Bertrand of Brittany by Warwick Deeping

BERTRAND was astir next morning, with the reconciliation of yesterday still vividly before his mind. He began to dress and to arm himself, sitting on the edge of the bed in his room in one of the turrets, his hands dawdling at their work as though their master were too much enthralled by the importunity of his own thoughts. He had been moved by the sudden surrender of his mother's pride, and the element of shame in her recantation had roused in him a new instinct of tenderness, a tenderness that overflowed perhaps from a subtle and more human source. The indifference of years had been broken by a few halting, yet inevitable, words. Bertrand had given Jeanne du Guesclin no idle promise. He would turn his horse's head towards Cancale that very day.

Bertrand could hear Hopart and Guicheaux talking together in the little anteroom that opened from the turret stair. The fellows had lain like a couple of dogs outside his door, happy in the promise that he had given them that they should be his men from that day forth. The murmur of their voices came up to Bertrand as he armed, bringing back many a wild memory of wild nights spent on the moors and in the woods.