ALAIN THE GENTLE
Soldier
by Marcel Schwob
Marcel Schwob / Alain el Gentil
From the age of twelve he served Charles VII as an archer, for he was brought up by men-at-arms in the flat country of Normandy and the circumstance of his adoption was the following. When the armies came through that region, burning barns, skinning the legs of peasants with their sheath-knives and flinging young girls down broken on their beds, Alain was hid in an empty cask at the door of a wine press, and when the soldiers tumbled the cask upside down they found him. They carried him away just as he was, in his shirt and his perky petticoat, to the captain of the troop, who gave him a little leather jacket and a cape that had been through the battle of Saint-Jacques. Perrin Godin taught him how to draw a bow and how to gamble at cards. In this company he passed through Bordeaux, Angouleme and Poitou to Bourges; saw SaintPourcain where the king sat beyond the marches of Lorrain; visited Tout; returned to Picardy; entered Flanders; crossed SaintQuentin and turned again toward Normandy. During his twenty-three years of military travel he met the Englishman,Jehan Poule-Cras, from whom he learned British curses; Chiquerello the Lombard, who instructed him in the cure of Saint-Anthony’s fire; and young Ydre de Laon, who taught him how to pull down breastworks.
Lorenette wanted a green cloth jacket, so Alain went back to the White Horse tavern at Lisieux where they had recently bought a jug of wine. That night he crept into the garden, made a hole in the wall with his pike, and so gained the hall of the inn where he found seven brass ecus, a red hat and a gold ring. Jaquet le Grand, pawnbroker of Lisieux, changed this assortment for a jacket such as Lorenette desired.
When they reached Bayeaux Lorenette went to live in a small painted house of none too scrupulous reputation. Alain the Gentle wanted her back again, but when he went for her the mistress of the house showed him the door, candle in one hand, a dangerous looking rock in the other, asking him if he would like to have his muscles rubbed to drive away the boils. Alain ran away, but he knocked the candle out of the woman’s hand as he went, grabbing what he thought was a precious ring from her finger. It turned out to be only a big pink pebble in a brass setting.
Alain left Lisieux to wander aimlessly along the roads. In the Hotel de Papegaut at Maubusson he found one of his old comrades in arms, Karandas, eating tripe with another fellow by the name of Jehan Petit. Karandas was still carrying his halberd while Jehan Petit wore a purse in his belt with pretty silver trinkets dangling from it. His belt buckle was solid silver too. After some drinking all three decided to walk through the woods to Senlis. It was late when they took the road, and when they were deep in the darkness of the wood Alain the Gentle prepared himself. Jehan Petit walked just ahead of him; there in the dark Alain let him have the pike straight between the shoulders while Karandas brought his halberd down across his head. Jehan fell flat on his face, then Alain was over him at a stride, cutting his throat from ear to ear. Afterwards Alain stuffed the hole in his neck with dry leaves to avoid leaving a marsh of blood on the path. The moon rose clear above the trees. Alain cut the silver buckle from the dead man’s belt and clipped the pretty silver trinkets dangling on his purse. There were sixteen lyons, gold, in the purse, with thirty-six patars. Alain kept the lyons, tossing the purse and the trinkets to Karandas for his pains, but holding his pike well poised as he did so. There in the bright moonlight they parted, each his own way, Karandas swearing by the blood of God.
Since Alain the Gentle dared not go on now to Senlis he returned to the city of Rouen. He spent the night under a blossoming hedge and woke surrounded by mounted men who bound his hands and led him off to prison. As they neared the gates he contrived to slip behind one of the horses, making a dash for the church of SaintPatrice, where he managed to gain the sanctuary of the High Altar. His captors of a moment before were not permitted to pass the door of the sacred building. Safe while he remained there, Alain walked freely up and down the nave and the choir, admiring the fine chalices of rich plate and the other vessels, thinking how nice they would be melted down. The following night he had two companions, Denisot and Marignon, thieves like himself. One of Marignon’s ears had been cropped off. Soon they thought of nothing but food, envying the little prowling mice that nested between the flagstones and fattened on crumbs of holy bread. When the third night came hunger drove them out, all three, and the waiting guardsmen seized them. Alain cried “clerk” —but forgot to take off his green sleeves.
Gaining a moment’s retirement for an urgent purpose, he tried to disguise those telltale sleeves by plunging his arms up to the elbows in manure. The sergeant of the guards caught him at it, however, and told the magistrate. A barber shaved Alain’s head clean, effacing his priestly tonsure. The judges laughed at the grotesque Latin of his psalms, though he had the audacity to swear a bishop had ordained him with a box on the ear when he was ten years old. He could not begin to say his pater-nosters. They put him to the question like a layman, first on the greater question, then on the lesser. Down by the fires in the kitchen prison he declared all his crimes, his limbs swollen by shackles and his throat racked. A lieutenant pronounced his sentence through the town. Tied to the tail of a cart, he was dragged all the way to the gallows and hanged. His body grew sun¬ burned after a time, for the hangman took his jacket, his green sleeves and the fine cloth cape trimmed with fur which he had stolen out of a tavern.
Marcel Schwob
Imaginary Lives
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