Yet men murmured against the Maid not only in their hearts, but openly, and many men-at-arms ceased to love her cause, both for the slaying of Franquet d’Arras, and because she was for putting away the leaguer-lasses, and, when she might, would suffer no plundering.  Whether she was right or wrong, it behoves me not to judge, but this I know, that the King’s men fought best when she was best obeyed.  And, like Him who sent her, she was ever of the part of the poor and the oppressed, against strong knights who rob and ravish and burn and torture, and hold to ransom.  Therefore the Archbishop of Reims, who was never a friend of the Maid, said openly in a letter to the Reims folk that “she did her own will, rather than obeyed the commandments of God.”  But that God commands knights and gentlemen to rob the poor and needy (though indeed He has set a great gulf between a manant and a gentleman born) I can in nowise believe.  For my part, when I have been where gentlemen and captains lamented the slaying of Franquet d’Arras, and justified the dealings of the English with the Maid, I have seemed to hear the clamour of the cruel Jews:  “Tolle hunc, et dimitte nobis Barabbam.” {35} For Barabbas was a robber.  Howbeit on this matter, as on all, I humbly submit me to the judgment of my superiors and to Holy Church.

Meantime the Maid rode from Lagny, now to Soissons, now to Senlis, now to Crepy-en-Valois, and in Crepy she was when that befell which I am about to relate.

CHAPTER XXVI—­HOW, AND BY WHOSE DEVICE, THE MAID WAS TAKEN AT COMPIEGNE

“Verily and indeed the Maid is of wonderful excellence,” quoth Father Francois to me, in my chamber at the Jacobins, where I was healing of my hurts.

“Any man may know that, who is in your company,” the father went on speaking.

“And how, good father?” I asked him; “sure I have caught none of her saintliness.”

“A saint I do not call you, but I scarce call you a Scot.  For you are a clerk.”

“The Maid taught me none of my clergy, father, nor have I taught her any of mine.”

“She needs it not.  But you are peaceful and gentle; you brawl not, nor drink, nor curse . . . "

“Nay, father, with whom am I to brawl, or how should I curse in your good company?  Find you Scots so froward?”

“But now, pretending to be our friends, a band of them is harrying the Sologne country . . . "

“They will be Johnstons and Jardines, and wild wood folk of Galloway,” I said.  “These we scarce reckon Scots, but rather Picts, and half heathen.  And the Johnstons and Jardines are here belike, because they have made Scotland over hot to hold them.  We are a poor folk, but honest, let by the clans of the Land Debatable and of Ettrick Forest, and the Border freebooters, and the Galloway Picts, and Maxwells, and Glendinnings, and the red-shanked, jabbering Highlanders and Islesmen, and some certain of the Angus folk, and, maybe, a wild crew in Strathclyde.”