One day, I remember, I and my shadow Flamaucœur were riding home after scouting some miles along the French lines without adventure, when, entering our camp by the pickets farthest removed from the Royal quarter, we saw a crowd of Irish kerns behind the wood where the King had stocked his baggage, all laughing round some common object. Now, these Irish were the most turbulent and dissolute fighters in the army. Such shock-headed, fiery ruffians never before called themselves Christian soldiers. They and the Welsh were forever at feud; but, whereas the Welshmen were brave and submissive to their chiefs, keen in war, tender of honor, fond of wine-cups and minstrels—gallant, free soldiers, indeed, just as I had known their kin a thousand years before; these savage kerns, on the other hand, were remorseless villains, rude and wild in camp, and cutthroat rascals, without compunction, when a fight was over. In ordinary circumstances we should have ridden by these noisy rogues, for they cared not a jot for any one less than the Camp Marshal with a string of billmen behind him, and feuds between knights of King Edward’s table and these shock-haired kerns were unseemly. But on this occasion, over the hustling ring of rough soldiers, as we sat high-perched upon our Flemish chargers, we saw a woman’s form, and craned our necks and turned a little from our course to watch what new devilry they were up to.
There, in the midst of that lawless gang of ruffian soldiers, their bronzed and grinning faces hedging a space in with a leering, compassionless wall, was a fair French girl, all wild and torn with misadventure, her smooth cheeks unwashed and scarred with tears, her black hair wild and tangled on her back, her skirt and bodice rent and muddy, fear and shame and anger flying alternate over the white field of her comely face, while her wistful eyes kept wandering here and there amid that grinning crowd for a look of compunction or a chance of rescue. The poor maid was standing upon an overturned box such as was used to carry cross-bow bolts in, her hands tied hard together in front, her captor by her side, and as we came near unnoticed he put her up for sale.
“By Congal of the Bloody Fingers,” said that cruel kern in answer to the laughing questions of his comrades, interlarding his speech with many fiery and horrid oaths, the which I spare you—“I found this accursed little witch this morning hiding among the rubbish of yonder cottage our boys pulled to pieces in the valley; and, as I could not light on better ware, I dragged her here. But may I roast forever if I will have anything more to do with her. She is a tigress, a little she-devil. I have thrashed and beat and kicked her, but I cannot get the spirit out. Let some other fellow try, and may Heaven wither him if he turns her loose near me again! Now then, what will the best of you give? She is a little travel-stained, perhaps—that comes of our march hither, and our subsequent disagreements—but all right otherwise, and, an some one could cure her of her spitfire nature and make her amenable to reason, she would be an ornament to any tent. Now you, Borghil, for instance—it was you, I think, who split the mother’s skull this morning—give me a bid for the daughter: you are not often bashful in such a case as this.”
“A penny then!” sang out Borghil of the Red Beard; “and, with maids as cheap as they be hereabouts, she’s dear at that,” and, while the laughter and jest went round, those rude islanders bid point by point for the unhappy girl who writhed and crouched before them. What could I do? Well I knew the vows my golden spurs put upon me, and the policy my borrowed knighthood warranted—and yet, she was not of gentle birth—’twas but the fortune of war. If men risked lives in that stern game, why should not maids risk something too? King Edward hated turmoil in the camp, and here on desperate venture, far in a hostile country, my soldier instinct rose against kindling such a blaze as would have burst out among these lawless, hot-tempered kerns, had I but drawn my sword a foot from its scabbard. And, thinking thus, I sat there with bent head scowling behind my visor-bars, and turning my eyes now to my ready hilt that shone so convenient at my thigh, and anon to the tall Normandy maid, so fair, so pitiful, and in such sorry straits.
While I sat thus uncertain, the girl’s price had gone up to fivepence, and, there being no one to give more, she was about to be handed over to an evil-looking fellow with a scar destroying one eye, and dividing his nose with a hideous yellow seam that went across his face from temple to chin. This gross mercenary had almost told the five coins into the blood-smudged hand of the other Irishman, and the bargain was near complete, when, to my surprise, Flamaucœur, who had been watching behind me, pushed his charger boldly to the front, and cried out in that smooth voice of his: “Wait a spell, my friends! I think the maid is worth another coin or two!” and he plunged his hand into the wallet that hung beside his dagger.
This interruption surprised every one, and for a moment there was a hush in the circle. Then he of the one eye, with a very wicked scowl, produced and bid another penny, the which Flamaucœur immediately capped by yet another. Each put down two more, and then the Celt came to the bottom of his store, and, with a monstrous oath, swept back his money, and, commending the maid and Flamaucœur to the bottom-most pit of hell, backed off amid his laughing friends.
Not a whit disconcerted, my peaceful gallant rode up to the grim purveyor of that melancholy chattel, and having paid the silver, with a calm indifference which it shocked me much to see, unwound a few feet of the halter-rope depending from his Fleming’s crupper. The loose end of this the man wound round and tied upon the twisted withies wherewith the maid’s white wrists were fastened.
Such an escape from the difficulty had never occurred to my slower mind, and now, when my lad turned toward the quarter where his tent lay, and, apparently mighty content with himself, stepped his charger out with the unhappy girl trailing along at his side, his lightness greatly pained me. Nor was I pleasured by the laughter and gibes of English squires and knights who met us.
“Hullo! you valorous two,” called out a mounted captain, “whose hen-roosts have you been robbing?” And then another said, “Faith! they’ve been recruiting,” and again, “’Tis a new page they’ve got to buckle them up and smooth their soldier pillows.” All this was hard to bear, and I saw that even Flamaucœur hung his head a little and presently rode along by byways less frequented. At one time he turned to me most innocent-like and said:
“Such a friend as this is just what I have been needing ever since I left the English shore.”