Blood Red, Sister Rose

by Thomas Keneally

  He was Breton and his spectacular battalion were all Bretons. He was said to be the wealthiest young man in the country. First, he rode glowing through the dusty bivouacs. He wore white silk, blue pomegranate trees covered it in groves and on the blue branches, orange pomegranates. Behind him, a forward guard of twenty immaculate knights. Next, on belled pack-horses, pieces of piping.

  Alençon and Jehanne watched from a window of the château.

  Alençon: That’s his portable organ. He takes it everywhere with him. Forty pack-horses! He’s a music-lover. Not only that. Look.

  Beyond, and far enough behind the pack-horses so as not to be tainted by the dust they raised, a choir of little boys and young men, all singing in Breton under the direction of a backward-walking and stumbling choir-master.

  It was a pity that raw music from the Scots camp blurred their song.

  Within half an hour he walked into the great hall of the château. His legs were long, he moved beautifully, was beautiful with eccentric blue eyes and red lips moist as if always in hope of some special word or event alighting between them. Something really special. Nothing as mundane as kisses. His hair was somewhere between red and gold. Had Jehanne ever seen a more dazzling man?

  He came straight to her and took her hand. He was slightly cross-eyed with fervour.

  De Rais: You’ve got no idea, Mademoiselle, how much the things you say interest me? Do you know alchemy?

  Jehanne: No Monsieur.

  De Rais: You’re a disciple of the Arabs!

  Jehanne: Disciple …?

  De Rais: Or a gifted herbalist?

  With his questions he was a sort of pagan version of the Poitiers examination.

  Jehanne: I’m not very strong on herbs. With herbs, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.

  De Rais: Indeed. You’ve got no idea how you excite me. Would you like to hear my choir?

  Jehanne: Yes, yes.

  At length he spoke to the others. Machet didn’t like him much, kept niggling at him.

  Machet: You still keep a choir, my lord? Of small boys?

  De Rais: You know how I prize a well-harmonized choir.

  Machet: Actually, there are a lot of good tenor monks in the camp.

  De Rais: Lumped together from a dozen places, untrained. The nearly good is worse than the execrable. My boys are the sweetest voices I can buy. From Normandy some of them, others from Périgord, a number from Lombardy.

  Machet: Your interest then is straight musical?

  The half-mad blue eyes blinked.

  De Rais: You know my passion and what I will spend on it, Maître Machet. However, no one could have thought of or bought a woman like Mademoiselle Jehanne. (It was an adroit tack.) You must give us your orders, Mademoiselle.

  La Hire, who was there, nodded as if he was keen for orders from her. She doubted it.

  At night, during a dinner in the great hall, she overheard Monsieur de Rais roaring into Admiral Culant’s ear. He had drunk a lot of straight Muscadet brought in by his own supply wagons.

  De Rais: But so squat, so plain, so young. Who would have expected the forces of light to show so much imagination?

  She didn’t like to be talked of in the same tone as was used for wonderful storms, plagues, victories or curious animals from the East. It seemed that Yolande, two places away, noticed her pain. When the dinner ended she pulled Jehanne to one side of the hall. Beyond the window they could see thousands of camp-fires, ordered, almost votive burning in a camp becoming more and more ritually pure. Tomorrow Gilles de Rais’s choir would sing at the morning Mass in the priests’ camp.

  Yolande: Before you start forming opinions about that boy de Rais there are things you ought to know. He’s a good soldier, better than your sweet Alençon. He’s massively cunning, a diplomat. Once more, your Alençon doesn’t come up to him. We need his help – his Breton companies are the best fed, best clothed, best armed. Last of all, he is one of the three soldiers you can trust. You might wonder why?

  Jehanne wondered.

  Yolande: Because he’s got a passion for the colourful. For prophecies, visions, flashes from the blue. That’s your strength. He’ll give you money, time, sweat, because the mystic and the supernal are the things he’s really willing to pay for. He is, in fact, a thorough freak.

  Jehanne shrugged. She would have been happier with more homely virtues, more stable talents than Monsieur de Rais.

  At noon the next day she was riding back with d’Aulon and her pages from High Mass in the clergy’s camp when Bertrand stepped out from a line of tents and held his hand up. Quickly, as if afraid of being accused this time of yet grander impersonations than Messire, he pointed to two men on his left.

  Both soldiers were grinning in moleskin trousers and shirts. They were her brothers Jehan, a year older than her, and Pierrolot, fifteen years old.

  She shifted on her horse and smiled at them. But there wasn’t room for them in her schemes, where they wanted to be.

  Jehanne: I can’t get down off this big horse. It’s all this steel I’m expected to wear. Whenever I get down the saddle looks higher than a roof.

  They laughed again.

  Jehanne: How do you like it here?

  Pierrolot: What a crowd!

  Jehan: It isn’t comfortable in the camp.

  He’d always been a main-chancer.

  Jehanne: What do you want?

  Jehan: A room maybe. In the château?

  Jehanne: Full up.

  Jehan: A pub?

  Jehanne: Perhaps that. A room in a pub.

  Jehan: What is it? (His voice was raised.) Why are you this way?

  Jehanne: I’ll get you food, bedding, better equipment. But you aren’t going to live with me.

  Jehan: Jesus.

  He looked at Pierrolot, invoking family memories of her bloody-mindedness. Her grandeur about taking cows to pasture. Pierrolot didn’t co-operate: he thought she’d promised them the world in promising food and something better than a blanket under the moon.

  Jehanne: I have a small treasury now, you see. My equerry manages it.

  Jehan: Equerry, Jesus!

  Pierrolot: Equerry.

  Pierrolot said it slowly, feeling it over like an artifact drifted in from Bohemia.

  Jehanne: I’ll look after you. I won’t be living with my family any more. That’s the way of it.

  Jehan: Well! Thanks!

  Jehanne: Come to Orleans. You’ll be safe.

  Jehan: Like cousin Collot? Got killed by a mortar. Mengette bringing him home in a handcart.

  Jehanne: It won’t happen to you. Their great lord Salisbury got the same injuries as Collot. Rednecks have got as good a chance as anyone. War’s changing.

  Jehan: Is it?

  Jehanne: Yes.

  Jehan: Why?

  Jehanne: Because I’m here.

  Jehan: Jesus.

  Jehanne: Where’s your wife?

  Jehan: With her mother. In Greux.

  Jehanne: You understand: whores aren’t permitted in the camp?

  Jehan: The soldiers sodomise. The whores come in dressed as men.

  Bertrand (pacifically): Not very many.

  Jehan: Guess who they learned the dress-up trick from?

  Jehanne: I’ll see to them. I’ll see to my sad sisters, brother. Have you got siege-hats?

  Siege-hats were flat-crowned, steel, with a wide steel rim.

  Pierrolot: What?

  Jehanne: Siege-hats. For when the English drop things on you. They have fortresses all round Orleans from which they drop things on people. Hadn’t you heard?

  They were all pale and silent. Jehan, almost her twin, spawned as soon before her as Zabillet and Jacques could have managed, twinned to her by name, kicked at the track with the ball of his foot.

  Jehanne: The forts are called St Lorent, St Loup, Croix-Boisée … you’ll see them. I’ll send Raymond and Minguet with three siege-hats.

  Pierrolot: Raymond and Minguet?

  Jehanne: My pag
es.

  Jehan: Pages! Jesus! Big horses! Equerries! Pages!

  Jehanne: I’ve got two heralds too who are away on business at the moment. And then there’s my chaplain Père Pasquerel. When you see him, feel free to confess.

  Jehan: Jesus almighty Christ riding on a horse!

  Jehanne clapped the neck of her mount.

  Jehanne: Riding on a horse …

  Pierrolot was simply pleased to be there, kept smiling at her privately, as if to say I’ve eaten and slept with you and seen you crap and scratch yourself, and look at you! What a roaring joke it is. Without Pierrolot, with two Jehans say, it could have been a nasty meeting.

  At night the tall sun-face of Messire moved in her right eye, in the tropics of her right side.

  Messire: The rose has it’s triumph in la Beauce. In King Jesus’ garden of vengeance in la Beauce.

  She went straight to Alençon’s apartments and had him woken. Much influenced by the air of adventurous chastity Yolande’s priests had created in the camp, he’d been sleeping. He gave you the idea that neither lust nor visitors usually woke him after eleven.

  Jehanne: My dear duke, if someone said the la Beauce side, what would it mean to you?

  Alençon: But you heard the other day. La Hire told you. La Beauce and Sologne.

  Jehanne: I didn’t hear anything about la Beauce and Sologne. Till just now.

  Alençon: But they talked about nothing else. North bank. South bank. La Hire and d’llliers said them by name.

  Jehanne: I haven’t heard the word la Beauce till now.

  Alençon: La Beauce is the north bank, where the city is. Sologne the south, the suburbs of Orleans. La Hire and d’llliers …

  To his appal she took his face in both her hands. She held it very tight and he was frightened.

  Jehanne: Will you believe me, lovely duke? I heard nothing of the name la Beauce till tonight.

  Alençon: I believe you. It doesn’t matter.

  As a reward, she let his little face escape.

  Jehanne: Anyhow, the army has to go by the la Beauce side. Fair up against the Goddam forts.

  Alençon: Oh?

  Jehanne: It will all happen in la Beauce.

  Alençon: I see.

  Jehanne: Will you give that order?

  Alençon: I have to meet with the others first.

  Jehanne: When? When?

  Alençon: Tomorrow morning.

  Jehanne: I’ll be there?

  Alençon: If you … all right.

  As if to soothe her he told her to be ready, they’d be marching very soon. That didn’t satisfy her. At last he had to be exact.

  The war leaders would meet in the great hall at eight o’clock the next morning. Their decisions would go for immediate approval to the Royal Council. They could be on the road the day after tomorrow.

  Jehanne: Ah!

  The next morning was Tuesday. At eight, mist still filled the encampments but there was a strong sun behind it. At eight, Jehanne and d’Aulon were the only people in the great hall. Jehanne stamped from the conference table to the windows and back.

  D’Aulon: You’ve got to remember that they’re used to war, they’ve been warring for years and years. They don’t feel as urgent about it …

  De Gaucourt came in with a secretary twenty minutes late. Taking his seat, he said nothing to her. Then la Hire, murmuring, Mademoiselle. He sat, joined his hands. Again like a good monk. He closed his eyes.

  Then Marshal Gilles de Rais with a beautiful boy equerry, a skin so white-ripe your impulse was, as with fruit, to touch and test.

  Gilles: You slept, Mademoiselle?

  Jehanne: Thank you …

  Gilles: Any prophetic dreams?

  His lips were moist to take account of them.

  At table, Monsieur de Gaucourt snorted thunderously. He must have had sinuses you could fit your fist in.

  Then Culant, Alençon walked in.

  Alençon: We haven’t been idle, Jehanne, we’ve been inspecting the convoy.

  All the others followed him in, found a place at table. The doors were locked. They all sat silent, waiting for Alençon’s initiatives.

  Alençon: The question of route. Jehanne’s counsel indicates we travel by the north bank, direct for the city gates, on the west.

  In this way began Jehanne’s first experience of those rituals called war councils. She didn’t know that morning, but the rite was performed as a means of conjuring up power for the generals, that they might have some measure of rule over their army. The decisions that arose at the close of the ceremony were sometimes enforceable, sometimes hopeful, sometimes doomed to be overruled by the politicians. Often as unrelated to truth as the statement of the priest at Mass-end: And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not consume it. As if that day were to be somehow brighter than all its dead and squalid brothers. In that same spirit, the generals held formal councils.

  Jehanne didn’t yet understand that these were hopeful rites as well as military assemblies.

  Alençon intoning therefore.

  Alençon: Jehanne’s counsel indicates we travel by the north bank.

  De Gaucourt: Does the young lady’s counsel understand that the English have two garrison towns between Orleans and Blois? One at Beaugency, one at Meung. Both north of the river.

  Jehanne: I think my counsel knows more about the Loire than you do, Monsieur.

  She still heatedly remembered her injured leg in Poitiers.

  De Gaucourt: This means that we have two garrisons on our flank all the way up to Orleans. They can make assaults on the convoy from the side and have walled towns to withdraw to. Then, if anything goes wrong in front of Orleans, we have these same garrisons on our flank for the retreat.

  Jehanne: My counsel guarantees things won’t go wrong in front of Orleans.

  De Gaucourt: Your counsel hasn’t outlaid money. We all have. All of us. Except you and your counsel.

  Jehanne: They’re crude ways of thinking. We won’t get anywhere thinking like that.

  Marshal de Boussac and Poton were both laughing.

  De Gaucourt: You’ll go out the door. On your ear, girl.

  Jehanne: Yes, on my ear. My knee-cap in Poitiers, my ear in Blois. You’re really working me over, Monsieur.

  Poton was hitting the table with two fingers and hissing Lovely, lovely, lovely. Gratification showed up too easily in the girl’s face. De Gaucourt saw it.

  Gilles, having heard she hadn’t dreamed last night, was asleep. It was a question: whose gallantry would save the girl?

  La Hire’s voice had a sudden quality to it. It saved her.

  La Hire: It isn’t impossible, of course, the north bank. We all know from Rouvray that attacking a supply column has its dangers. If we keep formed up tightly, the English at Meung and Beaugency won’t dare ride out. Now, when we get to the forts outside Orleans the greater part of the army can form up between the Paris road and St Lorent fort and the convoy with a strong guard could cross the same Paris road well to the north of the English line and come down to the Bannier or Parisis Gate, safe home.

  He coughed resonantly – his little body sounded quite hollow.

  Culant: I think we’re all aware that yesterday Monsieur d’Illiers got his company of four hundred men into Orleans by the la Beauce bank.

  De Gaucourt: You’re not seriously backing up this idiocy.

  Culant: I’m simply giving information.

  Boussac: What’s wrong with the Sologne bank? If we went by Sologne the best things of all would happen: the army would get there for a start … no bloody small consideration … the supplies can be barged down river to Orleans from a few miles upstream … the people inside the walls would get the girl the Bastard promised them. It has to be faced up to. The Bastard’s made, big of this girl. (The words had a double meaning.) Or will if given his chance.

  Poton again hit the table with two fingers, saying Lovely, lovely, lovely.

  Jehanne: Marshal de Boussac, I unde
rstand your joke. It’s a pity Marshal de Rais is asleep. I don’t think it’s his kind of humour.

  Again Poton with his fingers …

  La Hire began speaking. No one caught his first words. By his fourth or fifth there was entire silence. His authority was the highest at the table.

  La Hire:… needed something to make much of. Both outside and inside Orleans, for the English and for us, conditions are bad. Outside, the English are short of men, they live badly, supplies are irregular, the English Council in Westminster have other problems – the west country, Ireland. They happen to be quite sick of demands made by the English Council in Normandy. It’s a wrong-headed policy. Poor Johnnie Goddam outside Orleans feels he’s the tip of a finger of a long hand and a long arm, and the head that works the arm and hand and finger-tip doesn’t give a damn for him. He’s ripe to be destroyed. But the people inside the city can’t even see it. Once you go into that city it’s like going into a kingdom of the mad. They can see the Goddam mud and misery from the walls and yet they can’t see. The English have supernatural stature in the minds of the people inside the walls. The poor Bastard Royal has to make large promises to balance that out. His large promise is the girl. I share Monsieur de Gaucourt’s concern for the convoy. But whatever else fails to be brought to Orleans, the girl has to be.

  Alençon: Then isn’t the surest way the Sologne bank?

  La Hire: Even if we meet the English head-on in la Beauce, the girl can easily be slipped round the flanks. The English, you have to understand, are short of horses.

  Boussac: All right, the girl aside, we can win a set battle on the north bank. But we’ve all seen … haven’t we … the full-scale battle thing fall flat before against a hungry, muddy pack of bastard English. I won’t mention names …

  Jehanne: Agincourt.

  Boussac: I won’t mention names!

  The talk went on for hours. Far away in the camp Jehanne heard some consecrated trumpeter calling the camp to the daily Mass. She knew that that sort of thing would quickly lose its power amongst the soldiers unless the army moved soon and in the right direction.

  Then, all at once, there was no problem. Culant wrote on paper and showed what he had written to Boussac and then to Poton – but it could have been a joke because both men smiled. From that time de Gaucourt was abandoned by the others. Even though it was a marvellous ceasing of opposition it made Jehanne uneasy, as if she and de Gaucourt were the only two innocents in the room.