“I am from Normandy,” he went on quietly. “A gentleman of France.”
“But your name?” she said peremptorily. “Are you ashamed of your name?”
“You may call me Roger,” he answered. “Roger de Condé.”
“Raise your visor, Roger de Condé,” she commanded. “I do not take pleasure in riding with a suit of armor; I would see that there is a man within.”
Norman of Torn smiled as he did her bidding, and when he smiled thus, as he rarely did, he was good to look upon.
“It is the first command I have obeyed since I turned sixteen, Bertrade de Montfort,” he said.
The girl was about nineteen, full of the vigor and gaiety of youth and health; and so the two rode on their journey talking and laughing as they might have been friends of long standing.
She told him of the reason for the attack upon her earlier in the day, attributing it to an attempt on the part of a certain baron, Peter of Colfax, to abduct her, his suit for her hand having been peremptorily and roughly denied by her father.
Simon de Montfort was no man to mince words, and it is doubtless that the old reprobate who sued for his daughter’s hand heard some unsavory truths from the man who had twice scandalized England’s nobility by his rude and discourteous, though true and candid, speeches to the King.
“This Peter of Colfax shall be looked to,” growled Norman of Torn. “And, as you have refused his heart and hand, his head shall be yours for the asking. You have but to command, Bertrade de Montfort.”
“Very well,” she laughed, thinking it but the idle boasting so much indulged in in those days. “You may bring me his head upon a golden dish, Roger de Condé.”
“And what reward does the knight earn who brings to the feet of his princess the head of her enemy?” he asked lightly.
“What boon would the knight ask?”
“That whatsoever a bad report you hear of your knight, of whatsoever calumnies may be heaped upon him, you shall yet ever be his friend, and believe in his honor and his loyalty.”
The girl laughed gaily as she answered, though something seemed to tell her that this was more than play.
“It shall be as you say, Sir Knight,” she replied. “And the boon once granted shall be always kept.”
Quick to reach decisions and as quick to act, Norman of Torn decided that he liked this girl and that he wished her friendship more than any other thing he knew of. And wishing it, he determined to win it by any means that accorded with his standard of honor; an honor which in many respects was higher than that of the nobles of his time.
They reached the castle of De Stutevill late in the afternoon, and there, Norman of Torn was graciously welcomed and urged to accept the Baron’s hospitality overnight.
The grim humor of the situation was too much for the outlaw, and, when added to his new desire to be in the company of Bertrade de Montfort, he made no effort to resist, but hastened to accept the warm welcome.
At the long table upon which the evening meal was spread sat the entire household of the Baron, and here and there among the men were evidences of painful wounds but barely healed, while the host himself still wore his sword arm in a sling.
“We have been through grievous times,” said Sir John, noticing that his guest was glancing at the various evidences of conflict. “That fiend, Norman the Devil, with his filthy pack of cutthroats, besieged us for ten days, and then took the castle by storm and sacked it. Life is no longer safe in England with the King spending his time and money with foreign favorites and buying alien soldiery to fight against his own barons, instead of insuring the peace and protection which is the right of every Englishman at home.
“But,” he continued, “this outlaw devil will come to the end of a short halter when once our civil strife is settled, for the barons themselves have decided upon an expedition against him, if the King will not subdue him.”
“An’ he may send the barons naked home as he did the King’s soldiers,” laughed Bertrade de Montfort. “I should like to see this fellow; what may he look like—from the appearance of yourself, Sir John, and many of your men-at-arms, there should be no few here but have met him.”
“Not once did he raise his visor while he was among us,” replied the Baron, “but there are those who claim they had a brief glimpse of him and that he is of horrid countenance, wearing a great yellow beard and having one eye gone, and a mighty red scar from his forehead to his chin.”
“A fearful apparition,” murmured Norman of Torn. “No wonder he keeps his helm closed.”
“But such a swordsman,” spoke up a son of De Stutevill. “Never in all the world was there such swordplay as I saw that day in the courtyard.”
“I, too, have seen some wonderful swordplay,” said Bertrade de Montfort, “and that today. O he!” she cried, laughing gleefully, “verily do I believe I have captured the wild Norman of Torn, for this very knight, who styles himself Roger de Condé, fights as I ne’er saw man fight before, and he rode with his visor down until I chid him for it.”
Norman of Torn led in the laugh which followed, and of all the company he most enjoyed the joke.
“An’ speaking of the Devil,” said the Baron, “how think you he will side should the King eventually force war upon the barons? With his thousand hellhounds, the fate of England might well be in the palm of his bloody hand.”
“He loves neither King nor baron,” spoke Mary de Stutevill, “and I rather lean to the thought that he will serve neither, but rather plunder the castles of both rebel and royalist whilst their masters be absent
