Gaucherie: Some theologians would consider the king’s attitude unorthodox. Christ’s blood sacrifice is supposed to be the ultimate and adequate one. On the other hand, it’s possible to argue that other offerings have their power through association with Christ’s …
Jehanne: What is the astrology you cast the king?
Gaucherie: I can’t tell you that. You could be anyone.
De Metz: He still thinks you’re a cow-boy, Jehanne. Show him your tits.
Jehanne: I’m bound to the king. The king and I are the one breath …
Jean de Metz said to tell her and shrugged his hips as if to balance himself for the taking out of weapons.
Bertrand: Jean, you can’t talk that way to a royal dignitary.
De Metz nonetheless had Gaucherie by the eyes – or the other way round.
Gaucherie: The details are quite secret. But one thing I can tell you. Anyone can see it, just by looking. Virgo is in the ascendant, Venus, Mercury and the sun are halfway up the sky. Every village astrologer knows it. It’s the interpretation that counts. And the interpretation you cannot have. The king is my client in that matter.
Bertrand: I’m very sorry. My friend doesn’t realize …
De Metz: Listen, your friend’s all bloody right.
Gamherie: Excuse me, I’d hoped to visit the shrine of St Catherine before it’s too dark.
Jehanne got in front of him.
Jehanne: Thank you Maître. I’ve learned so much.
Gaucherie: Virgo …
He was looking at her closely to find likenesses between her and the trim constellations he’d seen deploying above Chinon. Then he went out to meet the tumour-lady and see Ste Catherine’s hardware.
Although the question of blood sacrifice raised by Gaucherie had resonated in Bertrand, he tried to soothe Jehanne.
Bertrand: Don’t take that sacrifice seriously. But the stars! Very meaningful, very meaningful.
Jehanne thought the king had sent that Maître Gaucherie to look at her and if Gaucherie’s report was good she’d get straight into the throne-room.
Jehanne: Bertrand, Jean, can we go straight on in the morning?
Bertrand: Yes. Fifteen miles. We might be there by noon.
Jehanne: I’m going for a walk.
What she wanted on her walk was to see a Mass or at least a crucifix. The Mass and crucifix were cool. They told you the blood, the impaling, the smotheration did not go on and on and on. The blood of a sacrificial god didn’t hurt forever.
In the empty village church Christ was resting on his gibbet as never he did in the hot agonies of Golgotha.
On a dripping Sunday afternoon they took rooms at a pub Colet had recommended just inside the Lorraine Gate of Chinon. It was the Sunday they called Laetare and at home, in Domremy-à-Greux, the priest would have read the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple to the incorrigible king-oak of Boischenu. Afterwards all the unmarried sat down and ate rolls under the tree, and hard-boiled eggs.
From the Lorraine Gate of Chinon you could see the river, brash ice floating in it, and the thin jumbled town. Above it all, on a ridge following the river’s line, the knotted skein of great towers. In one of those, the king, his undernourished presence!
Jehanne felt very tired. The complicated walls and forest of turrets on the mountain ran across her vision like some code she could not deal with. She thought perhaps he’s not reading the general’s letters about me. Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps he’ll say go home. You can’t disobey a king.
The landlady forced supper on her, a herring stew. It steamed in her face. She ate it quickly, with lumps of bread.
Later, while Bertrand and de Metz were out, Colet the messenger called in and told her about the tangle of royal masonry above the town. It was three castles in fact. In the northern one, called Coudray, a lot of officials lived. In the centre, St Louis, where the towers were highest, lived the king. In the southernmost, St George, was the military governor and the garrison.
Jehanne: I suppose it could be days and days …
She meant before the king sees me.
De Vienne: Maybe. But people know about you up there. The whole family’s very hot on prophets. Charles’s crazy old man always gave them a hearing. He used to give audiences to a sibyl called la Gasque. She told him which of the Popes was the true one. She turned out to be wrong … But he’ll see you.
It was five days before anything happened. Even then the happening was oblique: two horsemen wearing royal blue tabards with gold lilies came for de Poulengy and de Metz. Jehanne argued but wasn’t taken: she wasn’t in their instructions.
Only a few hours before, Bertrand and Jean had bathed and bought new doublets and were now grateful for it. Jehanne had also bathed – not at the public baths but in a back room of the house. But it counted for nothing.
She lent Bertrand her good cloak because his was a mess from the journey. She gave Jean de Metz instructions.
Jehanne: Tell him I’m the one he has to see. It’s urgent.
De Metz made a face. He’d never met a king before and intended to feel his way.
In the church of St Maurice, where she wandered that afternoon, there was a weird fresco. Christ faced a crowd of well-dressed people. Their faces glowed with a gentle enough interest. But he was looking over his shoulder, frowning, as if he didn’t want to get any closer. The crowd had begun to make a path for him in their midst. Whoever painted it … some Italian probably … knew how it was with gods.
They weren’t back till dark. They couldn’t sit. Memories kept stinging them, memories of poor phrasing, of ineptitudes, timidity before interrogators.
The afternoon’s history came out in jagged pieces. How small the little room where the king worked. Monsieur de Gaucourt bullied them. De Gaucourt? The Master of Household. There were three bishops with the king, four other theologians, suspecting them of espionage or witchcraft. The Queen of Sicily, Yolande, large, square, dark, silent.
Hearing it, the girl hissed and hit the wall.
Jehanne: I should be seeing her for myself.
Bertrand: And there was Maître Machet the king’s confessor.
Jehanne: I should be seeing him.
Bertrand: We did our best.
She asked had the king asked anything.
De Metz: Just twice.
He’d asked his confessor, Maître Machet, if that part of the country (round the Meuse) wasn’t famous for witches. He’d asked if she was still a virgin.
Bertrand actually winked at Jehanne. He was highly stimulated by his afternoon with royalty.
When Jehanne asked them what he looked like they argued. Bertrand idealized him and de Metz reacted with worse and worse and even obscene depictions of his bad features – the heavy eyes, the long nose.
They agreed he didn’t dress well.
Jehanne: Did you tell him the only one to talk to was me?
Of course they hadn’t, they felt they’d been lucky enough to be able to breathe in that exalted environment. Now they went downstairs and started drinking. A little celebration. They were thinking, this is the one time we’re ever going to get close to the king in our lives. Have we made enough of it?
They weren’t sure.
That night three priests came to question Jehanne. One was Maître Machet, the king’s confessor and another Pierre 1’Hermite to whom the king also confessed. They introduced themselves and were not hostile. She told them the same things she had told the general and Fournier in Vaucouleurs. It already depressed her a little, all the reiterating she must go on doing. In the intimacy of a hotel parlour they didn’t seem very special men, however prodigious they might have looked against a court background. Had she belonged to a coven? Did she often confess? (The king confesses daily, said Machet. You have a powerful ear, Maître, she very nearly told him.) Why did she want to stay a virgin? Did she want to be a nun?
She said there were some things she couldn’t tell them, she could only tell the king.
They got
ready to go: their notaries were shuffling together the record of their dialogue.
Jehanne: When?
Machet: This is a question for the Council. There’s a Council meeting in the morning. Perhaps after that, perhaps never. I can’t say.
Jehanne: You can tell him things in the confessional …
Machet: I don’t use the confessional that way …
Jehanne had already heard rumours however that he did.
Jehanne: It’ll all happen in the end, anyhow, Monsieur. We might as well get things going.
Machet: God in heaven!
But he did not hide that he was some way pleased by her quality. The rumour she had heard was that he was devoted to Maman Yolande.
Saturday.
The two messengers from the castle came in the early afternoon. It was to be seven o’clock at night, in the Grand Logis. She was dressed at four in the clothes given by Alain’s committee and wouldn’t eat supper. De Metz and de Poulengy sat with her giving her confidence. They knew that, after all, entering a fixed path amidst well-dressed people was what frightened her.
All the bells of Chinon rang Vespers – from the castle, from the city churches. Immediately Bertrand was found to be weeping.
Jehanne: Bertrand?
Bertrand: You won’t be coming back. You’re out of our area now.
She found that Jacques had been right: she had no graciousness for saying soft things at such times.
Jehanne: You’ll be riding up the mountain with me, won’t you?
Bertrand nodded and brushed his tears one at a time off his lashes.
De Metz: You won’t be coming back though. Whatever happens. And anything could happen. That worries Bertrand too.
Jehanne: Only one thing can happen.
She ached to say softer things. She saw de Metz’s strange discoloured eyes on her. Soon they might return to their old enthusiasms. Their old certainties: fire, rape, the trading of persons, the loot business. For the moment they said in mercy talk to Bertrand! She could say nothing to either man, she went and sat in a corner. While she was there she heard de Metz talking to Bertrand.
De Metz: Tonight, when we get back, we’ll get in Honnecourt and Julien and have a proper booze-up. And you can get dressed up and fool around …
Outside the pub a crowd grew. It pressed the door and trampled the garbage. From the upstairs windows you could see its breath going up like incense. They began to chant Noël.
Jehanne: Why are they doing that?
Bertrand looked radiant.
Bertrand: For you, Jehanne.
He opened a window and began to shout down at them. Noël, Noël. There was that about Bertrand: he liked to savour occasions.
He and de Metz had to force her through the crowd, swords drawn, when it was time to leave.
Jehanne kept asking the people why they were there, who had given them the enthusiasm. She got no answers.
Bertrand and de Metz had to leave her at the Barbican Gate. There were six young knights there in buffed white armour and rich tunics. On the tunics were heraldic falcons, beeches, barrels, stag horns, all the mysterious symbols of high birth. Bertrand seemed discomfited, shame-faced, not having any fine symbols for his own blood.
Thanks, Jehanne said a few times, thanks. Her attention was on the six pretty knights and the breakneck track up through the main gate into the outer yard. It would take ten minutes on foot.
She asked one of the knights.
Jehanne: Can’t we ride, Monsieur?
He rattled his cuirass.
Knight: It’s too hard on horses and we don’t want to have a fall in this stuff. Monsieur de Gaucourt sends his respects and says he’s waiting for you in the main yard.
Jehanne: The main yard?
Knight: Up there.
The terrible mountain overbore her, the king on its top. She’d be panting when she saw him.
She walked in the middle, three of de Gaucourt’s handsome boys on either side. On their foreheads silk twisted white and blue, indisputable knights banneret. She could smell their indifference under the cold moon.
They carried their helmets at their waists, ornate salades that terminated in steel eagles’ and griffins’ heads. She was amongst the aristocracy. Brother Jesus, teach me to be rude.
At the inner gate guards asked them to wait and someone went to find de Gaucourt. He had obviously been talking or drinking or both at once in one of the military apartments in the main wall.
When he came he was smaller than his knights. He wasn’t cold anyhow. He was unambiguously hostile.
De Gaucourt: They’re all waiting.
Some way inside the inner yard, past a white chapel, she could suddenly hear a crowd of talkers. She could hear people laughing, men and women. She kept looking straight ahead towards the old keep, its windows all shuttered, but knew it could not be the source of the noise.
De Gaucourt: Over there.
There was a vast hall, two floors high. Some of its upstairs windows were glassed and lights shone under the glass.
De Gaucourt: Have you ever been to a castle before?
Jehanne: Vaucouleurs.
De Gaucourt: Vaucouleurs? Oh yes. You’ll find this bigger.
She wanted to tell him you won’t get me to play the hick.
The six knights went ahead, up the steps into the hall and then up the inner stairs.
De Gaucourt: Do you know what’s in there?
Jehanne: The king, Monsieur.
De Gaucourt: Not only the king. Three hundred knights dressed like me. Officials. Their wives. Superbly dressed. Bishops and theologians. You see, you’re famous. But imagine how angry they’re going to be if you waste their time.
Jehanne: There is no need to talk to me like that.
De Gaucourt: Everyone says Virgo’s in the ascendant. Just the same, if things weren’t desperate, you wouldn’t get a look-in.
Jehanne: If things weren’t desperate I wouldn’t want to try, Monsieur.
She put her gloves back on her sweating hands. The count went ahead of her upstairs. At the top his knights were waiting for him behind screens that cut that end of the hall off from the rest. Over this part was a low wooden roof through which footsteps could be heard and the twanging of stringed instruments. That was the musicians’ gallery and the players were tuning up. The noise from the body of the hall was high, sounding fatuous and hostile. Even in this cold porch the heat of all those voices was unwelcome.
De Gaucourt: Go ahead.
It was so bright in there, it was all terrible splendour. She was grateful that for many seconds no one noticed she was there. Down the centre was an aisle. On one side were the three hundred knights … Gaucourt said there were three hundred, there looked to be three hundred. There were capes, cloaks, tunics over their steel. On the other side scarlet-gold-blue lords and their ladies. Some of them caressing against the walls. Royal stewards, blue and gold, knowing the audience had started, moved amongst the nobility, whacking them over the shoulders with short staffs.
Now people were beginning to see her. She could not believe she’d ever get through all the symbols that challenged her from clothing. Fishes and apples, dogs and tusked boars, black elephants, formal roses, towers, falcons, fishes, checks and crescents, hearts and oak fronds. Shells, crows, keys, roosters, bridges, onions, sheafs, hammers, ships and fettered swans. A hot interest in the eyes above the symbols. A hot fusty interest. She preferred the coldness of the six young men.
A lot of them, on both sides of the hall, were clearly drunk. They all wore their hats.
At the end of the room was a dais. A confusion of men sat there on chairs all of equal height, and two women. Both wore small circlet crowns. They were dark, the young one much slighter than the older. It was the queen of France and her mother Yolande.
Machet came down from the dais and took Jehanne from de Gaucourt. She scarcely recognized him. He was in armour with a tunic of pomegranates.
Jehanne: I didn’t know you were
a knight, Maître.
Her voice pulsed.
Machet: My family are lords of Blois. Come and meet the king.
He looked a prisoner between two heavy men sitting on his left and Maman Yolande two places off on his right. Even by the standards of March he was a pale man. His eyes were heavy as everyone said, his nose like someone’s chilblained finger. The fat unhappy lips seemed to quiver with questions.
Behind the lips, the mystery of kingship her blood was written off against!
Her head rang. It was like waking up to find yourself married to a stranger.
He would not take his strange drugged eyes off her. He was dressed in an unevenly blue quilted gown. That was a visible sign of their connection: they were the two worst dressed people in the Grand Logis.
She went on to the dais, got on her knees, kissed the hem of the quilted gown. It smelt of mould.
Jehanne: My name is Jehanne. I’m a virgin. Since I was thirteen I’ve had voices telling me I’m to lead you to Rheims to be anointed. Lately they talked about Orleans too.
He said nothing, didn’t look any more or less pained.
Jehanne: Messire told me to tell you these things.
The King: Messire?
It was a thin voice, the bones showed through it.
Jehanne: Christ our brother wants it all to happen.
The King: Is Christ our brother? Our brother?
The close relationship seemed to appeal to him. Though he had suffered greatly from close relations.
Later, people would wonder why he took to Jehanne so quickly.
It happened that from that second he could smell a sort of deliverance in her. Her brown protuberant eyes had a non-political guile in them. All she wanted to do was achieve her own victimhood. He could tell that and was excited.
Jehanne: There are other things I could tell. Only you.
The King: All right. Over in the bay. (He called over his shoulder.) Put two chairs there.
Blood Red, Sister Rose: A Novel of the Maid of Orleans Page 14
