Transcribed from the 1896 Longmans Green and Company edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
A MONK OF FIFE
Being the Chronicle written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, concerning
marvellous deeds that befell in the realm of France, in the years of our
redemption, MCCCCXXIX-XXXI. Now first done into English out of the
French by Andrew Lang.
TO HENRIETTA LANG
My Dear Aunt,--To you, who read to me stories from the History of France,
before I could read them for myself, this Chronicle is affectionately
dedicated.
Yours ever,
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
"Proces de Jeanne d'Arc," in contemporary chronicles, and in MSS. more
recently discovered in French local or national archives. Thus Charlotte
Boucher, Barthelemy 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 Bauge.
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 Abbe 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 Tremouille, 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 "a la belle etoile" 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.