Chapter 31 - Page 2

now the month of May had come, which was both her good and ill month. For in May she first went to Vaucouleurs and prophesied, in May she delivered Orleans, and in May she was taken at Compiegne. Wherefore I deemed, as men will, that in May she should escape her prison, or in May should die. Moreover, on the first day of March they had asked her, mocking her--

"Shalt thou be delivered?"

And she had answered--

"Ask me on this day three months, and I shall declare it to you."

The English, knowing this, made all haste to end her ere May ended, wherefore I had the more occasion for speed.

Now, on a certain day, being May the eighth, the heart of John Grey was merry within him. He had well drunk, and I had let him win of me, at the dice, that one of my three horses which most he coveted.

He then struck me in friendly fashion on the back, and cried--

"An unlucky day for thee, and for England. This very day, two years agone, that limb of the devil drove us by her sorceries from before Orleans. But to-morrow--" and he laughed grossly in his beard. "Storey, you are a good fellow, though a fool at the dice."

"Faith, I have met my master," I said. "But the lesson you gave me was worth bay Salkeld," for so I had named my horse, after a great English house on the Border who dwell at the Castle of Corby.

"I will do thee a good turn," he said. "You crave to see this Puzel, ere they put on her the high witch's cap for her hellward journey."

"I should like it not ill," I said; "it were something to tell my grandchildren, when all France is English land."

"Then you shall see her, for this is your last chance to see her whole."

"What mean you, fair sir?" I asked, while my heart gave a turn in my body, and I put out my hand to a great tankard of wine.

"To-morrow the charity of the Church hath resolved that she shall be had into the torture-chamber."

I set my lips to the tankard, and drank long, to hide my face, and for that I was nigh swooning with a passion of fear and wrath.

"Thanks to St. George," I said, "the end is nigh!"

"The end of the tankard," quoth he, looking into it, "hath already come. You drink like a man of the Land Debatable."

Yet I was in such case that, though by custom I drink little, the great draught touched not my brain, and did but give me heart.

"You might challenge at skinking that great Danish knight who was with us under Orleans, Sir Andrew Haggard was his name, and his bearings were . . . " {39}

So he was running on, for he himself had drunk more than his share, when I brought him back to my matter.

"But as touching this Puzel, how may I