第92章 HOW NORMAN LESLIE FARED IN COMPIEGNE,WITH THE ENDO

He will come himself presently,always presently,with all his host.""He will never come,"I said."He is a ...""He is my King,"said Barthelemy."Curse your own King of Scots,if you will.Scots,by the blood of Iscariot,traitors are they;well,I crave your pardon,I spake in haste and anger.Know you Nichole Cammet?""I have heard of the man,"I said."A town's messenger,is he not?""The same.But a week agone,Cammet was sent on a swift horse to Chateau Thierry.The good town craved of Pothon de Xaintrailles,who commands there,to send them what saltpetre he could spare for making gunpowder.The saltpetre came in this day by the Pierrefonds Gate,and Cammet with it,but on another horse,a jade.""Well,and what have the Scots to do with that?""No more than this.A parcel of them,routiers and brigands,have crept into an old castle on the road,and hold it for their own hands.Thence they sallied forth after Cammet,and so chased him that his horse fell down dead under him in the gateway of Chateau Thierry.""They would be men of the Land Debatable,"I cried:"Elliots and Armstrongs,they never do a better deed,being corrupted by dwelling nigh our enemies of England.Fain would I pay for that horse;see here,"and I took forth my purse from under my pillow,"take that to the attournes,and say a Scot atones for what Scots have done.""Norman,I take back my word;I crave your pardon,and I am shamed to have spoken so to a sick man of his own countryfolk.But for your purse,I am ill at carrying purses;I have no skill in that art,and the dice draw me when I hear the rattle of them.But look at the cordelier's tally:four men to-day,three yesterday;faith,he thins them!"Indeed,to shorten a long story,by the end of Barthelemy's count there were two hundred and thirty-nine notches on the rod.That he kept a true score (till he stinted and reckoned no more),I know,having proof from the other side.For twelve years thereafter,Ifalling into discourse with Messire Georges Chastellain,an esquire of the Duke of Burgundy,and a maker both of verse and prose,he told me the same tale to a man,three hundred men.And I make no doubt but that he has written it in his book of the praise of his prince,and of these wars,to witness if I lie.

Consider,then,what hope I had of being listened to by Flavy,or by the attournes (or,as we say,bailies),of the good town,if,being recovered from my broken limbs,I brought my witness to their ears.

None the less,the enemy battered at us every day with their engines,destroying,as Barthelemy had said,the houses on the bridge,and the mills,so that they could no longer grind the corn.

And now came the Earls of Huntingdon and Arundel,with two thousand Englishmen,while to us appeared no succour.So at length,being smitten by balls from above,and ruined by mines dug under earth from below,our company that held the boulevard at the bridge end were surprised in the night,and some were taken,some drowned in the river Oise.Wherefore was great sorrow and fear,the more for that the Duke of Burgundy let build a bridge of wood from Venette,to come and go across Oise,whereby we were now assailed on both hands,for hitherto we had been free to come and go on the landward side,and through all the forest of Pierrefonds.We had but one gate unbeleaguered,the Chapel Gate,leading to Choisy and the north-east.Now were we straitened for provender,notably for fresh meat,and men were driven,as in a city beleaguered,to eat the flesh of dead horses,and even of rats and dogs,whereof I have partaken,and it is ill food.

None the less we endured,despite the murmuring of the commons,so strong are men's hearts;moreover,all France lay staked on this one cast of the dice,no less than at Orleans in the year before.

Somewhat we were kept in heart by tidings otherwise bitter.For word came that the Maid,being in ward at Beaurevoir,a strong place of Jean de Luxembourg,had leaped in the night from the top of the tower,and had,next morning,been taken up all unhurt,as by,miracle,but astounded and bereft of her senses.For this there was much sorrow,but would to God that He had taken her to Himself in that hour!

Nevertheless,when she was come to herself again,she declared,by inspiration of the Saints,that Compiegne should be delivered before the season of Martinmas.Whence I,for one,drew great comfort,nor ever again despaired,and many were filled with courage when this tidings came to our ears,hoping for some miracle,as at Orleans.

Now,too,God began to take pity upon us;for,on August the fifteenth,the eighty-fifth day of the siege,came news to the Duke of Burgundy that Philip,Duke of Brabant,was dead,and he must go to make sure of that great heritage.The Duke having departed,the English Earls had far less heart for the leaguer;I know not well wherefore,but now,at least,was seen the truth of that proverb concerning the "eye of the master."The bastille,too,which our enemies had made to prevent us from going out by our Pierrefonds Gate on the landward side,was negligently built,and of no great strength.All this gave us some heart,so much that my hosts,the good Jacobins,and the holy sisters of the Convent of St.John,stripped the lead from their roofs,and bestowed it on the town,for munition of war.And when I was in case to walk upon the walls,and above the river,I might see men and boys diving in the water and searching for English cannon-balls,which we shot back at the English.

It chanced,one day,that I was sitting and sunning myself in the warm September weather,on a settle in a secure place hard by the Chapel Gate.With me was Barthelemy Barrette,for it was the day of Our Lady's Feast,that very day whereon we had failed before Paris last year,and there was truce for the sacred season.We fell to devising of what had befallen that day year,and without thought Itold Barthelemy of my escape from prison,and so,little by little,I opened my heart to him concerning Brother Thomas and all his treasons.