“Bring me my horse,” she said, so sternly that I crushed the answer on my lips, and the prayer that she would risk herself no more.

Her horse, that had been cropping the grass near him happily enough, I found, and brought to her, and so, with some ado, she mounted and rode at a foot’s pace to the little crowd of captains.

“Maiden, ma mie,” said the Bastard.  “Glad I am to see you able to mount.  We have taken counsel to withdraw for this night.  Martin,” he said to his trumpeter, “sound the recall.”

“I pray you, sir,” she said very humbly, “grant me but a little while”; and so saying, she withdrew alone from the throng of men into the vineyard.

What passed therein I know not and no man knows; but in a quarter of an hour’s space she came forth, like another woman, her face bright and smiling, her cheeks like the dawn, and so beautiful that we marvelled on her with reverence, as if we had seen an angel.

“The place is ours!” she cried again, and spurred towards the fosse.  Thence her banner had never gone back, for D’Aulon held it there, to be a terror to the English.  Even at that moment he had given it to a certain Basque, a very brave man, for he himself was out-worn with its weight.  And he had challenged the Basque to do a vaillance, or boastful deed of arms, as yesterday I and the Spaniard had done.  So D’Aulon leaped into the fosse, his shield up, defying the English; but the Basque did not follow, for the Maid, seeing her banner in the hands of a man whom she knew not, laid hold of it, crying, “Ha, mon estandart! mon estandart!”

There, as they struggled for it, the Basque being minded to follow D’Aulon to the wall foot, the banner wildly waved, and all men saw it, and rallied, and flocked amain to the rescue.

“Charge!” cried the Maid.  “Forward, French and Scots; the place is yours, when once my banner fringe touches the wall!”

With that word the wind blew out the banner fringe, and so suddenly that, though I saw the matter, I scarce knew how it was done, the whole host swarmed up and on, ladders, lifted, and so furiously went they, that they won the wall crest and leaped within the fort.  Then the more part of the English, adread, as I think, at the sight of the Maid whom they had deemed slain, fled madly over the drawbridge into Les Tourelles.

Then standing on the wall crest, whither I had climbed, I beheld strange sights.  First, through the dimness of the dusk, I saw a man armed, walking as does a rope-dancer, balancing himself with his spear, across the empty air, for so it seemed, above the broken arch of the bridge.  This appeared, in very sooth, to be a miracle; but, gazing longer, I saw that a great beam had been laid by them of Orleans to span the gap, and now other beams were being set, and many men, bearing torches, were following that good knight, Nicole Giresme, who first showed the way over such a bridge of dread.  So now were the English in Les Tourelles between two fires.