第43章 HOW NORMAN LESLIE WAS OUT OF ALL COMFORT(8)

So the Maid returned,leading the army,and then,being very weary,she went into her chamber,and lay down on a couch to sleep,her esquire,D'Aulon,also resting in the room,where were the lady and a daughter of the house,one Charlotte Boucher.There was I,devising idly with her page,Louis de Coutes,a boy half Scots by birth,and good-brother to Messire Florent d'Illiers,who had married his sister.But alas!he was more French than Scots,and later he left the Maid.But then we were playing ourselves at the door of the house,and all was still,the men-at-arms reposing,as we deemed,after their march.Then suddenly the Maid ran forth to us,her face white and her eyes shining,and cried to Louis de Coutes,in great anger -"Wretched boy,the blood of France is being shed,and you told me no word of it!""Demoiselle,"said he,trembling,"I wotted not of it.What mean you?"And I also stood in amaze,for we had heard no sound of arms.

"Go,fetch my horse,"she said,and was gone.

I went with him,and we saddled and bridled a fresh courser speedily;but when we reached the door,she stood there already armed,and sprang on the horse,crying for her banner,that De Coutes gave her out of the upper window.Then her spurs were in her horse's side,and the sparks flying from beneath his hoofs,as she galloped towards St.Loup,the English fort on the Burgundy road.

Thither we followed her,with what speed we might,yet over tardily;and when we came through crowds of people,many bearing the wounded on litters,there was she,under the wall of that fort,in a rain of arrows,holding up her banner,and crying on the French and Scots to the charge.They answered with a cry,and went on,De Coutes and Ipressing forward to be with them;but ere ever we could gain the fosse,the English had been overwhelmed,and,for the more part,slain.For,as we found,the French captains had commanded an attack on St.Loup,and had told the Maid no word of it,whether as desiring to win honour without her,or to spare her from the peril of the onslaught,I know not.But their men were giving ground,when by the monition of the saints,as I have shown,she came to them and turned the fray.

Of the English,as I said,most were slain,natheless certain men in priests'raiment came forth from the Church of St.Loup,and very humbly begged their lives of the Maid,who,turning to D'Aulon,her esquire,bade him,with De Coutes and me,and such men as we could gather,to have charge of them and be answerable for them.

So,while the French were plundering,we mustered these priests orderly together,they trembling and telling their beads,and we stood before them for their guard.False priests,I doubt,many of them were,Englishmen who had hastily done on such holy robes as they found in the church of St Loup.Now Louis de Coutes,being but a boy,and of a mad humour,cried -"'Cucullus non facit monachum!'Good sirs,let us see your reverend tonsures."With that he twitched the hood from the head of a tall cordelier,who,without more ado,felled him to the earth with his fist.

The hood was off but for a flash of time,yet I saw well the shining wolf's eyes and the long dark face of Brother Thomas.So,in the pictures of the romance of Renard Fox,have I seen Isengrim the wolf in the friar's hood.

"Felon and traitor!"I cried,and drawing my sword,was about to run him through the body,when my hand was stunned by a stroke,and the sword dropped from it.I turned,in great anger,and saw the Maid,her sword in her hand,wherewith she had smitten me flatlings,and not with the edge.