HEY follow!”
Cercamon reined in on the crest of a low hill and gazed back over the road that paralleled the blue Loire across the plain, like a white stripe and a blue one across a richly broidered garment.
“All the way from the town have they followed me!” he muttered. “But the hunter that shows himself to his quarry has little chance of a kill.”
And he waved a scornful hand at the distant figures in gleaming mail, who had kept ever at his heels since dawn, without once gaining on him, without once losing sight of him.
Till now he had not been sure it was he they sought. It was no rare thing for armed men to take the high road from Tours to Paris. The riders of Anjou, who held Touraine for Duke Geoffrey le Bel, patroled it ceaselessly; merchants or pilgrims with their escorts, or men-at-arms seeking service, traveled that road often.
But Cercamon had reason to be wary of mailed men; and after leaving the Loire and the distant spires of Tours behind him he had become troubled. He had first caught sight of those riders at sunrise, half an hour after he had ridden out from the gate of the city. Their constant trailing at his heels fretted him more and more, till he resolved to test their purpose. Therefore, an hour ago, he had turned aside from the highway, down a little-used road lined with trees, where armed men could have no honest business.
If they kept to the main road, well and good; but if they turned off after him, he would know they sought but a favorable chance to overtake and assail him. And so, when he trotted out of the byway on to the high road again, having seen the shimmer of their mail thrice behind him, he was sure. And now he could glimpse the sunlight flashing full and bright on their harness as they rode out of the byway on his trail.
The certainty that he was pursued did not astonish him. Cercamon rode on a weighty errand, one fraught with vast significance for all of France. On his success hung the issues of peace or war between great princes, the fortunes of rival houses, perhaps the fate of two kingdoms.
It was early April of 1137, that year so fateful for the young realm of France. The Abbot Suger, ruling in the name of the boy King Louis VII, was soon to hand over his authority to his royal ward. It was, a dangerous burden for so fiery and untrained a lad, for the kingdom of France was but a little triangle with Paris, Sens, and Orleans for its corners, claiming a shadowy and perilous sovereignty over the mighty principalities that surrounded it on all sides.
Of all those principalities the mightiest was Aquitaine, its vast area rolling from Loire to Pyrenees, from the Gascon Gulf to the borders of Toulouse. Hated by his neighbors, feared by the Regent Suger, Duke Guiihem X of Aquitaine had just gone to an unmourned grave. Only the iron hand of his great seneschal, Bertrand d'Armagnac, warded the rich lands and the beautiful young daughter Guiihem had left from the greedy hands of rival barons.
“These letters to the Abbot Suger!” Armagnac had commanded, “Let them not go from your hands till they pass into his in Paris. And ride warily, Cercamon; keep your eyes open and your hand on your sword, for I fear your errand is known to our enemies. My late lord the duke was not discreet in this matter, and his court has swarmed with the spies of Champagne.”
“Why send me, my lord?” Cercamon had asked his master. “I am both too humble a man and too weak for such an errand.”
“Any messenger will be exposed to attack as soon as he leaves Poitou and our garrisons behind him,” Armagnac had answered. “If we send a strong force, it will be ambushed by a stronger. Touraine belongs to Anjou; and Anjou loves us little. The road lies too near the borders of Blois to be safe, even for a small army; for Thibault of Champagne has a strong garrison in Blois. A single man has more chance of slipping through than a troop; and of all men you are our best hope. You are brave, cunning, resourceful; you are a troubadour, and even the most lawless man in France scarce dares lay a hand on the sacred person of a . Castel-Roussillon's fate is fresh in men's memories; even kings fear to commit his crime, lest they perish as he perished.”