Jehanne: Tell Jacques.
Morel: What?
Jehanne: I don’t want him asking me did I kill townfuls of people.
Morel: He wouldn’t. His girl? He’s very proud.
Jehanne: Show them all that thing.
She pointed to Lassois’s best red cloak. It was nearly grey now, from all the dust of her travelling.
He was visited by some sudden pride at being endowed by a great woman.
Morel: I certainly will. Aubrit. De Bourlémont. You’ve got into the way of dropping their titles.
Jehanne still felt venomous towards Aubrit.
Jehanne: Titles! Aubrit hasn’t got a title. From the Domremy and Greux end of things she might have. From this end she’s just another girl. Like me. You ought to all call her by her first name.
Morel grinned boyishly. But Jehanne knew, when he got back to the Meuse it would be indeed, Madame Aubrit.
For a self-important second, in front of all those people, he let the girl’s cloak, folded evenly from neck to tail, fall across his arm.
Before she left Chalons with Poton’s cavalry she said goodbye to Charles. Again the Council were at work around a table in a big hall at the hôtel de ville.
He talked about politics as if they were his own discovery and very much his own sport.
Charles: Just like the other cities – the Rheims Council has written off to Bedford and Philip for help but they don’t want it. Our informants inside the city say that the Burgundian commandant at Nogent had offered to bring them three thousand first-class troops. They’ve written him dense replies, as if they can’t understand what he’s offering.
They laughed together, king and king’s strange sister.
Charles: The persistent fool’s gone ahead and written again. The Rheims Council have answered and – this is really good – they’ve pretended that they think he’s asking for supplies and cash awards for his soldiers. They said they might be able to consider his requests at the next finance meeting in July, but that funds are low and they have to spend them on fortifications.
Again they laughed amongst his heads-down secretaries and advisers. It was just their joke, hers and Charles’s.
She made pace with the cavalry through the abandoned vineyards on the slopes of Rheims mountain. There were said to be a race of Champenois in the forests and caves on top of the mountain. They had been up there since the year Jean Sans Peur was killed at Montereau Bridge. They lived and bred on a diet of acorns, snails and roots. If you sent heralds up there to tell them the worst part was over, the noise of trumpets would drive them deeper into their caverns.
A mauve plain of thyme-blossom ran over the chalk towards Rheims. There a letter was being read. It had come by the hand of the herald-royal.
It may have come to your attention that we have enjoyed success and victory under God over our ancient enemies the English. In front of Orleans and later at Jargeau, Beaugency, Meung-sur-Loire, our enemies have suffered severe injuries. Their leaders and others to the number of many thousand have been killed or taken prisoner. These events having occurred, more by divine grace than human expertise, we – on the advice of our Princes of the Blood and the members of our Great Council – are coming to the city of Rheims to receive our anointing and coronation. Wherefore we summon you – on the loyalty and obedience you owe us – to dispose yourselves to receive us in the accustomed manner as you have done for our predecessors.
Do not be deterred by affairs of the past or the fear that we may remember them. Accept our assurances that if you now act towards us as you ought to you shall be dealt with as suits good and loyal subjects … If, in order to be better informed about our intentions, certain citizens of Rheims would care to come to us with this herald whom we have sent, we should be delighted. They may come in safety and in such numbers as suits them …
Only later did Charles and the girl come to know what further frantic postures the Council of Rheims took up. The recurring problem: they wanted to please Charles without upsetting Philip and Bedford who might come back to Champagne with grudges in some other season.
So they convened to consider the letter but found that although each individual councillor wanted the king and the king’s mercy for Rheims they unfortunately lacked a quorum to make an executive decision and send delegates out across the blue plain to Charles.
An ad hoc committee representing all sections of trade and the city said they would support what the councillors might decide whenever they managed to achieve a quorum.
The herald suggested that the city be searched. Three councillors were sick but five others were missing. If their names were called from street to street?
The councillors present said they were sure the herald understood … the councillors absent might not be in the best streets … discovery might be a discomfort, might ruin their reputations …
The herald thought it was a damned funny way for councillors to go on in an emergency. He rode alone back to Charles and told him how they were havering.
In fact the commander of Rheims was down on the Marne at Château-Thierry. His name was Monsieur de Chastillon. For his own reasons he was mobilizing to march north around the west of the Champagne hills into Rheims. Now the council of Rheims sent him a letter saying he must come immediately to discuss the defence of the city. Unfortunately, given the food shortage and rebelliousness in the city they could let him bring an escort of only fifty horsemen and their attendants – two hundred men.
He wrote back saying that two hundred men weren’t adequate for his safety. Didn’t they know a French army of thirty-thousand men and a witch had left Chalons?
They wrote back and said that certainly he could bring thousands once they’d decided on the final details of the defence. But for the moment they could not permit more than an escort of fifty horsemen into the city.
On Wednesday 13 July he came with hundreds of horsemen, more than a thousand soldiers. His herald told the council that 3,600 English knights and their attendant troops had landed at Calais three days before and were marching to Rheims. They had been raised to crusade against the Turks but were now assigned to the defence of Rheims. Within ten days, twenty at the outside …
The town council refused to let Chastillon in the gate. He’d brought more soldiers than they’d specified. Resentful, he moved away north to join up with the English.
Early on a Saturday morning the king, catching up with his forward cavalry, reached the château of Sept-Saulx in the river-meadows of the Vesle. Ten miles north-west stood holy Rheims. Monsieur de Sept-Saulx was in armour beyond the moat to receive Charles. The combined parties rode through into a sunny court of white stone, suitable to the day, the light, the triumph.
The king kissed the middle-aged lord.
Charles: Soon all your vineyards will grow again.
Lord: Despite the war, Your Majesty, they haven’t entirely failed to produce.
Charles: Ah.
In the first floor hall of Sept-Saulx, the king, his councillors and pucelle waited to meet the councillors of Rheims. They got there before noon with broiled complexions. Monsieur de Sept-Saulx offered them no wine. Their breath remained a little short right throughout the meeting. You would have thought Charles, his council, his prophetess, had first call on the air in the hall.
Machet read out Charles’s terms:
The Rheims garrison would go that afternoon. Any remaining after Angelus would be treated as prisoners. They could take goods to the value of two pounds tournois only. The prisoners they held would be brought back by the council of Rheims at a German mark or its equivalent for each man. As always Rheims would pay the cost of the coronation, the coronation feast and decorations. All French peers and their staffs would enter Rheims. The French army itself would encamp in the suburbs on the south-west where they would be expected not to loot but also to find free billets if that were possible – there were, after all, thirty thousand and His Majesty understood the problems.
The Ch
ief Magistrate of Rheims asked when the coronation might take place.
Machet told him the king had not decided, but the council of Rheims must be aware that coronation-day had always been a Sunday. Ever since Clovis.
The Chief Magistrate said therefore eight or nine days …? His eyes blinked, cringed, winced. Eight days the giant army eating Rheims empty …
Jehanne rode ahead to Rheims after the meeting. Gilles travelled at her side. He had let his beard grow out of grief for Lavignac. Since the boy’s damnation in front of Troyes, Jehanne didn’t feel comfortable with him, his oddities were less amusing.
Jehanne: Have you had masses said for the boy?
Gilles: Yes. Oh yes. But what good …?
Jehanne: Some good. Who knows?
Gilles: Dear lady, the astrolabes …
Jehanne: Yes?
Gilles: The astrolabes say he’s in hell.
Jehanne felt a gush of sweat between her breasts.
Jehanne: You ought to pitch those bloody astrolabes, Gilles!
Gilles: My eyes on the future, that’s what they are. You have to pray for me, Mademoiselle!
He had stood upright in his stirrups because of the urgency that she should pray for him.
Jehanne: Why?
Gilles: At one or two in the morning demons talk to me.
Jehanne: What sort of demons?
Gilles: Voices. Like your Voices. Though not like yours.
Jehanne: Gilles, you can have demons driven out. At least, they tried to drive them out of me. They found the house empty – thank Jesus.
Gilles: Last night, I heard my Robert’s voice, clearly as you’d want. Telling me …
Jehanne: What?
Gilles: I can’t tell you.
Jehanne: Brother Richard. Let him drive them out.
Gilles: Perhaps.
Jehanne: No perhaps. Let Richard. He’s a strong personality.
Also, God help him, he belonged to the same order of humans as Gilles did, and she herself.
They rested in a pub just south of the city by the Vesle bridge. Gilles got a room for Jehanne and she rested in the suspicion that Mesdames and Messire would visit her with indications. But nothing happened. She felt it unkind of them not to speak up here, on the margins of Rheims.
At four o’clock, stretching in the upstairs window, she saw the Bastard riding up the road from Sept-Saulx with hundreds of knights, a gaudy forest of flags, plumes lighting up the heat haze, usurping for vividness and fluidity the low and sand-banked Vesle.
She ran downstairs to meet them.
Bastard: He wants to be crowned tomorrow.
Jehanne: Sunday.
Bastard: I suppose you heard it’s always been a Sunday. Since Louis VIII. The ceremonial hasn’t varied since Clovis for that matter …
Dear Jesus, it all ends tomorrow. The Voices already departed and no further instructions.
Jehanne: Shouldn’t he rest a week? Go into a week’s contemplation?
Boussac: There’s this new English army sent out by the Archbishop of Winchester. The king thinks he ought to act while things are right.
Jehanne: The council never let him act before when things were right. I always had to wait months, except for this.
She exaggerated because of her fright. She felt Monday, the day after anointing, roaring down on her. She had not been given orders for Monday.
Rheims seemed just any other city when they crossed the lowered bridge over its narrow river. Corporation trumpeters blew blasts from above the gate. The names were roared down into the city by a basso-cryer.
Cryer: Monsieur Jean the Bastard-Royal, Mademoiselle Jehanne the girl.
The Council of Rheims was already taking ceremonial pains.
Bastard: Will you come with me now, Jehanne?
Jehanne: Where?
Bastard: To hunt up ceremonial items. For the crowning.
Jehanne: That would be pleasant.
Above their heads the balconies threatened. But the city sounded and smelt good. Drums, violas, tambourines, bagpipes, spice, fruit-mince, bacon, chicken in its own fat. I should be happy, she told herself.
Bastard: It’s easy to forget that a lot of the ceremonial items are in the sacristy of St Denis near Paris. The Goddam English have them. The Charlemagne crown, the Charlemagne sword called Joyeuse. The sceptre … my secretary has the list … the sceptre with a golden Charlemagne on top of it. The rod of justice that ends in a hand made of unicorn horn, the clasp of St Louis’s cloak, the Pontifical that’s been used since Louis VIII …
Jehanne: My God. No one ever told me …
Bastard: All that can be substituted for. We’ll find substitutes in the cathedral and the churches. We’ve got the only things that you can’t afford to counterfeit. I mean, we’ve got Rheims and a king and the holy ampoule of oil …
The crowds in the cathedral square roared to show how well they intended to roar for the king. The Bastard and Jehanne would have been satisfied with a little less. Under high saints in the grand stone front stood a bald and ordinary little priest in a golden cope. He stood in a thicket of junior clerics, all in spectacular dalmatics and armed, as if against an enemy, with censers, aspergillums, ceremonial crosses.
He said he was the Dean.
Dean: We’re waiting for our Archbishop.
Bastard: He’ll be along, perhaps towards dusk.
Dean: But we’ve been here since noon.
Jehanne flashed her dislike at him. Letting him know she was taking in his comfortable little body as evidence against him. To be just, he did have a summer cold.
Jehanne: We have to see the sacristy treasures.
Dean: Mademoiselle?
Bastard: For the purposes of the coronation. My secretary has the authorization from His Grace Regnault de Chartres.
The Bastard’s secretary rushed the document to the Dean’s hand.
Beyond the sublime nave and the long sacristy stood a windowless treasure-hall. Three keys were necessary for entry. Inside, batteries of chests and cupboards stood about.
It was cool in there, with a deep winter smell of incense, spice, age and aged fabric. Only the Bastard, his secretary and equerry, Jehanne, Pasquerel and d’Aulon were let in there. The Dean showed them a Liber Pontificalis only a little younger than the St Denis books. All the coronation ceremonies were there on vellum pages too slippery for mould. He found them a blue cloak tipped with ermine and knew there were sceptres somewhere about, one of them used by Louis VI at his coronation.
Dean: Of course, I hadn’t expected to have to find them in such a hurry. Our curator of treasures has phthisis.
Jehanne opened a chest at random. There was nothing inside except two small items wrapped in red silk. The silk had been dappled by mould. Her hand reached in: there was some elemental excitement as far as her armpit.
Inside one parcel was a circlet crown with sapphires around it. Inside the second some king’s or prince’s spurs.
Gilles lay still in the end. They took the wedge of wood from between his teeth. His nose was bleeding where the demons had left him. They’d made high-voiced female jokes, very gross, on their way out of his body. Poor Gilles’s lips did not move throughout – the voices rose out of his belly and throat and nose, articulating themselves, and last of all Lavignac’s voice.
Lavignac: Join me up the arse of hell, darling Gilles.
Senior Augustinians from the Rheims monastery and Brother Richard knelt beside him, puffing. They had read the exorcism over him, but the devils’ insults and the violence of the devils’ departure out of Gilles had stolen their breath away.
Over-stimulated and bound to have nightmares, Pasquerel put his hand tenderly behind Gilles’s ear.
Pasquerel: Welcome back, brother.
Jehanne: This is a secret. You have to understand that.
Augustinian: Of course, Mademoiselle.
Jehanne: I’ll call his squire in, to put him to bed. Do you good fathers know a public house called the Bronze Ring?<
br />
Augustinian: The …?
Jehanne: The Bronze Ring.
One of the Augustinians laughed.
Augustinian: Rue du Parvis. It’s very fashionable. Poets. Wealthy Italians.
He didn’t think much of poets or wealthy Italians.
Jehanne: My father’s staying there.
The guests were in a long upstairs parlour, sitting by the front windows, checking now and then on the passage of the moon.
Jacques’s voice dominated. She waited on the stairs and listened. She was wearing old clothes and had crossed the city with d’Aulon. There had been such enthusiasms for her this afternoon, when she’d left the cathedral, that she couldn’t have visited Jacques in her own person.
She could hear his voice. The childish wish came over her that she could have come in velvet and with her staff.
Jacques: So a child gets born. You accept it, you start to love it. Everyone round you is a farmer or farmer’s wife and you take it for granted that the kid is going to grow up to be that. When you’re given one who’s not meant to be a farmer or a farmer’s wife, you don’t know it, no one tells you, you keep trying to force it. I mean, you think about your kids, gentlemen. Think if one of them wanted to do what my girl’s done. Would you let it? You’d call it an uppity bitch. I called her an uppity bitch. Jesus Christ, often …
She had heard the city council was paying his hôtel bill, she had expected him to be lording it and perhaps he had been lording it earlier. But she hadn’t expected to walk in on such insights. In her fear of Monday, it was a high gift to have Jacques returned to her and in this self-doubting cast of mind.
She stepped up onto the floor. She saw Jacques was wearing a good gown of claret-coloured fabric.
Jehanne: Papa Jacques.
He got up, dragging his chair a little with him. For a long time he said nothing.
Jacques: My little cow.
Jehanne: Oh Jesus.
They both stood shuddering but feared to embrace. His hand stroked her collar.
Jacques: Can’t they dress a good soldier better than that?
She saw her brother Jehan at the window in a very nice doublet, scarlet and yellow. He wasn’t the best dressed there.
Jehan: She doesn’t ask enough. She works without wages.
Blood Red, Sister Rose: A Novel of the Maid of Orleans Page 37
