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

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 Frères 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.

CHAPTER V—OF THE FRAY ON THE DRAWBRIDGE AT CHINON CASTLE

During supper, to which they called me, my master showed me the best countenance that might be, and it was great joy to me to eat off clean platters once again, on white linen strewn with spring flowers.  As the time was Lent, we had fare that they called meagre: fish from the Vienne water, below the town, and eggs cooked in divers fashions, all to the point of excellence, for the wine and fare of Chinon are famous in France.  As my duty was, I waited on my master and on the maid Elliot, who was never silent, but babbled of all that she had heard since she came into the town; as to where the Pucelle had lighted off her horse (on the edge-stone of a well, so it seemed), and where and with what goodwife she lodged, and how as yet no message had come to her from the castle and the King; and great joy it was to watch and to hear her.  But her father mocked, though in a loving manner; and once she wept at his bourdes, and shone out again, when he fell on his knees, offering her a knife and baring his breast to the stroke, for I have never seen more love between father and child, my own experience being contrary.  Yet to my sisters my father was ever debonnair; for, as I have often marked, the mothers love the sons best and the sons the mothers, and between father and daughters it is the same.  But of my mother I have spoken in the beginning of this history.

When supper was ended, and all things made orderly, I had no great mind for my bed, having slept my fill for that time.  But the maid Elliot left us early, which was as if the light had been taken out of the room.

Beside the fire, my master fell to devising about the state of the country, as burgesses love to do.  And I said that, if I were the Dauphin, Chinon Castle should not hold me long, for my “spur would be in my horse’s side, and the bridle on his mane,” {9} as the old song of the Battle of Harlaw runs, and I on the way to Orleans.  Thereto he answered, that he well wished it were so, and, mocking, wished that I were the Dauphin.

“Not that our Dauphin is a coward, the blood of Saint Louis has not fallen so low, but he is wholly under the Sieur de La Trémouille, who was thrust on him while he was young, and still is his master, or, as we say, his governor.  Now, this lord is one that would fain run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and this side of him is Burgundian and that is Armagnac, and on which of the sides his heart is, none knows.  At Azincour, as I have heard, he played the man reasonably well.  But he waxes very fat for a man-at-arms, and is fond of women, and wine, and of his ease.  Now, if once the King ranges up with the Bastard of Orleans, and Xaintrailles, and the other captains, who hate La Trémouille, then his power, and the power of the Chancellor, the Archbishop of Rheims, is gone and ended.  So these two work ever to patch up a peace with Burgundy, but, seeing that the duke has his father’s death to avenge on our King, they may patch and better patch, but no peace will come of it.  And the captains cry ‘Forward!’ and the archbishop and La Trémouille cry ‘Back!’ and in the meantime Orleans will fall, and the Dauphin may fly whither he will, for France is lost.  But, for myself, I would to the saints that I and my lass were home again, beneath the old thorn-tree at Polwarth on the green, where I have been merry lang syne.”

With that word he fell silent, thinking, I doubt not, of his home, as I did of mine, and of the house of Pitcullo and the ash-tree at the door, and the sea beyond the ploughed land of the plain.  So, after some space of silence, he went to his bed, and I to mine, where for long I lay wakeful, painting on the dark the face of Elliot, and her blue eyes, and remembering her merry, changeful ways.

Betimes in the morning I was awakened by the sound of her moving about through the house, and having dressed and gone forth from my little chamber, I found her in