Red Falcons of Trémoine

“LEO!” called Hugh of New Normandy, peering between the new-budding leaves of the Abbey orchard. “Hey, where are you, boy? There’s a band of people coming down the road! A knight’s banner with red falcons, and two ladies, and a number of armed men. Come down and see the show.”


The boy called Leo thrust a yellow head and a stormy face between the leaves of the apple tree where he sat in the fork of two sturdy boughs. “Oh, I don’t care, Hugh! It was good of you to come for me, but I don’t care if it’s King Richard and Prince John and Queen Eleanor and William the Marshal all in one party! Please go away and leave me alone. I’m in a very bad temper.”


Hugh laughed good-naturedly. “You’re still angry because of Father Guillaume’s meanness,” he said, shaking the tree in which his fellow student sat. “But you can’t pretend not to be interested! Why, days and days go by here at the Abbey when we don’t see a single strange face—or even slightly familiar one! You must come. It might even be your friend Lady Olivet de Mardans.”


“It won’t be Lady Olivet,” said Leo gloomily. “She’s getting betrothed to a Crusader just back from the Holy Land, and she’ll be much too busy to come visiting us here.” But the anger died in his face at the mention of the youthful lady who had befriended a friendless boy, and he slid down from his perch in the apple tree.


“Come, that’s better,” said kindly Hugh. “I knew you would be interested!”


“I am still not interested,” said Leo. “But that was the first bell for Nones, in case you didn’t hear it.”


“Father Guillaume has soured your temper! But, Leo, he is like that to all us students—it isn’t anything against you.”


“Oh, isn’t it?” cried Leo indignantly. “Who else is badgered at lessons and driven from one task to another without any leisure or recreation and always scolded and never approved? And today he said I had been so bad that he would send me to the Abbot after Nones with a record of all my sins, so that he could punish me fittingly. Does he treat anyone else like that?”


“Well, I must admit I don’t care to be sent to the Abbot. He can be very stern, for all that gentle manner of his. Poor Leo, it really is too bad! Father Guillaume does seem to be sterner with you than with us others, now I come to think of it.”


Leo kicked at the sodden remains of a last-year’s apple. “It’s all very well for you and Guibert and Robert and Roger—you have homes to go to, but I belong to the monastery, having neither home nor name!”


Hugh twisted uncomfortably. He was a kindly soul and liked to avoid as much unhappiness as possible, for himself or anyone else. And there was pain and trouble in Leo’s voice, and a bitter knowledge that he could never expect to have what Hugh had and took for granted. “That’s true, and I wish I could do something for you, Leo, and perhaps when I am knighted I shall find a way. Now let’s race to the roadside. We can get a good view of the visitors and still be in time for Nones.”