Strange, eventful, and bloody, were the incidents that followed.
King Edward, burning for glory, had landed in Normandy a little time
before, had knighted on these yellow beaches that gallant boy his
son, and with the young Prince and some fourteen thousand English
troops, ten thousand wild Welshmen, and six thousand Irish, pillaging
and destroying as he went, he had marched straight into the heart of
unready France. With that handful of men he had burned all the ships in
Hogue, Barfleur, and Cherbourg; he had stormed Montebourg, Carentan,
St. Lo, and Valognes, sending a thousand sails laden with booty back
to England, and now, day by day, he was pressing southward through
his fair rebellious territories, deriding the French King in his own
country, and taking tithe and taxes in rough fashion with fire and
sword.
Nor had we who came late far to seek for the Sovereign. His whereabouts
was well enough to be told by the rolling smoke that drifted heavily
to leeward of his marching columns and the broad trail of desolation
through the smiling country that marked his stern progress. To travel
that sad road was to see naked War stripped of all her excusing
pageantry, to see gray desolation and lean sorrow following in the gay
train of victory.
Gods! it was a sad path. Here, as we rode along, would lie the still
smoldering ashes of a burned village, black and gray in the smiling
August sunshine. In such a hamlet, perhaps, across a threshold, his
mouth agape and staring eyes fixed on the unmoved heavens, would lie
a peasant herdsman, his right hand still grasping the humble weapon
wherewith he had sought to protect his home, and the black wound in his
breast showing whence his spirit had fled indignant to the dim Place of
Explanations.
Neither women nor babes were exempt from that fierce ruin. Once we
passed a white and silent mother lying dead in mid-path, and the babe,
still clasped in her stiff arms, was ruddy and hungry, and beat with
tiny hands to wake her and crowed angry at its failure, and whimpered
so pitiful and small, and was so unwotting of the merry game of war
and all it meant, that the laughter and talk died away from the lips
of those with me, as, one by one, we paced slowly past that melancholy
thing.
At another time, I remember, we came to where a little maid of some
three tender years was sitting weaving flowers on the black pile of a
ruined cottage, that, though her small mind did not grasp it, hid the
charred bodies of all her people. She twined those white-and-yellow
daisies with fair smooth hands, and was so sunny in the face and
trustful-eyed I could not leave her to marauding Irish spears, or the
cruel wolfdogs who would come for her at sunset. I turned my impatient
charger into the black ruin, and, _maugre_ that little maid’s consent,
plucked her from the ashes, and rode with her upon my saddle-bow until
we met an honest-seeming peasant woman. To her I gave the waif, with a
silver crown for patrimony.
Out in the open the broad stream of war had spread itself. The yellow
harvests were trodden under foot, and hedge and fence were broken. The
plow stood halfway through the furrow, and the reaper was dead with
the sickle in his hand. Here, as we rode, went up to heaven the smoke
of coppice and homestead; and there, from the rocks hanging over our
path, luckless maids and widowed matrons would hail and spit upon us in
their wild grief, cursing us in going, in coming, in peace and in war,
while they loaded the frightened echoes with their shrieks and wailings.
Now and then, on grass and roadside, were dark patches of new-dried
blood, and by them, maybe, lay country cloaks and caps and weapons.
There we knew men had fallen singly, and had long lain wounded or dead,
until their friends had taken them to grave or shelter. Out in the
open again, where skirmishes had happened and bill and bow or spear
had met their like, the dead lay thicker. Gods! how drear those fair
French fields did lie in the autumn moonlight, with their scattered
dead in twos and threes and knots and clusters! There were some who
sprawled upon the ground--still clutching in their dread white fingers
the grass and earth torn up in the moment of their agony. And here was
he who scowled with dead white eyes on the pale starlight, one hand on
his broken hilt and the other fast gripped upon the spear that pinned
him to the earth. Near him was a fair boy, dead, with the shriek still
seeming upon his livid lips, and the horrid rent in his bosom that had
let out his soul looming black in the gloom. Yonder a tall trooper
still stared out grimly after the English, and smiled in death with a
clothyard shaft buried to the feather in his heart. Some there were
of these horrid dead who still lay in grapple as they had fallen--the
stalwart Saxon and the bronzed Gaul with iron fingers on each other’s
throats, smiling their black hatred into each other’s bloodless white
faces. Others, again, lay about whose arms were fixed in air, seeming
still to implore with bloody fingers compassion from the placid sky.
One man I saw had died stroking the thin, pain-streaked muzzle of his
wounded charger--his friend, mayhap, for years in camp and march.
Indeed, among many sorrowful things of that midnight field, the dead
and dying horses were not least. It moved me to compassion to hear
their pain-fraught whinnies on every hand, and to see them lying so
stiff and stark in the bloody hollows their hoofs had scooped through
hours of untempered anguish. What could I do for all those many?
But before one I stopped, and regarded him with stern compassion
many a minute. He was a splendid black horse, of magnificent size
and strength; and not even the coat of blood and mud with which his
sweating sides were covered could hide, here and there, the care that
had but lately groomed and tended him. He lay dying on a great sheet
of his own red blood, and as I looked I saw his tasseled mane had been
plaited not long before by some soft, skilful fingers, and at every
point was a bow of ribbon, such as might well have been taken from a
lady’s hair to honor the war-horse of her favorite knight. That great
beast was moaning there, in the stillness, thinking himself forgotten,
but when I came and stood over him he made a shift to lift his shapely
head, and looked at me entreatingly, with black hanging tongue and
thirst-fiery eyes, the while his doomed sides heaved and his hot, dry
breath came hissing forth upon the quiet air. Well I knew what he asked
for, and, turning aside, I found a trooper’s empty helmet, and, filling
it from the willowed brook that ran at the bottom of the slope, came
back and knelt by that good horse, and took his head upon my knee and
let him drink. Jove! how glad he was! Forgot for the moment was the
battle and his wounds, forgotten was neglect and the long hours of pain
and sorrow! The limpid water went gurgling down his thirsty throat, and
every happy gasp he gave spoke of that transient pleasure. And then, as
the last bright drops flashed in the moonlight about his velvet nozzle,
I laid one hand across his eyes and with the other drew my keen
dagger--and, with gentle remorselessness, plunged it to the hilt into
his broad neck, and with a single shiver the great war-horse died!
In truth, ’twas a melancholy place. On the midnight wind came the wail
of women seeking for their kindred, and the howl and fighting of hungry
dogs at ghastly meals, the smell of blood and war--of smoldering huts
and black ruins! A stern pastime, this, and it is as well the soldier
goes back upon his tracks so seldom!
We passed two days through such sights as I have noted, meeting many
a heavy convoy of spoil on its way to the coast, and not a few of our
own wounded wending back, luckless and sad, to England; and then on
the following evening we came upon the English rear, and were shortly
afterward part and parcel of as desperate and glorious an enterprise as
any that was ever entered in the red chronicles of war. From the coast
right up to the white walls of the fair capital itself, King Edward’s
stern orders were to pillage and kill and spoil the country, so that
there should be left no sustenance for an enemy behind. I have told
you how the cruel Irish mercenaries and the loose soldiers of a baser
sort accomplished the command. Our English archers and the light-armed
Welsh, who scoured the front, were mild in their methods compared to
them. They mayhap disturbed the quiet of some rustic villages, and in
thirsty frolics broached the kegs of red vintage in captured inns,
robbed hen-roosts, and kissed matrons and set maids screaming, but
they, unlike the others, had some touch of ruth within their rugged
bosoms. But, as for keeps and castles, we stormed and sacked them as we
went, and he alone was rogue and rascal who was last into the breach.
Our wild kerns and escaladers rioting in those lordly halls, many a
sight of cruel pillage did I see, and many a time watched the red
flame bursting from the embrasures and windows of these fair baronial
homes, and could not stay it. The Frenchmen in these cases, such of
them as were not away with the army we hoped to find, fought brave and
stubborn, and we piled their dead bodies up in their own courtyards.
Many a comely dame and damsel did I watch wringing white hands above
these ghastly heaps, and tearing loose locks of raven hair in piteous
appeal to unmoved skies, the while the yellow flames of their comely
halls went roaring from floor to floor, and in mockery of their sobs,
crashing towers and staircases mingled with the yells of the defenders
and the shouting of the pillage.
I fear long ages begin to sap my fiber! There was a time when I would
have sat my war-horse in the courtyard and could have watched the red
blood streaming down the gutters and listened to the shrieking as
cold amid the ruin as any Viking on a hostile conquered strand. But,
somehow, with this steel panoply of mine I had put on softer moods; I
am degenerate by the pretty theories of what they called their chivalry.
Far be it from me to say the English army was all one pack of
bloodhounds. War is ever a rough game, the country was foreign, and the
adventure we were on was bold and desperate, therefore these things
were done, and chiefly by the unruly regiments, and the scullion Irish
who followed in our rear, led by knights of ill-repute, or none. These
hung like carrion crows about our flanks and rear, and, after each
fight, stole armor from dead warriors bolder hands had slain, and
burned, and thieved from high and low, and butchered, like the beasts
of prey they were.
On one occasion, I remember, a skirmish befell shortly after we joined
the main army, and a French noble, in their charge, was unhorsed upon
our front by an English archer. Now, I happened to be the only mounted
man just there, and as this silver shining prize staggered to his feet,
and went scampering back toward his friends with all his rich sheathing
safe upon his back, his gold chains rattling on his iron bosom, and his
jeweled belt sparkling as he fled, a savage old English swashbuckler,
whose horse was hamstrung--Sir John Enkington they called him--fairly
wrung his hands.
“After him, Sir Knight,” screamed that unchivalrous ruffian to me,
“after him, in the name of hell! If thou rid’st hard he cannot get
away, and run thy spear in under his gorget so as not to spoil his
armor--’tis worth, at least, a hundred shillings!”
I never moved a muscle, did not even deign to look down at that cruel
churl. Whereon the grizzly old boar-hound clapped his hand upon his
dagger and turned on me--ah! by the light of heaven, he did.
“What! not going, you lazy braggart!” he shouted, beside himself with
rage--“not going, for such a prize? Beast--scullion--coward!”
“Coward!” Had I lived more than a thousand years in a soldier-saddle
to be cowarded by such a hoary whelp of butchery--such a damnable old
taint on the honorable trade of arms? I spun my charger round, and with
my gloved left hand seized that bully by his ragged beard, and perked
him here and there; lifted him fairly off his feet; stretched his
corded, knotted throttle till his breath came thick and hard; jerked
and pulled and twisted him--then cast the ruffian loose, and, drawing
my square iron foot from my burnished stirrup, spurned him here and
there, and kicked and pommeled him, and so at last drove him howling
down the hill, all forgetful for the moment of prize and pillage!
These lawless soldiers were the disgrace of our camp, they did so rant
and roar if all went well and when the battle was fairly won whereto
they had not entered, they were so coward and cruel among the prisoners
or helpless that we would gladly have been rid of them if we could.
But, after the manner of the time, the war was open to all: behind the
flower of English chivalry who rode round the Sovereign’s standard,
and the gallant bill and bowmen who wore his livery and took his pay,
observing the decencies of war, came hustling and crowding after us
a host of rude mercenaries, a horde of ragged adventurers, who knew
nothing of honor or chivalry, and had no canons but to plunder, ravish,
and destroy.
They made a trade of every villainy just outside the camp, where, with
scoundrel hawkers who followed behind us like lean vultures, they
dealt in dead men’s goods, bought maids and matrons, and sold armor or
plunder under our marshal’s very eyes.
One day, I remember, I and my shadow Flamaucœur were riding home after
scouting some miles along the French lines without adventure, when,
entering our camp by the pickets farthest removed from the Royal
quarter, we saw a crowd of Irish kerns behind the wood where the King
had stocked his baggage, all laughing round some common object. Now,
these Irish were the most turbulent and dissolute fighters in the
army. Such shock-headed, fiery ruffians never before called themselves
Christian soldiers. They and the Welsh were forever at feud; but,
whereas the Welshmen were brave and submissive to their chiefs, keen
in war, tender of honor, fond of wine-cups and minstrels--gallant,
free soldiers, indeed, just as I had known their kin a thousand years
before; these savage kerns, on the other hand, were remorseless
villains, rude and wild in camp, and cutthroat rascals, without
compunction, when a fight was over. In ordinary circumstances we should
have ridden by these noisy rogues, for they cared not a jot for any
one less than the Camp Marshal with a string of billmen behind him, and
feuds between knights of King Edward’s table and these shock-haired
kerns were unseemly. But on this occasion, over the hustling ring of
rough soldiers, as we sat high-perched upon our Flemish chargers, we
saw a woman’s form, and craned our necks and turned a little from our
course to watch what new devilry they were up to.
There, in the midst of that lawless gang of ruffian soldiers, their
bronzed and grinning faces hedging a space in with a leering,
compassionless wall, was a fair French girl, all wild and torn with
misadventure, her smooth cheeks unwashed and scarred with tears, her
black hair wild and tangled on her back, her skirt and bodice rent and
muddy, fear and shame and anger flying alternate over the white field
of her comely face, while her wistful eyes kept wandering here and
there amid that grinning crowd for a look of compunction or a chance
of rescue. The poor maid was standing upon an overturned box such as
was used to carry cross-bow bolts in, her hands tied hard together in
front, her captor by her side, and as we came near unnoticed he put her
up for sale.
“By Congal of the Bloody Fingers,” said that cruel kern in answer to
the laughing questions of his comrades, interlarding his speech with
many fiery and horrid oaths, the which I spare you--“I found this
accursed little witch this morning hiding among the rubbish of yonder
cottage our boys pulled to pieces in the valley; and, as I could not
light on better ware, I dragged her here. But may I roast forever if
I will have anything more to do with her. She is a tigress, a little
she-devil. I have thrashed and beat and kicked her, but I cannot get
the spirit out. Let some other fellow try, and may Heaven wither him if
he turns her loose near me again! Now then, what will the best of you
give? She is a little travel-stained, perhaps--that comes of our march
hither, and our subsequent disagreements--but all right otherwise, and,
an some one could cure her of her spitfire nature and make her amenable
to reason, she would be an ornament to any tent. Now you, Borghil,
for instance--it was you, I think, who split the mother’s skull this
morning--give me a bid for the daughter: you are not often bashful in
such a case as this.”
“A penny then!” sang out Borghil of the Red Beard; “and, with maids
as cheap as they be hereabouts, she’s dear at that,” and, while the
laughter and jest went round, those rude islanders bid point by point
for the unhappy girl who writhed and crouched before them. What could
I do? Well I knew the vows my golden spurs put upon me, and the policy
my borrowed knighthood warranted--and yet, she was not of gentle
birth--’twas but the fortune of war. If men risked lives in that stern
game, why should not maids risk something too? King Edward hated
turmoil in the camp, and here on desperate venture, far in a hostile
country, my soldier instinct rose against kindling such a blaze as
would have burst out among these lawless, hot-tempered kerns, had I
but drawn my sword a foot from its scabbard. And, thinking thus, I sat
there with bent head scowling behind my visor-bars, and turning my eyes
now to my ready hilt that shone so convenient at my thigh, and anon to
the tall Normandy maid, so fair, so pitiful, and in such sorry straits.
While I sat thus uncertain, the girl’s price had gone up to fivepence,
and, there being no one to give more, she was about to be handed over
to an evil-looking fellow with a scar destroying one eye, and dividing
his nose with a hideous yellow seam that went across his face from
temple to chin. This gross mercenary had almost told the five coins
into the blood-smudged hand of the other Irishman, and the bargain was
near complete, when, to my surprise, Flamaucœur, who had been watching
behind me, pushed his charger boldly to the front, and cried out in
that smooth voice of his: “Wait a spell, my friends! I think the maid
is worth another coin or two!” and he plunged his hand into the wallet
that hung beside his dagger.
This interruption surprised every one, and for a moment there was a
hush in the circle. Then he of the one eye, with a very wicked scowl,
produced and bid another penny, the which Flamaucœur immediately capped
by yet another. Each put down two more, and then the Celt came to the
bottom of his store, and, with a monstrous oath, swept back his money,
and, commending the maid and Flamaucœur to the bottom-most pit of hell,
backed off amid his laughing friends.
Not a whit disconcerted, my peaceful gallant rode up to the grim
purveyor of that melancholy chattel, and having paid the silver, with a
calm indifference which it shocked me much to see, unwound a few feet
of the halter-rope depending from his Fleming’s crupper. The loose end
of this the man wound round and tied upon the twisted withies wherewith
the maid’s white wrists were fastened.
Such an escape from the difficulty had never occurred to my slower
mind, and now, when my lad turned toward the quarter where his tent
lay, and, apparently mighty content with himself, stepped his charger
out with the unhappy girl trailing along at his side, his lightness
greatly pained me. Nor was I pleasured by the laughter and gibes of
English squires and knights who met us.
“Hullo! you valorous two,” called out a mounted captain, “whose
hen-roosts have you been robbing?” And then another said, “Faith!
they’ve been recruiting,” and again, “’Tis a new page they’ve got to
buckle them up and smooth their soldier pillows.” All this was hard
to bear, and I saw that even Flamaucœur hung his head a little and
presently rode along by byways less frequented. At one time he turned
to me most innocent-like and said:
“Such a friend as this is just what I have been needing ever since I
left the English shore.”
“Indeed!” I answered, sardonically, “I do confess I am more surprised
than perhaps I should be. It is as charming a handmaid as any knight
could wish. Shall you send one of those long raven tresses home to thy
absent lady with thy next budget of sighs and true-love tokens?”
But Flamaucœur shook his head, and said I misunderstood him bitterly.
He was going on to say he meant to free the maid “to-morrow or the next
day,” when we turned a corner in our martial village street, and pulled
up at our own tent doors.
Now, that Breton girl had submitted so far to be dragged along, in
a manner of lethargy born of her sick heart and misery, but when we
stayed our chargers the very pause aroused her. She drew her poor
frightened wits together and glared first at us, and then at our
knightly pennons fluttering over the white lintels of our lodgment;
then, jumping to some dreadful, sad conclusion, she fired up as fierce
and sudden as a trapped tigress when the last outlet is closed upon
her. She stamped and raged, and twisted her fair white arms until the
rough withies on her wrists cut deep into the tender flesh and the
red blood went twining down to her torn and open bodice; she screamed
and writhed, and struggled against the glossy side of that gentle and
mighty war-horse, who looked back wondering on her and sniffed her
flagrant sorrow with wide velvet nostrils--no more moved than a gray
crag by the beating of the summer sea--and then she turned on us.
Gads! she swore at us in such mellow Bisque as might have made a
hardened trooper envious! Cursed us and our chivalry, called us
forsworn knights, stains upon manhood, dogs and vampires!--then dropped
upon her knee, and there suppliant, locked her swollen and bloody
hands, and, with the hot white tears sparkling in her red and weary
eyes, knelt to us, and in the wild, tearful grief of her people, “for
the honor of our mothers, and for the sake of the bright distant maid
we loved,” begged mercy and freedom.
And all through that storm of wild, sweet grief that callous libertine,
Flamaucœur, made no show of freeing her. He sat his prick-eared,
wondering charger, stared at the maid, and fingered his dagger-chain
as though perplexed and doubtful. The hot torrent of that poor
girl’s misery seemed to daze and tie his tongue: he made no sign of
commiseration and no movement, until at last I could stand it no
longer. Wheeling round my war-horse, so that I could shake my mailed
fist in the face of that sapling villain:
“By the light of day!” I burst out, half in wrath and half in amused
bewilderment, “this goes too far. Why, Flamaucœur, can you not see
this is a maid in a hundred, and one who well deserves to keep that
which she asks for? Jove! man, if you must have a handmaiden, why, the
country swarms with forlorn ones who will gladly compound with fate
by accepting the protection of thy tent. But this one!--come!--let my
friendship go in pawn against her, and free the maid. If you must have
something more solid--still, set her free, unharmed, and I will give
thee a helmetful of pennies--that is to say, on the first time that I
own so many.”
But Flamaucœur laughed more scornfully than he often did, and,
muttering that we were “all fools together,” turned from me to the wild
thing at his side.
“Look here,” he said, “you mad girl. Come into my tent and I will
explain everything. You shall be all unharmed, I vow it, and free to
leave me if you will not stop--this is all mad folly, though out here I
cannot tell you why.”
“I will not trust you,” she screamed, in arms again, straining at
those horrid red wrists of hers and glaring on us--“Mother of Christ!”
she shouted, turning to a knot of squires and captains who had
gathered around us--“for the dear Light of Heaven some of you free my
wretched spirit with your maces, here--here--some friendly spear for
this friendless bosom--one dagger-thrust to rid me from these cursed
tyrants, and I will take the memory of my slayer straight to the seat
of mercy and mix it forever with my grateful prayers. Oh, in Christian
charity unsheath a weapon!”
[Illustration: “I will not trust you!” she screamed]
I saw that slim soldier Flamaucœur groan within his helmet at this,
then down he bent. “Mad, mad girl!” I heard him say, and then followed
a whisper which was lost between his hollow helmet and his prisoner’s
ear. Whatever it was, the effect was instantaneous and wonderful.
“Impossible!” burst out the French girl, starting away as far as the
cords would let her, and eyeing her captor with surprise and amazement.
“’Tis truth, I swear it.”
“Oh, impossible!--thou a----”
“Hush, hush,” cried Flamaucœur, putting his hand upon the girl’s mouth,
and speaking again to her in his soft low voice, and as he did so her
eyes ran over him, the fear and wonder slowly melted away, and then,
presently, with a delighted smile at length shining behind her undried
tears, she clasped and kissed his hand with a vast show of delight
as ungoverned as her grief had been, and when he had freed her and
descended from his charger, to our amazement, led rather than followed
that knight most willing to his tent, and there let fall the flap
behind them.
“Now that,” said the King’s jester, who had come up while this matter
was passing--“that is what I call a truly persuasive tongue. I would
give half my silver bells to know what magic that gentleman has that
will get reason so quickly into an angry woman’s head.”
“If you knew that,” quoth a stern old knight through the steel bars of
his morion, “you might live a happy life, although you knew nothing
else.”
“Poor De Burgh!” whispered a soldier near me. “He speaks with
knowledge, for men say he owns a vixen, and is more honored and feared
here by the proud Frenchman than at his own fireside.”
“Perhaps,” suggested another to the laughing group, “he of the burning
heart whispered that he had a double Indulgence in his tent. Women will
go anywhere and do anything when it is the Church which leads them by
the nose.”
“Or, perhaps,” put in another, looking at the last speaker--“perhaps
he hinted that if the maid escaped from his hated clutches she would
fall into thine, St. Caen, and she chose the lesser evil. It were an
argument that would well warrant so sudden a conversion!”
“Well! Well!” quoth the fool, “we will not quarrel over the remembrance
of the meat which another dog has carried off. Good-by, fair Sirs, and
may God give you all as efficient tongues as Sir Flamaucœur’s when next
you are bowered with your distant ladies!” and laughing and jesting
among themselves the soldiers strolled away, leaving me to seek my
solitary tent in no good frame of mind.