When he had ended, Adhelmar cast aside the lute, and caught up both of Melite's hands, and strained them to his lips. There needed no wizard to read the message in his eyes.
Melite sat silent for a moment. Presently, 'Ah, cousin, cousin!' she sighed, 'I cannot love you as you would have me love. God alone knows why, true heart, for I revere you as a strong man and a proven knight and a faithful lover; but I do not love you. There are many women who would love you, Adhelmar, for the world praises you, and you have done brave deeds and made good songs and have served your King potently; and yet'—she drew her hands away and laughed a little wearily—'yet I, poor maid, must needs love Hugues, who has done nothing. This love is a strange, unreasoning thing, my cousin.'
'But do you in truth love Hugues?' asked Adhelmar, in a harsh voice.
'Yes,' said Melite, very softly, and afterward flushed and wondered dimly if she had spoken the truth. Then, somehow, her arms clasped about Adhelmar's neck, and she kissed him, from pure pity, as she told herself; for Melite's heart was tender, and she could not endure the anguish in his face.
This was all very well. But Hugues d'Arques, coming suddenly out of a pleached walk, at this juncture, stumbled upon them and found their postures distasteful. He bent black brows upon the two.
'Adhelmar,' said he, at length, 'this world is a small place.'
Adhelmar rose. 'Indeed,' he assented, with a wried smile, 'I think there is scarce room in it for both of us, Hugues.'
'That was my meaning,' said the Sieur d'Arques.
'Only,' Adhelmar pursued, somewhat wistfully, 'my sword just now, Hugues, is vowed to my King's quarrel. There are some of us who hope to save France yet, if our blood may avail. In a year, God willing, I shall come again to Puysange; and till then you must wait.'
Hugues conceded that, perforce, he must wait, since a vow was sacred; and Adhelmar, who suspected Hugues' natural appetite for battle to be lamentably squeamish, grinned. After that, in a sick rage, Adhelmar struck Hugues in the face, and turned about.
The Sieur d'Arques rubbed his cheek ruefully. Then he and Melite stood silent for a moment, and heard Adhelmar in the court-yard calling his men to ride forth; and Melite laughed; and Hugues scowled.
2.
The year passed, and Adhelmar did not return; and there was much fighting during that interval, and Hugues began to think the knight was slain and would never return to fight with him. The reflection was borne with equanimity.
So Adhelmar was half-forgot, and the Sieur d'Arques turned his mind to other matters. He was still a bachelor, for Reinault considered the burden of the times in ill-accord with the chinking of marriage-bells. They were grim times for Frenchmen: right and left the English pillaged and killed and sacked and guzzled and drank, as if they would never have done; and Edward of England began, to subscribe himself
In Normandy men acted according to their natures. Reinault swore lustily and looked to his defences; Hugues, seeing the English everywhere triumphant, drew a long face and doubted, when the will of God was made thus apparent, were it the part of a Christian to withstand it? Then he began to write letters, but to whom no man at either Arques or Puysange knew, saving One-eyed Peire, who carried them.
3.
It was in the dusk of a rain-sodden October day that Adhelmar rode to the gates of Puysange, with some score men-at-arms behind him. They came from Poictiers, where again the English had conquered, and Adhelmar rode with difficulty, for in that disastrous business in the field of Maupertuis he had been run through the chest, and his wound was scarce healed. Nevertheless, he came to finish his debate with the Sieur d'Arques, wound or no wound.
But at Puysange he heard a strange tale of Hugues. Reinault, whom Adhelmar found in a fine rage, told the story as they sat over their supper.
It had happened, somehow, (Reinault said), that the Marshal Arnold d'Andreghen—newly escaped from prison and with his disposition unameliorated by Lord Audley's gaolership,—had heard of these letters that Hugues wrote so constantly; and the Marshal, being no scholar, had frowned at such doings, and waited presently, with a company of horse, on the road to Arques. Into their midst, on the day before Adhelmar came, rode Peire, the one- eyed messenger; and it was not an unconscionable while before Peire was bound hand and foot, and d'Andreghen was reading the letter they had found in Peire's jerkin. 'Hang the carrier on that oak,' said d'Andreghen, when he had ended, 'but leave that largest branch yonder for the writer. For by the Blood of Christ, our common salvation! I will hang him there on Monday!'
So Peire swung in the air ere long and stuck out a black tongue at the crows, who cawed and waited for supper; and presently they feasted while d'Andreghen rode to Arques, carrying a rope for Hugues.
For the Marshal, you must understand, was a man of sudden action. Only two months ago, he had taken the Comte de Harcourt with other gentlemen from the Dauphin's own table to behead them that afternoon in a field behind Rouen. It was true they had planned to resist the
