DEMEANED HIMSELF TO TAKE SERVICE
Not seemly, was it, that I should expect these kind people, even though
they were of my own country, to do more for me than they had already
done. So, when I had eaten and drunk, I made my obeisance as if I would
be trudging towards Chinon, adding many thanks, as well I might.
"Nay, countryman," said the man, "for all that I can see, you may as well
bide a while with us; for, indeed, with leave of my graceless maid, I
think we may even end our wild-goose chase here and get us back to the
town."
Seeing me marvel, perhaps, that any should have ridden some four miles or
five, and yet speak of returning, he looked at the girl, who was playing
with the jackanapes, and who smiled at him as he spoke. "You must know,"
said he, "that though I am the father of your Fairy Queen, I am also one
of the gracious Princess's obedient subjects. No mother has she, poor
wench," he added, in a lower voice; "and faith, we men must always obey
some woman--as it seems now that the King himself must soon do and all
his captains."
"You speak," I said, "of the gracious Queen of Sicily and Jerusalem?"--a
lady who was thought to be of much avail, as was but right, in the
counsels of her son-in-law, the Dauphin, he having married her gentle
daughter.
"Ay; Queen Yolande is far ben {7} with the King--would he had no worse
counsellors!" said he, smiling; "but I speak of a far more potent
sovereign, if all that she tells of herself be true. You have heard, or
belike you have not heard, of the famed Pucelle--so she calls herself, I
hope not without a warranty--the Lorrainer peasant lass, who is to drive
the English into the sea, so she gives us all fair warning?"
"Never a word have I heard, or never marked so senseless a bruit if I
heard it; she must be some moon-struck wench, and in her wits wandering."
"Moon-struck, or sun-struck, or saint-struck, she will strike down our
ancient enemy of England, and show you men how it is not wine and
wickedness that make good soldiers!" cried the girl whom he called
Elliot, her face rose-red with anger; and from her eyes two blue rays of
light shot straight to mine, so that I believe my face waxed wan, the
blood flying to my heart.
"Listen to her! look at her!" said her father, jestingly. "Elliot, if
your renowned maid can fright the English as you have affrayed a good
Scot, the battle is won and Orleans is delivered."
But she had turned her back on us pettishly, and was talking in a low
voice to her jackanapes. As for me, if my face had been pale before, it
now grew red enough for shame that I had angered her, who was so fair,
though how I had sinned I knew not. But often I have seen that women,
and these the best, will be all afire at a light word, wherein the
touchiest man-at-arms who ever fought on the turn of a straw could pick
no honourable quarrel.
"How have I been so unhappy as to offend mademoiselle?" I asked, in a
whisper, of her father, giving her a high title, in very confusion.
"Oh, she will hear no bourde nor jest on this Pucelle that all the
countryside is clashing of, and that is bewitching my maid, methinks,
even from afar. My maid Elliot (so I call her from my mother's kin, but
her true name is Marion, and the French dub her Heliote) hath set all her
heart and her hope on one that is a young lass like herself, and she is
full of old soothsayings about a virgin that is to come out of an oak-
wood and deliver France--no less! For me, I misdoubt that Merlin, the
Welsh prophet on whom they set store, and the rest of the soothsayers,
are all in one tale with old Thomas Rhymer, of Ercildoune, whose
prophecies our own folk crack about by the ingle on winter nights at
home. But be it as it may, this wench of Lorraine has, these
three-quarters of a year, been about the Sieur Robert de Baudricourt, now
commanding for the King at Vaucouleurs, away in the east, praying him to
send her to the Court. She has visions, and hears voices--so she says;
and she gives Baudricourt no peace till he carries her to the King. The
story goes that, on the ill day of the Battle of the Herrings, she, being
at Vaucouleurs--a hundred leagues away and more,--saw that fight plainly,
and our countrymen fallen, manlike, around the Constable, and the French
flying like hares before a little pack of English talbots. When the evil
news came, and was approved true, Baudricourt could hold her in no
longer, and now she is on the way with half a dozen esquires and archers
of his command. The second-sight she may have--it is common enough, if
you believe the red-shanked Highlanders; but if maiden she set forth from
Vaucouleurs, great miracle it is if maiden she comes to Chinon." He
whispered this in a manner that we call "pauky," being a free man with
his tongue.
"This is a strange tale enough," I said; "the saints grant that the Maid
speaks truly!"
"But yesterday came a letter of her sending to the King," he went on,
"but never of her writing, for they say that she knows not 'A' from 'B,'
if she meets them in her voyaging. Now, nothing would serve my wilful
daughter Elliot (she being possessed, as I said, with love for this
female mystery), but that we must ride forth and be the first to meet the
Maid on her way, and offer her shelter at my poor house, if she does but
seem honest, though methinks a hostelry is good enough for one that has
ridden so far, with men for all her company. And I, being but a subject
of my daughter's, as I said, and this a Saint's Day, when a man may rest
from his paints and brushes, I even let saddle the steeds, and came forth
to see what ferlies Heaven would send us."
"Oh, a lucky day for me, fair sir," I answered him, marvelling to hear
him speak of paint and brushes, and even as I spoke a thought came into
my mind. "If you will listen to me, sir," I said, "and if the gentle
maid, your daughter, will pardon me for staying you so long from the
road, I will tell you that, to my thinking, you have come over late, for
that yesterday the Maiden you speak of rode, after nightfall, into
Chinon."
Now the girl turned round on me, and, in faith, I asked no more than to
see her face, kind or angry. "You tell us, sir, that you never heard
speak of the Maid till this hour, and now you say that you know of her
comings and goings. Unriddle your riddle, sir, if it pleases you, and
say how you saw and knew one that you never heard speech of."
She was still very wroth, and I knew not whether I might not anger her
yet more, so I louted lowly, cap in hand, and said--
"It is but a guess that comes into my mind, and I pray you be not angry
with me, who am ready and willing to believe in this Maid, or in any that
will help France, for, if I be not wrong, last night her coming saved my
life, and that of her own company."
"How may that be, if thieves robbed and bound you?"
"I told you not all my tale," I said, "for, indeed, few would have
believed the thing that had not seen it. But, upon my faith as a
gentleman, and by the arm-bone of the holy Apostle Andrew, which these
sinful eyes have seen, in the church of the Apostle in his own town,
somewhat holy passed this way last night; and if this Maid be indeed sent
from heaven, that holy thing was she, and none other."
"Nom Dieu! saints are not common wayfarers on our roads at night. There
is no 'wale' of saints in this country," said the father of Elliot; "and
as this Pucelle of Lorraine must needs pass by us here, if she is still
on the way, even tell us all your tale."
With that I told them how the "brigands" (for so they now began to call
such reivers as Brother Thomas) were, to my shame, and maugre my head,
for a time of my own company. And I told them of the bushment that they
laid to trap travellers, and how I had striven to give a warning, and how
they bound me and gagged me, and of the strange girl's voice that spoke
through the night of "mes Freres de Paradis," and of that golden "boyn"
faring in the dark, that I thought I saw, and of the words spoken by the
blind man and the soldier, concerning some vision which affrayed them, I
know not what.
At this tale the girl Elliot, crossing herself very devoutly, cried
aloud--
"O father, did I not tell you so? This holy thing can have been no other
but that blessed Maiden, guarded by the dear saints in form visible, whom
this gentleman, for the sin of keeping evil company, was not given the
grace to see. Oh, come, let us mount and ride to Chinon, for already she
is within the walls; had we not ridden forth so early, we must have heard
tell of it."
It seemed something hard to me that I was to have no grace to behold what
others, and they assuredly much more sinful men than myself, had been
permitted to look upon, if this damsel was right in that she said. And
how could any man, were he himself a saint, see what was passing by, when
his head was turned the other way? Howbeit, she called me a gentleman,
as indeed I had professed myself to be, and this I saw, that her passion
of anger against me was spent, as then, and gone by, like a shower of
April.
"Gentleman you call yourself, sir," said her father; "may I ask of what
house?"
"We are cadets of the house of Rothes," I answered. "My father, Leslie
of Pitcullo, is the fourth son of the third son of the last laird of
Rothes but one; and, for me, I was of late a clerk studying in St.
Andrews."
"I will not ask why you left your lore," he said; "I have been young
myself, and, faith, the story of one lad varies not much from the story
of another. If we have any spirit, it drives us out to fight the foreign
loons in their own country, if we have no feud at home. But you are a
clerk, I hear you say, and have skill enough to read and write?"
"Yea, and, if need were, can paint, in my degree, and do fair lettering
on holy books, for this art was my pleasure, and I learned it from a
worthy monk in the abbey."
"O day of miracles!" he cried. "Listen, Elliot, and mark how finely I
have fallen in luck's way! Lo you, sir, I also am a gentleman in my
degree, simple as you see me, being one of the Humes of Polwarth; but by
reason of my maimed leg, that came to me with scars many, from certain
shrewd blows got at Verneuil fight, I am disabled from war. A murrain on
the English bill that dealt the stroke! To make up my ransom (for I was
taken prisoner there, where so few got quarter) cost me every crown I
could gather, so I even fell back on the skill I learned, like you, when
I was a lad, from a priest in the Abbey of Melrose. Ashamed of my craft
I am none, for it is better to paint banners and missals than to beg; and
now, for these five years, I am advanced to be Court painter to the King
himself, thanks to John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, who is of my far-
away kin. A sore fall it is, for a Hume of Polwarth; and strangely
enough do the French scribes write my name--'Hauves Poulvoir,' and
otherwise, so please you; but that is ever their wont with the best names
in all broad Scotland. Lo you, even now there is much ado with banner-
painting for the companies that march to help Orleans, ever and again."
"When the Maiden marches, father, you shall have banner-painting," said
the girl.
"Ay, lass, when the Maid marches, and when the lift falls and smoors the
laverocks we shall catch them in plenty. {8} But, Maid or no Maid, saving
your presence, sir, I need what we craftsmen (I pray you again to pardon
me) call an apprentice, and I offer you, if you are skilled as you say,
this honourable post, till you find a better."
My face grew red again with anger at the word "apprentice," and I know
not how I should have answered an offer so unworthy of my blood, when the
girl broke in--
"Till this gentleman marches with the flower of France against our old
enemy of England, you should say, father, and helps to show them another
Bannockburn on Loire-side."
"Ay, well, till then, if it likes you," he said, smiling. "Till then
there is bed, and meat, and the penny fee for him, till that great day."
"That is coming soon!" she cried, her eyes raised to heaven, and so fair
she looked, that, being a young man and of my complexion amorous, I could
not bear to be out of her company when I might be in it, so stooped my
pride to agree with him.
"Sir," I said, "I thank you heartily for your offer. You come of as good
a house as mine, and yours is the brag of the Border, as mine is of the
kingdom of Fife. If you can put your pride in your pouch, faith, so can
I; the rather that there is nothing else therein, and so room enough and
to spare. But, as touching what this gentle demoiselle has said, I may
march also, may I not, when the Maid rides to Orleans?"
"Ay, verify, with my goodwill, then you may," he cried, laughing, while
the lass frowned.
Then we clapped hands on it, for a bargain, and he did not insult me by
the offer of any arles, or luck penny.
The girl was helped to horse, setting her foot on my hand, that dirled as
her little shoe sole touched it; and the jackanapes rode on her saddle-
bow very proudly. For me, I ran as well as I might, but stiffly enough,
being cold to the marrow, holding by the father's stirrup-leather and
watching the lass's yellow hair that danced on her shoulders as she rode
foremost. In this company, then, so much better than that I had left, we
entered Chinon town, and came to their booth, and their house on the
water-side. Then, of their kindness, I must to bed, which comfort I
sorely needed, and there I slept, in fragrant linen sheets, till compline
rang.