A Monk of Fife
A Monk of FifePREFACECHAPTER I—HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN, AND HOW NORMAN LESLIE FLED OUT OF FIFECHAPTER II—HOW NORMAN LESLIE MET NOIROUFLE THE CORDELIER, CALLED BROTHER THOMAS IN RELIGION: AND OF MIRACLES WROUGHT BY BROTHER THOMASCHAPTER III—WHAT BEFELL OUTSIDE OF CHINON TOWNCHAPTER IV—IN WHAT COMPANY NORMAN LESLIE ENTERED CHINON; AND HOW HE DEMEANED HIMSELF TO TAKE SERVICECHAPTER V—OF THE FRAY ON THE DRAWBRIDGE AT CHINON CASTLECHAPTER VI—HOW NORMAN LESLIE ESCAPED OUT OF CHINON CASTLECHAPTER VII—CONCERNING THE WRATH OF ELLIOT, AND THE JEOPARDY OF NORMAN LESLIECHAPTER VIII—OF CERTAIN QUARRELS THAT CAME ON THE HANDS OF NORMAN LESLIECHAPTER IX—OF THE WINNING OF ELLIOTCHAPTER X—HOW NORMAN LESLIE WAS OUT OF ALL COMFORTCHAPTER XI—HOW MADAME CATHERINE OF FIERBOIS WROUGHT A MIRACLE FOR A SCOT, AND HOW NORMAN RODE TO THE WARSCHAPTER XII—HOW THE MAID CAME TO ORLEANS, AND OF THE DOLOROUS STROKE THAT FIRST SHE STRUCK IN WARCHAPTER XIII—OF THE FIGHTING AT LES AUGUSTINS AND THE PROPHECY OF THE MAIDCHAPTER XIV—OF THE FIGHTING AT THE BRIDGE, AND OF THE PRIZE WON BY NORMAN LESLIE FROM THE RIVERCHAPTER XV—HOW NORMAN LESLIE WAS ABSOLVED BY BROTHER THOMASCHAPTER XVI—HOW SORROW CAME ON NORMAN LESLIE, AND JOY THEREAFTERCHAPTER XVII—HOW ELLIOT LOST HER JACKANAPESCHAPTER XVIII—HOW ELLIOT’S JACKANAPES WAS SEEN AT THE KING’S CROWNINGCHAPTER XIX—HOW NORMAN LESLIE RODE AGAIN TO THE WARSCHAPTER XX—CONCERNING THE MAID AND THE BIRDSCHAPTER XXI—HOW A HUNDRED SCOTS SET FORTH TO TAKE PARIS TOWNCHAPTER XXII—HOW NORMAN LESLIE FARED IN PARIS TOWNCHAPTER XXIII—HOW ELLIOT’S JACKANAPES CAME HOMECHAPTER XXIV—HOW THE MAID HEARD ILL TIDINGS FROM HER VOICES, AND OF THE SILENCE OF THE BIRDSCHAPTER XXV—OF THE ONFALL AT PONT L’ÉVÊQUE, AND HOW NORMAN LESLIE WAS HURTCHAPTER XXVI—HOW, AND BY WHOSE DEVICE, THE MAID WAS TAKEN AT COMPIÈGNECHAPTER XXVII—HOW NORMAN LESLIE FARED IN COMPIÈGNE, WITH THE END OFTHAT LEAGUERCHAPTER XXVIII—HOW THE BURGUNDIANS HUNTED HARES, WITH THE END OF THAT HUNTINGCHAPTER XXIX—SHOWETH HOW VERY NOBLE WAS THE DUKE OF BURGUNDYCHAPTER XXX—HOW NORMAN LESLIE TOOK SERVICE WITH THE ENGLISHCHAPTER XXXI—HOW NORMAN LESLIE SAW THE MAID IN HER PRISONCHAPTER XXXII—THE END OF THIS CHRONICLEAPPENDIX A—NORMAN’S MIRACLEAPPENDIX B—ELLIOT’S RINGFOOTNOTESCopyright
A Monk of Fife
Andrew Lang
PREFACE
Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, whose narrative the reader has in
his hands, refers more than once to his unfinished Latin
Chronicle. That work, usually known as “The Book of
Pluscarden,” has been edited by Mr. Felix Skene, in the series of
“Historians of Scotland” (vol. vii.). To Mr. Skene’s
introduction and notes the curious are referred. Here it may
suffice to say that the original MS. of the Latin Chronicle is
lost; that of six known manuscript copies none is older than 1480;
that two of these copies contain a Prologue; and that the Prologue
tells us all that has hitherto been known about the
author.The date of the lost Latin original is 1461, as the author
himself avers. He also, in his Prologue, states the purpose
of his work. At the bidding of an unnamed Abbot of
Dunfermline, who must have been Richard Bothwell, he is to
abbreviate “The Great Chronicle,” and “bring it up to date,” as we
now say. He is to recount the events of his own time, “with
certain other miraculous deeds, which I who write have had
cognisance of, seen, and heard, beyond the bounds of this
realm. Also, lastly, concerning a certain marvellous Maiden,
who recovered the kingdom of France out of the hands of the tyrant,
Henry, King of England. The aforesaid Maiden I saw, was
conversant with, and was in her company in her said recovery of
France, and till her life’s end I was ever present.” After “I
was ever present” the copies add “etc.,” perhaps a sign of
omission. The monkish author probably said more about the
heroine of his youth, and this the copyists have chosen to leave
out.The author never fulfilled this promise of telling, in Latin,
the history of the Maid as her career was seen by a Scottish ally
and friend. Nor did he ever explain how a Scot, and a foe of
England, succeeded in being present at the Maiden’s martyrdom in
Rouen. At least he never fulfilled his promise, as far as any
of the six Latin MSS. of his Chronicle are concerned. Every
one of these MSS.—doubtless following their incomplete
original—breaks off short in the middle of the second sentence of
Chapter xxxii. Book xii. Here is the brief fragment which
that chapter contains:—
“In those days the Lord stirred up the spirit of a certain
marvellous Maiden, born on the borders of France, in the duchy of
Lorraine, and the see of Toul, towards the Imperial
territories. This Maiden her father and mother employed in
tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle the distaff; man’s love
she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found in her, to her
innocence the neighbours bore witness . . . ”Here the Latin narrative of the one man who followed Jeanne
d’Arc through good and evil to her life’s end breaks off
abruptly. The author does not give his name; even the name of
the Abbot at whose command he wrote “is left blank, as if it had
been erased in the original” (Mr. Felix Skene, “Liber
Pluscardensis,” in the “Historians of Scotland,” vii. p. 18).
It might be guessed that the original fell into English hands
between 1461 and 1489, and that they blotted out the name of the
author, and destroyed a most valuable record of their conqueror and
their victim, Jeanne d’Arc.Against this theory we have to set the explanation here
offered by Norman Leslie, our author, in the Ratisbon Scots
College’s French MS., of which this work is a translation.
Leslie never finished his Latin Chronicle, but he wrote, in French,
the narrative which follows, decorating it with the designs which
Mr. Selwyn Image has carefully copied in black and
white.Possessing this information, we need not examine Mr. W. F.
Skene’s learned but unconvincing theory that the author of the
fragmentary Latin work was one Maurice Drummond, out of the
Lennox. The hypothesis is that of Mr. W. F. Skene, and Mr.
Felix Skene points out the difficulties which beset the opinion of
his distinguished kinsman. Our Monk is a man of
Fife.As to the veracity of the following narrative, the translator
finds it minutely corroborated, wherever corroboration could be
expected, in the large mass of documents which fill the five
volumes of M. Quicherat’s “Procès de Jeanne d’Arc,” in contemporary
chronicles, and in MSS. more recently discovered in French local or
national archives. Thus Charlotte Boucher, Barthélemy
Barrette, Noiroufle, the Scottish painter, and his daughter Elliot,
Capdorat, ay, even Thomas Scott, the King’s Messenger, were all
real living people, traces of whose existence, with some of their
adventures, survive faintly in brown old manuscripts. Louis
de Coutes, the pretty page of the Maid, a boy of fourteen, may have
been hardly judged by Norman Leslie, but he certainly abandoned
Jeanne d’Arc at her first failure.So, after explaining the true position and character of our
monkish author and artist, we leave his book to the judgment which
it has tarried for so long.
CHAPTER I—HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN, AND HOW NORMAN LESLIE FLED OUT
OF FIFE
It is not of my own will, nor for my own glory, that I,
Norman Leslie, sometime of Pitcullo, and in religion called Brother
Norman, of the Order of Benedictines, of Dunfermline, indite this
book. But on my coming out of France, in the year of our Lord
One thousand four hundred and fifty-nine, it was laid on me by my
Superior, Richard, Abbot in Dunfermline, that I should abbreviate
the Great Chronicle of Scotland, and continue the same down to our
own time.{1} He bade me tell, moreover, all
that I knew of the glorious Maid of France, called Jeanne la
Pucelle, in whose company I was, from her beginning even till her
end.Obedient, therefore, to my Superior, I wrote, in this our
cell of Pluscarden, a Latin book containing the histories of times
past, but when I came to tell of matters wherein, as Maro says,
“pars magna fui,” I grew weary of such rude, barbarous Latin as
alone I am skilled to indite, for of the manner Ciceronian, as it
is now practised by clerks of Italy, I am not master: my book,
therefore, I left unfinished, breaking off in the middle of a
sentence. Yet, considering the command laid on me, in the end
I am come to this resolve, namely, to write the history of the wars
in France, and the history of the blessed Maid (so far at least as
I was an eyewitness and partaker thereof), in the French language,
being the most commonly understood of all men, and the most
delectable. It is not my intent to tell all the story of the
Maid, and all her deeds and sayings, for the world would scarcely
contain the books that should be written. But what I myself
beheld, that I shall relate, especially concerning certain
accidents not known to the general, by reason of which ignorance
the whole truth can scarce be understood. For, if Heaven
visibly sided with France and the Maid, no less did Hell most
manifestly take part with our old enemy of England. And often
in this life, if we look not the more closely, and with the eyes of
faith, Sathanas shall seem to have the upper hand in the battle,
with whose very imp and minion I myself was conversant, to my
sorrow, as shall be shown.First, concerning myself I must say some few words, to the
end that what follows may be the more readily
understood.I was born in the kingdom of Fife, being, by some five years,
the younger of two sons of Archibald Leslie, of Pitcullo, near St.
Andrews, a cadet of the great House of Rothes. My mother was
an Englishwoman of the Debatable Land, a Storey of Netherby, and of
me, in our country speech, it used to be said that I was “a
mother’s bairn.” For I had ever my greatest joy in her, whom
I lost ere I was sixteen years of age, and she in me: not that she
favoured me unduly, for she was very just, but that, within
ourselves, we each knew who was nearest to her heart. She
was, indeed, a saintly woman, yet of a merry wit, and she had great
pleasure in reading of books, and in romances. Being always,
when I might, in her company, I became a clerk insensibly, and
without labour I could early read and write, wherefore my father
was minded to bring me up for a churchman. For this cause, I
was some deal despised by others of my age, and, yet more, because
from my mother I had caught the Southron trick of the tongue.
They called me “English Norman,” and many a battle I have fought on
that quarrel, for I am as true a Scot as any, and I hated the
English (my own mother’s people though they were) for taking and
holding captive our King, James I. of worthy memory. My
fancy, like that of most boys, was all for the wars, and full of
dreams concerning knights and ladies, dragons and enchanters, about
which the other lads were fain enough to hear me tell what I had
read in romances, though they mocked at me for reading. Yet
they oft came ill speed with their jests, for my brother had taught
me to use my hands: and to hold a sword I was instructed by our
smith, who had been prentice to Harry Gow, the Burn-the-Wind of
Perth, and the best man at his weapon in broad Scotland. From
him I got many a trick of fence that served my turn
later.But now the evil time came when my dear mother sickened and
died, leaving to me her memory and her great chain of gold. A
bitter sorrow is her death to me still; but anon my father took to
him another wife of the Bethunes of Blebo. I blame myself,
rather than this lady, that we dwelt not happily in the same
house. My father therefore, still minded to make me a
churchman, sent me to Robert of Montrose’s new college that stands
in the South Street of St. Andrews, a city not far from our house
of Pitcullo. But there, like a wayward boy, I took more
pleasure in the battles of the “nations”—as of Fife against
Galloway and the Lennox; or in games of catch-pull, football,
wrestling, hurling the bar, archery, and golf—than in divine
learning—as of logic, and Aristotle his analytics.Yet I loved to be in the scriptorium of the Abbey, and to see
the good Father Peter limning the blessed saints in blue, and red,
and gold, of which art he taught me a little. Often I would
help him to grind his colours, and he instructed me in the laying
of them on paper or vellum, with white of egg, and in fixing and
burnishing the gold, and in drawing flowers, and figures, and
strange beasts and devils, such as we see grinning from the walls
of the cathedral. In the French language, too, he learned me,
for he had been taught at the great University of Paris; and in
Avignon had seen the Pope himself, Benedict XIII., of uncertain
memory.Much I loved to be with Father Peter, whose lessons did not
irk me, but jumped with my own desire to read romances in the
French tongue, whereof there are many. But never could I have
dreamed that, in days to come, this art of painting would win me my
bread for a while, and that a Leslie of Pitcullo should be driven
by hunger to so base and contemned a handiwork, unworthy, when
practised for gain, of my blood.Yet it would have been well for me to follow even this craft
more, and my sports and pastimes less: Dickon Melville had then
escaped a broken head, and I, perchance, a broken heart. But
youth is given over to vanities that war against the soul, and,
among others, to that wicked game of the Golf, now justly cried
down by our laws,{2}as the mother of cursing and idleness,
mischief and wastery, of which game, as I verily believe, the devil
himself is the father.It chanced, on an October day of the year of grace Fourteen
hundred and twenty-eight, that I was playing myself at this
accursed sport with one Richard Melville, a student of like age
with myself. We were evenly matched, though Dickon was tall
and weighty, being great of growth for his age, whereas I was of
but scant inches, slim, and, as men said, of a girlish
countenance. Yet I was well skilled in the game of the Golf,
and have driven a Holland ball the length of an arrow-flight, there
or thereby. But wherefore should my sinful soul be now in
mind of these old vanities, repented of, I trust, long
ago?As we twain, Dickon and I, were known for fell champions at
this unholy sport, many of the other scholars followed us, laying
wagers on our heads. They were but a wild set of lads, for,
as then, there was not, as now there is, a house appointed for
scholars to dwell in together under authority. We wore
coloured clothes, and our hair long; gold chains, and
whingers{3}in our belts, all of which things are
now most righteously forbidden. But I carried no whinger on
the links, as considering that it hampered a man in his play.
So the game went on, now Dickon leading “by a hole,” as they say,
and now myself, and great wagers were laid on us.Now, at the hole that is set high above the Eden, whence you
see far over the country, and the river-mouth, and the shipping, it
chanced that my ball lay between Dickon’s and the hole, so that he
could in no manner win past it.
“You laid me that stimy of set purpose,” cried Dickon,
throwing down his club in a rage; “and this is the third time you
have done it in this game.”
“It is clean against common luck,” quoth one of his party,
“and the game and the money laid on it should be
ours.”
“By the blessed bones of the Apostle,” I said, “no luck is
more common. To-day to me, to-morrow to thee! Lay it of
purpose, I could not if I would.”
“You lie!” he shouted in a rage, and gripped to his
whinger.It was ever my father’s counsel that I must take the lie from
none. Therefore, as his steel was out, and I carried none, I
made no more ado, and the word of shame had scarce left his lips
when I felled him with the iron club that we use in
sand.
“He is dead!” cried they of his party, while the lads of my
own looked askance on me, and had manifestly no mind to be
partakers in my deed.Now, Melville came of a great house, and, partly in fear of
their feud, partly like one amazed and without any counsel, I ran
and leaped into a boat that chanced to lie convenient on the sand,
and pulled out into the Eden. Thence I saw them raise up
Melville, and bear him towards the town, his friends lifting their
hands against me, with threats and malisons. His legs trailed
and his head wagged like the legs and the head of a dead man, and I
was without hope in the world.At first it was my thought to row up the river-mouth, land,
and make across the marshes and fields to our house at
Pitcullo. But I bethought me that my father was an austere
man, whom I had vexed beyond bearing with my late wicked follies,
into which, since the death of my mother, I had fallen. And
now I was bringing him no college prize, but a blood-feud, which he
was like to find an ill heritage enough, even without an evil and
thankless son. My stepmother, too, who loved me little, would
inflame his anger against me. Many daughters he had, and of
gear and goods no more than enough. Robin, my elder brother,
he had let pass to France, where he served among the men of John
Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans—he that smote the Duke of Clarence
in fair fight at Baugé.Thinking of my father, and of my stepmother’s ill welcome,
and of Robin, abroad in the wars against our old enemy of England,
it may be that I fell into a kind of half dream, the boat lulling
me by its movement on the waters. Suddenly I felt a crashing
blow on my head. It was as if the powder used for artillery
had exploded in my mouth, with flash of light and fiery taste, and
I knew nothing. Then, how long after I could not tell, there
was water on my face, the blue sky and the blue tide were spinning
round—they spun swiftly, then slowly, then stood still. There
was a fierce pain stounding in my head, and a voice
said—
“That good oar-stroke will learn you to steal
boats!”I knew the voice; it was that of a merchant sailor-man with
whom, on the day before, I had quarrelled in the
market-place. Now I was lying at the bottom of a boat which
four seamen, who had rowed up to me and had broken my head as I
meditated, were pulling towards a merchant-vessel, or carrick, in
the Eden-mouth. Her sails were being set; the boat wherein I
lay was towing that into which I had leaped after striking down
Melville. For two of the ship’s men, being on shore, had
hailed their fellows in the carrick, and they had taken vengeance
upon me.
“You scholar lads must be taught better than your masters
learn you,” said my enemy.And therewith they carried me on board the vessel, the “St.
Margaret,” of Berwick, laden with a cargo of dried salmon from
Eden-mouth. They meant me no kindness, for there was an old
feud between the scholars and the sailors; but it seemed to me, in
my foolishness, that now I was in luck’s way. I need not go
back, with blood on my hands, to Pitcullo and my father. I
had money in my pouch, my mother’s gold chain about my neck, a
ship’s deck under my foot, and the seas before me. It was not
hard for me to bargain with the shipmaster for a passage to
Berwick, whence I might put myself aboard a vessel that traded to
Bordeaux for wine from that country. The sailors I made my
friends at no great cost, for indeed they were the conquerors, and
could afford to show clemency, and hold me to slight ransom as a
prisoner of war.So we lifted anchor, and sailed out of Eden-mouth, none of
those on shore knowing how I was aboard the carrick that slipped by
the bishop’s castle, and so under the great towers of the minster
and St. Rule’s, forth to the Northern Sea. Despite my broken
head—which put it comfortably into my mind that maybe Dickon’s was
no worse—I could have laughed to think how clean I had vanished
away from St. Andrews, as if the fairies had taken me. Now
having time to reason of it quietly, I picked up hope for Dickon’s
life, remembering his head to be of the thickest. Then came
into my mind the many romances of chivalry which I had read,
wherein the young squire has to flee his country for a chance blow,
as did Messire Patroclus, in the Romance of Troy, who slew a man in
anger over the game of the chess, and many another knight, in the
tales of Charlemagne and his paladins. For ever it is thus
the story opens, and my story, methought, was beginning to-day like
the rest.Now, not to prove more wearisome than need be, and so vex
those who read this chronicle with much talk about myself, and such
accidents of travel as beset all voyagers, and chiefly in time of
war, I found a trading ship at Berwick, and reached Bordeaux safe,
after much sickness on the sea. And in Bordeaux, with a very
sore heart, I changed the links of my mother’s chain that were left
to me—all but four, that still I keep—for money of that country;
and so, with a lighter pack than spirit, I set forth towards
Orleans and to my brother Robin.On this journey I had good cause to bless Father Peter of the
Abbey for his teaching me the French tongue, that was of more
service to me than all my Latin. Yet my Latin, too, the
little I knew, stood me in good stead at the monasteries, where
often I found bed and board, and no small kindness; I little
deeming that, in time to come, I also should be in religion, an old
man and weary, glad to speak with travellers concerning the news of
the world, from which I am now these ten years retired. Yet I
love even better to call back memories of these days, when I took
my part in the fray. If this be a sin, may God and the Saints
forgive me, for if I have fought, it was in a rightful cause, which
Heaven at last has prospered, and in no private quarrel. And
methinks I have one among the Saints to pray for me, as a friend
for a friend not unfaithful. But on this matter I submit me
to the judgment of the Church, as in all questions of the
faith.
CHAPTER II—HOW NORMAN LESLIE MET NOIROUFLE THE CORDELIER, CALLED
BROTHER THOMAS IN RELIGION: AND OF MIRACLES WROUGHT BY BROTHER
THOMAS
The ways were rude and long from Bordeaux town to Orleans,
whither I had set my face, not knowing, when I left my own country,
that the city was beleaguered by the English. For who could
guess that lords and knights of the Christian faith, holding
captive the gentle Duke of Orleans, would besiege his own city?—a
thing unheard of among the very Saracens, and a deed that God
punished. Yet the news of this great villainy, namely, the
leaguer of Orleans, then newly begun, reached my ears on my landing
at Bordeaux, and made me greatly fear that I might never meet my
brother Robin alive. And this my doubt proved but too true,
for he soon after this time fell, with many other Scottish
gentlemen and archers, deserted shamefully by the French and by
Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Clermont, at the Battle of the
Herrings. But of this I knew nothing—as, indeed, the battle
was not yet fought—and only pushed on for France, thinking to take
service with the Dauphin against the English. My journey was
through a country ruinous enough, for, though the English were on
the further bank of the Loire, the partisans of the Dauphin had
made a ruin round themselves and their holds, and, not being paid,
they lived upon the country.The further north I held, by ways broken and ruined with
rains and suns, the more bare and rugged grew the whole land.
Once, stopping hard by a hamlet, I had sat down to munch such food
as I carried, and was sharing my meal with a little brown herd-boy,
who told me that he was dinnerless. A few sheep and lean kine
plucked at such scant grasses as grew among rocks, and herbs
useless but sweet-scented, when suddenly a horn was blown from the
tower of the little church. The first note of that blast had
not died away, when every cow and sheep was scampering towards the
hamlet and a kind of “barmkyn”{4}they had builded there for protection,
and the boy after them, running with his bare legs for dear
life. For me, I was too amazed to run in time, so lay
skulking in the thick sweet-smelling herbs, whence I saw certain
men-at-arms gallop to the crest of a cliff hard by, and ride on
with curses, for they were not of strength to take the
barmkyn.Such was the face of France in many counties. The
fields lay weedy and untilled; the starving peasant-folk took to
the highway, every man preying on his neighbour. Woods had
grown up, and broken in upon the roads. Howbeit, though
robbers harboured therein, none of them held to ransom a wandering
poor Scots scholar.Slowly I trudged, being often delayed, and I was now nearing
Poictiers, and thought myself well on my road to Chinon, where, as
I heard, the Dauphin lay, when I came to a place where the road
should have crossed a stream—not wide, but strong, smooth, and very
deep. The stream ran through a glen; and above the road I had
long noted the towers of a castle. But as I drew closer, I
saw first that the walls were black with fire and roofless, and
that carrion birds were hovering over them, some enemy having
fallen upon the place: and next, behold, the bridge was broken, and
there was neither ford nor ferry! All the ruin was fresh, the
castle still smouldering, the kites flocking and yelling above the
trees, the planks of the bridge showing that the destruction was
but of yesterday.This matter of the broken 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 better speed, the town will have fallen, or
yielded, rescue or no rescue, and of rescue there is no hope at
all. The devil fights for the English, who will soon be
swarming over the Loire, and that King of Bourges of ours will have
to flee, and gnaw horse’s fodder, oats and barley, with your
friends in Scotland.”This was one of the many ungenerous taunts which the French
made often against us Scots, that have been their ancient and leal
brethren in arms since the days of King Achaius and
Charlemagne.
“The Dauphin,” he went on, “for King he is none, and crowned
he will never be, should be in Orleans, leading his men; and lo! he
is tied to the belt of fat La Trémouille, and is dancing of ballets
at Chinon—a murrain on him, and on them that make his music!”
Then he fell to cursing his King, a thing terrible to hear, and so
to asking me questions about myself. I told him that I had
fled my own country for a man-slaying, hoping, may Heaven forgive
me! to make him think the higher of me for the deed.
“So we all begin,” said he; “a shrewd blow, or a fair wench;
a death, or a birth unlawful, ’tis all one forth we are driven to
the world and the wars. Yet you have started well,—well
enough, and better than I gave your girl’s face credit for.
Bar steel and rope, you may carry some French gold back to stinking
Scotland yet.”He gave me so much credit as this for a deed that deserved
none, but rather called for rebuke from him, who, however unworthy,
was in religion, and wore the garb of the Blessed Francis.
But very far from fortifying me in virtuous courses, as was his
bounden duty, there was no wickedness that he did not try to teach
me, till partly I hated him, and partly, I fear, I admired one so
skilled in evil. The truth is, as I said, that this man, for
that time, was my master. He was learned in all the arts by
which poor and wandering folk can keep their bellies full wandering
by the way. With women, ugly and terrible of aspect as he
was, he had a great power: a pious saying for the old; a way with
the young which has ever been a mystery to me, unless, as some of
the learned think, all women are naturally lovers of wickedness, if
strength and courage go with it. What by wheedling, what by
bullying, what by tales of pilgrimages to holy shrines (he was
coming from Jerusalem by way of Rome, so he told all we met), he
ever won a welcome.Other more devilish cantrips he played, one of them at the
peasant’s house where we rested on the first night of our common
travel. The Lenten supper which they gave us, with no little
kindness, was ended, and we were sitting in the firelight, Brother
Thomas discoursing largely of his pilgrimages, and of his favour
among the high clergy. Thus, at I know not what convent of
the Clarisses,{5}in Italy, the holy Sisters had pressed
on him a relic of Monsieur St. Aignan, the patron of the good town
of Orleans. To see this relic, the farmer, his wife, and his
sons and daughters crowded eagerly; it was but a little blackened
finger bone, yet they were fain to touch it, as is the
custom. But this he would not yet allow.
“Perchance some of you,” he said, “are already corrupt, not
knowing it, with the poisonous breath of that damnable Hussite
heresy, which is blowing from the east like wind of the pestilence,
and ye may have doubts concerning the verity of this most holy and
miraculous relic?”They all crossed themselves, protesting that no such wicked
whisper of Sathanas had ever come into their minds, nor had they so
much as heard of Huss and his blasphemies.
“Nay,” said Brother Thomas, “I could scarcely blame you if it
were partly as I said. For in this latter time of the world,
when I have myself met Jews flocking to Babylon expecting the birth
of Antichrist, there be many false brethren, who carry about
feigned relics, to deceive the simple. We should believe no
man, if he be, as I am, a stranger, unless he shows us a sign, such
as now I will show you. Give me, of your grace, a kerchief,
or a napkin.” The goodwife gave him a clean white napkin from
her aumbry, and he tore it up before their eyes, she not daring to
stay his hand.
“Now note this holy relic and its wonderful power,” he said,
holding the blackened bone high in his left hand, and all our eyes
were fixed on it. “Now mark,” he said again, passing it over
the napkin; and lo! there was a clean white napkin in his hands,
and of the torn shreds not a trace!We were still gaping, and crossing ourselves with blessings
on this happy day and our unworthy eyes that beheld a miracle, when
he did a thing yet more marvellous, if that might be, which I
scarce expect any man will believe. Going to the table, and
catching up a glass vessel on which the goodwife set great store,
he threw it against the wall, and we all plainly heard it shiver
into tinkling pieces. Then, crossing the room into the
corner, that was dusky enough, he faced us, again holding the
blessed relic, whereon we stared, in holy fear. Then he rose,
and in his hand was the goodwife’s glass vessel, without crack or
flaw!{6}
“Such,” he said, “are the properties of this miraculous
relic; there is nothing broken but it will mend, ay, a broken limb,
as I can prove on my own sinful body,”—thrusting out his great
brown leg, whereon, assuredly, were signs of a fracture; “ay, a
broken leg, or, my dear daughters, a broken heart.” At this,
of course, they were all eager to touch the blessed relic with
their poor rings of base metal, such as they wear who are not
rich. Nay, but first, he said, they must give their mites for
a convent of the Clarisses, that was building at Castres, by the
care of the holy Colette, whom he might call his patroness,
unworthy as he was.Then he showed us a safe-conduct, signed with that blessed
woman’s own hand, such as she was wont to give to the religious of
the Order of St. Francis. By virtue of this, he said (and, by
miracle, for once he said truly, as I had but too good cause to
learn), he could go freely in and out among the camps of French,
English, and Burgundians.You may conceive how joyous they were in that poor cottage,
on a night so blessed, and how Brother Thomas told us of the holy
Colette, that famous nun and Mother in Christ, as he that had often
been in her company. He had seen her body lifted in the air
while she remained in a pious ecstasy, her mind soaring aloft and
her fleshly body following it some way.He had often watched that snow-white beast which followed
her, such a creature as is known in no country of the sinful world,
but is a thing of Paradise. And he had tried to caress this
wondrous creature of God, but vainly, for none but the holy sister
Colette may handle it. Concerning her miracles of healing,
too, he told us, all of which we already knew for very truth, and
still know on better warranty than his.Ye may believe that, late and at last, Brother Thomas had his
choice of the warmest place to sleep in—by the “four,” as is the
wont of pilgrims, for in his humility this holy man would not
suffer the farmer’s wife and the farmer to give him their bed, as
they desired. I, too, was very kindly entreated by the young
lads, but I could scarcely sleep for marvelling at these miracles
done by one so unworthy; and great, indeed, I deemed, must be the
virtue of that relic which wrought such signs in the hands of an
evil man. But I have since held that he feigned all by art
magic and very sorcery, for, as we wended next morning on our road,
he plainly told me, truly or falsely, that he had picked up the
blackened finger-bone out of the loathly ashes of the dead in the
burned castle near Ruffec.Wherefore I consider that when Brother Thomas sold the grace
of his relic, by the touching of rings, he dealt in a devilish
black simony, vending to simple Christians no grace but that of his
master, Sathanas. Thus he was not only evil (if I guess
aright, which I submit to the judgment of my ecclesiastical
superiors, and of the Church), but he had even found out a new kind
of wickedness, such as I never read of in any books of theology
wherein is much to be learned. I have spoken with some,
however, knights and men of this world, who deemed that he did but
beguile our eyes by craft and sleight-of-hand.This other hellish art he had, by direct inspiration, as I
hold, of his master Behemoth, that he could throw his voice whither
he would, so that, in all seeming, it came from above, or from
below, or from a corner of a room, fashioning it to resemble the
voice of whom he would, yet none might see his lips move.
With this craft he would affray the peasants about the fire in the
little inns where we sometimes rested, when he would be telling
tales of bogles and eldritch fantasies, and of fiends that rout and
rap, and make the tables and firkins dance. Such art of
speech, I am advised, is spoken of by St. Jerome, in his comment on
the holy prophet the saint Isaiah, and they that use it he calls
“ventriloqui,” in the Latin, or “belly-speakers,” and he takes an
unfavourable sense of them and their doings. So much I have
from the learned William de Boyis, Prior of Pluscarden, where now I
write; with whom I have conversed of these matters privately, and
he thinks this art a thing that men may learn by practice, without
dealing in nigromancy and the black magic. This question I am
content to leave, as is fitting, to the judgment of my
superiors. And indeed, as at that time, Brother Thomas spake
not in his belly except to make sport and affray the simple people,
soon turning their fears to mirth. Certainly the country folk
never misdoubted him, the women for a holy man, the men for a good
fellow; though all they of his own cloth shrank from him, and I
have seen them cross themselves in his presence, but to no
avail. He would say a word or two in their ears, and they
straightway left the place where he might be. None the less,
with his tales and arts, Brother Thomas commonly so wrought that we
seldom slept “à la belle étoile” in that bitter spring weather, but
we ordinarily had leave to lie by the hearth, and got a supper and
a breakfast. The good peasants would find their hen-roosts
the poorer often, for all that he could snap up was to him fortune
of war.I loved these manners little, but leave him I could
not. His eye was ever on me; if I stirred in the night he was
awake and watching me, and by day he never let me out of a bolt’s
flight. To cut the string of his wicked weapon was a thought
often in my mind, but he was too vigilant. My face was his
passport, he said; my face, indeed, being innocent enough, as was
no shame to me, but an endless cause of mirth and mockery to
him. Yet, by reason of the serviceableness of the man in that
perilous country, and my constant surprise and wonder at what he
did and said, and might do next (which no man could guess
beforehand), and a kind of foolish pride in his very wickedness, so
much beyond what I had ever dreamed of, and for pure fear of him
also, I found myself following with him day by day, ever thinking
to escape, and never escaping.I have since deemed that, just as his wickedness was to a boy
(for I was little more), a kind of charm, made up of a sort of
admiring hate and fear, so my guilelessness (as it seemed to him)
also wrought on him strangely. For in part it made sport for
him to see my open mouth and staring eyes at the spectacle of his
devilries, and in part he really hated me, and hated my very virtue
of simplicity, which it was his desire and delight to surprise and
corrupt.On these strange terms, then, now drawn each to other, and
now forced apart, we wended by Poictiers towards Chinon, where the
Dauphin and his Court then lay. So we fared northwards,
through Poitou, where we found evil news enough. For, walking
into a village, we saw men, women, and children, all gathered,
gaping about one that stood beside a horse nearly foundered, its
legs thrust wide, its nostrils all foam and blood. The man,
who seemed as weary as his horse, held a paper in his hands, which
the priest of that parish took from him and read aloud to us.
The rider was a royal messenger, one Thomas Scott of Easter
Buccleuch, in Rankel Burn, whom I knew later, and his tidings were
evil. The Dauphin bade his good towns know that, on the 12th
of February, Sir John Stewart, constable of the Scottish forces in
France, had fallen in battle at Rouvray, with very many of his
company, and some Frenchmen. They had beset a convoy under
Sir John Fastolf, that was bringing meat to the English leaguered
about Orleans. But Fastolf had wholly routed them (by
treachery, as we later learned of the Comte de Clermont), and Sir
John Stewart, with his brother Sir William, were slain.
Wherefore the Dauphin bade the good towns send him money and men,
or all was lost.Such were the evil tidings, which put me in sore fear for my
brother Robin, one that, in such an onfall, would go far, as
beseemed his blood. But as touching his fortunes, Thomas
Scott could tell me neither good nor bad, though he knew Robin, and
gave him a good name for a stout man-at-arms. It was of some
comfort to me to hear a Scots tongue; but, for the rest, I
travelled on with a heavier heart, deeming that Orleans must indeed
fall ere I could seek my brother in that town.
CHAPTER III—WHAT BEFELL OUTSIDE OF CHINON TOWN
My old nurse, when I was a child, used to tell me a long
story of a prince who, wandering through the world, made friends
with many strange companions. One she called Lynx-eye, that
could see through a mountain; one was Swift-foot, that could outrun
the wind; one was Fine-ear, that could hear the grass growing; and
there was Greedy-gut, that could swallow a river. All these
were very serviceable to this gracious prince, of I know not what
country, in his adventures; and they were often brought into my
mind by the companions whom we picked up on the grass-grown
roads.
These wanderers were as strange as the friends of the prince,
and were as variously, but scarce as honourably, gifted.
There was the one-armed soldier, who showed his stump very
piteously when it was a question of begging from a burgess, but was
as well furnished with limbs as other men when no burgess was in
sight. There was a wretched woman violer, with her
jackanapes, and with her husband, a hang-dog ruffian, she bearing
the mark of his fist on her eye, and commonly trailing far behind
him with her brat on her back. There was a blind man, with
his staff, who might well enough answer to Keen-eye, that is, when
no strangers were in sight. There was a layman, wearing cope
and stole and selling indulgences, but our captain, Brother Thomas,
soon banished him from our company, for that he divided the
trade. Others there were, each one of them a Greedy-gut, a
crew of broken men, who marched with us on the roads; but we never
entered a town or a house with these discreditable
attendants.
Now, it may seem strange, but the nearer we drew to Chinon
and the Court, the poorer grew the country, for the Court and the
men-at-arms had stripped it bare, like a flight of locusts.
For this reason the Dauphin could seldom abide long at one place,
for he was so much better known than trusted that the very
cordwainer would not let him march off in a new pair of boots
without seeing his money, and, as the song said, he even greased
his old clouted shoon, and made them last as long as he
might. For head-gear he was as ill provided, seeing that he
had pawned the fleurons of his crown. There were days when
his treasurer at Tours (as I myself have heard him say) did not
reckon three ducats in his coffers, and the heir of France borrowed
money from his very cook. So the people told us, and I have
often marvelled how, despite this poverty, kings and nobles, when I
have seen them, go always in cloth of gold, with rich jewels.
But, as you may guess, near the Court of a beggar Dauphin the
country-folk too were sour and beggarly.
We had to tighten our belts before we came to the wood
wherein cross-roads meet, from north, south, and east, within five
miles of the town of Chinon. There was not a white coin among
us; night was falling, and it seemed as if we must lie out under
the stars, and be fed, like the wolves we heard howling, on
wind. By the roadside, at the crossways, but not in view of
the road, a council of our ragged regiment was held in a deep
ditch. It would be late ere we reached the town, gates would
scarce open for us, we could not fee the warders, houses would be
shut and dark; the King’s archers were apt to bear them unfriendly
to wandering men with the devil dancing in their pouches.
Resource we saw none; if there was a cottage, dogs, like wolves for
hunger and fierceness, were baying round it. As for Brother
Thomas, an evil bruit had gone before us concerning a cordelier
that the fowls and geese were fain to follow, as wilder things,
they say, follow the blessed St. Francis. So there sat
Brother Thomas at the cross-roads, footsore, hungry, and sullen, in
the midst of us, who dared not speak, he twanging at the string of
his arbalest. He called himself our Moses, in his blasphemous
way, and the blind man having girded at him for not leading us into
the land of plenty, he had struck the man till he bled, and now
stood stanching his wound.
Suddenly Brother Thomas ceased from his twanging, and holding
up his hand for silence, leaned his ear to the ground. The
night was still, though a cold wind came very stealthily from the
east.
“Horses!” he said.
“It is but the noise of the brook by the way,” said the blind
man, sullenly.
Brother Thomas listened again.
“No, it is horses,” he whispered. “My men, they that
ride horses can spare somewhat out of their abundance to feed the
poor.” And with that he began winding up his arbalest
hastily. “Aymeric,” he said to one of our afflicted company,
“you draw a good bow for a blind man; hide yourself in the opposite
ditch, and be ready when I give the word ‘Pax vobiscum.’ You,
Giles,” he spoke to the one-armed soldier, “go with him, and, do
you hear, aim low, at the third man’s horse. From the sound
there are not more than five or six of them. We can but fail,
at worst, and the wood is thick behind us, where none may
pursue. You, Norman de Pitcullo, have your whinger ready, and
fasten this rope tightly to yonder birch-tree stem, and then cross
and give it a turn or two about that oak sapling on the other side
of the way. That trap will bring down a horse or twain.
Be quick, you Scotch wine-bag!”
I had seen many ill things done, and, to my shame, had held
my peace. But a Leslie of Pitcullo does not take purses on
the high-road. Therefore my heart rose in sudden anger, I
having all day hated him more and more for his bitter tongue, and I
was opening my mouth to cry “À secours!”—a warning to them who were
approaching, when, quick as lightning, Brother Thomas caught me
behind the knee-joints, and I was on the ground with his weight
above me. One cry I had uttered, when his hand was on my
mouth.
“Give him the steel in his guts!” whispered the blind
man.
“Slit his weasand, the Scotch pig!” said the one-armed
soldier.
They were all on me now.
“No, I keep him for better sport,” snarled Brother
Thomas. “He shall learn the Scots for ‘écorcheurs’ (flayers
of men) “when we have filled our pouches.”
With that he crammed a great napkin in my mouth, so that I
could not cry, made it fast with a piece of cord, trussed me with
the rope which he had bidden me tie across the path to trip the
horses, and with a kick sent me flying to the bottom of the ditch,
my face being turned from the road.