Charles thought: I shouldn’t be standing on the balls of my feet yelling after people. He sat and kept up the hard arguing with Laiguise.
Jehanne made herself return to the wall after an hour’s rest. D’Aulon, himself mounted, led her horse on a short rein. He could tell she wanted somehow to talk of Lavignac’s death and that conversation would return her to the siege, the afternoon, to herself. He said it was a shame that the boy died while the Troyes delegates were actually with the king.
Jehanne: Delegates?
Immediately d’Aulon knew he’d broken up some picture she had of the event, some necessary picture.
D’Aulon: The delegation from Troyes. They’ve been with the king this afternoon. Everyone knows.
Jehanne: Gilles? Does Gilles know?
D’Aulon: If I know, the Marshal de Rais is sure to know.
The king had told her to break the wall down. As if it were what he really wanted done.
Jehanne: Why are we all set to run at the walls then?
D’Aulon: To make it easy for the people inside to give up.
Jehanne: Eia!
She began to fall from her saddle. He reached back and caught her arm.
D’Aulon: I was certain you knew, Mademoiselle.
Jehanne: You ought to tell me these things, Jean. I’m a simple-minded person.
Back amongst the Bretons, she got down off her horse.
She saw a dozen Franciscans come out the Madeleine Gate and through the ditch. They carried a white flag like hers, Christ holding the earth on it. Jehanne could tell that one of them was zany Brother Richard. No one interfered with them. She walked on a line to intercept them on the road south into the suburbs. She edged round a bivouac of dozing Scots archers to confront Brother Richard.
Stop! his right hand told the others. He walked right up to her and knelt down.
In a sea of liars, she could tell he wasn’t a liar. As if for company, she found herself kneeling too.
Richard: The great God is preparing his way in Troyes and beyond Troyes, and his way in Troyes is nearly accomplished.
She groaned, she didn’t want perorations.
Jehanne: Does that mean they’ll open the gate to their king?
Richard: On the usual corrupt conditions.
Jehanne: Corrupt?
Richard: For example: all revenues and patronage bestowed on churchmen by the late king of France should be kept by them. All revenues and patronage bestowed by the late Henry and his boy should be kept.
Jehanne: You don’t care for the late Henry?
Brother Richard got incisive all at once.
Richard: Either Henry Monmouth was true heir or Charles Valois is. Both can’t be. Both can’t bestow revenues on fat clergy.
Jehanne: They don’t think things through the way you do.
Richard: Who don’t?
Jehanne: Politicians don’t.
Richard: I know that.
Jehanne: What’s it like in the city?
Richard: All the people are frightened there’ll be a slaughter. They think you’re an angel of death. They’re camping in the churches and I go around reassuring them.
Jehanne: It’s a work of great mercy.
Richard: I know you don’t want blood from such pathetic stones.
He touched her elbow.
Richard: I tell them you’re a saint unparalleled. The forerunner.
Jehanne: Let’s stand up.
It was hard work kneeling in armour.
Richard got up in one angular and practised glide. His eyes glowered, in another man it would have been erotic love, and a danger to her. But erotic love wasn’t one of the terms Brother Richard worked in. He had a raving chastity.
Richard: Let me tell you the manhood of Troyes are heckling the garrison. Cat-calling. The garrison will be let go, of course. The king will agree to that. He’ll let them go with their property.
Jehanne: Property?
Richard: I’ve come on behalf of their property.
Jehanne: I don’t understand.
Richard: The garrison owns three hundred French knights and others. A good soldier isn’t supposed to wriggle out of buying his ransom, that’s why they couldn’t write. But it seems they can tell a new dispensation will march in the gate with you. They don’t want to be taken away by the Burgundians.
Jehanne: Tell them they’re free, I promise …
Richard: But do you understand the problems, dear little saint? The king will tell the garrison yes, of course you can take them, they’re yours, acquired fairly. When you ride in at the Madeleine, the garrison will be on their way out of the Comporté and over the river. On what is poetically called safe conduct.
Jehanne: I’ll ride across town and catch up with them.
Richard: Ah!
Jehanne: Slip them the news. Those prisoners.
Richard: Yes.
He reached out for her shoulders.
Richard: Pax tecum, parvule virgo.
Jehanne: And with you, brother.
He began singing the Magnificat before he’d even taken his hands away. Turning his back then he gave the note to his brothers and led them back into the ditch. In the third verse, Maître Jean’s cannon spoke, but the noise sounded lazy and equivocal to Jehanne.
She thought, I’ve been used. The king? Not the king. People like Regnault, people like Fat Georges. So she told herself, and for the first time did not want to ask further.
Jehanne: I’ve been used then. They used me.
D’Aulon: It happens with soldiers. A lot of what they do is just gestures.
Jehanne: Let me tell you, Jean. The Lord of Lavignac is in hell now. For gestures.
D’Aulon: How can you be sure, Mademoiselle?
Jehanne: Would I tell you, if I wasn’t?
But she thought that if they went on talking about Lavignac, his damnation, Charles’s suspect decree that damned him, she’d be finished for the day.
Jehanne: When we go into Troyes we have to go in early. Across the town.
D’Aulon: Mademoiselle?
Jehanne: There’ll be Frenchmen there being made to leave with the garrison.
D’Aulon: Prisoners, Mademoiselle. Property of the Burgundians. We can’t interfere with that.
Jehanne: I see.
D’Aulon: It’d be a sort of robbery.
Too hard-up to feed captives, d’Aulon was still a man of his cast. Crime wasn’t to trample harvests, crime was to take the enemy’s prisoners from him.
Late on Saturday night everyone in the French army learned: the Madeleine would be opened at dawn the next morning. At the same time, the northern gates would open to let the Burgundians go. The knighthood and the girl could enter with the king. From dawn the French might line the king’s path into the city with guards. But there was no one on the walls who didn’t welcome him.
He knew it himself and was feverish with the gaiety of knowing it.
A little after five, Jehanne, d’Aulon, Minguet, Pasquerel, Bertrand, Jehan and Pierrolot rode in at the Madeleine and cantered across the town. From the cathedral they had to find a way north through the carts and furniture of the Burgundians.
No one seemed to notice them. Jehanne might just as well have been another decamping knight in the service of Burgundy.
The road through the centre of the city kept widening to squares. Even here her white silks drew the attention only of the early sun.
All these squares were crowded with furniture, wagons, archers, horses. You could hear laughter and songs.
Bertrand: They’re happy to be going, Jehanne.
Jehanne: Everyone’s happy except a few.
There were fine cloth-halls with stone-traceried fronts facing each of the squares. At the best of times it would be an elevating town to live in, a humane place.
With some hubris, Minguet rode through the Burgundians beating their shoulders with a knout and crying Way! Way!
In the square inside the Comporté Gate were a clutter of banners to s
how where the commandant waited for the packing to finish. In shade against the gate the French prisoners also waited. They wore breeches, jackets with the panels torn and the quilting coming through. Most of them had wristlet chains and there were a dozen on litters. Who could tell what their ranks were? But they must have been worth at least 500 pounds tournois.
This square was less crowded. She could rein in thirty metres from the commandant and still be face to face.
Jehanne: I’ve come to tell you, Messieurs. You can’t take your French with you.
They looked up, decided who it was, decided not to answer her, wanting her to feel foolish. But – for one thing – there was a quiver in their shoulders, they wanted to survey her well, the monster female, and carry their report north.
Jehanne: I’ve never taken or kept a soldier for profit. I could have. Ask your English friends. That day’s gone. The king’s coming. And a new day.
Burgundian Lord: The king said we can keep them. It’s fair dealing.
Jehanne: It isn’t the way things are going to be done.
Burgundian Lord: Madame, I won’t discuss it. You’re embarrassing your own knights.
It was quite possible. Poulengy, d’Aulon, Minguet and even Jacques’s sons were silent behind her, no snort or twitch of assent in them.
Jehanne: You French prisoners, refuse to go. The king should be here by ten.
The Burgundians laughed. They muttered stag, ram, bull, brute jokes about her. They strained their laughter out.
Burgundian Lord: We’d have a right under law. We could cut their throats here. No one could touch us, it’s law. If they wouldn’t come we’d execute them. We’d have to. The whole system would fall down otherwise.
Jehanne: Monsieur …?
She was seeking for his name.
Burgundian Lord: De Rochefort.
Jehanne: Monsieur de Rochefort, if you execute them you won’t get away from Troyes. You be peaceful. And understand where the power is now.
They began whistling and riding round her party in a mocking circle, taking grotesque postures in their saddle to show her how comic they thought she looked. They made the circuit only once, but she felt it was terrible, the hot walls of their contempt.
Now they sat still, waiting for her next abominable decree. She disappointed them by speaking in a hollow and feminine and almost defeated manner.
Jehanne: They’re not going. In God’s name they’re not.
The French prisoners did not move, they didn’t want to be known as breakers of the code.
De Rochefort: We’ve had some of these men since Verneuil. They were happy to come to us then, don’t kill us, our wives have power of attorney. Ask your knights there how it all works.
D’Aulon: You might have to give them up freely if the lady insists.
Jehanne: Thank you, Jean.
D’Aulon made a just-visible waggle of his hand. It meant to say, just the same the man’s absolutely right.
The argument went on as wagons began to leave the city and form up on the north bank across the Seine bridge. Some French knights found their way to that northern square and listened. They made the debate less virulent, they transmitted a lot of brother-feeling to de Rochefort and his knights who transmitted it back. They began to despise her more genially, fear her less. It was as always: war was a jovial conspiracy by people called enemies, for the game’s sake.
Jehanne: Monsieur de Rochefort, these French knights you hear … they didn’t hoot at me at les Tourelles. They were happy enough to have a crazy girl with them then.
Someone French called out it was a treaty term. She couldn’t go against her own king’s treaty.
The garrison was well on their way now, the archers riding out. De Rochefort could have tried to move the prisoners across the river. Perhaps he really felt fear for her though, or perhaps he wanted to go on teasing her with them.
At seven one of them began frankly pleading with her.
Prisoner: Don’t leave us. It’s a bad life with them, it’s a nothing life.
And the old and clownish ransom system broke apart before their eyes. French prisoners got unprofessionally down on their knees.
Soon de Rochefort knew that he would have to threaten execution to make them move, and the oddity of disposing of his property this way inside a town suddenly royal disturbed him.
At the time, Charles was robing in cloth of gold in the western suburbs with cousin d’Alençon. Someone must have reported the quarrel to him because, at eight, a herald royal arrived in the north a square and let it be known Charles king would pay immediately four pounds tournois per head of French prisoner. It was twice the market price. De Rochefort called Noël to the French knights. They called it back in their brotherly way.
The prisoners caressed each other, half the sick sat up and called good charms at Jehanne, a dozen ran up and kissed her boots in their stirrups, kissed them open-mouthed, leaving spittle there, taking dung and dust away on their lips.
Jehanne (to prisoner): I’m the only one who cares a damn for you.
Prisoner: Mmmm.
Jehanne’s party turned back through the muddle of the city. She looked at the French knights. They’d sunk back into lazy ways of thought now that they had Orleans, Patay, Auxerre, Troyes all accomplished.
Jehanne: Thank you for all your help.
But she was frightened. Now it was all nearly done. No one had any reason to be faithful to her. The time they’d sell her quick was soon.
St Pierre rang the hours. Soon, soon, soon.
For his entry the king wore no old clothes. The victories and acquired towns were all the time entering his brain, endowing his presence. His sleeves of green and gold, for example, opulent and wide-mouthed, cuffs so fantastic and wide that they drooped to his boots. Making mouths of the king-hands. There was no triumph those mouths weren’t willing to swallow.
The crowds raved for him, that he’d chosen mercy. The word of his mercy would get about. It would throw Bedford out of step.
On Monday the army marched in the gates and enjoyed for one night the town’s brief and uneasy hospitality.
Beyond Troyes, Champagne had its worst country – yellow at high summer, a wasteland of clay. By some irony much of it was sown, poor wheat grew and there were scrawny vineyards on the slopes down to the Aube. But it was still like a desert. D’Aulon said he wouldn’t be surprised to find Saracens beyond the next hill.
The little town of Arcis, deep in the country of traitors, sang Noël to its king on Tuesday.
On Wednesday the army camped around the forest of Lettrée and Charles sent his herald to tell Chalons its king was coming.
The Count Bishop of Chalons wrote to Rheims that he intended to resist with all his strength. So covered, he rode out to Lettrée with the keys of Chalons.
The Bishop said Chalons hoped for the same mercy as Troyes got. They were so confident of getting it that they were putting up travellers on their way to Rheims for the foregone coronation. Some of them from the girl’s own town …
One of them she saw during the grand entry to the town. It was her godfather, Jean Morel. She spotted him quite humbly waiting to talk to her outside the cathedral. He didn’t presume on their early association at the baptismal font of Domremy and in many other places on the Meuse.
Jehanne: Uncle Morel!
Morel: Your old man’s coming to Rheims. Jacques.
Jehanne: Him!
Being told you’d meet Jacques now, in August, was as improbable as being told in March that you’d see the king.
Jehanne: Zabillet?
Morel: She can’t come. It’s harsh travel at this time of the year.
His eyes evaded her, pretended fresh interest in the refined stonework of the cathedral façade.
Jehanne: What’s the matter, uncle?
Morel: Did you really slaughter everyone in Auxerre?
She thought, I’ve become a black image in people’s stories.
Jehanne: Is that what’s s
aid?
Morel: Yes.
Jehanne: You shouldn’t have come if you believed it. Chalons is an unfaithful city too.
He was kind enough to smile.
Morel: I’ll take my risks.
She wasn’t soothed so easily.
Jehanne: Then why did you ask?
Morel: When people get great … they’re not the people they were at all.
She began sweating for terror of her legend. She remembered the la Hire legend working on her brain in childhood.
Jehanne: I’m the same person, the same person. Look at this.
She had in her saddle bag in case of rain the red cloak Alain and Durand had given her in Vaucouleurs. She unbuckled the bag and hauled out the cloak.
Jehanne: Look. Durand Lassois gave me this. He’s at Burey-le-Petit, you know him. He put it on me and I still wear it. You take it.
Morel: It’s all right, Jehanne. I …
Jehanne: No, you take it. Tell everyone. It’s the same Jehanne who put it on in Vaucouleurs who’s giving it to you in Chalons.
Morel: Madame Aubrit’s the one who was worried.
Jehanne: Madame Aubrit?
Morel: She heard that everyone in Auxerre was killed. She said she felt to blame.
Jehanne: The stupidity of people …
If Aubrit had been there Jehanne would have beaten her on the lush face.
Morel made a concessive gesture.
Morel: I’ve really hurt you.
Jehanne: What does it matter? Show it to Aubrit and Madame de Bourlémont. Show it to Lassois and the le Royers in Vaucouleurs.
Morel: I’m sorry.
Jehanne: It isn’t you.
Morel: What is it, love?
Jehanne: Listen uncle, I’m going to be sold. Sure as Brother Jesus.
Morel: What?
Jehanne: Treachery, uncle. It’s what I’m afraid of.
Morel: After all you’ve done.
The king and his party got down from their horses and went into the cathedral behind her back. Choirs sang Te Deum Laudamus, Te Dominum Confitemur.
D’Aulon and the others waited for her, some feet away. People in the crowd came up and peered at the conversing wonder-woman and Morel. Not understanding a word, they were fully satisfied.
Blood Red, Sister Rose: A Novel of the Maid of Orleans Page 36
