A MONK OF FIFE
A Romance of the Days of Jeanne D'Arc - Joan of Arc
by Andrew Lang
CHAPTER IV
IN WHAT COMPANY NORMAN LESLIE ENTERED CHINON;
AND HOW HE
DEMEANED HIMSELF TO TAKE SERVICE
Not seemly, was it, that I should expect these kind people, even
though they were of my own country, to do more for me than they had
already done. So, when I had eaten and drunk, I made my obeisance
as if I would be trudging towards Chinon, adding many thanks, as
well I might.
"Nay, countryman," said the man, "for all that I can see, you may as
well bide a while with us; for, indeed, with leave of my graceless
maid, I think we may even end our wild-goose chase here and get us
back to the town."
Seeing me marvel, perhaps, that any should have ridden some four
miles or five, and yet speak of returning, he looked at the girl,
who was playing with the jackanapes, and who smiled at him as he
spoke. "You must know," said he, "that though I am the father of
your Fairy Queen, I am also one of the gracious Princess's obedient
subjects. No mother has she, poor wench," he added, in a lower
voice; "and faith, we men must always obey some woman--as it seems
now that the King himself must soon do and all his captains."
"You speak," I said, "of the gracious Queen of Sicily and
Jerusalem?"--a lady who was thought to be of much avail, as was but
right, in the counsels of her son-in-law, the Dauphin, he having
married her gentle daughter.
"Ay; Queen Yolande is far ben {7} with the King--would he had no
worse counsellors!" said he, smiling; "but I speak of a far more
potent sovereign, if all that she tells of herself be true. You
have heard, or belike you have not heard, of the famed Pucelle--so
she calls herself, I hope not without a warranty--the Lorrainer
peasant lass, who is to drive the English into the sea, so she gives
us all fair warning?"
"Never a word have I heard, or never marked so senseless a bruit if
I heard it; she must be some moonstruck wench, and in her wits
wandering."
"Moon-struck, or sun-struck, or saint-struck, she will strike down
our ancient enemy of England, and show you men how it is not wine
and wickedness that make good soldiers!" cried the girl whom he
called Elliot, her face rose-red with anger; and from her eyes two
blue rays of light shot straight to mine, so that I believe my face
waxed wan, the blood flying to my heart.
"Listen to her! look at her!" said her father, jestingly. "Elliot,
if your renowned maid can fright the English as you have affrayed a
good Scot, the battle is won and Orleans is delivered."
But she had turned her back on us pettishly, and was talking in a
low voice to her jackanapes. As for me, if my face had been pale
before, it now grew red enough for shame that I had angered her, who
was so fair, though how I had sinned I knew not. But often I have
seen that women, and these the best, will be all afire at a light
word, wherein the touchiest man-at-arms who ever fought on the turn
of a straw could pick no honourable quarrel.
"How have I been so unhappy as to offend mademoiselle?" I asked, in
a whisper, of her father, giving her a high title, in very
confusion.
"Oh, she will hear no bourde nor jest on this Pucelle that all the
countryside is clashing of, and that is bewitching my maid,
methinks, even from afar. My maid Elliot (so I call her from my
mother's kin, but her true name is Marion, and the French dub her
Heliote) hath set all her heart and her hope on one that is a young
lass like herself, and she is full of old soothsayings about a
virgin that is to come out of an oak-wood and deliver France--no
less! For me, I misdoubt that Merlin, the Welsh prophet on whom
they set store, and the rest of the soothsayers, are all in one tale
with old Thomas Rhymer, of Ercildoune, whose prophecies our own folk
crack about by the ingle on winter nights at home. But be it as it
may, this wench of Lorraine has, these three-quarters of a year,
been about the Sieur Robert de Baudricourt, now commanding for the
King at Vaucouleurs, away in the east, praying him to send her to
the Court. She has visions, and hears voices--so she says; and she
gives Baudricourt no peace till he carries her to the King. The
story goes that, on the ill day of the Battle of the Herrings, she,
being at Vaucouleurs--a hundred leagues away and more,--saw that
fight plainly, and our countrymen fallen, manlike, around the
Constable, and the French flying like hares before a little pack of
English talbots. When the evil news came, and was approved true,
Baudricourt could hold her in no longer, and now she is on the way
with half a dozen esquires and archers of his command. The second-
sight she may have--it is common enough, if you believe the red-
shanked Highlanders; but if maiden she set forth from Vaucouleurs,
great miracle it is if maiden she comes to Chinon." He whispered
this in a manner that we call "pauky," being a free man with his
tongue.
"This is a strange tale enough," I said; "the saints grant that the
Maid speaks truly!"
"But yesterday came a letter of her sending to the King," he went
on, "but never of her writing, for they say that she knows not "A"
from "B," if she meets them in her voyaging. Now, nothing would
serve my wilful daughter Elliot (she being possessed, as I said,
with love for this female mystery), but that we must ride forth and
be the first to meet the Maid on her way, and offer her shelter at
my poor house, if she does but seem honest, though methinks a
hostelry is good enough for one that has ridden so far, with men for
all her company. And I, being but a subject of my daughter's, as I
said, and this a Saint's Day, when a man may rest from his paints
and brushes, I even let saddle the steeds, and came forth to see
what ferlies Heaven would send us."
"Oh, a lucky day for me, fair sir," I answered him, marvelling to
hear him speak of paint and brushes, and even as I spoke a thought
came into my mind. "If you will listen to me, sir," I said, "and if
the gentle maid, your daughter, will pardon me for staying you so
long from the road, I will tell you that, to my thinking, you have
come over late, for that yesterday the Maiden you speak of rode,
after nightfall, into Chinon."
Now the girl turned round on me, and, in faith, I asked no more than
to see her face, kind or angry. "You tell us, sir, that you never
heard speak of the Maid till this hour, and now you say that you
know of her comings and goings. Unriddle your riddle, sir, if it
pleases you, and say how you saw and knew one that you never heard
speech of."
She was still very wroth, and I knew not whether I might not anger
her yet more, so I louted lowly, cap in hand, and said -
"It is but a guess that comes into my mind, and I pray you be not
angry with me, who am ready and willing to believe in this Maid, or
in any that will help France, for, if I be not wrong, last night her
coming saved my life, and that of her own company."
"How may that be, if thieves robbed and bound you?"
"I told you not all my tale," I said, "for, indeed, few would have
believed the thing that had not seen it. But, upon my faith as a
gentleman, and by the arm-bone of the holy Apostle Andrew, which
these sinful eyes have seen, in the church of the Apostle in his own
town, somewhat holy passed this way last night; and if this Maid be
indeed sent from heaven, that holy thing was she, and none other."
"Nom Dieu! saints are not common wayfarers on our roads at night.
There is no "wale" of saints in this country," said the father of
Elliot; "and as this Pucelle of Lorraine must needs pass by us here,
if she is still on the way, even tell us all your tale."
With that I told them how the "brigands" (for so they now began to
call such reivers as Brother Thomas) were, to my shame, and maugre
my head, for a time of my own company. And I told them of the
bushment that they laid to trap travellers, and how I had striven to
give a warning, and how they bound me and gagged me, and of the
strange girl's voice that spoke through the night of "mes Freres de
Paradis," and of that golden "boyn" faring in the dark, that I
thought I saw, and of the words spoken by the blind man and the
soldier, concerning some vision which affrayed them, I know not
what.
At this tale the girl Elliot, crossing herself very devoutly, cried
aloud -
"O father, did I not tell you so? This holy thing can have been no
other but that blessed Maiden, guarded by the dear saints in form
visible, whom this gentleman, for the sin of keeping evil company,
was not given the grace to see. Oh, come, let us mount and ride to
Chinon, for already she is within the walls; had we not ridden forth
so early, we must have heard tell of it."
It seemed something hard to me that I was to have no grace to behold
what others, and they assuredly much more sinful men than myself,
had been permitted to look upon, if this damsel was right in that
she said. And how could any man, were he himself a saint, see what
was passing by, when his head was turned the other way? Howbeit,
she called me a gentleman, as indeed I had professed myself to be,
and this I saw, that her passion of anger against me was spent, as
then, and gone by, like a shower of April.
"Gentleman you call yourself, sir," said her father; "may I ask of
what house?"
"We are cadets of the house of Rothes," I answered. "My father,
Leslie of Pitcullo, is the fourth son of the third son of the last
laird of Rothes but one; and, for me, I was of late a clerk studying
in St. Andrews."
"I will not ask why you left your lore," he said; "I have been young
myself, and, faith, the story of one lad varies not much from the
story of another. If we have any spirit, it drives us out to fight
the foreign loons in their own country, if we have no feud at home.
But you are a clerk, I hear you say, and have skill enough to read
and write?"
"Yea, and, if need were, can paint, in my degree, and do fair
lettering on holy books, for this art was my pleasure, and I learned
it from a worthy monk in the abbey."
"O day of miracles!" he cried. "Listen, Elliot, and mark how finely
I have fallen in luck's way! Lo you, sir, I also am a gentleman in
my degree, simple as you see me, being one of the Humes of Polwarth;
but by reason of my maimed leg, that came to me with scars many,
from certain shrewd blows got at Verneuil fight, I am disabled from
war. A murrain on the English bill that dealt the stroke! To make
up my ransom (for I was taken prisoner there, where so few got
quarter) cost me every crown I could gather, so I even fell back on
the skill I learned, like you, when I was a lad, from a priest in
the Abbey of Melrose. Ashamed of my craft I am none, for it is
better to paint banners and missals than to beg; and now, for these
five years, I am advanced to be Court painter to the King himself,
thanks to John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, who is of my far-away
kin. A sore fall it is, for a Hume of Polwarth; and strangely
enough do the French scribes write my name--"Hauves Poulvoir," and
otherwise, so please you; but that is ever their wont with the best
names in all broad Scotland. Lo you, even now there is much ado
with banner-painting for the companies that march to help Orleans,
ever and again."
"When the Maiden marches, father, you shall have banner-painting,"
said the girl.
"Ay, lass, when the Maid marches, and when the lift falls and smoors
the laverocks we shall catch them in plenty. {8} But, Maid or no
Maid, saving your presence, sir, I need what we craftsmen (I pray
you again to pardon me) call an apprentice, and I offer you, if you
are skilled as you say, this honourable post, till you find a
better."
My face grew red again with anger at the word "apprentice," and I
know not how I should have answered an offer so unworthy of my
blood, when the girl broke in -
"Till this gentleman marches with the flower of France against our
old enemy of England, you should say, father, and helps to show them
another Bannockburn on Loire-side."
"Ay, well, till then, if it likes you," he said, smiling. "Till
then there is bed, and meat, and the penny fee for him, till that
great day."
"That is coming soon!" she cried, her eyes raised to heaven, and so
fair she looked, that, being a young man and of my complexion
amorous, I could not bear to be out of her company when I might be
in it, so stooped my pride to agree with him.
"Sir," I said, "I thank you heartily for your offer. You come of as
good a house as mine, and yours is the brag of the Border, as mine
is of the kingdom of Fife. If you can put your pride in your pouch,
faith, so can I; the rather that there is nothing else therein, and
so room enough and to spare. But, as touching what this gentle
demoiselle has said, I may march also, may I not, when the Maid
rides to Orleans?"
"Ay, verify, with my goodwill, then you may," he cried, laughing,
while the lass frowned.
Then we clapped hands on it, for a bargain, and he did not insult me
by the offer of any arles, or luck penny.
The girl was helped to horse, setting her foot on my hand, that
dirled as her little shoe sole touched it; and the jackanapes rode
on her saddle-bow very proudly. For me, I ran as well as I might,
but stiffly enough, being cold to the marrow, holding by the
father's stirrup-leather and watching the lass's yellow hair that
danced on her shoulders as she rode foremost. In this company,
then, so much better than that I had left, we entered Chinon town,
and came to their booth, and their house on the water-side. Then,
of their kindness, I must to bed, which comfort I sorely needed, and
there I slept, in fragrant linen sheets, till compline rang.
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