CHAPTER XXI

The Black Wolf

On the same day on which Alured perilled his life to save the monk, a man was sitting alone, beside a dying fire, in the gloomy depths of the great forest which then covered a large part of that wild region south of the Loire, which was to be terribly famous, four centuries later, under the name of La Vendée.

This solitary forester was an apt figure for that background of gloomy trees and matted thickets. He was a man of high stature and powerful build, whose huge frame, though gaunt as a wolf, showed in every movement a tiger-like strength and elasticity with which few men could have coped. His ragged clothing, and rusty, dinted steel-cap, matched well with his grim, sullen, shaggy-bearded face, and the restless watchfulness of his keen black eyes, which had the half-cowed, half-ferocious look of a trapped beast of prey; and altogether, he was the last man that a timid wayfarer would have wished to meet in such a place.

All at once he raised his head with a quick, sharp movement, as if he had just caught some distant sound, though the faint and far-off hoof-tramp would have escaped any ear less keen and practised. But that he heard it was plain from the cruel smile that lighted up his dark face as he muttered, after listening intently for a moment—

“He is alone—good luck!”

The business-like alacrity with which he caught up his heavy ghisarme (long-handled battle-axe), and stood facing the point where the coming rider would appear, gave an ominous meaning to his words.

Nearer and nearer came the measured tramp, and at last a single rider in full armour, with visor closed, issued from the wall of leaves right in front of the grim watcher.

“Stand!” shouted the latter, with a menacing flourish of his weapon.

But the new-comer, though his short figure looked quite dwarfish beside the giant forester, seemed not a whit dismayed at this rude greeting, or at the grim aspect of his challenger. There was even a tinge of scorn in his voice as he asked—

“Who art thou, to be so bold as bid me stand?”

“I am one,” said the woodsman, with another flourish of his axe, and a growl like a wounded bear, “who will walk the good green wood as I will, and ask no leave of thee!”

“Thou art right, for these woods be none of mine,” laughed the traveller; “but they are not thine either, so I will forth on my way, and ask no leave of thee!”

“Wilt thou? Two words to that bargain,” roared the giant, stung to fury by this quiet scorn. “If thou wilt pass hence, thou must pass over my body.”

“Aha! thou would’st fight me man to man?” cried the stranger, as gleefully as a boy invited to join a cricket-match. “Art thou an outlaw of the wood?”

“I am, and I care not who knows it. I have vowed never to spare knight or noble, wherefore look well to thyself.”

“And how know’st thou I am either?”

“Because thou fearest nothing,” said the robber, simply.

“Well said!” cried the stranger, heartily. “Thou art a fellow worth fighting, and gladly will I have a bout with thee; but tarry till I alight, for ’twixt horseman and footman is no fair fight.”

As he sprang from his horse, and tied him to a tree, the bandit eyed him in blank amazement, and said—

“Art thou indeed knight and noble?”

“Why ask?” cried the other, with a hearty, boyish laugh. “Fear’st thou I am of too low degree for the worshipful sword of a knightly outlaw?”

“Not so; but because thou art the first of them who ever showed knightly courtesy to such as I.”

The knight winced as if the words stung him, and said gravely—

“A good knight is bound to show courtesy to every man for his own sake.”

His tone and manner had a quiet dignity that abashed the savage in spite of himself; and the latter’s keen eye had noted the ease with which this stranger moved in his heavy armour, his nimbleness in leaping from his horse, and the formidable weight of spear, shield, and battle-axe. He began to guess (though this only heightened his eagerness for the fray) that he had for once met his match.

But as he advanced with lifted axe, the knight stopped him once more.

“Aid me first, comrade, to doff this steel harness of mine, for thou hast no body-armour, and it behoves us to fight fairly. My helmet I must needs keep, for I have vowed that my face shall not be seen till I have achieved the quest on which I am bound; but it matters not, as thou hast a steel cap.”

Again the bandit looked wonderingly at this man, who was conceding to him point after point of vantage, in a combat for life and death.

“Wilt thou then trust me so far?” said he, as he aided the knight to doff his heavy panoply. “Fear’st thou not that I may stab thee in the back unawares?”

“Not I,” said the stranger, coolly; “I have trusted thee, and thou wilt not betray my trust. In a brave man is no treachery.”

For the first time, the savage’s sullen face brightened, and assumed a higher and more human expression than it had yet worn.

“Thou art a true man, whoever thou be’st!” said he, in a tone of grim and half-unwilling admiration; “and thou hast spoken such words as no man ever spake to me yet. ’Tis pity of my vow to spare neither knight nor noble, else would I spare thee!”

“Not so!” cried the other, in just the same jovial tone in which he would have challenged a friend to a game of bowls. “Do thy best, and spare not; and even so will I.”

And at it they went like giants.

Strong, active, used to hand-to-hand fights, the outlaw showered his blows like hail; but all in vain. Some of his strokes were avoided with a nimbleness quite amazing in a man of the stranger’s thickset, clumsy build, and others were warded with a strength that made the assailant reflect with inward dismay how terrible in attack must be that surpassing force which, even in defence, made itself so formidably felt.

More clearly every moment did the outlaw realize that, with all his courage and strength, he was hopelessly overmatched; and the worst of it was that this mysterious foe, whose face he had never seen, made no attempt to strike in return, and seemed to watch, with cold composure, the doomed man wasting his strength in vain efforts, as if meaning to wait till he was utterly spent, and then despatch him with a single blow.

What face was hidden by that barred helmet? A spectre? a demon? the ghost of one of his countless victims, risen from the grave for vengeance? the Evil One himself, come to snatch him away with all his sins on his head? Conscience made a coward of this man of a thousand crimes; and, bold as he was, he felt his heart sink as it had never sunk before.

Driven to desperation, he dealt a fearful blow at his foe’s unarmed body. But the stroke was wasted on the empty air, and ere the outlaw could recover his guard, the knight sprang in and clutched his weapon with both hands, and, with one mighty wrench, snapped the strong shaft like a twig!

The disarmed bandit was at his foe’s mercy; but in place of killing him at a blow, as he expected, the knight threw down his axe, saying—

“True battle calls for equal arms. As thou hast lost thy weapon, let us try it with our bare hands.”

This time the outlaw’s amazement was too great for words; and it was mechanically rather than from any reasoning impulse that he closed with his strange foe in a desperate grapple.

But he fared no better than before; for, once clutched in his opponent’s terrible grasp, he had no more chance than a deer in the coils of a boa. A frantic, useless struggle, which left him weaker and more breathless than ever—a dizzy whirl—a sudden shock—and he was lying flat on the earth, sick and giddy, and gasping for breath, with his foeman’s knee on his chest.

“Slay me if thou wilt,” panted he, with a defiant scowl; “I ask no mercy.”

“Not I!” cried the victor, with a loud, jovial laugh. “Good men-at-arms like thee are too rare to be wasted. Hark ye, friend; I will make a bargain with thee. If thou be a rover of these woods, thou must know one called ‘The Black Wolf of the Forest,’ who hath haunted them this many a day, and done much ill to many. Him have I bound me to seek out, and if thou wilt guide me to his haunt, the moment he and I stand face to face, thou art free to go whither thou wilt.”

“Dost thou jest?” said the staring robber. “Thou art the first who ever wished to meet him whom all men shun.”

“I jest not with men’s lives,” said the knight, simply. “As I have said, so shall it be.”

“As thou wilt,” said the other, rising slowly from the ground. “Follow me.”

Away they went through the black depths of the wood, the outlaw keeping beside his companion’s horse with a long, swinging stride.

On their way, the knight, seeing that his guide looked hungry and worn, shared his own scanty stock of food with him; and ere long (as often happened in that wild age with men who had just stood sword-point to sword-point) the two became quite confidential, and were soon talking as frankly as old friends.

At last the knight hinted to his new acquaintance that a stout fellow like himself might be better employed in defending his country against her foes, than in robbing peaceful travellers.

“So have I ofttimes thought,” said the outlaw; “but in all this land is but one knight under whom I would serve—to wit, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin.”

“And why under him specially?” asked the cavalier.

“Because,” said the robber, with bitter emphasis, “he is the only noble who careth for us common folk, whom all the rest scorn and trample down; and also because he once saved the life of my poor brother, who is now a saint in heaven.”

“Ay? How came that about?” asked the other, in a tone of undisguised interest.

The bandit, visibly pleased, told how his brother, a half-witted lad of the Rennes district, had once been attacked in the forest by a huge wolf; how Du Guesclin, then a mere boy, had slain the brute with his own hand; how the pilgrim-monk, Brother Michael, had appeared at that moment, and had bidden the simpleton follow him; and how the latter had thenceforth been his constant attendant.

“Meanwhile,” went on the robber, with a black frown, “my father was cast into a boiling caldron at Dinan,[2] for defacing the king’s coin; and my mother, who had gone thither to beg mercy for him, found none, and fell down and died where she stood. Then I, being left desolate, and having small love for the great folk who had made me so, became—what I am now, and must always be!”

The knight’s voice failed as he strove to reply; but the hearty, sympathizing clasp in which he seized the outcast’s hard brown hand said more than any words.

“What? Wilt thou take _my_ hand?” said the felon, eyeing him wonderingly. “But thou knowest not all, even now.”

Just then a fierce red glare broke through the deepening gloom, as a sudden turn brought them out in front of a huge fire, round which sat thirty wild forms armed to the teeth, who shouted hoarsely—

“Welcome back, captain; we have waited long for thee!”

“My task is done, and my pledge redeemed,” said the grim guide to the knight. “I am the Black Wolf of the Forest!”

“And I,” said the knight, raising his visor, “am Bertrand du Guesclin!”

Footnote 2:

See chap. v. The outlaw had probably had no chance to learn that his father had been saved by Brother Michael.