Lang A Monk of Fife

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-8496-0671-8
Verlag: Jazzybee Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 416 Seiten

This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer. The book: The recent revival of interest in the Maid of Orleans has resulted in the production of a considerable amount of romantic fiction, of which the most important example is Mr. Lang's ' A Monk of Fife.' The subject is one almost ideally suited to Mr. Lang's hand, appealing, as it does, to his deepest interests and intellectual sympathies - how warmly the noble poem in his latest volume of verse may witness. The romance before us pretends to be a translation of a French manuscript in the Ratisbons Scots College. Whether this pretence be wholly a bit of mystification we are not concerned to inquire; for all practical purposes 'A Monk of Fife' is an original work of Mr. Lang's imagination, although it follows historical fact more closely than such fiction is wont to do. As to the style of the book, it may be described, in Mr. Lang's own words, as 'not imitating, in manner, the almost contemporary English of the ' Paston Letters,' or the somewhat earlier English style of the Regent Bedford, but merely attempting to give a moderately old air to his (Mr. Lang's) version of a French - which, genuine or imitative, is certainly, in character and spelling, antique.' The story is told in the first person, and is essentially the narrative of a young Scotsman, fleeing from his own country in consequence of a brawl, and finding service with the French at such a time as to be concerned in the siege of Orleans, and to become closely associated with the fortunes of the Maid. The narrative is at times labored, as the result of a wish to omit no historical fact of importance, but is for the most part highly readable, giving a vivid impression of the stirring life of early fifteenth-century France.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lang, Andrew

Leseproben

CHAPTER VIII—OF CERTAIN QUARRELS THAT CAME ON THE HANDS OF NORMAN LESLIE

Belike I had dropped asleep, outwearied with what had befallen me, mind and body, but I started up suddenly at the sound of a dagger-hilt smitten against the main door of the house, and a voice crying, “Open, in the name of the Dauphin.”  They had come in quest of me, and when I heard them, it was as if a hand had given my heart a squeeze, and for a moment my breath seemed to be stopped.  This past, I heard the old serving-woman fumbling with the bolts, and peering from behind the curtain of my casement, I saw that the ways were dark, and the narrow street was lit up with flaring torches, the lights wavering in the wind.  I stepped to the wide ingle, thinking to creep into the secret hiding-hole.  But to what avail?  It might have served my turn if my escape alive from the moat had only been guessed, but now my master must have told all the story, and the men-at-arms must be assured that I was within.  Thinking thus, I stood at pause, when a whisper came, as if from within the ingle—

“Unbar the door, and hide not.”

It must be Elliot’s voice, speaking through some tube contrived in the ingle of the dwelling-room below or otherwise.  Glad at heart to think that she took thought of me, I unbarred the door, and threw myself into a chair before the fire, trying to look like one unconcerned.  The bolts were now drawn below; I heard voices, rather Scots than French, to my sense.  Then the step of one man climbed up the stair, heavily, and with the tap of a staff keeping tune to it.  It was my master.  His face was pale, and falling into a chair, he wiped the sweat from his brow.  “Unhappy man that I am!” he said, “I have lost my apprentice.”

I gulped something down in my throat ere I could say, “Then it is death?”

“Nay,” he said, and smiled.  “But gliff for gliff, {16} you put a fear on me this day, and now we are even.”

“Yet I scarce need a cup of wine for my recovery, master,” I said, filling him a beaker from the flagon on the table, which he drained gladly, being sore wearied, so steep was the way to the castle, and hard for a lame man.  My heart was as light as a leaf on a tree, and the bitterness of shameful death seemed gone by.

“I have lost my prentice another way,” he said, setting down the cup on the table.  “I had much a do to see Kennedy, for he was at the dice with other lords.  At length, deeming there was no time to waste, I sent in the bonny Book of Hours, praying him to hear me for a moment on a weighty matter.  That brought him to my side; he leaped at the book like a trout at a fly, and took me to his own chamber.  There I told him your story.  When it came to the wench in the King’s laundry, and Robin Lindsay, and you clad in girl’s gear, and kissed in the guard-room, he struck hand on thigh and laughed aloud.

“Then I deemed your cause as good as three parts won, and he could not hold in, but led me to a chamber where were many lords, dicing and drinking: Trémouille, Ogilvie, the Bishop of Orleans—that holy man, who has come to ask for aid from the King,—La Hire, Xaintrailles, and I know not whom.  There I must tell all the chronicle again; and some said this, and some that, and Trémouille mocks, that the Maid uttered her prophecy to no other end but to make you fulfil it, and slay her enemy for the sake of her ‘beaux yeux.’  The others would hear nothing of this, and, indeed, though I am no gull, I wot that Trémouille is wrong here, and over cunning; he trusts neither man nor woman.  Howsoever it be, he went with the story to the King, who is keen to hear any new thing.  And, to be short, the end of it is this: that you have your free pardon, on these terms, namely, that you have two score of masses said for the dead man, and yourself take service under Sir Hugh Kennedy, that the King may not lose a man-at-arms.”

Never, sure, came gladder tidings to any man than these to me.  An hour ago the rope seemed tight about my neck; one day past, and I was but a prentice to the mean craft of painting and limning, arts good for a monk, or a manant, but, save for pleasure, not to be melled or meddled with by a man of gentle blood.  And now I was to wear arms, and that in the best of causes, under the best of captains, one of my own country—a lord in Ayrshire.

“Ay, even so,” my master said, marking the joy in my face, “you are right glad to leave us—a lass and a lameter. {17} Well, well, such is youth, and eld is soon forgotten.”

I fell on my knees at his feet, and kissed his hands, and I believe that I wept.

“Sir,” I said, “you have been to me as a father, and more than it has been my fortune to find my own father.  Never would I leave you with my will, and for the gentle demoiselle, your daughter—”  But here I stinted, since in sooth I knew not well what words to say.

“Ay, we shall both miss you betimes; but courage, man!  After all, this new life beseems you best, and, mark me, a lass thinks none the worse of a lad because he wears not the prentice’s hodden grey, but a Scots archer’s green, white, and red, and Charles for badge on breast and sleeve, and a sword by his side.  And as for the bonny Book of Hours—‘Master,’ I said with shame, ‘was that my ransom?’

“Kennedy would have come near my price, and strove to make me take the gold.  But what is bred in the bone will out; I am a gentleman born, not a huckster, and the book I gave him freely.  May it profit the good knight in his devotions!  But now, come, they are weary waiting for us; the hour waxes late, and Elliot, I trow, is long abed.  You must begone to the castle.”

In the stairs, and about the door, some ten of Sir Hugh’s men were waiting, all countrymen of my own, and the noise they made and their speech were pleasant to me.  They gave me welcome with shouts and laughter, and clasped my hands: “for him that called us wine-sacks, you have given him water to his wine, and the frog for his butler,” they said, making a jest of life and death.  But my own heart for the nonce was heavy enough again, I longing to take farewell of Elliot, which might not be, nor might she face that wild company.  Howbeit, thinking it good to have a friend at court, I made occasion to put in the hand of the old serving-woman all of such small coins as I had won in my life servile, deeming myself well quit of such ill-gotten gear.  And thereafter, with great mirth and noise, they set forth to climb the hill towards the castle, where I was led, through many a windy passage, to the chamber of Sir Hugh Kennedy.  There were torches lit, and the knight, a broad-shouldered, fair-haired man, with a stern, flushed face, was turning over and gazing at his new Book of Hours, like a child busy with a fresh toy.  He laid the book down when we entered, and the senior of the two archers who accompanied me told him that I was he who had been summoned.

“Your name?” he asked; and I gave it.

“You are of gentle blood?”  And I answering “Yes,” he replied, “Then see that you are ready to shed it for the King.  Your life that was justly forfeit, is now, by his Royal mercy, returned to you, to be spent in his service.  Rutherford and Douglas, go take him to quarters, and see that to-morrow he is clad as beseems a man of my command.  Now good night to you—but stay!  You, Norman Leslie, you will have quarrels on your hand.  Wait not for them, but go to meet them, if they are with the French men-at-arms, and in quarrel see that you be swift and deadly.  For the townsfolk, no brawling, marauding, or haling about of honest wenches.  Here we are strangers, and my men must be respected.”

He bowed his head: his words had been curt, no grace or kindness had he shown me of countenance.  I felt in my heart that to him I was but a pawn in the game of battle.  Now I seemed as far off as ever I was from my foolish dream of winning my spurs; nay, perchance never had I sunk lower in my own conceit.  Till this hour I had been, as it were, the hinge on which my share of the world turned, and now I was no more than a wheel in the carriage of a couleuvrine, an unconsidered cog in the machine of war.  I was to be lost in a multitude, every one as good as myself, or better; and when I had thought of taking service, I had not foreseen the manner of it and the nature of the soldier’s trade.  My head, that I had carried high, somewhat drooped, as I saluted, imitating my companions, and we wheeled forth of the room.

“Hugh has taken the pride out of you, lad, or my...