Blood Red, Sister Rose

by Thomas Keneally

  How did this happen? It was honest work at the base of the palisades. It couldn’t have made all these black dead English.

  In King Jesus’ garden of vengeance in la Beauce …

  She and Gilles strolled across the killing-ground to a cloister whose roof had fallen in.

  Gilles: It’s all terrible. It’s the only way God gave men of settling his affairs.

  Jehanne: I see.

  Gilles: One gets very used to it …

  All at once she was very angry with the dead.

  Jehanne: I told them three times to go home.

  Amongst the columns of the cloister an English boy in engraved armour gave up his sword to a Breton knight. The boy was weeping. Six Englishmen passed her in the smoke. One of them looked her in the eyes. They all ran on. Where were they going?

  From the end of the cloister nearest the chapel, a French mercenary stepped. He wore tapestry over his shoulders like a cape.

  Jehanne: They’re starting to loot. Does that mean we’ve won?

  Gilles: It seems so.

  They began walking side by side towards the looter. Gilles raised his visor.

  Jehanne: And all the killing over?

  Gilles: I think so.

  Jehanne: It’s all very quick, isn’t it?

  Gilles: Yes.

  At the edge of the cloister, however, an Englishman lay in a long smear of gore. His guts flopped red and grey out of a long belly wound. His eyes were open. His mouth was moving very slowly. He was so intent on his words; like a rehearser.

  Jehanne was overtaken by mad hope.

  Jehanne: If we tucked them back. In the right way.

  More offal slipped suddenly from the wound. The coué closed his lips.

  Jehanne: There must be an order. For putting them back.

  She was about to go on her knees and try to puzzle it out. Gilles took her by the shoulders and jolted her against a pillar of that ruined cloister. Her breath left her for some seconds. Her head rang.

  Gilles: He’s gone, dear lady. It can’t be done, there’s no right way to replace a man’s viscera. He didn’t suffer.

  Jehanne: Savages. Bastard savages.

  She wasn’t sure whom she was talking about.

  Gilles: You saw him talking quietly. He didn’t suffer.

  She spoke in a daze.

  Jehanne: Don’t let them kill anyone in the church. The army mustn’t get unclean. Don’t let them loot the place. There’s a man there stolen a drape.

  Gilles: Dear lady.

  She put her helmeted head against the stonework in King Jesus’ garden of vengeance in la Beauce. She could hear Gilles asking the soldier with the tapestry where it had come from. Gilles sounded very quiet, very terrifying. Two or three other soldiers too had come into the open with loot and Gilles asked them acid questions while, in their hands, rich cloth rustled and precious metal clicked.

  She could hear axe-blows and raised her head. Beyond the apse of the chapel stood a bell-tower. Militia-men were cutting at its door with axes. Knights and gentlemen strolled about amongst the wreckage. A thousand knights and gentlemen in the fort, inspecting the outnumbered dead. Some chatted with their English prisoners. Only the militia-men were still warlike, hacking at the campanile door.

  Gilles told her he’d put guards on the chapel. They walked through the murk to see what was happening at the tower.

  Jehanne: I expected when we got inside we’d find the English laid out, washed … you know. Anointed … in clean shrouds.

  Gilles said nothing.

  When the campanile door broke down militia-men trampled each other to get inside. They were convinced of their immortality now, they had unbuckled their pavis which lay, great husks, all over the cloisters. Within the tower, finding the last enemy, they were laughing.

  Jehanne: Tell them to bring them out.

  When Gilles tried to he couldn’t be heard. Then Englishmen were forced out the door. They were dressed ridiculously in badly fitting Augustinian habits. In dalmatics you could see moleskin breeches or bare legs beneath. In chasubles over filthy drawers. The cloister was all at once thudding with rampant male laughter. The crowd unflexed itself and Gilles led Jehanne through it. Soon they were facing a tall Englishman. His monk’s habit came as far as his calves. His eyes were not funny. But Jehanne began to laugh at him because she knew she could save him, that the eyes boggled like that without any necessity.

  He said, Lady, you can’t risk killing us, we’re clergy.

  Gilles went into the middle of the robed English and gestured that he wanted everyone to be silent. He could tell and was grateful that the sight of all those antic hairy calves had broken her despair.

  Gilles: The English came last October. Since then you’ve had no success with them. Generals promised success but produced its opposite. That dear lady came last Friday evening, promised success and here it is on Monday afternoon. You shouldn’t do anything with these English clergy unless you ask her. Why? Because you never know what divine pattern you upset by not asking her.

  The militia all looked to her. For some reason she found herself laughing again and she could see the militia-men think certainly she’s going to say slaughter, and could feel the impulses of their blood burring at her heart unexpectedly.

  I’m going to say yes. I want their comic blood. When she said no she was arguing with herself as well as them. She said no, the clergy had to be saved, not cut about or beaten. She said King Jesus lusts for mercy the way we lust for worse things. She said Obey me!

  Englishmen gave way at the knees. They put their foreheads to the ground and cried.

  At night in Orleans, Jehanne confessed to Pasquerel her guilt for the dead, her hour of blood-lust. Pasquerel said of course, of course. She was angry at him for being unimpressed. And as well for caring more about the doctrine of suffering than about suffering itself, the doctrine of death rather than about death, the doctrine of whole skins rather than the fact of strewn guts.

  She was still in a state of unease at dinnertime. She felt they’re in hell now, consumed, wasted. What meat and wine can put a coating on that fact?

  So she was petulant when the Bastard came to dinner with his thanks.

  He said the fall of St Loup was more than he and de Gaucourt could have hoped for. They had put a garrison there while workmen filled the ditches, levelled the mounds, knocked down the palisades. They were working this very night by torchlight. St Loup couldn’t have fallen at a better time. The news was that Fastolf was in Janville, though no one knew how true that was. Janville was only a day’s march north.

  Jehanne: Fastolf, Fastolf!

  She said it Fastoff. Fastoff. The way she – and others – called Glasdale Classidas, and Suffolk Suffort.

  Bastard: You’d rather not be told about him.

  Jehanne: If I’m not told I’ll have your head.

  Bastard: I’ve a tough neck. But I’ll remember.

  She went to bed shivering that summer’s night beside warm Charlotte.

  To my honoured etc.

  Dated 1 May 1429

  Today was Ascension Day and the girl, who seems to be given all credit for yesterday’s capture of St Loup, went to Mass in Sainte-Croix without any armour. There is a rumour that the slaughter she saw has made her less militant. But all the militia were drawn up in companies in the cathedral square and cheered her for a solid half-hour.

  Monsieur de Rais tells me that the generals are alarmed in case all the militia and knights cross the river tomorrow to take on St Jean-le-Blanc and leave the town denuded. Some of them tried to tell her the next attack will be a sortie against St Lorent. She refused to believe them. She said she had asked her squire, who had told her every soldier knew the next step was an assault on the St Jean-le-Blanc, on the les Augustins side.

  The Marshal is dazzled by her. His taste is for her sort of exalted impudence and intuition. La Hire also appreciates her: they both have the same peasant temperament.

  The English are not
so easily endeared to her. In fact there are signs that she is their greatest fear. This afternoon she went out across the bridge at the south of the city until she came to the place where the French have broken two spans and built a fort facing les Tourelles. As on an earlier occasion she wanted to warn them, but this time she asked a French archer to shoot a letter she had had written into the English fortifications. I think she hoped by this stratagem to avoid being called names. For someone so sure of her mission, she is easily hurt by the insults of others. As the archer shot the arrow with the letter bound round it she called out ‘Take this and read!’ As she turned to come back into town she heard an English knight yell, ‘News from the Armagnac whore!’ This shout is supposed to have distressed her very much …

  Bernardo Massimo

  At five o’clock the next morning the militia companies lined up in the rue des Talmeliers. They stretched from the Renard Gate out of sight in the direction of the centre of the town. About half-past six they all started barracking. Les Augustins! Les Augustins!

  Jehanne could hear it and was frightened – it sounded such an unmanageable roar.

  D’Aulon: They ought to quieten down. Talbot could overhear them.

  Jehanne: I’ll tell them.

  She went out on to the steps with Pasquerel and d’Aulon. Seeing her, they stopped being coherent and let out a long deep scream of acclaim.

  A half-dozen city magistrates stood at the base of the steps. They advanced. In the centre a boyish man, sleek, about thirty. They all bowed.

  Magistrate: Mademoiselle, we cannot accept de Gaucourt as civil governor. His interests fight the interests of the city and the Orleanais. It suits him if the situation drags on. It suits the knights and free companies, because we feed them while they take and sell prisoners. They don’t really like headlong assault because the militia kill too many negotiable Englishmen, you understand. General Poton complained to the captains of militia that they killed too many English knights at St Loup.

  Jehanne: You surely think we ought to let anyone surrender who wants to.

  Magistrate: I express it badly. What I mean is that it’s business to them, but to us it’s a fight for our lives.

  For our sanity, one of the others admitted.

  Magistrate: De Gaucourt can gain from forcing the Council to raise another army still. He pretends he’s mortgaged himself for his king, but he’s really on the money-lending side. We can’t fit another army into the city. We can’t feed it or support it. If we aren’t allowed to start doing now what has to be done, we would consider giving the city up. I say that so that you’ll see how serious we are.

  The militia were screaming. St Loup, les Augustins!

  Jehanne: I want to go over the river today. Does that suit you?

  Magistrate: It makes us ecstatic, Mademoiselle. De Gaucourt has boats ready to ferry the knights …

  Jehanne: The knights will come too. I’ll be with la Hire and Monsieur de Rais.

  She looked up and down the lines of red morning faces. It was an hour of the day, under a clear sky narrow but radiant above the balconies and gables of Orleans, when no one believes in death, in the abstract let alone in the particular.

  D’Aulon and the magistrates managed to quieten the companies closest to Boucher’s door.

  Minguet got her horse and Raymond her armour. She told Raymond to hang the armour from his horse – she’d put it on outside the walls – and not in his short-sightedness to drop any. Her brothers were there, mounted, and Bertrand wheezing for air – so much of it was burnt up in the fervour up and down rue des Talmeliers.

  All together, and with the magistrates, they rode down the lines of militia-men who took up the whole far wall as far as the cross-road at rue Ste Catherine, half-way across the city.

  It took a quarter of an hour from there to the sight of the Burgundy Gate. In the square in front of the gate were one hundred and fifty armed knights and horsemen. At least as many archers stood on the parapets over the gate, facing the centre of the city.

  D’Aulon knew what they were for. They’re there to stop us, he told Jehanne.

  She found the magistrates had ridden forward on her flanks for the confrontation. She looked them in the face, as if to assure them the right sort of fury was in her.

  D’Aulon: That’s de Gaucourt’s flag.

  He pointed out a knight in the centre. At that second a knight rode forward and raised his visor. It was old de Gaucourt’s face inside.

  De Gaucourt: I could hear them yelling les Augustins.

  Jehanne: You’re a fool if you think I told them.

  De Gaucourt: Who told them?

  Jehanne: They knew. They could smell it.

  De Gaucourt: All a matter of noses.

  Jehanne: It’s good to see you ready for war, Monsieur. Even if you’re all facing the wrong way.

  De Gaucourt: This crowd isn’t leaving the city, Jehanne. When we go to les Augustins it’s to be done properly.

  Jehanne: I’m going where no one can stop them going. That’s all.

  There was a clean whistling sound. All the archers on the parapet had armed and drawn their bowstrings. Their leather wristlets glistened, tight-packed with sinew.

  Jehanne: The people behind me will fight you and then the Goddams. That’s a fact.

  Magistrate: They’ll fight you, Monsieur.

  The militia were crowding the buttocks of the horses, the magistrates’ horses were skidding forward towards de Gaucourt.

  De Gaucourt: For Christ’s sake, if they do it … the les Augustins thing … it’ll be a shambles.

  The archers on the wall were being whistled, hissed, booed. Militia-men were taking off their mail, opening their jackets, calling out, Kill a Frenchman if you want to. Sow’s arse. Bastards.

  Magistrate: They’ll kill you, old man.

  De Gaucourt hissed and punched the rampart of his saddle.

  D’Aulon: Don’t do that, Monsieur. Your archers might think it’s a signal.

  De Gaucourt called over his shoulder for the gate to be opened. His knights couldn’t move for militia-men. Their horses hated being immobile in the crowd and began snorting out their terror.

  De Gaucourt: There aren’t enough boats to get this crowd over quickly.

  Jehanne: A good thing we began early.

  De Gaucourt: I’m not responsible for the shambles we’ll see today.

  Jehanne: They can’t be controlled.

  De Gaucourt: You’re very pleased, Mademoiselle. That they are out of control.

  Jehanne: I don’t think you can say that, Monsieur.

  De Gaucourt: I needn’t ask: your Voices all say today’s the great day.

  Jehanne: Perhaps they do.

  De Gaucourt: Have they read Vegetius on de Re Militari?

  Jehanne: They don’t admit it.

  De Gaucourt: It’ll be a great day for blood.

  De Gaucourt rode out of the barbican with her. The jonquils trembled in the ditches. Even the weeds binding the misused earth of St Aignan suburb looked vibrant.

  Soon they could see a fleet of a half-dozen barges moored near the little river islands called les Martinets.

  De Gaucourt: See. A half-dozen to ferry all this crowd over to Ile aux Toiles.

  It appeared that a bridge of two barges, moored overnight, connected Ile aux Toiles with the south bank. It was only a short throw from the isle to the south bank.

  The magistrates said that the barges ought to be packed with militia-men, who could then wait on Ile aux Toiles for Jehanne, de Gaucourt and whatever other mounted troops took it into their heads to come. De Gaucourt and Jehanne agreed.

  Jehanne: Raymond, get me in my hardware.

  The boy came to her, peering to make sure where the limbs were on which he was to clamp the items of her suit.

  With these defiances and in these casts of mind a day began so confusing that by the afternoon no one could tell who had been right – de Gaucourt for his caution, Jehanne for being blithe, the militia
and magistrates for being enthusiastic.

  Militia-men and some knights were already sailing for Ile aux Toiles when la Hire led his companies out of the Burgundy Gate. Jehanne asked could she speak to la Hire. They rode a little aside.

  Jehanne: The magistrates say all you knights and generals don’t want to finish the English quickly. It’s not in your interest.

  La Hire: Maman Yolande has made it in my interest.

  She realized he had achieved what was for him a summit of honesty.

  Jehanne: Thank you. I want to stay with you today. Not de Gaucourt.

  La Hire: My honour, Mademoiselle.

  It was two hours before there was room on a barge for Jehanne and la Hire, their frightened horses, the frightened horses of their equerries and attendants. She didn’t speak to that pale incarnation of Messire called Sir Bertrand de Poulengy, who had in any case to wait for the next barge.

  The river ran deeply, potently, and the horses had to be soothed.

  Look, la Hire told her.

  The day’s first and basic confusion was commencing. From mid-river they could see not only the Ile aux Toiles, but on the south bank the English mud-and-palisade fortress called St Jean-le-Blanc. To the west of St Jean, a half-mile away and hazed by the exhalations of the river, stood the complex of les Augustins – les Tourelles.

  So it was like this:

  The English were leaving St Jean-le-Blanc, climbing west over its parapets. A roar of French joy from the militia on Ile aux Toiles gusted the English west to where they could join their colleagues in les Augustins.

  La Hire: They’ll run wild now, those militia. Wild!

  And hundreds of militia left the island and ran over the barge-bridge to St Jean-le-Blanc and struck their company flags all over the mounds and set fire to the palisades and the hovels inside.

  The flames looked nearly companionable at that distance, in the sun and under the light wind.

  Jehanne: Is it such a bad thing? To get a fort so easily.

  La Hire: It won’t do them any good. They’ll think it’s a compliment to them.