Blood Red, Sister Rose

by Thomas Keneally

  Jehanne: Perhaps it is.

  There was all the delirium of amateur-soldiering in her too that morning.

  La Hire: Glasdale’s making les Augustins stronger. That’s all.

  Soon Jehanne, la Hire, d’Aulon and fifty other mounted soldiers were on Ile aux Toiles, amongst the thick forests of rowan trees. Beyond a rise were the anchored barges by which they would get to the south bank. The barge trembled in this deep and narrow channel. The girl’s belly knotted. It would be hard to lead the warhorses across them.

  D’Aulon came to talk to Jehanne and la Hire. He came, in fact, in delegation – a red-haired Scot called Lord Hugh Kennedy, a Spaniard called Don Partrada, and d’Aulon, bankrupt Armagnac.

  D’Aulon: Monsieur, Mademoiselle, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. The militia are going to run on to les Augustins …

  La Hire: I know. Expecting the English to clear out of it as well.

  D’Aulon: The English will in fact chase them all the way back to the bridge here. Unless there’s a good rear-guard set up on the south bank …

  La Hire: I know, I know. It’s going to be an abattoir.

  D’Aulon: De Gaucourt was right by accident.

  La Hire: It hadn’t escaped my notice.

  He counted heads. There were twenty of his own hired knights, there were Partrada and a half-dozen Spaniards, there were four Scots lords, Jehanne, d’Aulon, squires, Minguet, Raymond and, by now, her brothers and Bertrand. About eighty people, all mounted. They’d take station on the west mound of St Jean-le-Blanc if it wasn’t too hot there from the burning walls. Every time the English crowded the militia back to the bridge la Hire’s people would threaten and terrify them. The bridge of barges had to be kept a reasonable, a peaceable thoroughfare where men and horses could cross without panic.

  Amongst the trees squires blindfolded the horses and led them over the flat-boats. Everyone picked a rowan branch, for rowans were reputed best when dealing with unruly horses. There was a beach of soft brown silt for them to step on to at the south bank.

  D’Aulon: It’s happening already.

  The militia had gone sprinting for les Augustins. They ran through the trampled earth and few charred doorposts of what had been the south bank suburb of le Portereau. The bad winter diet they had eaten told on them. They could see too that English knights and archers were coming out of the gate of les Augustins and standing on the piled earth and logs outside. Bending English crossbowmen were coolly at work on the ratchets of their weapons.

  It occurred to the Orleans militia that les Augustins was not going to be like Jericho. They pulled up and stood gasping, hand on belts. Some of them even lay down amongst the weeds where the market gardens had been in years of peace.

  La Hire lined out his eighty people on the steep mound of St Jean-le-Blanc. Jehanne kept an eye on her brothers in siege hats and mail-coats, mounted on the sort of horses you’d use as pack-animals in more peaceful times. Already a few militia-men were strolling back towards St Jean and the bridge. A middle-aged man stopped under the mound and called out to them: There’s a giant up there, a Goddam giant. There, outside les Augustins.

  All the knights began pointing out to each other an English soldier in armour, who did look big, treading up and down the outworks of les Augustins. He was a depressing symbol.

  La Hire knew the militia couldn’t deal with such symbols. He had dismounted but climbed into his saddle again to ride out and order them back from the wasteland in front of les Augustins. He saw though, they all saw, the militia get up in silence and more or less at once and begin to walk forward towards the English. What weird shift in their vision, what incantations of the coués made them do it? The English waited on their mound or behind barriers of stakes. Ready as bridegrooms.

  Flocks of arrows flew out of the breastworks. Hundreds of English knights, a few of them mounted, came yelling downhill. The militia died like sleepwalkers. A half minute later they woke and began running.

  La Hire dismounted again. He told his people to shelter behind their horses. If any squires or others had bows or crossbows they should get them ready.

  Not everyone obeyed. The Scots were arguing. Two Scots lords wanted to ride straight up the Sancerre Road, through the running militia. La Hire talked to them, using their own Scots obscenities. He told them how soon the militia would all be milling out of breath to cross to Ile aux Toiles and how the English would be all around them, lofting arrows into the dense and indiscreet target.

  Lord Kennedy: You’re entitled to tell mercenaries what to do. Younger sons and hard-up farmers. You can’t tell lords a thing.

  La Hire didn’t argue. He just kept up the presumption of command. He watched the shafts of the English longbowmen – whom he was known to admire – catch sunlight at their apogees above the Orleanais rabble.

  La Hire: Save up your death for this afternoon, Monsieur Kennedy. I think it might be needed more then.

  The militia-men were now walking back in a leisurely way, stopping to let wounded friends spit blood or get their balance back. It was soon that they’d run.

  La Hire spoke quietly, professionally, to Jehanne explaining how the English worked, the archers in squads, the knights running out all at once to hack up their enemy, then returning to the screen of archers who fired all at once in squads. The crossbowmen in amongst the longbowmen, letting go with terrible bolts all together at someone’s word. Then the knights emerging again.

  La Hire: We never do anything as well as that. Too much false pride, I think.

  Jehanne saw that the sun was high.

  Jehanne: Is it noon already?

  La Hire, squinting at the sun as if it too were obdurate, admitted it was already noon.

  Soon all the militia were running, very slowly, and the English – who had eaten badly themselves that winter – slowly following. In la Hire’s company on the slope squires and suspect knights unhitched crossbows from their saddles, fitted bolts, cranked the weapons.

  La Hire asked d’Aulon to look and tell him whose flags were flying on Ile aux Toiles. D’Aulon went down to the river bank to make a survey. When he came back he told la Hire that he’d seen de Gaucourt’s, de Villars’s and de Rais’s flags amongst the clearings high up on the spine of the island.

  La Hire made a detached comment on the report.

  La Hire: The old man will keep them there all day. Just to show he was right about the militia.

  Jehanne: Surely Gilles …

  La Hire: Maybe Gilles will come.

  La Hire nodded at d’Aulon. You could see he liked d’Aulon’s tranquil style.

  So the Orleans militia came gasping back through the flattened suburb of le Portereau. They milled on the bad road. Their mouths hung, they looked identically vacant, and inept with their feet. The English pattern la Hire had indicated to Jehanne had now broken up because of the numbers of French prisoners taken, all from Orleans and so easily saleable. On the road below St Jean-le-Blanc a militia-man from Orleans who had no breath left stopped to lecture la Hire’s force.

  Militia-man: They had a giant … two-handed bloody sword … like a scythe. Why weren’t you there?

  One of the Scots rode at him, but he danced to the side and barked for breath and joined the queue for the bridge.

  Some knight had walked up to argue with la Hire. We should have ridden up to the militia, he said. We ought to do it now, while the Goddams are feeling good and have lines of prisoners to look at. La Hire didn’t answer.

  Now the English archers walked away a little and sat down to rest. The militia got across the bridge and there was wide rural quietness in le Portereau and on the slopes of St Jean-le-Blanc. You had to look hard to see the corpses along the river flats.

  About one o’clock Monsieur de Villars crossed with a small party and joined la Hire.

  At the same time, defiant Englishmen marched out of les Augustins and pretended to picnic in the rubble of le Portereau, half-way between their fortress and the mound where
la Hire’s people waited. After taking a little bread, the Goddam archers began firing at la Hire. Everyone on the slope had at least a hide shield which they put up when the arrows made the black well-ordered dive for their flesh.

  La Hire said the English were trying to force them back over to Ile aux Toiles. Once they managed that they’d knock holes in the bottoms of the barge-bridges and the day’s war would be finished.

  Proud knights, poor knights, squires, adventurous peasants (Jehan and Pierrolot for example) sheltered under shields and behind horses of varying value. When arrows struck or pierced a shield it was a blow that could knock a man on his backside. So, comically bowled over and open to the sky he could be caught by the next volley. In this way a few of la Hire’s men were wounded. But of a dozen volleys not one shaft struck Jehanne’s shield or her old grey.

  The English could see it all had scant effect and sat down again to think.

  Jehanne put her shield on her shoulder and went to see her brothers. Downhill a Frenchman’s horse was bucking and galloping with a shaft in its withers. Another was on its front knees with an arrow deep in its eye. A boy, struck in the belly, was praying aloud in a level voice, very businesslike. He seemed to be acknowledging that praying aloud was the professional thing to do when an arrow found your belly. She stopped and kissed his face but he didn’t know. He wasn’t as alive as he looked.

  Jehan was peasant-bitter. When were those lords and cowards on Ile aux Toiles coming? Why are you crying? Am I crying? she asked him.

  Pierrolot: I wish I had a crossbow. Couldn’t you afford me a crossbow?

  She remembered what de Baudricourt had told her about crossbows, one zany afternoon in Vaucouleurs.

  Jehanne: They’re very slow to load. You have to be taught.

  Pierrolot: I’ll learn.

  He was willing to undertake any course of learning if he got off that hill.

  Jehanne: Don’t be frightened. Your big sister tells you. Don’t be frightened.

  Pierrolot: I wish more people would come.

  Bertrand was there in his mail and siege-hat, stooped more than the other stoopers, behind his horse. In his white face the veins at the sides of his nose were an expanse of purple. It seemed they might have burst from terror. He appeared old and unhealthy and looked up at her as if he was saying yes I know what I am, a vain threadbare knight, I confess it.

  She stood by his horse and laughed at him lovingly and he half-laughed, half-sobbed back at her. They both knew too that the other was thinking: yes, that was the best time, when the pattern was simple, with de Baudricourt or on the flooded roads with the king’s messenger.

  Jehanne: Nothing’s going to happen to you, Bertrand.

  Bertrand: There are a thousand Englishmen there, Jehanne. How many of us? Are there a hundred, are there as many as that?

  She told him that nothing would happen to him because he was Messire’s voice, there were incarnations, and he was an incarnation.

  Bertrand: I’m not aware of being Messire’s voice. When the arrows start all falling I’m not aware of it. Why don’t they run up on us?

  Jehanne: I don’t know.

  Bertrand: You have to go back to la Hire?

  Jehanne: Yes. Do you know, none of those generals are like humans at all.

  He laughed. Because he thought she was apologizing for leaving.

  Jehanne: It’s the truth.

  Her visit had however done him good.

  Bertrand: Put your shield on the other shoulder going back. It’s not much use to you facing Germany.

  When she had walked a little way away she turned again and they laughed with each other under the terrible sound, again beginning, the glissade and hiss of arrows in the air. He called, Put your visor down. But she felt happier with it up, as if she might ultimately escape entirely, even from Messire, through that little hole.

  She saw that the praying boy had died and was being carried down behind the mound into the charred ditch of St Jean-le-Blanc.

  The air cleared again. It seemed the English had put up a flight of arrows just out of bemusement. Now they sat down again.

  A half-hour past. Everyone except la Hire was angry. Jehanne was angry. Knights were calling overland to Ile aux Toiles. Gaucourt, Gaucourt, Gilles for Christ’s sake!

  In the wasteland the English stood up all together, then divided into two unequal parts.

  There were hundreds of Englishmen running at them, hundreds for the flat-boats. Only two dozen English knights were mounted.

  La Hire told his people to stand on the mound. He signalled around him and acquired some Gascons, the Scots, the Spaniard Partrada, and d’Aulon. You could hear the English shouting. There was a crunch of lance-butts as la Hire and the others couched their lances in the sockets on the right chests of their armour. Jehanne remembered to call for her own lance from myopic Raymond.

  Her belly jumped when she homed its butt in the socket near her right armpit.

  La Hire said undramatically Montjoie St Denis, the old French battle-cry. He admitted later he thought it would be his last utterance of that nearly meaningless but cherished French slogan.

  Jehanne, uninvited, jolted downhill with the clutch of horsemen la Hire had signalled for. Her visor was down. Her impetus, the impact she would make on something down on the river-bank, alarmed her. But she was grunting in a sort of exaltation. Through the grate of her salade, she could see English knights and soldiers turning, trying to form up for the shock of la Hire, d’Aulon, don Partrada, some Gascons, some Scots, her potent virgin self.

  She could tell they wouldn’t be able to stand it. Even if they were hundreds, with axes for knocking holes in the flat-boats. They all caught terror from each other in one holy instant. She saw a Gascon catch an Englishman on lance-point, lift him broken in the air, discard him on the road.

  Time, like a hand, took her as it takes the drunken and flung her, with d’Aulon and la Hire and Partrada side-on to the Englishmen running at the mound where Bertrand and young Pierrolot, with his ambitions regarding crossbows, waited on their poor horses.

  Again you knew the English would run away at an angle.

  The Orleanais militia watched this success from Ile aux Toiles. With them as with the Englishmen hope and despair came in epidemic spasms. In epidemic hope they came jogging over the bridge back into Sologne.

  Most of the knights had taken English prisoners and Jehanne watched them pass her. They were a lean race. They were sent into the ditch of St Jean-le-Blanc where the praying boy’s fresh corpse lay. The earth there was black and still hot.

  La Hire: Oh holy Christ.

  Again the militia were chasing the English all the way back to the outworks of les Augustins. No one could stop them. Watching them freshly and fatuously inspired she had the same sense la Hire suffered: that although it was mid-afternoon the morning’s idiocies were repeating themselves. And she was tired now.

  La Hire thought it safe for them now to go forward into the wasteland of le Portereau. Militia companies passed them and called back commendations.

  La Hire: We’ll have to do all over what we’ve done all day. Just the same, it can be done.

  But her horse that had seemed so hectic and fluid on the slope moved heavily now.

  Behind them the Marshals de Boussac and de Rais and old de Gaucourt at last crossed. Jehanne, turning painfully, saw de Gaucourt’s great flag coming forward, green leeks on a red ground. God damn him.

  Breton knights suddenly rode all about them shouting Noël. Celebrating then. She asked la Hire if what they did all day was the right thing then?

  La Hire: It was the only right thing that’s been done all day.

  Gilles: Noël, dear lady.

  The Marshal de Rais, bright-eyed this afternoon, had ridden to her front, making his big horse step crabwise in salute.

  La Hire: It would have been pleasant to see you earlier, Monsieur.

  Gilles: I was ill the whole morning in Orleans.

  La Hire:
Your flag was on the island.

  Gilles: I had my man put it there. As an inspiration.

  He smiled, a loving broadness of smile along the delicate lips.

  La Hire: Jesus Lord Almighty!

  Jehanne: You might have sent us your knights, Gilles.

  Gilles: I had to be bled, Jehanne. The omen! I couldn’t send my men out under such an omen.

  La Hire: Mother of God!

  Gilles: Remember I had that fever yesterday? A recurrence. I was too sick to instruct my servant on the correct herbal mixture. I’m an excellent herbalist, Jehanne. Any village from Lorraine to the sea would be quite proud of me.

  La Hire: And de Gaucourt’s story?

  He was so quietly angry, his blue eyes drugged with it.

  Jehanne watched them. Gilles still rode sideways up the plain. She was fascinated, as if she might find out now which one was the more dangerous, the least human.

  Gilles: I simply warn you. When I tell you I had a fever you are not to talk as if it’s fiction.

  La Hire spoke through Jehanne.

  La Hire: Monsieur wants me to fight him so he can establish the good name of his puke, of his fever sweat. There’s no question of its good name. I wish he’d been here, that’s all. Even the lower gentry are permitted wishes.

  Gilles: Spare us the story of your farm boyhood, Monsieur.

  La Hire inhaled and rode away to the right flank.

  Gilles: He puts on this calm act. But he’s really very touchy.

  Away to the right de Gaucourt rode in a broad convoy of knights.

  Jehanne: That old man. He should lose his head.

  Now Gilles was riding more normally, at her side.

  Gilles: You mustn’t make rash judgments, Jehanne. I had a fever. De Gaucourt spent the morning finding barges. The Bastard is menacing Talbot in front of St Lorent to stop him crossing over here. All reasonable activities. Just look at that fellow!

  They were nearing the corner of les Augustins. As at St Loup you could see monastic masonry beyond the palisade, a campanile like the one where the frightened English at St Loup had dressed as priests. On the walls, above the main gate, facing south towards the hub of the king’s France, the English had their giant standing. He must have been seven feet tall inside his armour, but his helmet was fantastical and high, the kind they made in Germany, swept up above the crown in the form of an eagle’s head. He stood there as some sort of argument – symbolic, mythical, biblical, magical – that to try to burn down les Augustins was against nature, decency, reason.