Part 4 (1/2)
”Oh, a lucky day for me, fair sir,” I answered him, marvelling to hear him speak of paint and brushes, and even as I spoke a thought came into my mind. ”If you will listen to me, sir,” I said, ”and if the gentle maid, your daughter, will pardon me for staying you so long from the road, I will tell you that, to my thinking, you have come over late, for that yesterday the Maiden you speak of rode, after nightfall, into Chinon.”
Now the girl turned round on me, and, in faith, I asked no more than to see her face, kind or angry. ”You tell us, sir, that you never heard speak of the Maid till this hour, and now you say that you know of her comings and goings. Unriddle your riddle, sir, if it pleases you, and say how you saw and knew one that you never heard speech of.”
She was still very wroth, and I knew not whether I might not anger her yet more, so I louted lowly, cap in hand, and said-
”It is but a guess that comes into my mind, and I pray you be not angry with me, who am ready and willing to believe in this Maid, or in any that will help France, for, if I be not wrong, last night her coming saved my life, and that of her own company.”
”How may that be, if thieves robbed and bound you?”
”I told you not all my tale,” I said, ”for, indeed, few would have believed the thing that had not seen it. But, upon my faith as a gentleman, and by the arm-bone of the holy Apostle Andrew, which these sinful eyes have seen, in the church of the Apostle in his own town, somewhat holy pa.s.sed this way last night; and if this Maid be indeed sent from heaven, that holy thing was she, and none other.”
”Nom Dieu! saints are not common wayfarers on our roads at night. There is no 'wale' of saints in this country,” said the father of Elliot; ”and as this Pucelle of Lorraine must needs pa.s.s by us here, if she is still on the way, even tell us all your tale.”
With that I told them how the ”brigands” (for so they now began to call such reivers as Brother Thomas) were, to my shame, and maugre my head, for a time of my own company. And I told them of the bushment that they laid to trap travellers, and how I had striven to give a warning, and how they bound me and gagged me, and of the strange girl's voice that spoke through the night of ”mes Freres de Paradis,” and of that golden ”boyn” faring in the dark, that I thought I saw, and of the words spoken by the blind man and the soldier, concerning some vision which affrayed them, I know not what.
At this tale the girl Elliot, crossing herself very devoutly, cried aloud-
”O father, did I not tell you so? This holy thing can have been no other but that blessed Maiden, guarded by the dear saints in form visible, whom this gentleman, for the sin of keeping evil company, was not given the grace to see. Oh, come, let us mount and ride to Chinon, for already she is within the walls; had we not ridden forth so early, we must have heard tell of it.”
It seemed something hard to me that I was to have no grace to behold what others, and they a.s.suredly much more sinful men than myself, had been permitted to look upon, if this damsel was right in that she said. And how could any man, were he himself a saint, see what was pa.s.sing by, when his head was turned the other way? Howbeit, she called me a gentleman, as indeed I had professed myself to be, and this I saw, that her pa.s.sion of anger against me was spent, as then, and gone by, like a shower of April.
”Gentleman you call yourself, sir,” said her father; ”may I ask of what house?”
”We are cadets of the house of Rothes,” I answered. ”My father, Leslie of Pitcullo, is the fourth son of the third son of the last laird of Rothes but one; and, for me, I was of late a clerk studying in St. Andrews.”
”I will not ask why you left your lore,” he said; ”I have been young myself, and, faith, the story of one lad varies not much from the story of another. If we have any spirit, it drives us out to fight the foreign loons in their own country, if we have no feud at home. But you are a clerk, I hear you say, and have skill enough to read and write?”
”Yea, and, if need were, can paint, in my degree, and do fair lettering on holy books, for this art was my pleasure, and I learned it from a worthy monk in the abbey.”
”O day of miracles!” he cried. ”Listen, Elliot, and mark how finely I have fallen in luck's way! Lo you, sir, I also am a gentleman in my degree, simple as you see me, being one of the Humes of Polwarth; but by reason of my maimed leg, that came to me with scars many, from certain shrewd blows got at Verneuil fight, I am disabled from war. A murrain on the English bill that dealt the stroke! To make up my ransom (for I was taken prisoner there, where so few got quarter) cost me every crown I could gather, so I even fell back on the skill I learned, like you, when I was a lad, from a priest in the Abbey of Melrose. Ashamed of my craft I am none, for it is better to paint banners and missals than to beg; and now, for these five years, I am advanced to be Court painter to the King himself, thanks to John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, who is of my far-away kin. A sore fall it is, for a Hume of Polwarth; and strangely enough do the French scribes write my name-'Hauves Poulvoir,' and otherwise, so please you; but that is ever their wont with the best names in all broad Scotland. Lo you, even now there is much ado with banner-painting for the companies that march to help Orleans, ever and again.”
”When the Maiden marches, father, you shall have banner-painting,” said the girl.
”Ay, la.s.s, when the Maid marches, and when the lift falls and smoors the laverocks we shall catch them in plenty. {8} But, Maid or no Maid, saving your presence, sir, I need what we craftsmen (I pray you again to pardon me) call an apprentice, and I offer you, if you are skilled as you say, this honourable post, till you find a better.”
My face grew red again with anger at the word ”apprentice,” and I know not how I should have answered an offer so unworthy of my blood, when the girl broke in-
”Till this gentleman marches with the flower of France against our old enemy of England, you should say, father, and helps to show them another Bannockburn on Loire-side.”
”Ay, well, till then, if it likes you,” he said, smiling. ”Till then there is bed, and meat, and the penny fee for him, till that great day.”
”That is coming soon!” she cried, her eyes raised to heaven, and so fair she looked, that, being a young man and of my complexion amorous, I could not bear to be out of her company when I might be in it, so stooped my pride to agree with him.
”Sir,” I said, ”I thank you heartily for your offer. You come of as good a house as mine, and yours is the brag of the Border, as mine is of the kingdom of Fife. If you can put your pride in your pouch, faith, so can I; the rather that there is nothing else therein, and so room enough and to spare. But, as touching what this gentle demoiselle has said, I may march also, may I not, when the Maid rides to Orleans?”
”Ay, verify, with my goodwill, then you may,” he cried, laughing, while the la.s.s frowned.
Then we clapped hands on it, for a bargain, and he did not insult me by the offer of any arles, or luck penny.