A Monk of Fife eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 388 pages of information about A Monk of Fife.

A Monk of Fife eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 388 pages of information about A Monk of Fife.

Then he drained the flagon.

The Maid, holding the girl Charlotte yet closer to her, smote her right hand on the table, so that it dirled, and the cups and dishes leaped.

“You have been with your counsel,” she cried, “and I have been with mine!  The counsel of Messire will stand fast and prevail, and yours shall perish, for it is of men.  Go back, and bear my words to the captains,” quoth she; and then, turning to us, who looked on her in amazement, she said—­

“Do ye all rise right early, and more than ye have done to-day shall ye do.  Keep ever close by me in the mellay, for to-morrow I shall have much to do, and more than ever yet I did.  And to-morrow shall my blood leap from my body, above my breast, for an arrow shall smite here!” and she struck the place with her hand.

Thereon the knight, seeing that she was not to be moved, made his obeisance, and went back to them that sent him, and all we lay down to sleep while we might.

These words of the Maid I, Norman Leslie, heard, and bear record that they are true.

CHAPTER XIV—­OF THE FIGHTING AT THE BRIDGE, AND OF THE PRIZE WON BY NORMAN LESLIE FROM THE RIVER

On that night I slept soft, and woke oft, being utterly foredone.  In the grey dawn I awoke, and gave a little cough, when, lo! there came a hot sweet gush into my mouth, and going to the window, I saw that I was spitting of blood, belike from my old wound.  It is a strange thing that, therewith, a sickness came over me, and a cold fit as of fear, though fear I had felt none where men met in heat of arms.  None the less, seeing that to-day, or never, I was to be made or marred, I spoke of the matter neither to man nor woman, but drinking a long draught of very cold water, I spat some deal more, and then it stanched, and I armed me and sat down on my bed.

My thoughts, as I waited for the first stir in the house, were not glad.  Birds were singing in the garden trees; all else was quiet, as if men were not waking to slay each other and pass unconfessed to their account.  There came on me a great sickness of war.  Yesterday the boulevard of Les Augustins, when the fight was over, had been a shambles; white bodies that had been stripped of their armour lay here and there like sheep on a hillside, and were now smirched with dust, a thing unseemly.  I put it to myself that I was engaged, if ever man was, in a righteous quarrel, fighting against cruel oppression; and I was under the protection of one sent, as I verily believed, by Heaven.

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A Monk of Fife from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.