by Robert Nye
It was exquisite.
Most refreshing.
Reminding me of the night before Verneuil, when a French girl called Jessica did the same office for me – only that was in less comfortable environs. I had to lean against a wall, and this little carroty-headed mamselle knelt down before me.
‘He eez too beeg, milord!’
But we managed, somehow. And, afterwards, I fucked her fore and aft against the selfsame wall. And there were no more complaints regarding the size of the English milord’s battering ram.
At Verneuil, now, in that great battle, an August it was, and stinking hot, with flies everywhere, but I forget the year – at the Battle of Verneuil, I took the Duke of Alençon prisoner. (That is, John II, son of the Alençon who fought so bravely against us at Agincourt, inheritor of his father’s title and a great part of his courage.) I agreed with him on the sum of £26,666. 13s. 4d (Twenty Six Thousand Pounds, Thirteen Shillings, and Fourpence) as a right ransom. This was paid – though it took three years for the money to come through, and Alençon meanwhile lived here at Caister at my expense, I having seen to it that he was safely shipped home on my own little vessel The Blythe.
Now, then, Bussard, put this down clear. The money was paid, but I never saw my proper share of it yet. Lord Willoughby (that cheap paederast) and my lord the ox of Bedford got every penny of it between them. Such nervous gratitude! And I’d just agreed to provide eighty men-at-arms and two hundred and forty archers to help the Ox win his campaign in Maine! Ah well, the numbers will at least give you an idea of how your author had risen in the world – or fallen? – since those days when he took only ten and thirty to the fight at Agincourt.
My niece Miranda is different from that Verneuil girl in one respect. She likes to drink it all down, to swallow it. She sucks me off as though I were a sugar stick.
After Verneuil, and Mons, and St Ouen d’Estrais, and Beaumont le Vicomte, and Silly-Guillem, I was installed a Knight of the Garter. I have my Garter, my collar and George, my lesser George and ribbon, and my Star. All very nice, though they don’t keep out the cold.
Move those curtains.
We should have more wax on those curtains.
I want more wax on those curtains.
HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE.
Full circle. I had to wear garters in the service of the Duchess of Norfolk.
As for my own coat-of-arms …
Bussard, I cannot see. It would give me pleasure if you would draw them for me on the page before you. Draw boldly. I might be able to make it out.
That motto, ME FAUNT FARE, means I must be doing.
Doing, Pigbum.
Oh, I know the local translation of it, don’t worry!
So then, now then, I had honours and dignities and responsibilities. I also had money to invest. It was impossible for an English soldier not to make money out of the fortunes of the war in France. Where I differed from others like me was only in my dream of Caister. I was determined to invest my profits in good English land.
Item, 23rd January, 1426, I entrusted eight thousand gold crowns, equivalent to some £1333 (One Thousand Three Hundred and Thirty Three Pounds) to Sir William Breton, the bailey of Caen, and to Jean Roussel – for them to forward to England on my behalf. That money was paid to John Wells, alderman and grocer of the City of London, and to John Kirtling, clerk, my receiver-general on this side of the Channel.
Breton was not my only basket.
Item, 26th April, 1430, from Bartolomeo Spinola the Genoese, Wells and Kirtling took delivery in London of a sum of £333 (Three Hundred and Thirty Three Pounds), which I had deposited with another Italian merchant in Paris nearly nine months previous.
My Paris banker, Spinola’s colleague, was Johannes d’Franchis Sachus. I called him John Sack.
This money – and much else besides – came here to Caister. To build my dream. This castle. But more of that anon. I shall reserve a Day for it. For an inventory of my castle and its building. And how I had in the end a licence from the Crown expressly for the purpose of bringing my own fleet of six ships with building materials up the Hundred River.
Caister Castle is my dream, my craze, my maze, my embodiment in stone, my pleasure dome. And all that, and the glory in France, is very nice. But what really counts in the end, little farter of mine, is the state of your soul and your prick and the number of figs in the barrel.
The sun on the wall.
A girl.
A cask of wine.
That’s what remains.
Sap rising. Miranda. And sack.
That’s all the facts. That’s what remains.
Sap rising. Miranda. And sack.
Chapter Ninety-Three
A fancy of Sir John Fastolf’s concerning the marriage of Joan of Arc & the Marshal Gilles de Retz
St Dionysius’ Day
Joan of Arc. Joan la Pucelle. Joan the Maid. Joan the Puzzell.
Gilles de Retz. Gilles de Laval. Marshal of France. Bluebeard.
The story of those two.
Father, I wish that I could tell it.
There is a very great mystery here. I was a witness to the edges of it.
I saw half France in flames, and the Dolphin’s hopeless cause suddenly alive again, and all because of a virgin in a suit of white armour, bearing the sword with which Charles Martel was said to have vanquished the Saracens.
I saw the same girl burnt as a witch in the market-place at Rouen.
And I saw her heart afterwards, in the hands of the executioner. It would not burn.
‘We have burnt a saint!’ he told me. And he threw her heart in the Seine.
What are we to make of this? What are we to make of the whole tale of her ‘voices’ and her victories? And the fact that every single one of her judges, starting at the top with Peter Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, came to some kind of violent and cut-throat end? And that from the day of her burning – it was on the 30th of May, in the year of our Lord 1431 – nothing went right again for the English in France?
Was Joan a saint?
I saw her three times – once at Orleans, once in the flames, once at Patay (more of that last time later). She died crying Jesu! Jesu! She was a short, stumpy, ugly girl, with a dark complexion. She came from the marches of Lorraine, a place called Domremy, in the Vosges Mountains. There were several prophecies that a virgin would come out of those oak-forests, and be the salvation of France. Yet this Joan was a strange sort of salvation, severe and spotty-faced, and the Dolphin made no effort to get her back when Burgundy captured her and sold her to us.
Relapsed heretic …
excommunicate catholic …
apostate, idolatress, divineress and sorceress …
I remember the words on the paper they hung round her neck, and the cap they put on her head. For years I had this jingle in my memory, whenever I thought of her:
A thing in the form of a woman
By name of the Pucelle
Was burnt by the soldiers at Rouen
After a proper trial.
She was a relapsed heretic
And excommunicate catholic,
Apostate, idolatress,
Divineress and sorceress;
A devil from Lorraine
Whence devils come
In the dress of women,
As everyone knows.
Not my jingle, father. I have stooped low, but never so low as to verses. Nym was the author. That humorous Nym. He was hanged not long after, for an offence similar to Bardolph’s.
But – I confess that Joan the Puzzell worried me, and worries me. Sometimes I’ve thought her bitch, witch, and murderess. Sometimes – something else. And then, three years ago, Pope Callistus III accepted the findings of that commission which he had appointed to investigate the whole matter of her trial, and declared her rehabilitated. O for God’s sake, I’ve no doubt there were political motives behind that little move. But the Pope’s the Pope, and the politics aren’t really relevant. The rehabilita
tion of Joan’s memory just expresses what a lot of people felt who saw her die. There was a soldier of my company who made a cross out of two sticks and held it up in front of her eyes even as she was burning. A witch would have flinched from that, or spat, or just ignored it. I never saw such love as came in tears from that girl’s eyes as she fixed her last look on those two crossed sticks in the smoke, and cried out Jesu! Jesu!
But then there’s Bluebeard’s shadow on the story …
The man she chose, the general she selected, her comrade-in-arms, the captain of her captains – and not so very long after we burnt Joan, this same Gilles de Retz was arrested, and brought before the Bishop of Nantes by his own people, and accused of witchcraft, and sacrilege, and the murder of little children. Threatened with excommunication, he confessed to the crimes. And the details of that confession were so vile that the Bishop of Nantes got up and threw a veil across the crucifix. It was obscene, atrocious. Bluebeard had burnt the bodies of most of his victims – but I heard that they found sufficient remains to indicate that forty-six children had been murdered for his pleasure at Chantocé, and eighty at his castle at Machecoul. He was executed after a trial which lasted a month. Strangled. Then burnt. There are records of that trial in the archives of the Chateau at Nantes. It is a mercy that no one has ever been required to read them, save those judges, who got up and veiled the cross as the tide of De Retz’s filth swept over them.
Father, I am haunted by these images of contradiction …
Joan in the white armour.
De Retz on the black horse.
The saint.
The devil.
Is it so simple? Can they be separate?
Father, I say some ceremony must be found …
to marry the Maid of Orleans to the Marshal of France!
Last night I dreamt of it again –
The cathedral at the bottom of the sea, where the organ sounds the Gloria in Excelsis backwards –
Bells and bright light in a garden at noon –
Blue streams of smoke among leaves –
White flames curling upwards –
Joan at Patay, in ridiculous armour, and waving her sword like a flag, but sovereign all the same, a wingless Victory riding down upon us –
Gilles in that dark tower at Poitou, the cracked winter landscape, the smell of myrrh and cinnamon –
The Marshal’s dogs with blood on their paws and muzzles –
Snow falling, falling –
A nightingale singing in a black tree at the wrong season –
And that cross made of serpents twisted, hung upside-down above the pit –
The huge ivory phallus –
The air beating –
Beaten –
As if with the wings of eagles –
Flutes! Drums!
THE DANCE BEGINS!
Christ dances!
Jupiter dances!
Apollo dances!
Venus dances!
Mars and Mercury, Juno and Minerva, Neptune and Vulcan, Ceres and Diana!
Bacchus dances!
Saturn and Proserpine!
Isis and Osiris!
Taramis, Teutates, Esus, Belinus, Ardena, and Belisarna!
Up and down, and in and out, arm-in-arm, and round about –
Love makes them dance!
And my heart dances to that tune.
But now –
O
My Eros has been crucified!
Lord—
The Marshal with the whip.
Lord Jesus—
Fire and shit and flesh and a single drop of blood in his beard burning like a blue jewel.
Lord Jesus Christ—
Fire and black wine and flies buzzing in that inner chamber hung with cloth-of-gold from roof to floor.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son—
FIRE and Joan again rejecting him, accepting him, rejecting him by accepting him, that stake in the Rouen market-place her answer, her meaning, her love, her martyrdom.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of—
They say that wicked man died with much peace, having made his confession and asked forgiveness of the mothers of the children he had murdered.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God—
Joan did not die in peace. She died in agony in the flames. But she cried Jesu! Jesu! at the end.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have—
Their story was not my story.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy—
I was the fat man in the crowd, who came to watch the witch Joan burn, and thought at the time of the price of decent brandy and how to get more money up to John Sack in Paris and how his feet itched in ill-fitting boots and whose stomach was vaguely disgusted by the present stench and a memory of Badby burning in his barrel.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on—
Their story was not my story.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me—
But is her story my story?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a—
Or is his story my story?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.
How many stories do you think there are?
I got piss-absolute drunk that night, and fell into the Seine, and would have drowned, only I was fished out by the executioner on his way to kill himself.
Chapter Ninety-Four
Sir John Fastolf’s great Bill of Claims against the Crown
(With Notes by Stephen Scrope)
Translation of St Edward the Confessor
Billa de debitis Regis in partibus Franciae Johanni Fastolf militi debitis
These are the injuries, losses and damages that the said Fastolf has had, as well within this kingdom of England as in other parts:
First, it is to be considered how the said Fastolf has been vexed and troubled since he returned to England by the might and power of the Duke of Suffolk, and by the labour of his servants in divers wises, as in great oppressions, grievous and outrageous amercieaments and many great horrible extortions, as it may appear more plainly by a roll of articles thereupon made, the damages of which extend to the sum of … …
£3333. 6s. 10d.
(The said Fastolf is also so stingy that I was obliged, on coming of age, to sell a manor which was part of my inheritance and take service in France with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. It was my hope by this to obtain favour with the Duke, and restitution of the Lordship of the Isle of Man, which belonged to my uncle the Earl of Wiltshire in the days of King Richard II.)
Item, the said Fastolf has in particular been greatly damaged and hurt by the might and power of the said Duke of Suffolk and his councillors, in the disseizing and taking away of a manor of the said Fastolf, called Dedham, in the county of Essex, to the value of £66. 13s. of yearly rent thereby lost for three years, to his great hurt, with £133. 6s. in costs expended in recovery of the same, the sum in all …
£333. 6s. 10d.
(The said Fastolf, when he heard of my possibilities with Duke Humphrey, wrote to my mother, his lady wife, and by some hold over her got her to insist that I give up my engagement with the Duke, and serve instead with him, the said Devil, in France. Which I did. To no advantage whatsoever, except to the said fiend.)
Item, there was cast into the King’s hands by untrue forged offices and inquisitions, supposed to be found by divers escheators in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, three certain manors of the said Fastolf, to the value of £66. 13s. yearly, which said offices and inquisitions were never duly found, but forged by untrue imaginations and means of certain persons wishing ill to the said Fastolf, as has now been confessed by those that were appointed and named to be upon the inquests; and by the malicious labour of his said evil willers, the said manors have been troubled and put in jeopardy for the past four years, to the damage and cost of the said Fastolf, the sum … … … … …
£333. 6s. 10d.
(The said wickedne
ss not only cheated me out of my wages in his service in France, but when a dispute arose between me, Scrope, and the Marshal of Harfleur, the said scoundrel took the latter’s part, and I was forced to return to live upon my mother’s charity in England.)
Item, the said Fastolf having the right to the Baronies and Lordship of Silly-Guillem and Lasuse, in the county of Maine, to him and to his assigns for ever, the which were gotten by the said Fastolf, and at no charge to the King, bearing a value of £500 of yearly rent, he was commanded by the King’s letters to deliver up the said baronies and lordships to the King’s commissioners, promising him, by the King’s commandment, recompense therefor, as the said Fastolf has those letters to show, and he not recompensed nor rewarded nothing for the levying of his said baronies and lordship, to the damages of the said Fastolf of the sum of … … …
£1666. 13s. 5d.
(The said villain, with me his stepson returned home, presented me with A bill for my food and drink in my mother’s own house!)
Item, whereas the said Fastolf had a prisoner of his own taking, called Guillaume Raymond, which was ransomed, and agreed to pay him for his ransom with the sterling equivalent of 3200 salutes in gold, the prisoner, without knowledge or licence of the said Fastolf, was taken away from him by the Duke of Bedford, then being the King’s Regent of France; and with the said prisoner he caused the town of Pacy, then lying in the governance of the French party, to yield itself to the King, and to his said Regent in his name; and the said Fastolf, after long pursuits made to the King and his council, was recompensed only to the value of 1600 French gold salutes in the form of lands in Normandy, when these fortuned to fall into the King’s hands, (which lands he has now unfortunately lost). And also the said Fastolf has lost the residue of the said ransom, beside the said lands, to the sum of … … … … … … … … … … …
