A MONK OF FIFE
A Romance of the Days of Jeanne D'Arc - Joan of Arc
by Andrew Lang
CHAPTER I
HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN,
AND HOW NORMAN LESLIE FLED OUT
OF FIFE
It is not of my own will, nor for my own glory, that I, Norman
Leslie, sometime of Pitcullo, and in religion called Brother Norman,
of the Order of Benedictines, of Dunfermline, indite this book. But
on my coming out of France, in the year of our Lord One thousand
four hundred and fifty-nine, it was laid on me by my Superior,
Richard, Abbot in Dunfermline, that I should abbreviate the Great
Chronicle of Scotland, and continue the same down to our own time.
{1} He bade me tell, moreover, all that I knew of the glorious Maid
of France, called Jeanne la Pucelle (Joan of Arc), in whose company I was, from
her beginning even till her end.
Obedient, therefore, to my Superior, I wrote, in this our cell of
Pluscarden, a Latin book containing the histories of times past, but
when I came to tell of matters wherein, as Maro says, "pars magna
fui," I grew weary of such rude, barbarous Latin as alone I am
skilled to indite, for of the manner Ciceronian, as it is now
practised by clerks of Italy, I am not master: my book, therefore,
I left unfinished, breaking off in the middle of a sentence. Yet,
considering the command laid on me, in the end I am come to this
resolve, namely, to write the history of the wars in France, and the
history of the blessed Maid (so far at least as I was an eyewitness
and partaker thereof), in the French language, being the most
commonly understood of all men, and the most delectable. It is not
my intent to tell all the story of the Maid, and all her deeds and
sayings, for the world would scarcely contain the books that should
be written. But what I myself beheld, that I shall relate,
especially concerning certain accidents not known to the general, by
reason of which ignorance the whole truth can scarce be understood.
For, if Heaven visibly sided with France and the Maid, no less did
Hell most manifestly take part with our old enemy of England. And
often in this life, if we look not the more closely, and with the
eyes of faith, Sathanas shall seem to have the upper hand in the
battle, with whose very imp and minion I myself was conversant, to
my sorrow, as shall be shown.
First, concerning myself I must say some few words, to the end that
what follows may be the more readily understood.
I was born in the kingdom of Fife, being, by some five years, the
younger of two sons of Archibald Leslie, of Pitcullo, near St.
Andrews, a cadet of the great House of Rothes. My mother was an
Englishwoman of the Debatable Land, a Storey of Netherby, and of me,
in our country speech, it used to be said that I was "a mother's
bairn." For I had ever my greatest joy in her, whom I lost ere I
was sixteen years of age, and she in me: not that she favoured me
unduly, for she was very just, but that, within ourselves, we each
knew who was nearest to her heart. She was, indeed, a saintly
woman, yet of a merry wit, and she had great pleasure in reading of
books, and in romances. Being always, when I might, in her company,
I became a clerk insensibly, and without labour I could early read
and write, wherefore my father was minded to bring me up for a
churchman. For this cause, I was some deal despised by others of my
age, and, yet more, because from my mother I had caught the Southron
trick of the tongue. They called me "English Norman," and many a
battle I have fought on that quarrel, for I am as true a Scot as
any, and I hated the English (my own mother's people though they
were) for taking and holding captive our King, James I. of worthy
memory. My fancy, like that of most boys, was all for the wars, and
full of dreams concerning knights and ladies, dragons and
enchanters, about which the other lads were fain enough to hear me
tell what I had read in romances, though they mocked at me for
reading. Yet they oft came ill speed with their jests, for my
brother had taught me to use my hands: and to hold a sword I was
instructed by our smith, who had been prentice to Harry Gow, the
Burn-the-Wind of Perth, and the best man at his weapon in broad
Scotland. From him I got many a trick of fence that served my turn
later.
But now the evil time came when my dear mother sickened and died,
leaving to me her memory and her great chain of gold. A bitter
sorrow is her death to me still; but anon my father took to him
another wife of the Bethunes of Blebo. I blame myself, rather than
this lady, that we dwelt not happily in the same house. My father
therefore, still minded to make me a churchman, sent me to Robert of
Montrose's new college that stands in the South Street of St.
Andrews, a city not far from our house of Pitcullo. But there, like
a wayward boy, I took more pleasure in the battles of the "nations"-
-as of Fife against Galloway and the Lennox; or in games of catch-
pull, football, wrestling, hurling the bar, archery, and golf--than
in divine learning--as of logic, and Aristotle his analytics.
Yet I loved to be in the scriptorium of the Abbey, and to see the
good Father Peter limning the blessed saints in blue, and red, and
gold, of which art he taught me a little. Often I would help him to
grind his colours, and he instructed me in the laying of them on
paper or vellum, with white of egg, and in fixing and burnishing the
gold, and in drawing flowers, and figures, and strange beasts and
devils, such as we see grinning from the walls of the cathedral. In
the French language, too, he learned me, for he had been taught at
the great University of Paris; and in Avignon had seen the Pope
himself, Benedict XIII., of uncertain memory.
Much I loved to be with Father Peter, whose lessons did not irk me,
but jumped with my own desire to read romances in the French tongue,
whereof there are many. But never could I have dreamed that, in
days to come, this art of painting would win me my bread for a
while, and that a Leslie of Pitcullo should be driven by hunger to
so base and contemned a handiwork, unworthy, when practised for
gain, of my blood.
Yet it would have been well for me to follow even this craft more,
and my sports and pastimes less: Dickon Melville had then escaped a
broken head, and I, perchance, a broken heart. But youth is given
over to vanities that war against the soul, and, among others, to
that wicked game of the Golf, now justly cried down by our laws, {2}
as the mother of cursing and idleness, mischief and wastery, of
which game, as I verily believe, the devil himself is the father.
It chanced, on an October day of the year of grace Fourteen hundred
and twenty-eight, that I was playing myself at this accursed sport
with one Richard Melville, a student of like age with myself. We
were evenly matched, though Dickon was tall and weighty, being great
of growth for his age, whereas I was of but scant inches, slim, and,
as men said, of a girlish countenance. Yet I was well skilled in
the game of the Golf, and have driven a Holland ball the length of
an arrow-flight, there or thereby. But wherefore should my sinful
soul be now in mind of these old vanities, repented of, I trust,
long ago?
As we twain, Dickon and I, were known for fell champions at this
unholy sport, many of the other scholars followed us, laying wagers
on our heads. They were but a wild set of lads, for, as then, there
was not, as now there is, a house appointed for scholars to dwell in
together under authority. We wore coloured clothes, and our hair
long; gold chains, and whingers {3} in our belts, all of which
things are now most righteously forbidden. But I carried no whinger
on the links, as considering that it hampered a man in his play. So
the game went on, now Dickon leading "by a hole," as they say, and
now myself, and great wagers were laid on us.
Now, at the hole that is set high above the Eden, whence you see far
over the country, and the river-mouth, and the shipping, it chanced
that my ball lay between Dickon's and the hole, so that he could in
no manner win past it.
"You laid me that stimy of set purpose," cried Dickon, throwing down
his club in a rage; "and this is the third time you have done it in
this game."
"It is clean against common luck," quoth one of his party, "and the
game and the money laid on it should be ours."
"By the blessed bones of the Apostle," I said, 'no luck is more
common. To-day to me, to-morrow to thee! Lay it of purpose, I
could not if I would."
"You lie!" he shouted in a rage, and gripped to his whinger.
It was ever my father's counsel that I must take the lie from none.
Therefore, as his steel was out, and I carried none, I made no more
ado, and the word of shame had scarce left his lips when I felled
him with the iron club that we use in sand.
"He is dead!" cried they of his party, while the lads of my own
looked askance on me, and had manifestly no mind to be partakers in
my deed.
Now, Melville came of a great house, and, partly in fear of their
feud, partly like one amazed and without any counsel, I ran and
leaped into a boat that chanced to lie convenient on the sand, and
pulled out into the Eden. Thence I saw them raise up Melville, and
bear him towards the town, his friends lifting their hands against
me, with threats and malisons. His legs trailed and his head wagged
like the legs and the head of a dead man, and I was without hope in
the world.
At first it was my thought to row up the river-mouth, land, and make
across the marshes and fields to our house at Pitcullo. But I
bethought me that my father was an austere man, whom I had vexed
beyond bearing with my late wicked follies, into which, since the
death of my mother, I had fallen. And now I was bringing him no
college prize, but a blood-feud, which he was like to find an ill
heritage enough, even without an evil and thankless son. My
stepmother, too, who loved me little, would inflame his anger
against me. Many daughters he had, and of gear and goods no more
than enough. Robin, my elder brother, he had let pass to France,
where he served among the men of John Kirkmichael, Bishop of
Orleans--he that smote the Duke of Clarence in fair fight at Bauge.
Thinking of my father, and of my stepmother's ill welcome, and of
Robin, abroad in the wars against our old enemy of England, it may
be that I fell into a kind of half dream, the boat lulling me by its
movement on the waters. Suddenly I felt a crashing blow on my head.
It was as if the powder used for artillery had exploded in my mouth,
with flash of light and fiery taste, and I knew nothing. Then, how
long after I could not tell, there was water on my face, the blue
sky and the blue tide were spinning round--they spun swiftly, then
slowly, then stood still. There was a fierce pain stounding in my
head, and a voice said -
"That good oar-stroke will learn you to steal boats!"
I knew the voice; it was that of a merchant sailor-man with whom, on
the day before, I had quarrelled in the market-place. Now I was
lying at the bottom of a boat which four seamen, who had rowed up to
me and had broken my head as I meditated, were pulling towards a
merchant-vessel, or carrick, in the Eden-mouth. Her sails were
being set; the boat wherein I lay was towing that into which I had
leaped after striking down Melville. For two of the ship's men,
being on shore, had hailed their fellows in the carrick, and they
had taken vengeance upon me.
"You scholar lads must be taught better than your masters learn
you," said my enemy.
And therewith they carried me on board the vessel, the "St.
Margaret," of Berwick, laden with a cargo of dried salmon from Eden-
mouth. They meant me no kindness, for there was an old feud between
the scholars and the sailors; but it seemed to me, in my
foolishness, that now I was in luck's way. I need not go back, with
blood on my hands, to Pitcullo and my father. I had money in my
pouch, my mother's gold chain about my neck, a ship's deck under my
foot, and the seas before me. It was not hard for me to bargain
with the shipmaster for a passage to Berwick, whence I might put
myself aboard a vessel that traded to Bordeaux for wine from that
country. The sailors I made my friends at no great cost, for indeed
they were the conquerors, and could afford to show clemency, and
hold me to slight ransom as a prisoner of war.
So we lifted anchor, and sailed out of Eden-mouth, none of those on
shore knowing how I was aboard the carrick that slipped by the
bishop's castle, and so under the great towers of the minster and
St. Rule's, forth to the Northern Sea. Despite my broken head--
which put it comfortably into my mind that maybe Dickon's was no
worse--I could have laughed to think how clean I had vanished away
from St. Andrews, as if the fairies had taken me. Now having time
to reason of it quietly, I picked up hope for Dickon's life,
remembering his head to be of the thickest. Then came into my mind
the many romances of chivalry which I had read, wherein the young
squire has to flee his country for a chance blow, as did Messire
Patroclus, in the Romance of Troy, who slew a man in anger over the
game of the chess, and many another knight, in the tales of
Charlemagne and his paladins. For ever it is thus the story opens,
and my story, methought, was beginning to-day like the rest.
Now, not to prove more wearisome than need be, and so vex those who
read this chronicle with much talk about myself, and such accidents
of travel as beset all voyagers, and chiefly in time of war, I found
a trading ship at Berwick, and reached Bordeaux safe, after much
sickness on the sea. And in Bordeaux, with a very sore heart, I
changed the links of my mother's chain that were left to me--all but
four, that still I keep--for money of that country; and so, with a
lighter pack than spirit, I set forth towards Orleans and to my
brother Robin.
On this journey I had good cause to bless Father Peter of the Abbey
for his teaching me the French tongue, that was of more service to
me than all my Latin. Yet my Latin, too, the little I knew, stood
me in good stead at the monasteries, where often I found bed and
board, and no small kindness; I little deeming that, in time to
come, I also should be in religion, an old man and weary, glad to
speak with travellers concerning the news of the world, from which I
am now these ten years retired. Yet I love even better to call back
memories of these days, when I took my part in the fray. If this be
a sin, may God and the Saints forgive me, for if I have fought, it
was in a rightful cause, which Heaven at last has prospered, and in
no private quarrel. And methinks I have one among the Saints to
pray for me, as a friend for a friend not unfaithful. But on this
matter I submit me to the judgment of the Church, as in all
questions of the faith.
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