第69章 HOW NORMAN LESLIE RODE AGAIN TO THE WARS(2)

"It is ill work parting,Heaven help us,"said my master."Faith,Iremember,as if it were to-day,how I set forth for Verneuil;a long time I was gone,and came back a maimed man.But it is fortune of war!The saints have you in their keeping,my son,and chiefly St.

Andrew.Come back soon,and whole,and rich,for,meseems,if Ilose one of you,I am to lose both."Therewith he embraced me,and I set forth to the hostel where I was to lie that night.

Now,see how far lighter is life to men than to women,for,though Ileft the house with the heaviest heart of any man in Tours,often looking back at the candleshine in my lady's casement,yet,when Ireached the "Hanging Sword,"I found Thomas Scott sitting at his wine,and my heart and courage revived within me.He lacked nothing but one to listen,and soon was telling tales of the war,and of the road,and of how this one had taken a rich prisoner,and that one had got an arrow in his thigh,and of what chances there were to win Paris by an onslaught.

"For in no other can we take it,"said he,"save,indeed,by miracle.For they are richly provisioned,and our hope is that,if we can make a breach,there may be a stir of the common folk,who are well weary of the English and the Burgundians."Now,with his talk of adventures,and with high hopes,I was so heartened up,that,to my shame,my grief fell from me,and I went to my bed to dream of trenches and escalades,glory and gain.But Elliot,I fear me,passed a weary night,and a sorry,whereas I had scarce laid my head on my pillow,as it seemed,when I heard Thomas shouting to the grooms,and clatter of our horses'hoofs in the courtyard.So I leaped up,though it was scarce daylight,and we rode northwards before the full coming of the dawn.

Here I must needs write of a shameful thing,which I knew not then,or I would have ridden with a heavier heart,but I was told concerning the matter many years after,by Messire Enguerrand de Monstrelet,a very learned knight,and deep in the counsels of the Duke of Burgundy.

"You were all sold,"he said to me,at Dijon,in the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and forty-seven--"you were all sold when you marched against Paris town.For the Maid,with D'Alencon,rode from Compiegne towards Paris,on the twenty-third of August,if Iremember well";and here he turned about certain written parchments that lay by him."Yea,on the twenty-third she left Compiegne,but on the twenty-eighth of that month the Archbishop of Reims entered the town,and there he met the ambassadors of the Good Duke of Burgundy.There he and they made a compact between them,binding your King and the Duke,that their truce should last till Noel,but that the duke might use his men in the defence of Paris against all that might make onfall.Now,the Archbishop and the King knew well that the Maid was,in that hour,marching on Paris.To what purpose make a truce,and leave out of the peace the very point where war should be?Manifestly the French King never meant to put forth the strength of his army in helping the Maid.There was to be truce between France and Burgundy,but none between England and the Maid."So Messire Enguerrand told me,a learned knight and a grave,and thus was the counsel of the saints defeated by the very King whom they sought to aid.But of this shameful treaty we men-at-arms knew nothing,and so hazarded our lives against loaded dice.