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

the Reims folk that “she did her own will, rather than obeyed the commandments of God.”  But that God commands knights and gentlemen to rob the poor and needy (though indeed He has set a great gulf between a manant and a gentleman born) I can in nowise believe.  For my part, when I have been where gentlemen and captains lamented the slaying of Franquet d’Arras, and justified the dealings of the English with the Maid, I have seemed to hear the clamour of the cruel Jews: “Tolle hunc, et dimitte nobis Barabbam.” {35} For Barabbas was a robber.  Howbeit on this matter, as on all, I humbly submit me to the judgment of my superiors and to Holy Church.

Meantime the Maid rode from Lagny, now to Soissons, now to Senlis, now to Crepy-en-Valois, and in Crepy she was when that befell which I am about to relate.

CHAPTER XXVI—HOW, AND BY WHOSE DEVICE, THE MAID WAS TAKEN AT COMPIÈGNE

“Verily and indeed the Maid is of wonderful excellence,” quoth Father François to me, in my chamber at the Jacobins, where I was healing of my hurts.

“Any man may know that, who is in your company,” the father went on speaking.

“And how, good father?” I asked him; “sure I have caught none of her saintliness.”

“A saint I do not call you, but I scarce call you a Scot.  For you are a clerk.”

“The Maid taught me none of my clergy, father, nor have I taught her any of mine.”

“She needs it not.  But you are peaceful and gentle; you brawl not, nor drink, nor curse . . . ”

“Nay, father, with whom am I to brawl, or how should I curse in your good company?  Find you Scots so froward?”

“But now, pretending to be our friends, a band of them is harrying the Sologne country . . . ”

“They will be Johnstons and Jardines, and wild wood folk of Galloway,” I said.  “These we scarce reckon Scots, but rather Picts, and half heathen.  And the Johnstons and Jardines are here belike, because they have made Scotland over hot to hold them.  We are a poor folk, but honest, let by the clans of the Land Debatable and of Ettrick Forest, and the Border freebooters, and the Galloway Picts, and Maxwells, and Glendinnings, and the red-shanked, jabbering Highlanders and Islesmen, and some certain of the Angus folk, and, maybe, a wild crew in Strathclyde.”

“Yours, then, is a very large country?”

“About the bigness of France, or, may be, not so big.  And the main part of it, and the most lawful and learned, is by itself, in a sort, a separate kingdom, namely Fife, whence I come myself.  The Lothians, too, and the shire of Ayr, if you except Carrick, are well known for the lands of peaceful and sober men.”

“Whence comes your great captain, Sir Hugh Kennedy?”

“There you name an honourable man-at-arms,” I said, “the glory of Scotland; and to show you I was right, he is none of your marchmen, or Highlanders, but has lands in Ayrshire, and comes of a very honourable house.”

“It is Sir Hugh that hath just held to ransom the King’s good town of Tours, where is that gracious lady the mother of the King’s wife, the Queen of Sicily.”

Hereat I waxed red as fire.

“He will be in arrears of his pay, no doubt,” I made answer.

“It is very like,” said Father François: “but considering all that you tell me, I crave your pardon if I still think that the Blessed Maid has won you from the common ways of your countrymen.”

To which, in faith, I had no answer to make, but that my fortune was like to be the happier in this world and the next.

“Much need have all men of her goodness, and we of her valour,” said the father, and he sighed.  “This is now the fourth siege of Compiègne I have seen, and twice have the leads from our roofs and the metal of our bells been made into munition of war.  Absit omen Domine!  And now they say the Duke of Burgundy has sworn to slay all, and spare neither woman nor child.”

“A vaunt of war, father.  Call they not him the Good Duke?  When we lay before Paris, the English put about a like lying tale concerning us, as if we should sack and slay all.”

“I pray that you speak sooth,” said Father François.

On the next day, being May the twentieth, he came to me again, with a wan face.

“Burgundians are in Claroix,” said he, “across the river, and yet others, with Jean de Luxembourg, at Margny, scarce a mile away, at the end of the causeway through the water meadows, beyond the bridge.  And the Duke is at Coudun, a league off to the right of Claroix, and I have clomb the tower-top, and thence seen the English at Venette, on the left hand of the causeway.  All is undone.”

“Nay, father, be of better cheer.  Our fort at the bridge end is stronger than Les Tourelles were at Orleans.  The English shot can scarce cross the river.  Bridge the enemy has none, and northward and eastward all is open.  Be of better heart, Heaven helps France.”

“We have sent to summon the Maid,” said he, “from Crepy-en-Valois.  In her is all my hope; but you speak lightly, for you are young, and war is your trade.”

“And praying is yours, father, wherefore you should be bolder than I.”

But he shook his head.

So two days passed, and nothing great befell, but in the grey dawn of May the twenty-third I was held awake by clatter of horsemen riding down the street under the window of my chamber.  And after matins came Father François, his face very joyful, with the tidings that the Maid, and a company of some three hundred lances of hers, had ridden in from Crepy-en-Valois, she making her profit of the darkness to avoid the Burgundians.

Then I deemed that the enemy would soon have news of her, and all that day I heard the bells ring merry peals, and the trumpets sounding.  About three hours after noonday Father François came again, and told me that the Maid would make a sally, and cut the Burgundians in twain; and now nothing would serve me but I must be borne in a litter to the walls, and see her banner once more on the wind.

So, by the goodwill of Father François, some lay brethren bore me forth from the convent, which is but a stone’s-throw from the bridge.  They carried me across the Oise to a mill hard by the boulevard of the Bridge fort, whence, from a window, I beheld all that chanced.  No man sitting in the gallery of a knight’s hall to see jongleurs play and sing could have had a better stance, or have seen more clearly all the mischief that befell.

The town of Compiègne lies on the river Oise, as Orleans on the Loire, but on the left, not the right hand of the water.  The bridge is strongly guarded, as is custom, by a tower at the further end, and, in front of that tower, a boulevard.  All the water was gay to look on, being covered with boats, as if for a holiday, but these were manned by archers, whom Guillaume de Flavy had set to shoot at the enemy, if they drove us back, and to rescue such of our men as might give ground, if they could not win into the boulevard at the bridge end.

Beyond the boulevard, forth to the open country, lay a wide plain, and behind it, closing it in, a long, low wall of steep hills.  On the left, a mile and a half away, Father François showed me the church tower of Venette, where the English camped; to the right, a league off, was the tower of Clairoix; and at the end of a long raised causeway that ran from the bridge across the plain, because of the winter floods, I saw the tower and the village of Margny.  All these towns and spires looked peaceful, but all were held by the Burgundians.  Men-at-arms were thick on the crest of our boulevard, and on the gate-keep, all looking across the river towards the town, whence the Maid should sally by way of the bridge.  So there I lay on a couch in the window and waited, having no fear, but great joy.

Nay, never have I felt my spirit lighter within me, so that I laughed and chattered like a fey man.  The fresh air, after my long lying in a chamber, stirred me like wine.  The May sun shone warm, yet cooled with a sweet wind of the west.  The room was full of women and maids, all waiting to throw flowers before the Maid, whom they dearly loved.  Everything had a look of holiday, and all was to end in joy and great victory.  So I laughed with the girls, and listened to a strange tale, how the Maid had but of late brought back to life a dead child at Lagny, so that he got his rights of Baptism, and anon died again.

So we fleeted the time, till about the fifth hour after noon, when we heard the clatter of horses on the bridge; and some women waxed pale.  My own heart leaped up.  The noise drew nearer, and presently She rode across and forth, carrying her banner in the noblest manner, mounted on a grey horse, and clad in a rich hucque of cramoisie; she smiled and bowed like a queen to the people, who cried, “Noël!  Noël!”  Beside her rode Pothon le Bourgignon (not Pothon de Xaintrailles, as some have falsely said), her confessor Pasquerel on a palfrey; her brother, Pierre du Lys, with his new arms bravely blazoned; and her maître d’hôtel, D’Aulon.  But of the captains in Compiègne no one rode with her.  She had but her own company, and a great rude throng of footmen of the town that would not be said nay.  They carried clubs, and they looked, as I heard, for no less than to take prisoner the Duke of Burgundy himself.  Certain of these men also bore spades and picks and other tools; for the Maid, as I deem, intended no more than to take and hold Margny, that so she might cut the Burgundians in twain, and sunder from them the English at Venette.  Now as the night was not far off, then at nightfall would the English be in sore straits, as not knowing the country and the country roads, and not having the power to join them of Burgundy at Clairoix.  This, one told me afterwards, was the device of the Maid.

Be this as it may, and a captain of hers, Barthélemy Barrette, told me the tale, the Maid rode gallantly forth, flowers raining on her, while my heart longed to be riding at her rein.  She waved her hand to Guillaume de Flavy, who sat on his horse by the gate of the boulevard, and so, having arrayed her men, she cried, “Tirez avant!” and made towards Margny, the foot-soldiers following with what speed they might, while I and Father François, and others in the chamber, strained our eyes after them.  All the windows and roofs of the houses and water-mills on the bridge were crowded with men and women, gazing, and it came into my mind that Flavy had done ill to leave these mills and houses standing.  They wrought otherwise at Orleans.  This was but a passing thought, for my heart was in my eyes, straining towards Margny.  Thence now arose a great din, and clamour of trumpets and cries of men-at-arms, and we could see tumult, blown dust, and stir of men, and so it went for it may be half of an hour.  Then that dusty cloud of men and horses drove, forward ever, out of our sight.

The sun was now red and sinking above the low wall of the western hills, and the air was thicker than it had been, and confused with a yellow light.  Despite the great multitude of men and women on the city walls, there came scarcely a sound of a voice to us across the wide river, so still they kept, and the archers in the boats beneath us were silent: nay, though the chamber wherein I lay was thronged with the people of the house pressing to see through the open casement, yet there was silence here, save when the father prayed.

A stronger wind rising out of the west now blew towards us with a sweet burden of scent from flowers and grass, fragrant upon our faces.  So we waited, our hearts beating with hope and fear.

Then I, whose eyes were keen, saw, blown usward from Margny, a cloud of flying dust, that in Scotland we call stour.  The dust rolled white along the causeway towards Compiègne,