emember no more than a flight
through air, and the dead stroke of a fall on earth with a stone above
me. For such is the fortune of war, whereof a man knows but his own
share for the most part, and even that dimly. The eyes are often blinded
with swift running to be at the wall, and, what with a helm that rings to
sword-blows, and what with smoke, and dust, and crying, and clamour, and
roar of guns, it is but little that many a man-at-arms can tell
concerning the frays wherein, may be, he has borne himself not unmanly.

This was my lot at Pont l'Eveque, and I knew but little of what passed
till I found myself in very great anguish. For I had been laid in one of
the carts, and so was borne along the way we had come, and at every turn
of the wheels a new pang ran through me. For my life I could not choose
but groan, as others groaned that were in the same cart with me. For my
right leg was broken, also my right arm, and my head was stounding as if
it would burst. It was late and nigh sunset or ever we won the gates of
Compiegne, having lost, indeed, but thirty men slain, but having wholly
failed in our onfall. For I heard in the monastery whither I was borne
that, when the Maid and Xaintrailles and their men had won their way
within the walls, and had slain certain of the English, and were pushing
the others hard, behold our main battle was fallen upon in the rear by
the English from Noyon, some two miles distant from Pont l'Eveque.
Therefore there was no help for it but retreat we must, driving back the
English to Noyon, while our wounded and all our munitions of war were
carried orderly away.

As to the pains I bore in that monastery of the Jacobins, when my broken
bones were set by a very good surgeon, there is no need that I should
write. My fortune in war was like that of most men-at-arms, or better
than that of many who are slain outright in their first skirmish. Some
good fortune I had, as at St. Pierre, and again, bad fortune, of which
this was the worst, that I could not be with the Maid: nay, never again
did I ride under her banner.

She, for her part, was not idle, but, after tarrying certain days in
Compiegne with Guillaume de Flavy, she rode to Lagny, "for there," she
said, "were men that warred well against the English," namely, a company
of our Scots. And among them, as later I heard in my bed, was Randal
Rutherford, who had ransomed himself out of the hands of the French in
Paris, whereat I was