“Par Dieu! and so I did. I had clean forgotten it! But how, in Heaven’s name, came you to know of that, who were not there?”
“Some one told me of it,” replied the boy, looking away from me, as though he were lying.
“Well, cross it out!”
“Not I! The maid already knows, no doubt, the fickleness of men, and this will surprise her no more than to see a weathercock go round when the wind doth change. Proceed!”
Heavily laden with booty, we turned toward Flanders. We gained two days ago the swelling banks of the Somme, and down this sluggish stream, taking what we listed as we went with the red license of our revengeful errand, we have struggled until here, fair lady. But each hour of this adventurous march has seen us closer and more closely beset. The broad stream runs to north of us, the burgher levies of Amiens are mustering thick upon our right and behind, Gods! so close, that now as this is penned the black canopy of the night is all ruddy where his countless watchfires glimmer on the southern sky; behind us comes the pale respondent in this bloody suit that we are trying—Philip, who says that France is his by Salic law, and no rod of it, no foot or inch on this side of the salt sea, ever can or shall be Edward’s. And for jurors, Madam, to the assize that will be held so shortly he has gathered from every corner of his vassal realm a hundred thousand footmen and twenty thousand horse; a score of perjured Princes make his false quarrel doubly false by bearing witness to it, and here, to-morrow at the farthest, we do think, they will arraign us, and put this matter to the sharp adjustment of the sword. Against that great host that threatens us we are but a handful, four thousand men at arms all native to the English shires, ten thousand archers, as many light-armed Welshmen, and four thousand wild Irish.
“There!” I said with pride, as Flamaucœur’s busy pen came to a stop—“There! she will know now how it goes with King Edward’s gallant English.”
“Why, yes, no doubt she may,” responded my friend; “but maids are more apt to be interested in the particular than in the general. You have addressed her so far like the presiding captain of a warlike council. Is there nothing more to come?”
“Gads! that’s true enough! I have left out all the love!”