A Monk of Fife<br />Being the Chronicle Written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, Concerning Marvellous by Andrew Lang (famous ebook reader .TXT) 📖

bridge cost me little thought, for I could swim like an otter.  But there was another traveller down by the stream who seemed more nearly concerned.  When I came close to him, I found him standing up to his waist in the water, taking soundings with a long and heavy staff.  His cordelier’s frock was tucked up into his belt, his long brown legs, with black hairs thick on them, were naked.  He was a huge, dark man, and when he turned and stared at me, I thought that, among all men of the Church and in religion whom I had ever beheld, he was the foulest and most fierce to look upon.  He had an ugly, murderous visage, fell eyes and keen, and a right long nose, hooked like a falcon’s.  The eyes in his head shone like swords, and of all eyes of man I ever saw, his were the most piercing and most terrible.  On his back he carried, as I noticed at the first, what I never saw on a cordelier’s back before, or on any but his since—an arbalest, and he had bolts enough in his bag, the feathers showing above.

“Pax vobiscum,” he cried, in a loud, grating voice, as he saw me, and scrambled out to shore.

“Et cum anima tua,” I answered.

“Nom de Dieu!” he said, “you have bottomed my Latin already, that is scarce so deep as the river here.  My malison on them that broke the bridge!”  Then he looked me over fiercely.

“Burgundy or Armagnac?” he asked.

I thought the question strange, as a traveller would scarce care to pronounce for Burgundy in that country.  But this was a man who would dare anything, so I deemed it better to answer that I was a Scot, and, so far, of neither party.

“Tug-mutton, wine-sack!” he said, these being two of many ill names which the French gave our countrymen; for, of all men, the French are least grateful to us, who, under Heaven and the Maid, have set their King on his throne again.

The English knew this, if the French did not; and their great King, Harry the Fifth, when he fell ill of St. Fiacre’s sickness, after plundering that Scots saint’s shrine of certain horse-shoes, silver-gilt, said well that, “go where he would, he was bearded by Scots, dead or alive.”  But the French are not a thankful people.

I had no answer very ready to my tongue, so stepped down silent to the water-edge, and was about taking off my doublet and hose, meaning to carry them on my head and swim across.  But he barred the way with his staff, and, for me, I gripped to my whinger, and watched my chance to run in under his guard.  For this cordelier was not to be respected, I deemed, like others of the Order of St. Francis, and all men of Holy Church.

“Answer a civil question,” he said, “before it comes to worse: Armagnac or Burgundy?”

“Armagnac,” I answered, “or anything else that is not English.  Clear the causeway, mad friar!”

At that he threw down his staff.

“I go north also,” he said, “to Orleans, if I may, for the foul ‘manants’ and peasant dogs of this country have burned the castle of Alfonse Rodigo, a good knight that held them in right good order this year past.  He was worthy, indeed, to ride with that excellent captain, Don Rodrigo de Villandradas.  King’s captain or village labourer, all was fish that came to his net, and but two days ago I was his honourable chaplain.  But he made the people mad, and a great carouse that we kept gave them their opportunity.  They have roasted the good knight Alfonse, and would have done as much for me, his almoner, frock and all, if wine had any mastery over me.  But I gave them the slip.  Heaven helps its own!  Natheless, I would that this river were between me and their vengeance, and, for once, I dread the smell of roast meat that is still in my nostrils—pah!”

And here he spat on the ground.

“But one door closes,” he went on, “and another opens, and to Orleans am I now bound, in the service of my holy calling.”

“There is, indeed, cause enough for the shriving of souls of sinners, Father, in that country, as I hear, and a holy man like you will be right welcome to many.”

“They need little shriving that are opposite my culverin,” said this strange priest.  “Though now I carry but an arbalest, the gun is my mistress, and my patron is the gunner’s saint, St. Barbara.  And even with this toy, methinks I have the lives of a score of goddams in my bolt-pouch.”

I knew that in these wild days many clerics were careless as to that which the Church enjoins concerning the effusion of blood—nay, I have named John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, as having himself broken a spear on the body of the Duke of Clarence.  The Abbé of Cerquenceaux, also, was a valiant man in religion, and a good captain, and, all over France, clerics were gripping to sword and spear.  But such a priest as this I did not expect to see.

“Your name?” he asked suddenly, the words coming out with a sound like the first grating of a saw on stone.

“They call me Norman Leslie de Pitcullo,” I answered.  “And yours?”

“My name,” he said, “is Noiroufle”—and I thought that never had I seen a man so well fitted with a name;—“in religion, Brother Thomas, a poor brother of the Order of the mad St. Francis of Assisi.”

“Then, Brother Thomas, how do you mean to cross this water which lies between you and the exercise of your holy calling?  Do you swim?”

“Like a stone cannon-ball, and, for all that I can find, the cursed water has no bottom.  Cross!” he snarled.  “Let me see you swim.”

I was glad enough to be quit of him so soon, but I noticed that, as I stripped and packed my clothes to carry in a bundle on my head, the holy man set his foot in the stirrup of his weapon, and was winding up his arbalest with a windlass, a bolt in his mouth, watching at the same time a heron that rose from a marsh on the further side of the stream.  On this bird, I deemed, he meant to try his skill with the arbalest.

“Adieu, Brother Thomas,” I said, as I took the water; and in a few strokes I was across and running up and down on the bank to get myself dry.  “Back!” came his grating voice—“back! and without your clothes, you wine-sack of Scotland, or I shoot!” and his arbalest was levelled on me.

I have often asked myself since what I should have done, and what was the part of a brave man.  Perchance I might have dived, and swum down-stream under water, but then I had bestowed my bundle of clothes some little way off, and Brother Thomas commanded it from his side of the stream.  He would have waited there in ambush till I came shivering back for hose and doublet, and I should be in no better case than I was now.  Meanwhile his weapon was levelled at me, and I could see the bolt-point set straight for my breast, and glittering in a pale blink of the sun.  The bravest course is ever the best.  I should have thrown myself on the earth, no doubt, and so crawled to cover, taking my chance of death rather than the shame of obeying under threat and force.  But I was young, and had never looked death in the face, so, being afraid and astonished, I made what seemed the best of an ill business, and, though my face reddens yet at the thought of it, I leaped in and swam back like a dog to heel.

“Behold me,” I said, making as brave a countenance as I might in face of necessity.

“Well done, Norman Leslie de Pitcullo,” he snarled, baring his yellow teeth.  “This is the obedience which the young owe to the Church.  Now, ferry me over; you are my boat.”

“You will drown, man,” I said.  “Not while you swim.”

Then, unbuckling his frock, he packed it as he had seen me do, bade me put it on my head, and so stepped out into the water, holding forth his arm to put about my neck.  I was for teaching him how to lay it on my shoulder, and was bidding him keep still as a plank of wood, but he snarled—

“I have sailed on a boat of flesh before to-day.”

To do him justice, he kept still as a log of wood, and so, yielding partly to the stream, I landed him somewhat further down than the place where my own clothes were lying.  To them he walked, and very quietly picking up my whinger and my raiment that he gathered under his arm, he concealed himself in a thick bush, albeit it was leafless, where no man could have been aware of him.  This amazed me not a little, for modesty did not seem any part of his nature.

“Now,” says he, “fetch over my arbalest.  Lying where I am you have no advantage to shoot me, as, nom de Dieu! I would have shot you had you not obeyed.  And hark ye, by the way, unwind the arbalest before you cross; it is ever well to be on the safe side.  And be sure you wet not the string.”  He pushed his face through the bush, and held in his mouth my naked whinger, that shone between his shining eyes.

Now again I say it, I have thought over this matter many a time, and have even laughed aloud and bitterly, when I was alone, at the figure of me shivering there, on a cold February day, and at my helpless estate.  For a naked man is no match for a man with a whinger, and he was sitting on my clothes.  So this friar, unworthy as he was of his holy calling, had me at an avail on every side, nor do I yet see what I could do but obey him, as I did.  And when I landed from this fifth voyage, he laughed and gave me his blessing, and, what I needed more, some fiery spirits from a water-gourd, in which Father Thomas carried no water.

“Well done, my son,” he said, “and now we are comrades.  My life was not over safe on yonder side, seeing that the ‘manants’ hate me, and respect not my hood, and two are better company than one, where we are going.”

This encounter was the beginning of many evils, and often now the picture shines upon my eyes, and I see the grey water, and hear the cold wind whistle in the dry reeds of the river-bank whereon we sat.

The man was my master, Heaven help me! as surely as Sathanas was his.  And though, at last, I slipped his clutches, as you shall hear (more readily than, I trow, he will scape his lord in the end, for he still lives), yet it was an ill day that we met—an ill day for me and for France.  Howbeit we jogged on, he merrily enough singing a sculdudery song, I something surly, under a grey February sky, with a keen wind searching out the threadbare places in our raiment.  My comrade, as he called himself, told me what passages he chose in the history of his life: how he came to be frocked (but ‘cucullus non facit monachum’), and how, in the troubles of these times, he had discovered in himself a great aptitude for the gunner’s trade, of which he boasted not a little.  He had been in one and another of these armed companies that took service with either side, for hire, being better warriors and more skilled than the noblesse, but a curse to France: for, in peace or war, friend or foe, they plundered all, and held all to ransom.  With Rodrigo de Villandradas, that blood-hound of Spain, he had been high in favour, but when Rodrigo went to harry south and east, he had tarried at Ruffec, with another thief of that nation, Alfonse Rodigo.  All his talk, as we went, was of slaying men in fight; whom he slew he cared not much, but chiefly he hated the English and them of Burgundy.  To him, war was what hunting and shooting game is to others; a cruel and bloody pastime, when Christians are the quarry!

“John the Lorrainer, and I, there are no others to be named with us at the culverin,” he would brag.  “We two against an army, give us good cover, and powder and leaden balls enough.  Hey!  Master John and I must shoot a match yet, against English targets, and of them there are plenty under Orleans.  But if I make not the