Читать книгу Bertrand of Brittany - Warwick Deeping - Страница 5

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It had always been said in the Breton lands that Sieur Robert du Guesclin was a brave man, save in the presence of that noble lady, Jeanne de Malemains, his wife.

Now Dame Jeanne was a handsome, black-browed woman with a resolute mouth and a full, white chin. The Norman apple-trees had lost their bloom, so sang the romancers, when Gleaquim by the sea had stolen her as the sunlight from Duke Rollo’s lands. The Lady Jeanne had brought no great dowry to her husband, save only her smooth and confident beauty, and the perilous blessings of a splendid pride. She had borne Sieur Robert children, fed them at her own breast as babes, and whipped them with the stern sense of her responsibility heavy in her hand. It was well in those days for a wife to watch strong sons growing into manhood about her husband’s table. One fist the more, and the surer was the mother’s honor when enemies might speak with her good man at his gate.

Proud, lovely, and masterful, the Lady Jeanne had looked to see her majesty repeated in her children. It had been but the legitimate and expectant vanity of a mother to dower her first-born with all the grace and beauty of a Roland. Poor dame, the thing had seemed as ugly as sin when it first kicked and squalled in her embroidered apron; bristling hair, a pug of a nose, crooked limbs, skin like a pig’s! Every passing month had brought the brat into more obvious disfavor. Its temper appeared as ugly as its body. It would bite and yell with a verve and fierceness that made the nurse vow it was an elf’s child, a changeling, or some such monstrosity. The Lady Jeanne had grieved, prayed to the saints, and yet been at a loss to discover why her motherhood should have been shamed by such a child.

Years passed, and still mother and son were no better accorded. Jeanne, proud lady, had no joy or pleasure in her eldest child. His ugliness increased: he was wild as a passage hawk, rebellious, passionate, yet very sullen. The younger children went in terror of him; the servants felt his fists and teeth; he fought with the village lads, and came home bloody and most whole-heartedly unclean. Sieur Robert might break many a good ash stick over Master Bertrand’s body. His mother might storm, scold, clout, and zealously declaim; the ugly whelp defied her and her gentlewomen. He had no more respect for a lady than for Huon, the miller, whose apples he stole, and whose son he tumbled into the mill-pool.

Poor Jeanne du Guesclin! The fault was with her pride—and with no other virtue. She could not love the child, and nature, as though in just revenge, mocked with the clumsiness of the son the vanity of the mother. Young Bertrand was starved of all affection. His very viciousness was but a protest against the indifference of those who made him. Cuffed, chided, sneered at, he grew up like a dwarfed and misshapen oak that has been lopped unwisely by the forester’s bill. He was slighted and ignored for Olivier, the second son, whose prettiness atoned with Jeanne for her first-born’s snub nose and ugly body. It was Olivier whom the mother loved, the sleek and clean-faced Jacob ousting poor Esau into the cold. Often Bertrand rebelled. The good child would come snivelling to his mother with a wet nose and a swollen cheek.

“See what Bertrand has done to me!”

The sneak! And Bertrand—well, he would be cuffed into the dark cellar under the solar floor, and be left there with bread and water to meditate on the beauty of motherly affection. And yet within a week, perhaps, sweet Olivier would boast another bloody nose, and the whole process be repeated.

Such was Bertrand’s upbringing, with all the fierce instincts pampered in his heart, all the gentler impulses chilled and stunted for lack of love. Bertrand’s figure was a slur on the Du Guesclin shield. He had no manners and no graces, and loved to herd with the peasant lads, and wrestle with ploughmen rather than listen to the romances of chivalry at his mother’s knee. While Olivier had the adventures of Sir Ipomedon by heart, and knew the lays of Marie de France, his brother Bertrand robbed orchards and used his fists, growing into a brown-faced, crab-legged young rascal who looked more like a peasant’s child than the son of Jeanne the Proud of Normandy.

The May-trees were white about Motte Broon in the year of our Lord 1338, the meadows were covered with tissue of gold. Dame Jeanne walked in her garden, dressed in a gown of yellow sarcenet, her black hair bundled into a silver net. To the west of the little lawn stood a yew-hedge, over which the sun was sinking, to plunge into the mystery of the darkening woods. Several tall aspens glittered in the evening light. The smoke rose straight from the octagonal chimneys of the château.

Dame du Guesclin walked on the grass round the stone vivarium with its darting fish, Sieur Robert strolling beside her, stroking his amiable and brown-bearded chin, and listening to her as to an oracle as she talked. The Lady Jeanne was in one of her masterful moods; moreover, she was tired and out of temper, and in no mind to be reasoned with, even though the tongue of an angel had pleaded the cause of the ugly son.

“Robert, I tell you Bertrand must not go to Rennes. We can leave him with Father Isidore, and Olivier will do us honor. I have been stitching some gold stuff on the lad’s best côte-hardie, and sewing some of my own jewels into his cap. Olivier will make a show among the bachelors.”

Du Guesclin’s sleepy eyes wandered for a moment over his wife’s face.

“So you would not have us take Bertrand, wife?” he repeated.

The lady pouted out her lower lip.

“Think of it, Robert—think of Bertrand in such company! Good Heavens! Why, the lad is only fit to take his meals in an ale-house; the lout would disgrace us, and set the whole town laughing. Besides, he has no clothes; his best surcoat was slit down the back last Sunday by a Picard fellow whom he threw into the church ditch. I’ll not have the young fool shaming us before all the gentlemen of Brittany.”

“The lad may take it to heart,” said the husband, troubled with recollections of his own youth.

“Nonsense!” returned Dame Jeanne, “Bertrand has no pride; his tastes are low, and he is without ambition. Often I think that the boy is mad. Moreover, Robert, there is no horse. Olivier must have the gray, and there is only Yellow Thomas, with his broken knees and stumpy tail. He is good enough for Bertrand as things go, but imagine the oaf riding into Rennes beside you on Yellow Thomas, and his surcoat split all up the back!”

Du Guesclin could not forbear a chuckle at the picture painted by his wife.

“Then we will leave Bertrand to Dom Isidore,” he said.

“Ah, Robert, you are a man of sense! I do not want to be cruel to the lad, but he has no figure for gay routs, he is no courtier—only a clumsy fool. I have no wish to be shamed by one of my own children. Olivier is quick and debonair; that lad will do us credit.”

The Lady Jeanne had hardly emphasized this last piece of treachery to her first-born by laying her large white hand on her husband’s shoulder, when there was a fierce bustling among the yew-trees, as though some young ram had been caught by the horns and was struggling to break through. The green boughs were burst asunder. A pair of hands and a black pate came burrowing through the yew-hedge into the light.

“Bertrand!”

And an ugly vagabond the lad looked, with his huge hollow chest, arms long and powerful as an ape’s, bowed legs, and head sunk between his shoulders. His green eyes were glittering under their heavy brows, his mouth working in a way that was not calculated to make him seem more serene and beautiful.

“Bertrand!”

The Lady Jeanne’s voice was hard and imperious. It is never flattery to the inner self to be overheard plotting a mean act, and the coincidence was not soothing to the lady’s temper. She was not the woman, however, to be startled out of her judicial calm. In such a case it was better to brandish the whip than to hold out the hand.

“Bertrand, you have been eavesdropping!”

The lad had approached them over the grass, walking with that bow-legged but springy action peculiar to some men of great physical strength. His forehead was all knotted up in wrinkles, and he was breathing heavily, as though under the influence of strong emotion.

“Mother, I’ll kill Olivier! I’ll break his bones—”

“Bertrand, stand back! How dare you threaten?”

“Curse Olivier! I tell you I will go to Rennes.”

“Rennes!”

“Yes; why should I not go? I am your son, mother. By Heavens! when will you treat me as you treat Olivier?” He gulped down some great sob of feeling that was in his throat, and turned to his father with moist eyes. “Sire, say that I may go to Rennes.”

Du Guesclin winced, fidgeted, and glanced at his wife.

“What shall I say to the lad, Jeanne?” he asked.

“Leave him to me,” she said, quietly. “I will show the fool the honest truth.”

Sieur Robert surrendered to his wife’s discretion, and, retreating towards the château, settled himself on a bench under an almond-tree that was still in bloom. Jeanne stood watching her husband over her shoulder. Presently she turned again to Bertrand with that regal and half-contemptuous air he had known so well of old. Jeanne stared at the lad in silence for some moments, the angles of her mouth twitching, her eyes cold and without pity.

“Bertrand!”

Her tones were sharp, hard, and incisive. The lad nodded, slouching his shoulders, and looking surly and ill at ease.

“Bertrand, can you serve or carve at table?”

“No.”

“Can you sing or play the lute, dance, or make courtly speeches?”

“No.”

“Can you amuse a great lady?”

“No.”

“Where are your fine clothes, your armor, and your horse?”

“Mother, you know I have none.”

Dame Jeanne’s eyes were fixed with a malicious glitter upon his face. She knew how to crush the lad, to sting into him the realization of his unfitness for the polite pageantry of life.

“Listen to me, Bertrand: you will never make a gentleman.”

He winced, and looked at his mother sulkily under his heavy brows.

“How can such as you mix with the lords and ladies of France and Brittany—you, who herd with ploughboys and scuffle with scullions? Bah, you fool! they would only laugh at you at Rennes, and take you for a groom who had sneaked in from the stables! Go to Rennes, indeed—to Jeanne de Penthièvre’s wedding! Who ever heard such nonsense! Where are your manners, Messire Bertrand? Where are your fine clothes, your airs and graces? Where are you going to find a horse? No, no; the honor and fortune of the family must be remembered.”

Bertrand stood gnawing his finger nails in humiliation. He knew that he was ugly, rough, and violent, and he half suspected that his mother’s words were true. And yet what chance had she ever given him to show his mettle? He had been the spurned dog since he could remember.

“Well, Bertrand, what have you to say to me?”

“Nothing,” he growled, hanging his head and staring at the grass.

Suddenly, as though to end the lad’s torture, there came the cry of a trumpet from the road across the meadows. Dame Jeanne heard it, and turned her head. Sieur Robert had risen from the seat, and climbed the stairway leading from the garden to the solar. He looked out over the palisading above the moat towards the meadows, sheeted in the sunlight like cloth of gold.

“The banner of the De Bellières!” he cried, beckoning to his wife. “Come, Jeanne, leave the lad; we must be ready to make them welcome.”