第66章 HOW ELLIOT'S JACKANAPES WAS SEEN AT THE KING'SCROW

He held forth his hand to me,saying,"All is as well as heart could desire,and the Maid bids you follow her,if you may,to the taking of Paris,for there she says will be your one chance to win your spurs.And now let me eat and drink,for the heat is great,the ways dusty,and I half famished.Thereafter ask me what you will,and you,Elliot,come not between a hungry man and his meat."So he spoke,sitting at his table with his tankard in his hand,and his wallets lying about him on the floor.Elliot was therefore fain not to be embracing him,but rather to carve for him,and serve in the best manner,that he might sup the quicker and tell us all his tale.This he did at last,Elliot sitting on his knee,with her arm about his neck.But,as touches the sacring,how it was done,though many of the peers of France were not there to see,and how noble were the manners of the King and the Maid,who stood there with her banner,and of the only reward which she would take,namely,that her townsfolk should live free of tax and corvee,all this is known and written of in Chronicles.Nor did I see it myself,so I pass by.But,next to actual beholding of that glorious rite,the best thing was to hear my master tell of it,taking out his books,wherein he had drawn the King,and the Maid in her harness,and many of the great lords.From these pictures a tapestry was afterwards wrought,and hung in Reims Cathedral,where it is to this day:the Maid on horseback beckoning the King onward,the Scots archers beside him in the most honourable place,as was their lawful due,and,behind all,the father of the Maid entering Reims by another road.By great good fortune,and by virtue of being a fellow-traveller with Thomas Scott,the rider of the King's stable,my master found lodgings easily enough.So crowded was the town that,the weather being warm,in mid July,many lay in tabernacles of boughs,in the great place of Reims,and there was more singing that night than sleeping.But my master had lain at the hostelry called L'Asne Roye,in the parvise,opposite to the cathedral,where also lay Jean d'Arc,the father of the Maid.

Thither she herself came to visit him,and she gave gifts to such of the people of her own countryside as were gathered at Reims.

"And,Jeannot,do you fear nothing?"one of them asked her,who had known her from a child.

"I fear nothing but treason,"my master heard her reply,a word that we had afterwards too good cause to remember.

"And is she proud now that she is so great?"asked Elliot.