The King's Women

by Deryn Lake

  Deputising for the missing lords was Georges de la Trémoille, huge as a pavilion in his flowing robes, his very presence guaranteeing that certain people would not be present. Hating Richemont more than ever for his new friendship with Jehanne, a creature whom Georges considered a freak of nature which should be put down swiftly, preferably for good, the fat man had recently managed to score a sizeable point against his erstwhile friend. Yesterday evening at the pre-coronation Council meeting he had elevated d’Albret, Comte de Dreux, to the position of acting Constable of France, it being de rigueur that the Constable be present at the ceremony and Richemont, of course, quite unable to attend.

  But now Georges’s wandering attention, tom between admiring his own gold tissue clothes and pinching his wife’s thigh under her many skirts, a feat not easy to achieve in a cathedral stall, was thoroughly brought back to the grandness of the occasion by the shrill call of the state trumpets.

  From the door of the cathedral, walking beneath a blue canopy covered with fleur-de-lis, carried at the four comers by the Marechal de Boussac, the Admiral de Culant, and the Lords de Rais and de Graville, Charles was making his solemn entrance, clad in a glorious robe of scarlet satin covered with a sleeveless chasuble also sewn with fleur-de-lis, each one stitched in a thousand pearls. In front of the King came d’Albret, bearing the sword of state, unsheathed and upright, while behind him, riding his horse right up to the choir came the Sire de St. Severe holding the Holy Ampulla, which he would hand from the saddle to Regnault de Chartres, the Archbishop.

  In the nave, under the multi-coloured banners and flags, the congregation stood in two lines, forming a guard of honour, marvelling at the man approaching the altar in so magnificent a manner. Slender and graceful, his bare head revealing a cap of russet hair which shone like polished wood in the hazy sunshine, his eyes full of unshed tears, crystal bright, Charles de Valois was scarcely recognisable as the ugly child, the reticent boy, the nervous wreck of only a few months ago.

  ‘A King is born.’ thought the Bastard of Orleans, and silently burst into tears.

  The high bright trumpets sounded again into the sudden awed silence and Jehanne la Pucelle clad in the most noble vestments of cloth of gold and silk, well lined with fur, came slowly down the nave, bearing in her right hand the standard of France. Behind her walked her page, young Louis, carrying the colours of the Knights Templar, a fact which drew a gasp of astonishment from the mighty crowd.

  Slowly, but with a sense of purpose and occasion surprising in one so humbly born, she made her way to the altar and knelt down beside Charles on his right, while d’Albret knelt to the left.

  The King, now rightful King, not the one who had been so shabbily heralded in Mehun-sur-Yèvre in October 1422, thought as he prayed that his heart might actually burst with the strength of his joy and gratitude, and did not care that he could be seen to openly weep, his tears falling onto the red carpet beneath his knees. Beside him, the strange little thing who had turned his life around and brought him out of the depths, back to humanity, wept also, her sobs audible above the sound of the organ, the choir, and the loud low chant of priests.

  Regardless of tradition and ceremony, Charles de Valois turned and, putting out his hand, grasped that of Jehanne Dare, who responded by raising his fingers to her lips and dewing them with her tears. Then, their few private moments over, all three stood, Jehanne and d’Albret one pace behind their sovereign, all of them still as statues, as the five-hour ritual began.

  Putting his hand on the gospel, Charles took the solemn oath, swearing to honour and protect both his kingdom and his people.

  “In the name of Christ I promise that I will serve…”

  But he was away, dreaming, not thinking so much of the words he was saying as the path he had trodden to get here. In his mind, Charles saw his gross mother, the extraordinary face of Nicolas Flamel, the beauty of Bonne, the power of Yolande, the comforting presence of Marie. But towering over them all, the little girl standing beside him at the altar steps, the virgin knight, the transvestite, the freak, the savage courageous creature who had come out of nowhere and led him to victory.

  “…for my country and all my subjects,” he said, then looked straight at her to see that she was crying again, or perhaps hadn’t stopped.

  Charles added an improvisational ending to his oath. “And I promise that for the rest of her mortal days on earth, Jehanne la Pucelle shall—”

  And then the most extraordinary thing happened. Before he could complete his sentence, the King’s voice was drowned by the frantic sound of a terrified animal. The horse that had brought the Holy Ampulla up to the choir and which was now standing in the cathedral porch suddenly took fright and, rearing up, began to head back down the nave, the squire who had been attending it still clinging to its leading rein. There was a moment of pure pandemonium as members of the congregation seated at the back rose to restrain the frantic animal.

  The whole incident could only have lasted two minutes, no more, but it was enough to throw Charles off his stroke and he concluded the oath abruptly, leaving out any further mention of Jehanne, a bad and somehow sinister omen.

  But the time had come for the King to receive the regalia of state. The beautiful Duke d’Alengon stepped from the crowd and dubbed Charles a knight, fixing the golden spurs onto his boots; the acting Constable handed him the staff topped with the ivory main-de-justice; then the Sire d’Albret ceremoniously gave the sceptre.

  And now the ritual was leading towards its climax, the unction, the anointing with the Sainte Ampoule, the holy oil believed to hold such supernatural powers that it made the French Kings priests, sacred, capable of curing scrofula by touch. Without this anointing, Charles had only been the Dauphin to Jehanne, and also to a great many others besides.

  Bearing the Holy Ampulla, Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, motioned Charles to sit on the state throne and then, leaning forward, poured the mystic oil onto the King’s head, while the girl briefly closed her eyes in a moment of blissful fulfilment. That done, de Chartres opened the front of Charles’s gown and applied sacred oil to his chest, then finally to his hands.

  The twelve nobles chosen to place the crown on the King’s head closed in a ring around him, arms and hands raised aloft, fingers extended to hold the open crown of fleurons high, then slowly lower it onto the monarch’s head. The Bishops of Orleans and Sees draped him in a robe of blue cloth, sewn with golden fleur-de-lis and trimmed with ermine. And at that moment, the moment of crowning, everyone, both in and outside the cathedral cried, “Noel!” while the trumpets sounded so loudly it seemed the very vaults of the church would crack.

  High over the heads of the congregation the twelve peers lifted the throne on which Charles sat so that all the world could see the new King of France, while Jehanne, shaking with sobs, once more knelt at his feet.

  “Sweet King, God’s will that I raise the siege of Orleans and bring you to the cathedral of Reims for your anointing, so that all should see you are the true King to whom the Kingdom of France belongs, has today been fulfilled.”

  And with those words she laid the banner of the Knights Templar on the steps of the altar as a tribute.

  It was done and they left the cathedral together, Jehanne and Charles, walking side by side through the cheering crowd to the banqueting hall where the coronation feast was to be served. And there she sat beside him, the child of Yolande and Richemont who knew nothing of her antecedents, plied with food and wine which, for once, she took with relish.

  “Well?” the Bastard of Orleans said to her, drunk and happy and still occasionally weeping as he was.

  “Yes, I am satisfied.”

  “And your voices?”

  He asked that without malice and Jehanne accepted the question as such.

  “They are pleased too.” She turned her dark eyes on him and he saw in their depths a strange combination of pride and fear, uneasy partners that made the Bastard suddenly anxious for her.
/>   “But something is still wrong?”

  “Not wrong exactly, just inexplicable,” Jehanne answered quietly.

  “What is it?”

  “From that day, the day I was wounded, the day that Clasdas drowned, the day of victory at Orleans…”

  “Yes?”

  “My voices changed towards me, they began to address me differently.”

  “In what way?”

  “It frightens me, Jean. I don’t understand it. For now they are calling me the Daughter of God.”

  Thirty-Four

  She was lost in mist, Jehanne was aware of that; drowning in gentle clouds, pale as lilac, deep as gentian. And other people were lost too, she could hear their whispering voices, their words vague and unclear, a constant background of sibilants. The air was full of the smell of flowers and a harp had begun to play, its divine cadences pouring into her ear like drops of crystal, drowning the unnerving whispers, while somewhere a dragon had started to sing. Jehanne raised her sword to stab the beast and realised instantly that it was not a monster but Gilles de Rais, as she had known it would be all along.

  The mist vanished, the man assumed his normal shape and, taking Jehanne’s hand, led her into a pale pure chapel where he knelt at her feet as if she were one of the sacred images standing in the many niches around the walls.

  “Daughter of God,” he said, “know that I love you.”

  “You must not do so,” Jehanne heard herself reply.

  “Then kill me if I am not necessary to you.”

  And he pulled open his black satin doublet to reveal the spot where his heart beat.

  “I tried to kill you on another occasion but you would not die.”

  “I will die this time if that is what you want.”

  La Pucelle broke into tears. “I do not want it, I do not. That is my trouble.”

  She turned to run, confused by what he was saying and the violet mist closed about her once more, the air heavy with the cloying scent of death, the dragon’s song one long continuous scream. With a great cry of terror, the girl woke, shivering and shaking with cold, a prayer on her lips that her saints would return quickly to guide her on the path of righteousness.

  They had left her some while ago, those voices of hers, those high persistent tones which could never be ignored, and Jehanne had understood that they were punishing her for disobedience. For she had gone against their advice and in the autumn of 1429 made an attempt to retake Paris for the King without their consent, mounting her attack on a feast day, the birthday of Our Lady. La Pucelle had received an arrow wound in the thigh for her pains and had fallen, hurt, into the fosse, the town ditch, alongside a donkey, where she had remained lying amongst the dung and dirt until one of the Duke d’Alengon’s serving men had discovered her and pulled her out, only to be nursed back to health by an overpoweringly attentive Gilles de Rais.

  Charles had made Jehanne’s wounding his reason for ending the battle and the current campaign and, disbanding his army, had withdrawn to the Loire for the winter. To add to Jehanne’s chagrin at this turn of events, the voices had become silent and she had been on her own in every sense, the handsome d’Alengon returning to his wife at the castle of Beaumont, the ardent Gilles, who nowadays could rarely be kept from her company, being sent on a tour of inspection by de la Trémoille.

  So she had spent the short dark months kicking her heels, idling her time at court, dressed like a little whore in satins and furs, wishing that her friends would come back and she could once again get down to some fighting. But even more than that, Jehanne had wished those demanding saints would return to blast her eardrums, for better by far to endure their imperious commands, to obey their wishes, than veer about like a rudderless ship. And now it was April, the year being 1430, the start of another decade, a decade during which Jehanne had vowed to see the English off French soil once and for all.

  Charles had decided to keep his spring at Sully, the magnificent chateau of Georges de la Trémoille, created Duke de Sully at the time of the coronation, and the court, including a

  reluctant and noticeably sulky Pucelle, had moved there with him. She had walked the chateau’s enormous magnificent rooms, bigger by far than anything at Loches or Saumur, comparable indeed to the state apartments at Chinon, and wondered that such a horrid fat man, who did not bother to disguise too heavily the fact of his enmity towards her, should achieve so much. And then, even without her voices, she had remembered God’s great and inescapable mills and known that it would only be a matter of time before Georges de la Trémoille went the way of all creatures who create havoc and misery in other people’s lives.

  But even with these stirring thoughts the stifling atmosphere in that grand and opulent place had eventually become too much for her and one April night, during the hours of darkness, Jehanne had gone forth with her brother Pierre, her squire Jean d’Aulon, and a small company of men-at-arms, once more to take to the roads. She had asked permission of neither her voices nor her King and was, therefore, acting illegally. But then so was Gilles de Rais, promoted to Marechal of France at the coronation, who had written a coded letter expressing his wish to be at her side again, to get back to some action, and arranging to meet her at Lagny on the 17th April.

  And now she woke, cold and terrified, to find she was indeed at that place, within spitting distance of Paris, that she was sleeping rough with her few hundred troops, and that the real-life de Rais, not a dragon but a swarthy-skinned, dark-bearded man with eyes like a falcon’s, burnished blue, was leaning over her, staring into her face, saying, “What is wrong, ma Pucelle?”

  It was impossible to believe at such a vulnerable moment, lying in her tent, stripped to her hose, legs apart while she slept, that he had not been party to her dream, or to the two others that she had had about him, and in fright Jehanne said, “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

  Gilles smiled reassuringly but behind that smile Jehanne saw the face of a tiger.

  “I was concerned because you called out in your sleep. I thought perhaps you were having a nightmare.”

  “You know I was, you know because you were part of it.”

  He did not try to pretend, instead those liquid blue eyes, bubbling and molten at the core, darkened like a stormy sky.

  “So you have let me in at last, ma Pucelle.”

  She sat up from her ground sheet, every bone in her body aching and dry, staring at him, and Gilles went on, “I am speaking of how our souls once met, and took up arms against each other in a game of chess.”

  “Chess?” She felt that she was weakening.

  “Aye, Pucelle. Don’t you remember?”

  How could she forget the whiteness of her body, the blackness of her hair and the crimson of her blood as she surrendered to him that virginity which she had promised her saints to keep in order to honour them?

  “That was a dream,” she said hotly.

  “Was it?” answered Gilles, his mouth close to hers. “When we first met at Tours, in the armourer’s shop, you recognised me, knew that we were destined to be together, in love and hate.”

  Jehanne turned away, unable to bear his proximity a moment longer. “Marechal de Rais, please leave me. If we are to return to the fight tomorrow I shall need more sleep than this.”

  The blue falcon eyes glittered. “I will leave you now, ma Pucelle, but never permanently. For I who have had your blood in my mouth have now become part of you.”

  They entered Melun the next morning, 22nd April, to find that the Burgundian garrison stationed there had evacuated even before the legendary Pucelle arrived. Grateful to have a victory without bloodshed, Jehanne dropped on her knees beside the town moat, and then it happened. Her head was suddenly full of sound, there were bright lights before her eyes.

  “Am I forgiven?” she asked.

  High as a bell came the reply, “Prepare yourself, Jehanne. Prepare, prepare!”

  La Pucelle crossed herself hurriedly, very much afraid.

  �
��For what?”

  “For what will inevitably happen.”

  “Which is?”

  “Before the Feast of St. John you will be captured, and so it must be.”

  La Pucelle found that she was shaking from head to foot.

  “You must accept your fate, for God will help you.”

  “Then I have nothing to fear?”

  But there was no reply, the strange burst of sound abruptly at an end.

  Jehanne slowly rose to her feet, realising that up until this moment she had never had a true sense of danger, had gone into battle in an almost phlegmatic way, certain that nothing could ever stop her or her divine mission. But now an unpleasant realisation of her own mortality, her own human frailty, swept over her.

  “God give me strength,” she murmured, and it seemed to her, then, that one of the voices came back momentarily and said, “Be calm.”

  She had been in retreat for a week, gone to the chapel of Sainte Marguerite, only a short distance from the town of Compiègne, with no one for company except the Abbot Jacques. Jehanne’s voices were coming all the time now, telling her that she should take the situation calmly, that her capture was predestined and had to be. But when La Pucelle had asked her saints when and how she was to be taken prisoner they had refused to answer her.

  “But Jacques, if I knew I might manage to avoid being caught.”

  “I think perhaps, ma Pucelle, you should go away now.”

  “But how can I?” she had asked despairingly. “I believe my voices want me to be a prisoner.”

  Reluctantly, the bemused girl had left Sainte Marguerite