A Monk of Fife

A >> Andrew Lang >> A Monk of Fife


"Tug-mutton, wine-sack!" he said, these being two of many ill names which
the French gave our countrymen; for, of all men, the French are least
grateful to us, who, under Heaven and the Maid, have set their King on
his throne again.

The English knew this, if the French did not; and their great King, Harry
the Fifth, when he fell ill of St. Fiacre's sickness, after plundering
that Scots saint's shrine of certain horse-shoes, silver-gilt, said well
that, "go where he would, he was bearded by Scots, dead or alive." But
the French are not a thankful people.

I had no answer very ready to my tongue, so stepped down silent to the
water-edge, and was about taking off my doublet and hose, meaning to
carry them on my head and swim across. But he barred the way with his
staff, and, for me, I gripped to my whinger, and watched my chance to run
in under his guard. For this cordelier was not to be respected, I
deemed, like others of the Order of St. Francis, and all men of Holy
Church.

"Answer a civil question," he said, "before it comes to worse: Armagnac
or Burgundy?"

"Armagnac," I answered, "or anything else that is not English. Clear the
causeway, mad friar!"

At that he threw down his staff.

"I go north also," he said, "to Orleans, if I may, for the foul 'manants'
and peasant dogs of this country have burned the castle of Alfonse
Rodigo, a good knight that held them in right good order this year past.
He was worthy, indeed, to ride with that excellent captain, Don Rodrigo
de Villandradas. King's captain or village labourer, all was fish that
came to his net, and but two days ago I was his honourable chaplain. But
he made the people mad, and a great carouse that we kept gave them their
opportunity. They have roasted the good knight Alfonse, and would have
done as much for me, his almoner, frock and all, if wine had any mastery
over me. But I gave them the slip. Heaven helps its own! Natheless, I
would that this river were between me and their vengeance, and, for once,
I dread the smell of roast meat that is still in my nostrils--pah!"

And here he spat on the ground.

"But one door closes," he went on, "and another opens, and to Orleans am
I now bound, in the service of my holy calling."

"There is, indeed, cause enough for the shriving of souls of sinners,
Father, in that country, as I hear, and a holy man like you will be right
welcome to many."

"They need little shriving that are opposite my culverin," said this
strange priest. "Though now I carry but an arbalest, the gun is my
mistress, and my patron is the gunner's saint, St. Barbara. And even
with this toy, methinks I have the lives of a score of goddams in my bolt-
pouch."

I knew that in these wild days many clerics were careless as to that
which the Church enjoins concerning the effusion of blood--nay, I have
named John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, as having himself broken a
spear on the body of the Duke of Clarence. The Abbe of Cerquenceaux,
also, was a valiant man in religion, and a good captain, and, all over
France, clerics were gripping to sword and spear. But such a priest as
this I did not expect to see.

"Your name?" he asked suddenly, the words coming out with a sound like
the first grating of a saw on stone.

"They call me Norman Leslie de Pitcullo," I answered. "And yours?"

"My name," he said, "is Noiroufle"--and I thought that never had I seen a
man so well fitted with a name;--"in religion, Brother Thomas, a poor
brother of the Order of the mad St. Francis of Assisi."

"Then, Brother Thomas, how do you mean to cross this water which lies
between you and the exercise of your holy calling? Do you swim?"

"Like a stone cannon-ball, and, for all that I can find, the cursed water
has no bottom. Cross!" he snarled. "Let me see you swim."

I was glad enough to be quit of him so soon, but I noticed that, as I
stripped and packed my clothes to carry in a bundle on my head, the holy
man set his foot in the stirrup of his weapon, and was winding up his
arbalest with a windlass, a bolt in his mouth, watching at the same time
a heron that rose from a marsh on the further side of the stream. On
this bird, I deemed, he meant to try his skill with the arbalest.

"Adieu, Brother Thomas," I said, as I took the water; and in a few
strokes I was across and running up and down on the bank to get myself
dry. "Back!" came his grating voice--"back! and without your clothes,
you wine-sack of Scotland, or I shoot!" and his arbalest was levelled on
me.

I have often asked myself since what I should have done, and what was the
part of a brave man. Perchance I might have dived, and swum down-stream
under water, but then I had bestowed my bundle of clothes some little way
off, and Brother Thomas commanded it from his side of the stream. He
would have waited there in ambush till I came shivering back for hose and
doublet, and I should be in no better case than I was now. Meanwhile his
weapon was levelled at me, and I could see the bolt-point set straight
for my breast, and glittering in a pale blink of the sun. The bravest
course is ever the best. I should have thrown myself on the earth, no
doubt, and so crawled to cover, taking my chance of death rather than the
shame of obeying under threat and force. But I was young, and had never
looked death in the face, so, being afraid and astonished, I made what
seemed the best of an ill business, and, though my face reddens yet at
the thought of it, I leaped in and swam back like a dog to heel.

"Behold me," I said, making as brave a countenance as I might in face of
necessity.

"Well done, Norman Leslie de Pitcullo," he snarled, baring his yellow
teeth. "This is the obedience which the young owe to the Church. Now,
ferry me over; you are my boat."

"You will drown, man," I said. "Not while you swim."

Then, unbuckling his frock, he packed it as he had seen me do, bade me
put it on my head, and so stepped out into the water, holding forth his
arm to put about my neck. I was for teaching him how to lay it on my
shoulder, and was bidding him keep still as a plank of wood, but he
snarled--

"I have sailed on a boat of flesh before to-day."

To do him justice, he kept still as a log of wood, and so, yielding
partly to the stream, I landed him somewhat further down than the place
where my own clothes were lying. To them he walked, and very quietly
picking up my whinger and my raiment that he gathered under his arm, he
concealed himself in a thick bush, albeit it was leafless, where no man
could have been aware of him. This amazed me not a little, for modesty
did not seem any part of his nature.

"Now," says he, "fetch over my arbalest. Lying where I am you have no
advantage to shoot me, as, nom de Dieu! I would have shot you had you not
obeyed. And hark ye, by the way, unwind the arbalest before you cross;
it is ever well to be on the safe side. And be sure you wet not the
string." He pushed his face through the bush, and held in his mouth my
naked whinger, that shone between his shining eyes.

Now again I say it, I have thought over this matter many a time, and have
even laughed aloud and bitterly, when I was alone, at the figure of me
shivering there, on a cold February day, and at my helpless estate. For
a naked man is no match for a man with a whinger, and he was sitting on
my clothes. So this friar, unworthy as he was of his holy calling, had
me at an avail on every side, nor do I yet see what I could do but obey
him, as I did. And when I landed from this fifth voyage, he laughed and
gave me his blessing, and, what I needed more, some fiery spirits from a
water-gourd, in which Father Thomas carried no water.

"Well done, my son," he said, "and now we are comrades. My life was not
over safe on yonder side, seeing that the 'manants' hate me, and respect
not my hood, and two are better company than one, where we are going."

This encounter was the beginning of many evils, and often now the picture
shines upon my eyes, and I see the grey water, and hear the cold wind
whistle in the dry reeds of the river-bank whereon we sat.

The man was my master, Heaven help me! as surely as Sathanas was his. And
though, at last, I slipped his clutches, as you shall hear (more readily
than, I trow, he will scape his lord in the end, for he still lives), yet
it was an ill day that we met--an ill day for me and for France. Howbeit
we jogged on, he merrily enough singing a sculdudery song, I something
surly, under a grey February sky, with a keen wind searching out the
threadbare places in our raiment. My comrade, as he called himself, told
me what passages he chose in the history of his life: how he came to be
frocked (but 'cucullus non facit monachum'), and how, in the troubles of
these times, he had discovered in himself a great aptitude for the
gunner's trade, of which he boasted not a little. He had been in one and
another of these armed companies that took service with either side, for
hire, being better warriors and more skilled than the noblesse, but a
curse to France: for, in peace or war, friend or foe, they plundered all,
and held all to ransom. With Rodrigo de Villandradas, that blood-hound
of Spain, he had been high in favour, but when Rodrigo went to harry
south and east, he had tarried at Ruffec, with another thief of that
nation, Alfonse Rodigo. All his talk, as we went, was of slaying men in
fight; whom he slew he cared not much, but chiefly he hated the English
and them of Burgundy. To him, war was what hunting and shooting game is
to others; a cruel and bloody pastime, when Christians are the quarry!

"John the Lorrainer, and I, there are no others to be named with us at
the culverin," he would brag. "We two against an army, give us good
cover, and powder and leaden balls enough. Hey! Master John and I must
shoot a match yet, against English targets, and of them there are plenty
under Orleans. But if I make not the better speed, the town will have
fallen, or yielded, rescue or no rescue, and of rescue there is no hope
at all. The devil fights for the English, who will soon be swarming over
the Loire, and that King of Bourges of ours will have to flee, and gnaw
horse's fodder, oats and barley, with your friends in Scotland."

This was one of the many ungenerous taunts which the French made often
against us Scots, that have been their ancient and leal brethren in arms
since the days of King Achaius and Charlemagne.

"The Dauphin," he went on, "for King he is none, and crowned he will
never be, should be in Orleans, leading his men; and lo! he is tied to
the belt of fat La Tremouille, and is dancing of ballets at Chinon--a
murrain on him, and on them that make his music!" Then he fell to
cursing his King, a thing terrible to hear, and so to asking me questions
about myself. I told him that I had fled my own country for a
man-slaying, hoping, may Heaven forgive me! to make him think the higher
of me for the deed.

"So we all begin," said he; "a shrewd blow, or a fair wench; a death, or
a birth unlawful, 'tis all one forth we are driven to the world and the
wars. Yet you have started well,--well enough, and better than I gave
your girl's face credit for. Bar steel and rope, you may carry some
French gold back to stinking Scotland yet."

He gave me so much credit as this for a deed that deserved none, but
rather called for rebuke from him, who, however unworthy, was in
religion, and wore the garb of the Blessed Francis. But very far from
fortifying me in virtuous courses, as was his bounden duty, there was no
wickedness that he did not try to teach me, till partly I hated him, and
partly, I fear, I admired one so skilled in evil. The truth is, as I
said, that this man, for that time, was my master. He was learned in all
the arts by which poor and wandering folk can keep their bellies full
wandering by the way. With women, ugly and terrible of aspect as he was,
he had a great power: a pious saying for the old; a way with the young
which has ever been a mystery to me, unless, as some of the learned
think, all women are naturally lovers of wickedness, if strength and
courage go with it. What by wheedling, what by bullying, what by tales
of pilgrimages to holy shrines (he was coming from Jerusalem by way of
Rome, so he told all we met), he ever won a welcome.

Other more devilish cantrips he played, one of them at the peasant's
house where we rested on the first night of our common travel. The
Lenten supper which they gave us, with no little kindness, was ended, and
we were sitting in the firelight, Brother Thomas discoursing largely of
his pilgrimages, and of his favour among the high clergy. Thus, at I
know not what convent of the Clarisses, {5} in Italy, the holy Sisters
had pressed on him a relic of Monsieur St. Aignan, the patron of the good
town of Orleans. To see this relic, the farmer, his wife, and his sons
and daughters crowded eagerly; it was but a little blackened finger bone,
yet they were fain to touch it, as is the custom. But this he would not
yet allow.

"Perchance some of you," he said, "are already corrupt, not knowing it,
with the poisonous breath of that damnable Hussite heresy, which is
blowing from the east like wind of the pestilence, and ye may have doubts
concerning the verity of this most holy and miraculous relic?"

They all crossed themselves, protesting that no such wicked whisper of
Sathanas had ever come into their minds, nor had they so much as heard of
Huss and his blasphemies.

"Nay," said Brother Thomas, "I could scarcely blame you if it were partly
as I said. For in this latter time of the world, when I have myself met
Jews flocking to Babylon expecting the birth of Antichrist, there be many
false brethren, who carry about feigned relics, to deceive the simple. We
should believe no man, if he be, as I am, a stranger, unless he shows us
a sign, such as now I will show you. Give me, of your grace, a kerchief,
or a napkin." The goodwife gave him a clean white napkin from her
aumbry, and he tore it up before their eyes, she not daring to stay his
hand.

"Now note this holy relic and its wonderful power," he said, holding the
blackened bone high in his left hand, and all our eyes were fixed on it.
"Now mark," he said again, passing it over the napkin; and lo! there was
a clean white napkin in his hands, and of the torn shreds not a trace!

We were still gaping, and crossing ourselves with blessings on this happy
day and our unworthy eyes that beheld a miracle, when he did a thing yet
more marvellous, if that might be, which I scarce expect any man will
believe. Going to the table, and catching up a glass vessel on which the
goodwife set great store, he threw it against the wall, and we all
plainly heard it shiver into tinkling pieces. Then, crossing the room
into the corner, that was dusky enough, he faced us, again holding the
blessed relic, whereon we stared, in holy fear. Then he rose, and in his
hand was the goodwife's glass vessel, without crack or flaw! {6}

"Such," he said, "are the properties of this miraculous relic; there is
nothing broken but it will mend, ay, a broken limb, as I can prove on my
own sinful body,"--thrusting out his great brown leg, whereon, assuredly,
were signs of a fracture; "ay, a broken leg, or, my dear daughters, a
broken heart." At this, of course, they were all eager to touch the
blessed relic with their poor rings of base metal, such as they wear who
are not rich. Nay, but first, he said, they must give their mites for a
convent of the Clarisses, that was building at Castres, by the care of
the holy Colette, whom he might call his patroness, unworthy as he was.

Then he showed us a safe-conduct, signed with that blessed woman's own
hand, such as she was wont to give to the religious of the Order of St.
Francis. By virtue of this, he said (and, by miracle, for once he said
truly, as I had but too good cause to learn), he could go freely in and
out among the camps of French, English, and Burgundians.

You may conceive how joyous they were in that poor cottage, on a night so
blessed, and how Brother Thomas told us of the holy Colette, that famous
nun and Mother in Christ, as he that had often been in her company. He
had seen her body lifted in the air while she remained in a pious
ecstasy, her mind soaring aloft and her fleshly body following it some
way.

He had often watched that snow-white beast which followed her, such a
creature as is known in no country of the sinful world, but is a thing of
Paradise. And he had tried to caress this wondrous creature of God, but
vainly, for none but the holy sister Colette may handle it. Concerning
her miracles of healing, too, he told us, all of which we already knew
for very truth, and still know on better warranty than his.

Ye may believe that, late and at last, Brother Thomas had his choice of
the warmest place to sleep in--by the "four," as is the wont of pilgrims,
for in his humility this holy man would not suffer the farmer's wife and
the farmer to give him their bed, as they desired. I, too, was very
kindly entreated by the young lads, but I could scarcely sleep for
marvelling at these miracles done by one so unworthy; and great, indeed,
I deemed, must be the virtue of that relic which wrought such signs in
the hands of an evil man. But I have since held that he feigned all by
art magic and very sorcery, for, as we wended next morning on our road,
he plainly told me, truly or falsely, that he had picked up the blackened
finger-bone out of the loathly ashes of the dead in the burned castle
near Ruffec.

Wherefore I consider that when Brother Thomas sold the grace of his
relic, by the touching of rings, he dealt in a devilish black simony,
vending to simple Christians no grace but that of his master, Sathanas.
Thus he was not only evil (if I guess aright, which I submit to the
judgment of my ecclesiastical superiors, and of the Church), but he had
even found out a new kind of wickedness, such as I never read of in any
books of theology wherein is much to be learned. I have spoken with
some, however, knights and men of this world, who deemed that he did but
beguile our eyes by craft and sleight-of-hand.

This other hellish art he had, by direct inspiration, as I hold, of his
master Behemoth, that he could throw his voice whither he would, so that,
in all seeming, it came from above, or from below, or from a corner of a
room, fashioning it to resemble the voice of whom he would, yet none
might see his lips move. With this craft he would affray the peasants
about the fire in the little inns where we sometimes rested, when he
would be telling tales of bogles and eldritch fantasies, and of fiends
that rout and rap, and make the tables and firkins dance. Such art of
speech, I am advised, is spoken of by St. Jerome, in his comment on the
holy prophet the saint Isaiah, and they that use it he calls
"ventriloqui," in the Latin, or "belly-speakers," and he takes an
unfavourable sense of them and their doings. So much I have from the
learned William de Boyis, Prior of Pluscarden, where now I write; with
whom I have conversed of these matters privately, and he thinks this art
a thing that men may learn by practice, without dealing in nigromancy and
the black magic. This question I am content to leave, as is fitting, to
the judgment of my superiors. And indeed, as at that time, Brother
Thomas spake not in his belly except to make sport and affray the simple
people, soon turning their fears to mirth. Certainly the country folk
never misdoubted him, the women for a holy man, the men for a good
fellow; though all they of his own cloth shrank from him, and I have seen
them cross themselves in his presence, but to no avail. He would say a
word or two in their ears, and they straightway left the place where he
might be. None the less, with his tales and arts, Brother Thomas
commonly so wrought that we seldom slept "a la belle etoile" in that
bitter spring weather, but we ordinarily had leave to lie by the hearth,
and got a supper and a breakfast. The good peasants would find their hen-
roosts the poorer often, for all that he could snap up was to him fortune
of war.

I loved these manners little, but leave him I could not. His eye was
ever on me; if I stirred in the night he was awake and watching me, and
by day he never let me out of a bolt's flight. To cut the string of his
wicked weapon was a thought often in my mind, but he was too vigilant. My
face was his passport, he said; my face, indeed, being innocent enough,
as was no shame to me, but an endless cause of mirth and mockery to him.
Yet, by reason of the serviceableness of the man in that perilous
country, and my constant surprise and wonder at what he did and said, and
might do next (which no man could guess beforehand), and a kind of
foolish pride in his very wickedness, so much beyond what I had ever
dreamed of, and for pure fear of him also, I found myself following with
him day by day, ever thinking to escape, and never escaping.

I have since deemed that, just as his wickedness was to a boy (for I was
little more), a kind of charm, made up of a sort of admiring hate and
fear, so my guilelessness (as it seemed to him) also wrought on him
strangely. For in part it made sport for him to see my open mouth and
staring eyes at the spectacle of his devilries, and in part he really
hated me, and hated my very virtue of simplicity, which it was his desire
and delight to surprise and corrupt.

On these strange terms, then, now drawn each to other, and now forced
apart, we wended by Poictiers towards Chinon, where the Dauphin and his
Court then lay. So we fared northwards, through Poitou, where we found
evil news enough. For, walking into a village, we saw men, women, and
children, all gathered, gaping about one that stood beside a horse nearly
foundered, its legs thrust wide, its nostrils all foam and blood. The
man, who seemed as weary as his horse, held a paper in his hands, which
the priest of that parish took from him and read aloud to us. The rider
was a royal messenger, one Thomas Scott of Easter Buccleuch, in Rankel
Burn, whom I knew later, and his tidings were evil. The Dauphin bade his
good towns know that, on the 12th of February, Sir John Stewart,
constable of the Scottish forces in France, had fallen in battle at
Rouvray, with very many of his company, and some Frenchmen. They had
beset a convoy under Sir John Fastolf, that was bringing meat to the
English leaguered about Orleans. But Fastolf had wholly routed them (by
treachery, as we later learned of the Comte de Clermont), and Sir John
Stewart, with his brother Sir William, were slain. Wherefore the Dauphin
bade the good towns send him money and men, or all was lost.

Such were the evil tidings, which put me in sore fear for my brother
Robin, one that, in such an onfall, would go far, as beseemed his blood.
But as touching his fortunes, Thomas Scott could tell me neither good nor
bad, though he knew Robin, and gave him a good name for a stout man-at-
arms. It was of some comfort to me to hear a Scots tongue; but, for the
rest, I travelled on with a heavier heart, deeming that Orleans must
indeed fall ere I could seek my brother in that town.




CHAPTER III--WHAT BEFELL OUTSIDE OF CHINON TOWN


My old nurse, when I was a child, used to tell me a long story of a
prince who, wandering through the world, made friends with many strange
companions. One she called Lynx-eye, that could see through a mountain;
one was Swift-foot, that could outrun the wind; one was Fine-ear, that
could hear the grass growing; and there was Greedy-gut, that could
swallow a river. All these were very serviceable to this gracious
prince, of I know not what country, in his adventures; and they were
often brought into my mind by the companions whom we picked up on the
grass-grown roads.

These wanderers were as strange as the friends of the prince, and were as
variously, but scarce as honourably, gifted. There was the one-armed
soldier, who showed his stump very piteously when it was a question of
begging from a burgess, but was as well furnished with limbs as other men
when no burgess was in sight. There was a wretched woman violer, with
her jackanapes, and with her husband, a hang-dog ruffian, she bearing the
mark of his fist on her eye, and commonly trailing far behind him with
her brat on her back. There was a blind man, with his staff, who might
well enough answer to Keen-eye, that is, when no strangers were in sight.
There was a layman, wearing cope and stole and selling indulgences, but
our captain, Brother Thomas, soon banished him from our company, for that
he divided the trade. Others there were, each one of them a Greedy-gut,
a crew of broken men, who marched with us on the roads; but we never
entered a town or a house with these discreditable attendants.

Now, it may seem strange, but the nearer we drew to Chinon and the Court,
the poorer grew the country, for the Court and the men-at-arms had
stripped it bare, like a flight of locusts. For this reason the Dauphin
could seldom abide long at one place, for he was so much better known
than trusted that the very cordwainer would not let him march off in a
new pair of boots without seeing his money, and, as the song said, he
even greased his old clouted shoon, and made them last as long as he
might. For head-gear he was as ill provided, seeing that he had pawned
the fleurons of his crown. There were days when his treasurer at Tours
(as I myself have heard him say) did not reckon three ducats in his
coffers, and the heir of France borrowed money from his very cook. So
the people told us, and I have often marvelled how, despite this poverty,
kings and nobles, when I have seen them, go always in cloth of gold, with
rich jewels. But, as you may guess, near the Court of a beggar Dauphin
the country-folk too were sour and beggarly.