke with forced calmness, “to say to me that Henry of Normandy, your master and Pierre's, demands his release? Yet the duke, in a letter signed with his own hand, gave Pierre to me!”

Cercamon noted the thin line of her lips, and understood that she would never give Pierre up alive. He had scarce hoped a more favorable outcome of his interview. He must seem to yield to her, if he would find a way to outwit her purpose.

“I think that letter was forged,” he said calmly, “and I think you know it. But in any case my lord does not demand his release. Indeed, he bade me do nothing that would hazard his—friendship for you.”

Startled out of her calm, Aliénor confirmed his suspicions of the letter.

“He knows I have Pierre, then?” she exclaimed. “And he will not force me to surrender him?”

“He suspects you have him, and prefers to do nothing that will displease your Grace. For my part, Pierre is my friend—but the duke is my lord. Even to save my friend I would hesitate to use the duke's name for a purpose that would cost him your—”

Aliénor laughed, a most musical laugh, like the song of a bird.

“My friendship, I believe you said. Ah well, troubadour, there is no need of concealment between us. We have been foes too long for that. Henry would save his servant from me if he could, but prefers not to risk my displeasure by demanding him, lest I refuse his offer of marriage. Is not that it?

“That is my meaning.”

“And you—you are shrewd, Cercamon, but you do not deceive me. I warrant you have come with full power from the duke to do whatever may be necessary for Pierre's freedom, even at the cost of my—friendship; but you and Henry are both resolved to keep both your friend Pierre and my consent to this marriage. Bah! I can read you. You are not the man to betray a friend; nor is Henry that kind of master. I should care little for him if he were. You have come here with a plan—a clever trick. Tell me—what is it?”

“What trick would avail against one who can so shrewdly read men's minds?” Cercamon evaded. “Have I not said that I come with a gift—a great gift—to give in ransom for Pierre?”

This time Aliénor laughed scornfully.

“What gift have you that can buy my revenge? What can you, a troubadour, offer the mistress of the richest provinces in France?”

“Something that not all your wealth can buy, lady. Safety!”

THE duchess sprang to her feet, her chiseled nostrils dilated.

“Safety? Ah, I understand! I had scarce left Paris, but three days freed from him who had been my husband, when Thibault of Champagne sent horsemen to seize me. Now that I am free to marry again, every noble in France covets my lands—ay, my lands, not my beauty! I escaped from Thibault and sought refuge here. Who seeks me now? Am I not safe in Tours, surrounded by Henry's garrisons?”

“You are not safe here, nor anywhere but in your own lands,” Cercamon replied meaningly. “As you say, every great lord in France desires your lands and your beauty, and will hazard all to win them. It chances that I know—and for a price, will tell—the danger that threatens you. Unless you yield what I ask, you will be carried off—ay, from Tours itself—to become the wife of a man without lands, almost without title. Your Grace knows—”

Aliénor eyes blazed.

“Ay, I know! All France will laugh if I, who have been Queen of France, am forced into a marriage with one who can bring me neither lands nor coronet! Tell me—who threatens me? How may I escape? How know I that you speak truth?”

“Your Grace has called me a gentleman,” Cercamon retorted. “On the honor of a gentleman, I speak truth. Now, touching your prisoner—”

She cut him off with an imperious gesture.

“Not that! Tell me, and I will give you your weight in gold; but for no price on earth—no, not to save my life, would I give up my vengeance on Pierre of the Sword! Your own offense is as nothing beside his. It was he whose accusations cost me the crown, cost me the respect of men, made me a byword for hissing throughout France! By my soul, he shall hang for it!”

“His accusations—” Cercamon began.

“Were true? Ay, what if they were? Did he injure me the less for that? Ask not for his life—I would not give it for my hope of heaven!”

Cercamon's head bowed, his face dark with despair.

“I have done what I could,” he said heavily. “You will bear witness to that. The knowledge I possess may still be yours for a lesser price. If you will not forego your revenge, at least mitigate it. I have been told you have denied Pierre a priest. Is it not enough to hang him, without sending him to with all his sins unshriven on his head? Grant him the last ministrations of the church, and I will tell you the danger in which you stand. It is not yet too late to avert it, though time presses.”

Aliénor pondered, her lips twitching with her emotion. At last she smiled, a hard, bitter smile.

“He shall have a priest,” she agreed. “But you are a shrewd man, famous for your skill in snatching your desire from the very jaws of death. I will trust no priest you furnish. Pierre shall be shriven by my own chaplain; and I think you will find him no easier to move than me.”

“It is enough, your Grace. I have your word?”

“Not my word only, which I have been known to break.” She said this frankly, with a dazzling flash of her blue eyes. “Not my word only, but my oath by the Five Wounds, which I dare not break. But lest you hope to effect a rescue, the priest shall not go to him till one hour before he dies.”

Cercamon bowed.

“Now for my part of the bargain, my lady. If you do not leave this city very soon, you will fall into the hands of Geoffrey of Anjou!”

The duchess started.

“Geoffrey? That boy? The duke's brother?”

“Ay, that boy. He is desperate with the harsh treatment—well deserved though it be—that Henry has given him. Neither lands nor men—not even money—can he get from the duke. But there are those who follow him, in the hope that they can overthrow Henry and make Geoffrey duke in his stead. Our turbulent barons know well that the boy would make an easier ruler than his stern brother. Therefore I bid you flee from Tours as fast as you may. Geoffrey has told me just enough to make me sure he plans to seize you, and make himself great with your inheritance. How would you fare then, the enforced bride of a penniless, landless lad? How greatly would you regret the folly that deprived you of all marriage to Henry would bring you. For Henry is not only lord of all the Northwest—he will one day be King of England!”

Aliénor's little hands were clenched; but the calculating lines of her forehead showed she was thinking desperately.

“You know he will come soon?” she questioned. “Surely he can not find men enough to storm Tours?”

“I do not know how swiftly he will come—but, having betrayed his plan to me without winning my help, he will strike very soon, for fear I will reveal his secret. He dares not wait long, lest Henry learn of it. If he does as I should do in his place, he will slip quietly out of Chinon with such men as he can trust, gather his garrisons from Loudun and Mirebeau and ride at once for Tours. There are many in Touraine who will join him once his banner is raised. He may be on his way hither now—and with a force that the city can not resist; and he has certainly friends within the walls. Unless he is a fool, he has every chance to win. I myself could devise a dozen plans for snatching you from the very presence of the governor.”

He meant this to frighten her; and he saw that he had succeeded.

“Then—I must go tonight!”

“I think so, my lady. And go warily, lest he ambush you on the road to Poitiers.”

Aliénor's eyes were troubled.

“For this great service I thank you, troubadour. You have given me much, and have received little in return. Your friend shall have his priest. Now go, for I have much to do if I am to ride tonight!”

But Cercamon stood motionless, till Aliénor turned on him impatiently.

“Pardon, my lady. I would feel safer if I heard you command your chaplain to attend Pierre.”

“Ha! True! If I ride tonight, Pierre must hang tonight, lest I be cheated of my revenge.”

She clapped her hands, and her women hurried into the room.

“Fetch Father Ambrose!”

Cercamon waited stolidly till the priest appeared; a short, pursy man, black-gowned, with a square, hard-lined face. In his eyes burned the flame of the zealot, pure of heart, inflexible of purpose. To him Aliénor gave her signet ring, with the command that he shrive the prisoner within the hour, and transmit her order that he be hanged as soon as shriven.

“I commend your altered purpose, my daughter!”

The priest spoke in pure Gascon, and Cercamon's heart warmed to him, remembering his own ragged boyhood in Gascony. Hastening to his chamber, he found the taciturn Bruyn waiting with curious eyes. From him Cercamon took his short sword, and girded it on.

“Now, my lad, I have orders for you!” he spoke briskly. “You know me for Henry's man; perchance you know not I am Cercamon the troubadour.”

Bruyn's face lighted. He had heard of Cercamon—as who in France had not?—and was ready enough to serve one so famous.

“WHAT I bid you do will peril your soul and mine, yet not so much but that we may have absolution. If you disobey, I will see to it that your head parts company with your shoulders. Do you understand?”

It needed not the fire in Cercamon's blue-green eyes to win the squire's eager nod. He knew the repute of the troubadour's sword-arm.

“It will comfort you to know that you stand to win the duke's favor and my friendship—and mayhap much gold. You are to lie in wait in the passage just above the door to the crypt, and seize the duchess's confessor. Take him swiftly, lest he cry out. Bind and gag him if you will; it will make less trouble. Hide him so securely that none can find him, and do not set him free till I have left Tours. Bring me his gown and the ring he wears. If you fail—”

The squire's reticence melted under stress of fear and admiration.

“By the mass, good sir! I shall not fail!” he stammered.

“Then, my lad, I shall see to it that you have a brilliant future,” Cercamon smiled meaningly. “But be sure he does not cry out!”

The squire vanished, and Cercamon sat down to wait the outcome of his plot. The minutes dragged interminably, till he could bide still no longer, and paced the floor with nervous strides. He reckoned it close to the allotted hour at the end of which Pierre must die, before his door stealthily opened and Bruyn glided in. Under his cloak was wadded the priest's black gown; between thumb and forefinger he held the carved ruby that was the duchess's signet.

“He is safely bestowed,” he whispered, “in the chamber next this. I have the key. He made no noise. Saints, but I am afraid!”

“No need, now I have these.” Cercamon compared the priest's gown with that of the monk of St. Martin in which he had come to Tours, and smiled faintly. The gray habit of St. Martin would not serve him now. He put on the cassock of Father Ambrose and strode to the door.

“Follow me. When I descend into the crypt, do you stand by the door. If you hear sounds of fight, stand fast, and refuse to pass any who would go down to interfere. Kill if you must, but pass no one—not even the duchess. Say the governor forbids it.”

“But if the governor himself—”

“He lodges at the other end of the castle, and can not come till I have done what I came to do. But tell no man Cercamon is here. The duchess knows, but she will scarce speak of it. I will take the responsibility on my own head.”

The two hastened down the corridor to the massive door of the crypt, Cercamon with his cowl pulled far down over his forehead. At the entrance he thrust Bruyn back, laid a finger to his lip, and descended the damp stone steps.

Sir Hugo D'Orbec and his six men-at-arms waited at the foot of the stair. Cercamon held up the duchess's signet, and D'Orbec nodded sullenly.

“It is her Grace's will that he be shriven,” Cercamon spoke, in a tone as like the priest's as he could counterfeit. “When I have done with him, take him out and hang him.”

Hugo hung back, muttering.

“He was to die without the sacrament,” he protested. “Why trouble with such a dog?”

“Would you peril a mortal soul?” Cercamon asked sternly. “Her Grace has relented. Open swiftly now, for the duchess rides tonight, and her going must not be delayed. Already her horses wait at the gate.”

The guards darted surprized glances at one another. Unwillingly D'Orbec fitted a heavy key in the clumsy lock and the door opened with a whine of rusty hinges. Then Cercamon had cause to rejoice at the feeble, flickering light cast by the two torches of the guard; for outside their radiance the huge crypt was a black well of darkness, and his own figure, between the Norman and his followers, threw D'Orbec into deep shadow. Letting the wide sleeve of his gown touch D'Orbec's arm, even as the door moved, Cercamon slid his fingers cunningly over the Norman's hilt—the hilt of the great sword stolen from Pierre. Then, thrusting hard with his free left hand, the troubadour flung his foe backward with all his strength, jerking at the hilt with his right. D'Orbec crashed back among his men, who raised a shout of alarm; but ere they could act, Cercamon was inside the cell, and thrust Pierre's sword into his hand.

“Out, comrade!” he cried. “Out, and strike for freedom!”

“Cercamon!” Pierre's voice rang trumpet-clear with joy and ardor. He leaped through the door even as the soldiers rushed to close it; and on the instant Cercamon, short sword out, was at his side with whirling blade.

D'Orbec, disarmed, hung back behind his men; and these were in no wise eager for fight. They were still confused; and strong habit made them slow to strike at a priest's gown. But Hugo, wresting a sword from one of his followers, flung himself forward.

“Fools!” he bellowed. “Did ye not hear? It is no priest, but Cercamon the troubadour! He has betrayed us! Cut him down!”

Still they hung back; for they knew it was not good to exchange blows with two such splendid swordsmen. Pierre and Cercamon took advantage of their hesitance to leap for the stair. They might have made it, had not Pierre had a debt to pay. He turned at the lowest step, his eyes on Hugo.

The Norman snarled at his men, who moved forward uncertainly.

“It is not good to slay a troubadour!” one shrilled. “They are under the protection of princes! The duke—”

One of the Aquitanians rushed forward with an oath.

“The duchess has put a price on this one!” he roared. “She will assure our safety. Slay!”

Under this urge the spearmen charged, and the two comrades awaited them, calm and confident. Pierre struck first, his great sword flashing in the torchlight like a monstrous gem. His first blow drove the helmet from D'Orbec's head. The Norman stepped back in sudden fear, but Pierre thrust home under the chin, and stretched his foe dead on the stones.

Four of the spearmen drove in doggedly, their long weapons at disadvantage between the columns of the crypt; while their two comrades held the torches for them to fight by. Pierre, bestriding the dead Hugo, made his whirling blade serve as weapon and shield both. While he fought for his life, Cercamon skipped passed a plunging point and knocked the torch spinning from the hand of one of the light-bearers. As he did so, an Aquitanian drove his point full against the troubadour's breast. The fine mail checked its force, but the keen steel tore a gash over his breast-bone. Swinging short, Cercamon cut away the point of the spear. The soldier, raising his lopped shaft like a quarter staff, struck down at his adversary's chin; but Cercamon warded and countered with a slash that shore away the man's arm. In that moment Pierre, having felled his second opponent, lashed at the second torchbearer. Darkness swallowed them.

“Pierre! The stair!” cried Cercamon, lunging out to keep his foemen clear. He sprang up three steps and waited, while the crash of wildly swinging blades, now against steel, now grating on the stone pillars, ground in his ears. There came the ring of blade on blade, a groan; and a great figure hurtled against him, bowling him over. He struggled up, shortening his sword for a thrust; but a voice rasped—

“It is I, comrade!”

The two stumbled up the stair together, the blind chase blundering after them, mail clanking as men slipped on the damp stone. Angry shouts lifted in wild cries for the guard. Then the fugitives struck the door and flung it outward, landing full sprawl in the lighted corridor.

As they picked themselves up, a third figure stood beside them. It was Bruyn.

“None came!” he growled. “Ye struck too fast. But—ha!”

As he cried out, the squire stepped nimbly round them and lashed out with his point at the stair-head. One of D'Orbec's men, caught in full stride, clattered headlong down the stair with his breast pierced through. The three who remained, Normans all, saw themselves matched and held back; but their yells echoed deafeningly down the corridor.

Other cries answered them from the inner court, where Aliénor's men-at-arms were housed. Swiftly Cercamon, catching his comrades each by an arm, hustled them up the second flight of stairs that led to the duchess's quarters. Seeing them apparently in flight again, the three Normans ventured forth and made a half-hearted move to follow. A dozen men-at-arms in the livery of Aquitaine, an officer at their head, rushed in from the court. The Normans burst into full cry, but Cercamon forestalled them. Raising his resonant singer's voice in a mighty shout that drowned their cries, he pointed straight at the astonished Normans.

“Ho, duchess's men!” he roared. “Slay these dogs! They plot treason against her Grace!”

The officer, already bewildered by the sight of the three weird figures on the stair—a priest with blood-stained sword, a huge man in leather jipoun who flourished a long, dripping blade, and the governor's squire—stood open-mouthed, waiting explanation.

“Father Ambrose!” he gasped, recognizing Cercamon's robes. Moreover, the troubadour had spoken in the Gascon tongue, in which he had heard the priest acknowledge Aliénor orders; and his southern accent lulled suspicion.

“These dogs would have murdered me because I heard their plots!” he cried again. “They meant to carry off the duchess. Slay them! Take no prisoners!”

HE COUNTED shrewdly on the officer's having heard of Aliénor's purpose to ride forth that night, lest she be taken by Geoffrey. He knew her orders must already have gone forth that her men prepare for the march. Nor did he reckon amiss. With a howl of rage, the Aquitanians sprang on the astounded Normans. These, seeing no way to explain themselves ere the long spears should rend out their lives, burst into headlong flight down the corridor. After them raced the duchess's guard; and after the guard—but much more slowly—Cercamon led his comrades. When the chase had passed the door of his chamber, he drew the other two swiftly in.

“We are safe—for the moment!” he gasped. “Go you, Bruyn, and bid the governor, in the duke's name, admit none to this room. Let him place a guard over it—but say nothing to him of what you have seen!”

Bruyn vanished into the passage, heading swiftly for the Salle D'Armes. Cercamon sank onto his bed.

“By the mass, that was brisk!” he panted; and straightway he rolled upon his side and broke into silent laughter.

Pierre, casting down his bloody sword, reached for his friend's hand.

“I know not how you did it, lad, but I have you to thank that I am not this moment dangling in a noose!” he said earnestly.

Cercamon sat up, wiping his streaming eyes, still struggling with his laughter.

“When I think how the duchess—” he began; then he grew suddenly serious.

“When she learns how we have outwitted her,” he said, “she may think I lied to her about Geoffrey, and remain here after all! Ay, and she may yet cajole the governor into searching every corner of the castle for you, Pierre!”

“Geoffrey?” echoed the bewildered Pierre.

“Ay—ask me not now.” He tore off the robe of Father Ambrose, stuffed it under the bed and forced on Pierre the gray habit in which he himself had come to Tours.

“Wear that! You are sore in need of garments, and I have hose and mail. So! Now, if any comes, you are a blessed monk—if you can make yourself look smaller, and clothe your face in piety. And I am Cercamon again.”

The tramp of mailed feet rang down the corridor; a heavy hand beat on the door.

“Who comes?” Cercamon challenged.

“I—Marc de St. Martin. My squire brought your message, father. Are you in peril? Here has been bloodshed and murder.”

Cercamon winked at Pierre.

“Bruyn is a wise youth,” he whispered. “He brought my commands as from the duke's messenger, and said nought of the troubadour.”

He flung the door open. The governor, backed by a knot of mailed men, turned his eyes to the figure clad in the monk's robe, and stared in astonishment to see how its wearer had grown. Then he gazed at Cercamon, full-mailed and splashed with blood.

“Which of you is you, father?” he gasped; and Cercamon smiled.

“I am Cercamon the troubadour, Sir Marc,” he answered. “I was the monk who came to you with the duke's letter. It were unwise for you to ask the name of this holy brother beside me. If you knew, you might deem yourself forced to act in a way that would displease either the duchess or the duke. But you spoke of bloodshed?”

“Three men have been slain under my roof by the duchess's guards,” Sir Marc said anxiously. “The alarm was given too late to prevent the deed, and her Grace's officer spoke of a plot against her. Do you know of this?”

Cercamon nodded soberly.

“I know—but here again is a matter which I dare not speak of now. It is most important that the duchess should not know where I and this pious brother lie hidden; but I have an urgent message for her, which I pray that you will take her in person.”

He paused, and eyed the governor. It were hard to say whether Sir Marc or Pierre was the more perplexed.

“Say to her,” he resumed, “that the warning I gave her is a true one, and that she will do well to flee for Poitiers with all speed. And tell her that the duke knows nothing of what has happened this night, but that I have no doubt of his approval. Assure her that Cercamon the troubadour swears all this upon his honor as a gentleman. And in the meantime—I think you said the duchess has four and twenty men with her?”

“Even so. But—”

“Good. Then, before you go to her, have two score of your staunchest men mounted on the swiftest horses in your stables, and hold them for me at the great gate.”

“But—”

“This is the last order which I shall give you in the duke's name!” Cercamon spoke sternly. “As you fulfill it, so will I report on your loyalty to him!”

The governor drew himself up stiffly.

“It shall be done! My squire will bring you word.” He marched off, angry, puzzled, but obedient.

Pierre looked at his friend with a whimsical smile.

“What means all this mystery?” he asked.

Swiftly Cercamon explained to him all that had happened since his arrival in Tours; explained, too, how he judged from Geoffrey's half made confession that the young count meant to seize Aliénor's person and lands for himself.

Pierre sat in deep thought for a space; then.

“If Geoffrey is not a fool,” he said, “he will not seek her in Tours. You say that you told him you meant to ride hither on my account. Well, by this time—and before—he has learned that you are not in Chinon. He will have guessed that you might use his confidence to force Aliénor to give me up. He will assume, then, that the city is prepared for his coming, and will not dare attack it. He will also suspect that the duchess, frightened by your warning, will flee for her own city of Poitiers. Therefore he will ride, not hither, but straight for the Tours-Poitiers road, and set an ambush for her there,”

Cercamon nodded.

“If he is not a fool, yes. I count on his doing so. Your head is clear as ever, my Pierre.”

“And for this,” Pierre hazarded, “you ordered the two score horse?”

“Even so. Will you ride with me?”

Pierre took his head in his hands.

“I have no love for this duchess,” he spoke slowly, “nor do I think it will make for our lord's happiness to marry her. But his will is his will; and who am I to interfere with it? Since he wants her for himself, it is not meet that he should be cozened out of her by his own brother. I will ride with you.”

They clasped hands. As they stood thus, they heard footsteps again in the corridor, and the governor's voice craved admission. Entering, he stood before them, the torches borne by his men-at-arms blown backward by the draught. He was smiling. Taking a light from a soldier, he closed the door, shutting the guards out.

“Your men are ready,” he announced. “They know they are to ride under Cercamon. Before you go you will do me the honor to dine with me.”

“If we may eat swiftly,” Cercamon ventured.

“And thoroughly,” Pierre amended. “My stomach has had little encouragement for a long ride.”

“As it pleases you. The duchess is in a rage. She desires to depart swiftly, but has spent overmuch time searching the tower for her prisoner, Pierre Faidit, who it seems has escaped. She asked also—very angrily, I thought—about yourself, Cercamon. I informed her that you are my guest, and that, to my knowledge, I have not seen this Pierre since I had him cast into prison for her some days gone. Do you perchance know him, good father?”

“He is a friend of my own, and a worthy fellow,” Pierre answered, suppressing his laughter. “I trust he is safe.”

“That may be. I see you bear a sword, father. A strange weapon for a monk, and somewhat like this Pierre's. It may be you would care to see his armor, which is in my care?”

Pierre's eyes twinkled.

“I should like it of all things. I will even wear it a little, in his memory.”

The Governor chuckled.

“Sometimes it is good not to know too much!” he said. “Come now and eat, ere your spearmen grow impatient.”

WITH the governor's aid the two comrades made their start well ahead of Aliénor, and for the greater part of the night pushed on with all speed to maintain their lead. This they had every hope of doing, for their horses were the pick of Tours. It was an hour past midnight ere they felt safe in taking a softer pace.

The white road, ghostly in the light of a faint moon, stretched straight ahead on its way to Poitiers, the first great city of Aliénor's realm. Faint smells of flowers and moist earth, borne on a light breeze, rose from the night-mantled valley of the Vienne, far southeast of its broader waters by Chinon. The night was still, save for the rattle of the riders' mail and the steady beat of their horses' hoofs.

“If Geoffrey means to set an ambush for her,” hazarded Pierre, “'twill be close to the border of Poitou, north of Poitiers. That is the nearest place to his own castle pf Mirebeau, which is doubtless his base.”

“So I think,” Cercamon agreed. “Mirebeau is the only point where he could concentrate his men without Henry's knowledge. From now on we must go warily. Now I do not wish to seem too much against Geoffrey in this matter, seeing that what I suspect of his purpose came to me from his own lips. It were best if you took over command.”

He summoned his sergeants, and bade them take orders from Pierre, who at once picked out two of the best-mounted.

“Do ye ride ahead very vigilantly,” he commanded, “and make sure that the way is clear. Spur back if ye see or hear men on the road between here and the border.”

Certain now that they were well ahead of Aliénor, they resumed the march; but more slowly, that her cavalcade might draw sufficiently close for the purpose Cercamon and Pierre had contrived. The night waned, and the little breeze that blows just before dawn began to shred the fog from the river.

“What town is that which lies ahead?” asked Pierre, pointing to a few bunched lights to the south.

“No town, messire!” a trooper answered. “'Tis the watch-fires on the keep at Chastellarault. We draw close to the Poitou march.”

“And dawn is in the sky. Either we have made fools of ourselves, or Geoffrey will be somewhere close at hand. Halt!”

The horses stood, sorting and stamping in the gray chill. Impatient troopers swore under their breath, using the pause to tighten girths and see that their swords were loose in the scabbards.

“It will be soon, or not at all,” Cercamon muttered.

The scouts came tearing back.

“There is a wood a mile ahead,” they reported. “We heard the neigh of horses and the voices of men.”

Pierre glanced at Cercamon.

“Had we ridden farther, they would have heard us also,” he spoke. “Now do you two lads reconnoitre die rear!”

They waited again, restless and nervous, till word came that a troop of horse, riding fast, was approaching from the direction of Tours.

“Aliénor!” Pierre exclaimed. “Ride, lads, and make what noise ye can!”

They went on at a canter, calling back and forth loudly, rising high in the saddle to make their armor clash. The sky turned from gray to white, from white to pink. A little ahead lifted the dark tops of massed trees.

The edges of the wood winked suddenly with the glint of steel; and Pierre, pointing, lifted his voice in a great shout:

“'Ware ambush! À droite à l'épéron!”

His column swung to the right, faced west, and sunk their spurs in their horses' sides. Even as they turned, the whole rim of the forest spouted horsemen. Cries rang out, lances dipped; and the rim of the sun, throbbing above the eastern horizon, set the mail-clad ranks ablaze.

The men of Tours had no more than a half-mile lead, and their mounts were weary with the night's work; yet their burst of speed gave proof of the wisdom with which Sir Marc had picked them. They broke across the fields at a splendid pace, red nostrils aflame, clean limbs lifting fleetly. Turning in the saddle, Pierre glanced at their shouting, galloping pursuers, whose ragged front swept on, men crouched over their horses' necks. They rode without formation, still pelting hit-or-miss after their emergence from the broken ground of the forest.

“Nobles—noisy, and too proud to drill!” he mused. “With a boy for leader!”

A clear voice cried after the fugitives; but distance and the clank of mail drowned it to a thin wail. The chase drummed on over the dew-wet grass, swerving to avoid the marshy river-brink, melting into groves, sweeping out again into broad meadows. For a time the men of Tours gained; then, as the long night ride told on their weary beasts, they caught the flash of spears nearer, and heard the beat of hoofs closer behind. At last the pursuers slowly, steadily began to overhaul them.

Pierre pointed to a low hill just ahead, and gave a burst of sharp orders. His men checked their pace to a trot, a canter, a walk, and drew to a halt on its crest. There they shifted from column into line.

A joyful howl rose from the throats of their hunters. In a final flurry of speed the pursuit drew up at the foot of the hill, its stragglers streaming up in disorderly fringes. The morning sun, warm now and bright, touched the bunched horsemen into flame.

“To the rear!” Pierre hissed at Cercamon. “Yon is Geoffrey—you are helmetless, and he will know you!” Cercamon obeyed, and Pierre waited what was to come.

A slender figure in fine mail advanced from the clump of spears at the foot of the hill, while the two forces rested immobile, spears couched, waiting on a word to charge. Pierre, watching the single rider approach, estimated the hostile force at no less than three hundred.

The slender leader halted, and made an impatient gesture.

“Yield!” he shouted. “Surrender the duchess, or we grind you to pieces!”

Pierre smiled. The other's face was hidden in his helmet, but his voice was Geoffrey Plantagenet's.

“In whose name?” he demanded.

Geoffrey hesitated; then—

“Plantagenet!” he cried.

“You are Duke Henry's men?” Pierre asked calmly; and the other, furious to be thus questioned, flung back at him:

“Whose else? Do ye yield, or die?”

Pierre held up his naked sword—that sword like no other in France—so that the sun set the great ruby in its pommel burning.

“We also are Duke Henry's,” he made answer. “You can have no quarrel with us!”

The young count's eyes fastened for a moment on the glowing jewel, then roved to Pierre's great height; and recognition shone in them.

“Pierre!” he gasped. “But you—you were—in Tours! And where, is—”

He faltered, aware that his errand was one he could scarce confess to his brother's trusted servant.

“I was in Tours,” Piene answered easily, “but now you see me here, on the duke's business. How can I serve you, my lord? And who is this duchess of whom you speak?”

But Geoffrey was only a boy; his patience broke.

“Peste! Do you mock me, Pierre? Before ——, I could stamp you to dust, if it pleased me!”

Pierre coaxed his horse forward, step by step, and halted within arm's reach of Geoffrey. He flashed a glance past the angry lad, to the massed spears that waited within the space of a javelin-cast. He slid his sword into its scabbard.

“My sword is now sheathed,” he said. “I am a peaceful man. But I can draw fast, my lord. It is not for you to interfere with the duke's affairs. Have I your word to let us go unscathed?”

Geoffrey's men swayed a little forward behind him, and gripped their spears so that the points quivered. But Geoffrey knew Pierre. One look into the hard, dark eyes that were all he could see of the steel-circled face; one glance at the sinewy hand that rested lightly on the jeweled hilt, and he cried angrily over his shoulder—

“Fall back, men of Anjou!”

As they retired, he answered, sullenly—

“You have my word, Pierre.”

“That is good, lord count. Now I think your business here is brought to an end. For while ye have chased us so far from the highway, the Duchess Aliénor has safely passed the border into her own land. We have saved you from a deed that would have done you great harm.”

Geoffrey turned his back.

“About!” he cried, in a voice thick with rage. As his men wheeled, he pointed a trembling hand toward the distant Poitiers road.

“Ride, while there may be time!”

So the knights of Anjou and their men-at-arms galloped back, in a last, hopeless attempt to overtake their quarry. But they of Tours laughed, knowing the chase vain.

Cercamon returned to his friend.

“And now?” he asked.

“Back to Tours,” Pierre answered gravely, “with these borrowed spears. And there our ways part for a while. You must go to Henry, and account for these two days. They have been good days, lad, and I shall not forget them. I must bide in Tours, where I shall be safe—now. But there will be another spring, when the wind blows fair for England; and there we shall meet again.”

Cercamon seized his hand.

“Ay, we shall meet, under the duke's banner!”

“Nay!” Pierre cried, his eyes shining. “Under the king's!”