CHAPTER I

The Broken Bough

“What place is there for me on the earth? I would I were dead!”

Startling words, in truth, to hear from any one’s lips; and doubly so from those of a boy of fourteen, with his whole life before him.

It was a clear, bright evening in the spring of 1334, and the setting sun was pouring a flood of golden glory over the wooded ridges, and dark moors, and wide green meadows, and quaint little villages of Bretagne, or Brittany, then a semi-independent principality ruled by its own duke, and little foreseeing that, barely two centuries later, it was to be united to France once for all.

Over earth and sky brooded a deep, dreamy stillness of perfect repose, broken only by the lowing of cattle from the distant pastures, and the soft, sweet chime of the vesper-bell from the unseen church tower, hidden by the still uncleared wood, through one solitary gap in which were seen the massive grey battlements of Motte-Brun Castle, the residence of the local “seigneur,” or lord of the manor. A rabbit sat upright in its burrow to clean its furry face. A squirrel, halfway up the pillar-like stem of a tall tree, paused a moment to look down with its small, bright, restless eye; and a tiny bird, perched on a bough above, broke forth in a blithe carol.

But the soothing influence of this universal peace brought no calm to the excited lad who was striding up and down a small open space in the heart of the wood, stamping fiercely ever and anon, and muttering, half aloud, words that seemed less like any connected utterance than like the almost unconscious bursting forth of thoughts too torturing to be controlled.

“Is it my blame that I was born thus ill-favoured? Yet mine own father and mother gloom upon me and shrink away from me as from one under ban of holy Church, or taken red-handed in mortal sin. What have I done that mine own kith and kin should deal with me as with a leper?”

In calling himself ill-favoured, the poor boy had only spoken the truth; for the features lighted up by the sinking sun, as he turned his face toward it, were hideous enough for one of the demons with which these woods were still peopled by native superstition.

His head was unnaturally large, and covered with coarse, black, bristly hair, which, worn long according to the custom of all men of good birth in that age, tossed loosely over his huge round shoulders like a bison’s mane. His light-green eyes, small and fierce as those of a snake, looked out from beneath a low, slanting forehead garnished with bushy black eyebrows, which were bent just then in a frown as dark as a thunder-cloud. His nose was so flat that it almost seemed to turn inward, and its wide nostrils gaped like the yawning gargoyles of a cathedral. His large, coarse mouth, the heavy jaw of which was worthy of a bulldog, was filled with strong, sharp teeth, which, as he gnashed them in a burst of rage, sent a sudden flash of white across his swarthy face like lightning in a moonless sky.

His figure was quite as strange as his face. Low of stature and clumsily built, his vast and almost unnatural breadth of shoulder and depth of chest gave him the squat, dwarfish form assigned by popular belief to the deformed “Dwergar” (earth-dwarfs) who then figured prominently in the legends of all Western Europe. His length of arm was so great that his hands reached below his knees, while his lower limbs seemed as much too short as his arms were too long. In a word, had a half-grown black bear been set on its hind legs, and arrayed in the rich dress of a fourteenth-century noble, it would have looked just like this strange boy.

All at once the excited lad stopped short in his restless pacing, and, as if feeling the need of venting in some violent bodily exertion the frenzy that boiled within him, snatched from its sheath his only weapon (a broad-bladed hunting-knife, half cutlass and half dirk), and with one slash cut half through the thickest part of a large bough just over his head.

His arm was raised to repeat the blow and sever the branch entirely, when a new thought struck him, and, flinging down his weapon, he seized the bough with both hands, and threw his whole strength into a tug that seemed capable of dislodging not merely the branch, but the tree itself.

The tough wood quivered, cracked, and gave way, and a second effort—which hung the boy-athlete’s low, broad forehead with beads of moisture, and made the veins of his strong hands stand out like cords—wrenched the bough away altogether.

For a moment the young champion’s harsh but striking features brightened into a smile of joyful pride, natural enough to one who felt that he possessed surpassing bodily strength in an age when bodily strength and prowess were the most valued of all qualities. But the smile faded instantly, and the sullen gloom settled down on his dark face again, more heavily than before.

“Methinks yon gay cousins of mine,” muttered he, with a grim laugh, “would be hard put to it to do the like, though they call me dwarf and lubbard, and look askance at me as if I were a viper or a toad. I feel, in truth, that though I am not one to wear the dainty trappings of a court-gallant and bask in ladies’ smiles, I have it in me to approve myself a tried man-at-arms on a stricken field, and make my name dreaded by the foes of my country and liege-lord. But what avails it, if I may never find a chance to show what I can do?”

At that very moment, as if in direct answer to the bitter query that the fiery youth had unconsciously spoken aloud, a clear, sweet voice rose from amid the clustering leaves, singing as follows:—

“The knight rode forth on his dapple-grey steed Thro’ the sunshine of early morn; And he was aware of a cry of woe To his ear by the breezes borne.

“He turned his eye to the miry slough That ran beside his way, And he was aware of a leper man Half-sunk in the mire that lay.

“His fingers were parting joint from joint, His skin was yellow as corn; More countless the sores in his rotting flesh Than buds on the milk-white thorn.

“His hairless head was as bare and white As the boughs of a blasted tree; A fouler sight than that leper-man No mortal eye could see.

“‘For Christ’s dear sake, Sir Knight,’ quoth he, ‘I pray thee reach thine hand, And draw me forth, or ere I sink, Unto the firmer land.’

“Nor quailed nor wavered that valiant knight; ‘For Christ’s dear sake let it be!’ And out he reached his strong right hand, And the leper-man forth drew he.

“Then the leper-man’s face grew bright as the sun When he smiles on the earth at morn; And his voice was soft as the summer breeze That stirs the ripening corn.

“And the knight, who had bowed not for prince or peer, Bent low as to holy rood, For well he wist ’twas our Lord Himself Who there before him stood.

“‘I give thee My blessing,’ our Saviour said, As the warrior bowed his knee; ‘What thou didst to the poor and outcast man, Thou hast done it unto Me.

“‘Henceforth shall men call thee My chosen knight, And best of all knights alive; And all that thou doest from this day forth, Whate’er it be, shall thrive.

“‘For dearer to Heaven is one pitying word Than rich minsters or abbey-lands broad; And the path of kindness to suffering man Is the nearest way to God!’”