The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle (top rated books of all time txt) 📖

him he will pummel you. Doubtless you find it so in England.”

“Ma foi, no!” said Sir Nigel. “I have two Englishmen of this class in my train, who are at this instant, I make little doubt, as full of your wine as any cask in your cellar. He who pummelled them might come by such a pat as he would be likely to remember.”

“I cannot understand it,” quoth the seneschal, “for the English knights and nobles whom I have met were not men to brook the insolence of the base born.”

“Perchance, my fair lord, the poor folk are sweeter and of a better countenance in England,” laughed the Lady Rochefort. “Mon Dieu! you cannot conceive to yourself how ugly they are! Without hair, without teeth, all twisted and bent; for me, I cannot think how the good God ever came to make such people. I cannot bear it, I, and so my trusty Raoul goes ever before me with a cudgel to drive them from my path.”

“Yet they have souls, fair lady, they have souls!” murmured the chaplain, a white-haired man with a weary, patient face.

“So I have heard you tell them,” said the lord of the castle; “and for myself, father, though I am a true son of holy Church, yet I think that you were better employed in saying your mass and in teaching the children of my men-at-arms, than in going over the country-side to put ideas in these folks’ heads which would never have been there but for you. I have heard that you have said to them that their souls are as good as ours, and that it is likely that in another life they may stand as high as the oldest blood of Auvergne. For my part, I believe that there are so many worthy knights and gallant gentlemen in heaven who know how such things should be arranged, that there is little fear that we shall find ourselves mixed up with base roturiers and swine-herds. Tell your beads, father, and con your psalter, but do not come between me and those whom the king has given to me!”

“God help them!” cried the old priest. “A higher King than yours has given them to me, and I tell you here in your own castle hall, Sir Tristram de Rochefort, that you have sinned deeply in your dealings with these poor folk, and that the hour will come, and may even now be at hand, when God’s hand will be heavy upon you for what you have done.” He rose as he spoke, and walked slowly from the room.

“Pest take him!” cried the French knight. “Now, what is a man to do with a priest, Sir Bertrand?—for one can neither fight him like a man nor coax him like a woman.”

“Ah, Sir Bertrand knows, the naughty one!” cried the Lady Rochefort. “Have we not all heard how he went to Avignon and squeezed fifty thousand crowns out of the Pope.”

“Ma foi!” said Sir Nigel, looking with a mixture of horror and admiration at Du Guesclin. “Did not your heart sink within you? Were you not smitten with fears? Have you not felt a curse hang over you?”

“I have not observed it,” said the Frenchman carelessly. “But by Saint Ives! Tristram, this chaplain of yours seems to me to be a worthy man, and you should give heed to his words, for though I care nothing for the curse of a bad pope, it would be a grief to me to have aught but a blessing from a good priest.”

“Hark to that, my fair lord,” cried the Lady Rochefort. “Take heed, I pray thee, for I do not wish to have a blight cast over me, nor a palsy of the limbs. I remember that once before you angered Father Stephen, and my tire-woman said that I lost more hair in seven days than ever before in a month.”

“If that be sign of sin, then, by Saint Paul! I have much upon my soul,” said Sir Nigel, amid a general laugh. “But in very truth, Sir Tristram, if I may venture a word of counsel, I should advise that you make your peace with this good man.”

“He shall have four silver candlesticks,” said the seneschal moodily. “And yet I would that he would leave the folk alone. You cannot conceive in your mind how stubborn and brainless they are. Mules and pigs are full of reason beside them. God He knows that I have had great patience with them. It was but last week that, having to raise some money, I called up to the castle Jean Goubert, who, as all men know, has a casketful of gold pieces hidden away in some hollow tree. I give you my word that I did not so much as lay a stripe upon his fool’s back, but after speaking with him, and telling him how needful the money was to me, I left him for the night to think over the matter in my dungeon. What think you that the dog did? Why, in the morning we found that he had made a rope from strips of his leathern jerkin, and had hung himself to the bar of the window.”

“For me, I cannot conceive such wickedness!” cried the lady.

“And there was Gertrude Le Boeuf, as fair a maiden as eye could see, but as bad and bitter as the rest of them. When young Amory de Valance was here last Lammastide he looked kindly upon the girl, and even spoke of taking her into his service. What does she do, with her dog of a father? Why, they tie themselves together and leap into the Linden Pool, where the water is five spears’-lengths deep. I give you my word that it was a great grief to young Amory, and it was days ere he could cast it from his mind. But how can one serve people who are so foolish and so ungrateful?”

Whilst the Seneschal of Villefranche had been detailing the evil doings of his tenants, Alleyne had been unable to take his eyes from the face of Lady Tiphaine. She had lain back in her chair, with drooping eyelids and bloodless face, so that he had feared at first her journey had weighed heavily upon her, and that the strength was ebbing out of her. Of a sudden, however, there came a change, for a dash of bright color flickered up on to either cheek, and her lids were slowly raised again upon eyes which sparkled with such lustre as Alleyne had never seen in human eyes before, while their gaze was fixed intently, not on the company, but on the dark tapestry which draped the wall. So transformed and so ethereal was her expression, that Alleyne, in his loftiest dream of archangel or of seraph, had never pictured so sweet, so womanly, and yet so wise a face. Glancing at Du Guesclin, Alleyne saw that he also was watching his wife closely, and from the twitching of his features, and the beads upon his brick-colored brow, it was easy to see that he was deeply agitated by the change which he marked in her.

“How is it with you, lady?” he asked at last, in a tremulous voice.

Her eyes remained fixed intently upon the wall, and there was a long pause ere she answered him. Her voice, too, which had been so clear and ringing, was now low and muffled as that of one who speaks from a distance.

“All is very well with me, Bertrand,” said she. “The blessed hour of sight has come round to me again.”

“I could see it come! I could see it come!” he exclaimed, passing his fingers through his hair with the same perplexed expression as before.

“This is untoward, Sir Tristram,” he said at last. “And I scarce know in what words to make it clear to you, and to your fair wife, and to Sir Nigel Loring, and to these other stranger knights. My tongue is a blunt one, and fitter to shout word of command than to clear up such a matter as this, of which I can myself understand little. This, however, I know, that my wife is come of a very sainted race, whom God hath in His wisdom endowed with wondrous powers, so that Tiphaine Raquenel was known throughout Brittany ere ever I first saw her at Dinan. Yet these powers are ever used for good, and they are the gift of God and not of the devil, which is the difference betwixt white magic and black.”

“Perchance it would be as well that we should send for Father Stephen,” said Sir Tristram.

“It would be best that he should come,” cried the Hospitaller.

“And bring with him a flask of holy water,” added the knight of Bohemia.

“Not so, gentlemen,” answered Sir Bertrand. “It is not needful that this priest should be called, and it is in my mind that in asking for this ye cast some slight shadow or slur upon the good name of my wife, as though it were still doubtful whether her power came to her from above or below. If ye have indeed such a doubt I pray that you will say so, that we may discuss the matter in a fitting way.”

“For myself,” said Sir Nigel, “I have heard such words fall from the lips of this lady that I am of the opinion that there is no woman, save only one, who can be in any way compared to her in beauty and in goodness. Should any gentleman think otherwise, I should deem it great honor to run a small course with him, or debate the matter in whatever way might be most pleasing to him.”

“Nay, it would ill become me to cast a slur upon a lady who is both my guest and the wife of my comrade-in-arms,” said the Seneschal of Villefranche. “I have perceived also that on her mantle there is marked a silver cross, which is surely sign enough that there is nought of evil in these strange powers which you say that she possesses.”

This argument of the seneschal’s appealed so powerfully to the Bohemian and to the Hospitaller that they at once intimated that their objections had been entirely overcome, while even the Lady Rochefort, who had sat shivering and crossing herself, ceased to cast glances at the door, and allowed her fears to turn to curiosity.

“Among the gifts which have been vouchsafed to my wife,” said Du Guesclin, “there is the wondrous one of seeing into the future; but it comes very seldom upon her, and goes as quickly, for none can command it. The blessed hour of sight, as she hath named it, has come but twice since I have known her, and I can vouch for it that all that she hath told me was true, for on the evening of the Battle of Auray she said that the morrow would be an ill day for me and for Charles of Blois. Ere the sun had sunk again he was dead, and I the prisoner of Sir John Chandos. Yet it is not every question that she can answer, but only those–-”

“Bertrand, Bertrand!” cried the lady in the same mutterings far-away voice, “the blessed hour passes. Use it, Bertrand, while you may.”

“I will, my sweet. Tell me, then, what fortune comes upon me?”

“Danger, Bertrand—deadly, pressing danger—which creeps upon you and you know it not.”

The French soldier burst into a thunderous laugh, and his green eyes twinkled with amusement. “At what time during these twenty years would not that have been a true word?” he cried. “Danger is in the air that I breathe. But is this so very close, Tiphaine?”

“Here—now—close upon you!” The words came out in broken, strenuous speech, while