Here I must needs write of a shameful thing, which I knew not then, or I would have ridden with a heavier heart, but I was told concerning the matter many years after, by Messire Enguerrand de Monstrelet, a very learned knight, and deep in the counsels of the Duke of Burgundy.

“You were all sold,” he said to me, at Dijon, in the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and forty-seven—­“you were all sold when you marched against Paris town.  For the Maid, with D’Alencon, rode from Compiegne towards Paris, on the twenty-third of August, if I remember well”; and here he turned about certain written parchments that lay by him.  “Yea, on the twenty-third she left Compiegne, but on the twenty-eighth of that month the Archbishop of Reims entered the town, and there he met the ambassadors of the Good Duke of Burgundy.  There he and they made a compact between them, binding your King and the Duke, that their truce should last till Noel, but that the duke might use his men in the defence of Paris against all that might make onfall.  Now, the Archbishop and the King knew well that the Maid was, in that hour, marching on Paris.  To what purpose make a truce, and leave out of the peace the very point where war should be?  Manifestly the French King never meant to put forth the strength of his army in helping the Maid.  There was to be truce between France and Burgundy, but none between England and the Maid.”

So Messire Enguerrand told me, a learned knight and a grave, and thus was the counsel of the saints defeated by the very King whom they sought to aid.  But of this shameful treaty we men-at-arms knew nothing, and so hazarded our lives against loaded dice.

CHAPTER XX—­CONCERNING THE MAID AND THE BIRDS

We rode northwards, first through lands that I had travelled in before to Orleans, and so into a country then strange to me, passing by way of Lagny, with intent to go to Senlis, where we deemed the King lay.  The whole region being near Paris, and close under the English power, was rich and peaceful of aspect, the corn being already reaped, and standing in sheaves about the fields, whether to feed Englishmen or Frenchmen, none could tell.  For the land was in a kind of hush, in expectancy and fear, no man knowing how things should fall out at Paris.  Natheless the Prior of Lagny, within that very week wherein we came, had gone to St. Denis, and yielded his good town into the hands of the Duc d’Alencon for the King.  And the fair Duke had sent thither Messire Ambrose de Lore, a very good knight, with Messire Jehan Foucault, and many men-at-arms.

To Messire Ambrose we were brought, that we might give and take his news.  I remember well that I dropped out of the saddle at the door of his lodgings, and could scarce stand on my legs, so weary was I with the long and swift riding.  Never had I ridden so far, and so fast, fresh horses standing saddled and bridled for Thomas Scott and me at every stage, but the beast which I had hired I sent back from the first stage to mine host of the “Hanging Sword.”  Not without labour I climbed the stairs to the chamber of Messire Ambrose, who bade us sit down, and called for wine to be given us, whereof Thomas Scott drank well, but I dared take none, lest my legs should wholly refuse their office.