A Monk of Fife<br />Being the Chronicle Written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, Concerning Marvellous, Andrew Lang [speld decodable readers TXT] 📗

the shade of leaves.  But her father stood by me, asking many questions concerning the siege, and gaping at the half-mended arch of the bridge, where through we sailed, and at the blackened walls of Les Tourelles, and all the ruin that war had wrought.  But now masons and carpenters were very busy rebuilding all, and the air was full of the tinkling of trowels and hammers.  Presently we passed the place where I had drawn Brother Thomas from the water; but thereof I said no word, for indeed my dreams were haunted by his hooded face, like that of the snake which, as travellers tell, wears a hood in Prester John’s country, and is the most venomous of beasts serpentine.  So concerning Brother Thomas I held my peace, and the barque, swinging round a corner of the bank, soon brought us into a country with no sign of war on it, and here the poplar-trees had not been felled for planks to make bulwarks, but whispered by the riverside.

The wide stream carried many a boat, and shone with sails, white, and crimson, and brown; the boat-men sang, or hailed each other from afar.  There was much traffic, stores being carried from Blois to the army.  Some mile or twain above Beaugency we were forced to land, and, I being borne in a litter, we took a cross-path away from the stream, joining it again two miles below Beaugency, because the English held that town, though not for long.  The sun had set, yet left all his gold shining on the water when we entered Blois, and there rested at a hostel for the night.  Next day—one of the goodliest of my life, so soft and clear and warm it was, yet with a cool wind on the water—we voyaged to Tours; and now Elliot was glad enough, making all manner of mirth.

Her desire, she said, was to meet a friend that she had left at their house in Tours, one that she had known as long as she knew me, my friend he was too, yet I had never spoken of him, or asked how he did.  Now I, being wrapped up wholly in her, and in my joy to see her kind again, and so beautiful, had no memory of any such friend, wherefore she mocked me, and rebuked me for a hard heart and ungrateful.  “This friend of mine,” she said, “was the first that made us known each to other.  Yea, but for him, the birds might have pecked out your eyne, and the ants eaten your bones bare, yet”—with a sudden anger, and tears in her eyes at the words she spoke—“you have clean forgotten him!”

“Ah, you mean the jackanapes.  And how is the little champion?”

“Like the lads of Wamfray, aye for ill, and never for good,” said my master; but she frowned on him, and said—

“Now you ask, because I forced you on it; but, sir, I take it very ill that you have so short a memory for a friend.  Now, tell me, in all the time since you left us at Chinon, how often have you thought of him?”

“Nigh as often as I thought of you,” I answered.  “For when you came into my mind (and that was every minute), as in a picture, thither too came your playfellow, climbing and chattering, and holding out his little bowl for a comfit.”

“Nay, then you thought of me seldom, or you would have asked how he does.”

Here she turned her face from me, half in mock anger.  But, just as it is with children, so it was with Elliot, for indeed my dear was ever much of a child, wherefore her memory is now to me so tender.  And as children make pretence to be in this humour or that for sport, and will affect to be frighted till they really fear and weep, so Elliot scarce knew how deep her own humour went, and whether she was acting like a player in a Mystery, or was in good earnest.  And if she knew not rightly what her humour was, far less could I know, so that she was ever a puzzle to me, and kept me in a hundred pretty doubts and dreads every day.  Alas! how sorely, through all these years, have I longed to hear her rebuke me in mirth, and put me adread, and laugh at me again I for she was, as it were, wife and child to me, at once, and I a child with her, and as happy as a child.

Thus, nothing would now jump with her humour but to be speaking of her jackanapes, and how he would come louting and leaping to welcome her, and forsake her old kinswoman, who had followed with them to Tours.  And she had much to report concerning his new tricks: how he would leap over a rod for the Dauphin or the Maid, but not if adjured in the name of the English King, or the Duke of Burgundy.  Also, if you held him, he would make pretence to bite any that you called Englishman or false Frenchman.  Moreover, he had now been taught to fetch and carry, and would climb into Elliot’s window, from the garden, and bring her little basket of silks, or whatsoever she desired, or carry it thither, as he was commanded.

“And he wrung the cat’s neck,” quoth my master; but Elliot bade him hold his peace.

In such sport the hours passed, till we were safely come to Tours, and so to their house in a street running off the great place, where the cathedral stands.  It was a goodly dwelling, with fair carved-work on the beams, and in the doorway stood the old Scots kinswoman, smiling wide and toothless, to welcome us.  Elliot kissed her quickly, and she fondled Elliot, and held a hand out over her shoulder to greet me.

“But where is my jackanapes, that should have been here to salute his mistress?” Elliot cried.

“Out and alas!” said the old wife in our country tongue—“out and alas! for I have ill news.  The poor beast is missing these three days past, and we fear he is stolen away by some gangrel bodies, for the town is full of them.  There came two to our door, three days agone, and one was a blind man, and the other a one-armed soldier, maimed in the wars, and I gave them bite and sup, as a Christian should do.  Now, they had not been gone but a few minutes, and I was in the spence, putting away the dishes, when I heard a whistle in the street, and anon another.  I thought little of it, and so was about my business for an hour, when I missed the jackanapes.  And then there was a hue and cry, and all the house was searched, and the neighbours were called on, but since that day there has been no word of the jackanapes.  But, for the blind man and the armless soldier, the town guard saw them leaving by the North Gate, with a violer woman and her husband, an ill-looking loon, in their company.”  Elliot sat her down and wept sore.  “They have stolen my little friend,” she cried, “and now he that was so fat I called him Trémouille will go hungry and lean, and be whipped to make him do his tricks, and I shall never see him more.”

Then she ran out of the chamber, to weep alone, as I guessed, for she was pitiful and of very tender affection, and dumb things came near about her heart, as is the manner of many women.

But I made no doubt in my mind that the husband of the ape’s old mistress had stolen him, and I, too, sorrowed for the poor beast that my mistress loved, and that, in very deed, had been the saving of my own life.  Then I spoke to my master, and said that we must strive to buy her a new ape, or a little messan dog, to be her playfellow.

But he shook his head.  “Say nothing more of the beast,” he muttered, “unless she speaks of him first, and that, methinks, will be never.  For it is not her wont to speak of what lies very deep in her heart, and if you talk of the beast it will please her little.”

And, indeed, I heard no word more of the jackanapes from Elliot, save that, coming back from the minster next day, she whispered, “I have prayed for him,” and so fled to her own chamber.

As then I deemed it a strange thing, and scarcely to be approved by Holy Church, that my lady should pray for a dumb beast who had no soul to be saved.  But a faithful, loving prayer is not unavailing or unheard of Him who made the beasts, as well as He made us; for whose sin, or the sin of our father Adam, they now suffer, silently.  And the answer to this prayer was to be known in the end.

As the week went on, tidings came that made Elliot glad again, if before she had been sad enough.  For this was that great week of wonders which shall never be forgotten while France is France, and the lilies bloom.

On June the thirteenth the Maid took Jargeau, whence the famed Bastard of Orleans had been driven some weeks agone; and the Earl of Suffolk yielded him her prisoner, saying that she was “the most valiant woman in the world.”  Scarce had tidings of this great victory come, when messengers followed, declaring that the Maid had seized the Bridge of Meun and driven the English into the Castle.

Next she marched against Beaugency, and, at midnight of June the seventeenth, the English made terms, that they might go forth with their lives, but without baggage or arms, and with but one mark of silver apiece.  Next morning came Talbot, the best knight then on ground, and Fastolf, the wariest of captains, with a great army of English.  First they made for Jargeau, but they came too late, and then they rode to Meun, and would have assailed the French in the bridge-fort, but, even then, they heard how Beaugency had yielded to La Pucelle, and how the garrison was departed into Normandy, like pilgrims, without swords, and staff in hand.  Thus all the Loire and the water-way was in the power of France, wherefore the English marched off through the country called La Beauce, which then lay desert and overgrown with wild wood, by reason of the war.  And there, in a place named Coynce, near Patay, the Maid overtook the English, having with her La Hire and Xaintrailles, and she charged them so rudely, that ere the English could array them in order of battle, they were already flying for their lives.  There were Talbot and Warwick taken and held to ransom, but Fastolf fled as fast as his horse could carry him.

Thus in one week, between June the eleventh and June the eighteenth, the Maid had delivered three strong towns from the English, and had utterly routed them in fair field.  Then, at Orleans, on June the nineteenth, the army went to the churches, thanking God, and the Blessed Virgin, and all the saints, for such great signs and marvels wrought through the Maid only.

Sorrow it is to me to write of such things by report, and not to have seen them done.  But, as Talbot said to the Duc d’Alençon, when they took him at Patay, “it is fortune of war.”

But, as day by day messengers came, their horses red with spurring, to the cross in the market-place of Tours, and as we that gathered round heard of some fresh victory, you may consider whether we rejoiced, feasted, filled the churches with our thanksgivings, and deemed that, in a few weeks, there would be no living Englishman on French soil.  And of all that were glad my lady was the happiest, for she had believed in the Maid from the very beginning, when her father mocked.  And a hard life she now led him with her sallies, day by day, as more and ever more glad tidings were brought, and we could hear Elliot singing through the house.

Yea, I found her once dancing in the garden all alone, a beautiful sight to look upon, as the sun fell on her and the shadow, she footing it as if to music, but the music was made by her own heart.  Leaning against an apple-tree, I watched her, who waved her hand to me, and still danced on; this was after we had heard the news of Beaugency.  As she so swayed and moved, dancing daintily, came a blast of a trumpet and a gay peal from the minster bells.  Then forth rushed Elliot, and through the house, and down