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.
We had to tighten our belts before we came to the wood wherein cross-roads meet,from north,south,and east,within five miles of the town of Chinon.There was not a white coin among us;night was falling,and it seemed as if we must lie out under the stars,and be fed,like the wolves we heard howling,on wind.By the roadside,at the crossways,but not in view of the road,a council of our ragged regiment was held in a deep ditch.It would be late ere we reached the town,gates would scarce open for us,we could not fee the warders,houses would be shut and dark;the King's archers were apt to bear them unfriendly to wandering men with the devil dancing in their pouches.Resource we saw none;if there was a cottage,dogs,like wolves for hunger and fierceness,were baying round it.As for Brother Thomas,an evil bruit had gone before us concerning a cordelier that the fowls and geese were fain to follow,as wilder things,they say,follow the blessed St.Francis.So there sat Brother Thomas at the cross-roads,footsore,hungry,and sullen,in the midst of us,who dared not speak,he twanging at the string of his arbalest.He called himself our Moses,in his blasphemous way,and the blind man having girded at him for not leading us into the land of plenty,he had struck the man till he bled,and now stood stanching his wound.
Suddenly Brother Thomas ceased from his twanging,and holding up his hand for silence,leaned his ear to the ground.The night was still,though a cold wind came very stealthily from the east.
"Horses!"he said.
"It is but the noise of the brook by the way,"said the blind man,sullenly.
Brother Thomas listened again.
"No,it is horses,"he whispered."My men,they that ride horses can spare somewhat out of their abundance to feed the poor."And with that he began winding up his arbalest hastily."Aymeric,"he said to one of our afflicted company,"you draw a good bow for a blind man;hide yourself in the opposite ditch,and be ready when Igive the word "Pax vobiscum."You,Giles,"he spoke to the one-armed soldier,"go with him,and,do you hear,aim low,at the third man's horse.From the sound there are not more than five or six of them.We can but fail,at worst,and the wood is thick behind us,where none may pursue.You,Norman de Pitcullo,have your whinger ready,and fasten this rope tightly to yonder birch-tree stem,and then cross and give it a turn or two about that oak sapling on the other side of the way.That trap will bring down a horse or twain.
Be quick,you Scotch wine-bag!"
I had seen many ill things done,and,to my shame,had held my peace.But a Leslie of Pitcullo does not take purses on the high-road.Therefore my heart rose in sudden anger,I having all day hated him more and more for his bitter tongue,and I was opening my mouth to cry "A secours!"--a warning to them who were approaching,when,quick as lightning,Brother Thomas caught me behind the knee-joints,and I was on the ground with his weight above me.One cry Ihad uttered,when his hand was on my mouth.
"Give him the steel in his guts!"whispered the blind man.
"Slit his weasand,the Scotch pig!"said the one-armed soldier.
They were all on me now.