All right, Simon, how are you doing?
“Fine,” he said, though Gabriel’s mouth was dry. What was it about Joan? Her face was not conventionally pretty; jaw a little too square, forehead a little too high. But she had looked at Gabriel with the bluest eyes Simon had ever seen—and that was the honest truth, not hyperbole—and those eyes, her tumble of hair as black as a raven’s wing (all right, that part was hyperbole) combined with a sense of barely leashed energy made for a heady combination.
“You keep the Night Office,” came a soft, musical voice.
Gabriel started. Joan stood a few steps away, fully dressed, as was he, a cloak pulled tight against the night’s dampness. It should have been too dark to see her, but Gabriel took in every curve of cheeks and lips, her strong, pale hands holding the cloak closed in front of her. The glimmer of stars caught her eyes, and she seemed to him to glow as if made of starlight herself.
“The what?” he stammered.
She stepped closer to him. “That’s what the monks call it. It’s also called vigil, or nocturnes, or matins. You know the Hours.” Of course he knew them. Everyone did. Church bells were rung eight times a day. But he had never heard matins called by the other names.
“At home, I would drop everything and go to church when I heard the hours tolled,” she said, laughing a little. “I even had to chide our bell ringer from time to time when he was late. But at night, to attend matins… I had to sneak out.”
Her smile widened into a mischievous grin, and Gabriel stopped breathing for a moment. She turned her face up to the stars, and her grin faded. “They tease me, you know.”
“Who?”
“The boys, mostly; my brothers, even my friends. They love me, but they think it’s strange, that I like going to church so much.”
Hearing how others had talked about her, Gabriel himself had thought it odd. But that was before he had met her. In some ways, Joan was just a girl—she laughed, and went about her chores, and never seemed to let their teasing upset her. In fact, she’d give as good as she got, sometimes, so this admission from her surprised him.
She turned to him, her eyes brimming with starlight in the deep shadow. “Do you think I’m strange?” He wanted to tell her no, he didn’t, but he found his tongue disobeying him. He couldn’t lie to her.
“Yes, at first. But then I got to know you. I… I see how happy you are. How it makes you shine. And I think it’s beautiful.”
He almost blurted out I think you’re beautiful, but he bit down hard on his treasonous, too-glib tongue. Her face softened in a smile.
I’m drowning, Gabriel thought, his heart racing.
“Gabriel… do you ever feel like you are different from other people?”
In the midst of the moment, the words struck him harshly. He almost winced. “I’m a bastard. I know I’m not like other people.”
“It troubles you?” Her eyes were sympathetic.
He nodded. “It didn’t when I was with my mama and my papa. My stepfather, I mean,” he amended. “They were the only parents I knew. My stepfather was a merchant in Nancy. I didn’t even know he wasn’t my real father until after… after he died. He took ill with a fever.”
Joan made a soft sound and took his hand. Gabriel tensed, anticipating the strange, almost painful sensations that seemed to gallop through him at the most inappropriate times. But her hand was cool, and comforting, and instead of exciting him, her touch calmed him. The tension in his body eased. The words flowed more easily.
“Mama fought it off for another month. But toward the end, she had me write a letter to Durand, asking if he would take care of me. I didn’t think he would, and even if he did, I didn’t know what his wife would think of me.”
Joan tilted her head, still shining. Is it the starlight, or me? Gabriel wondered. “Your family here, the Laxarts… they are good people. That’s why….” She paused abruptly, then squeezed his hand. “Jeanne seems to treat you well.”
That’s right… another Jeanne, thought Simon. “Joan” was an Anglicized pronunciation of the French “Jeanne,” and was, apparently, also the name of Gabriel’s stepmother. It seemed to be absurdly common, and Simon expected would be challenging to keep all the Jeannes—and the Jeans—straight.
“She does,” Gabriel hastened to assure her. “You are right. She is good. Like her cousin.” Tentatively, Gabriel squeezed her hand back. “But it’s not been very long. Nancy is a much larger town. I counted coins and wrote receipts and managed inventory. Farming… is different. And I still don’t know where I fit in.”
“I am different, too,” Joan said. “But I know what I must do in this life.” She withdrew her hand. Gabriel felt suddenly hollow, and the night abruptly turned cold. “We are friends, yes?”
Inside his chest, Gabriel’s heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, before it returned to its task in slow, painful lurches. The words were as ash in his mouth, but he spoke them. “Yes,” he said, softly. If there can be nothing more between us, then I will cherish this.
“Then I must ask for your help. I do not do so lightly.”
“Anything,” he said, too eagerly. “Anything at all, Jeanette.”
“Tomorrow, I will ask your father to do something for me. It will sound strange, and you will wonder at it. But I need you to help me persuade him.”
“Can you not tell me now?”
Joan looked away, and her face grew pensive. She seemed to be staring at something over his shoulder, but Gabriel turned and saw nothing. Only a cat, pale in the darkness, perched atop a wall and licking its forepaw.
“No,” she said. “Not yet. I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
She stared at him, her strong, slender body taut, and that strange starlit glow seemed brighter than before. There was only one answer. “Of course, Jeanette. Whatever it is you ask of my father, I will make it happen.”
The serious expression melted into a smile and Gabriel could have sworn he felt his heart cracking in his chest. “You’re a good person, Gabriel. Good night.” Then she was gone, and for a long moment Gabriel stood and wondered if he had imagined the entire thing.
Simon was confused by what Gabriel had seen when he looked at Joan. The scene began to fade, becoming misty gray, then darkening. I’m bringing you out, came Victoria’s voice. A moment later, Simon felt a light touch on his shoulder alerting him to Victoria’s presence. The air felt cool on his face as she removed the helmet, and he realized he had been sweating.
“Victoria,” Simon ventured as she began unfastening the myriad clips, “did… did you see what happened? With Joan’s face?”
She shot him a quick, curious glance. “What do you mean?”
“She… she….” Simon fumbled for the words. “She was—I’m not sure if it was starlight mixed with Gabriel’s infatuation, but she looked—like she was glowing.”
Her face went carefully neutral. Doubtless she was putting on her therapist’s cap. “I saw, through your perception, that Gabriel thought she was glowing,” she said noncommittally.
“I was expecting to see something of the sort when we found the sword, but… it was her. It was all her. And Gabriel sees it.”
His right arm was free, and as she turned to liberate his left, he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Victoria… I think we’ve found not one, but two people with an extraordinarily high percentage of Precursor DNA.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Victoria had refused to discuss anything until Simon had eaten something. “Food is grounding,” she said. “It brings you back into your body, and out of Gabriel’s. Eat,” she said, tossing him a Lion Bar. Simon was annoyed, but obeyed.
“All right, I’m following doctor’s orders. So, Dr. Bibeau, please share your thoughts.”
“I confess I was a little worried when you first pulled yourself out of the simulation.” Simon had been so, too, but opted to keep that scrap of information to himself. “But between Gabriel’s feelin
gs for Joan, the powerful charisma she was reputed to have exerted, and the fact that it was your first time in the Animus, I’m not overly concerned. Honestly, the fact that you were able to choose to desynchronize speaks to your personal strength of will. I don’t think you’re in any danger of negative Bleeding Effects, at least not for the time being.”
“That’s a relief,” he said. “But as for Joan and Gabriel—I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“Neither have I,” Victoria admitted.
“She’s exerting the same type of….” He searched for the word. “Compulsion. No, that’s not it. And ‘charisma’ is a word far too overused. Gabriel is reacting to her the way people usually do to one of the Apples of Eden. He’s drawn to her, almost despite himself. I can literally see this—this radiance through his eyes. And her whole career—at the beginning, at least—give us example after example of how she inspired and persuaded people.”
“Gabriel, maybe, but we already know there are perfectly normal hormones at work in his brain. And obviously, she didn’t influence everyone. It’s not as if she’s a Piece of Eden given human form.”
Victoria didn’t mean it to be cruel, but Simon winced slightly. He’d been trying not to think about how this story was going to end. Victoria was correct. If Joan was a Piece of Eden somehow given human form, she would not have met her bitter fate. No one would have sentenced her.
“No, she’s not, thank goodness. Pieces of Eden are powerful enough as inanimate objects. Living persons, even fighting for good causes, would truly be too terrifying to contemplate.”
“At the same time, I have to agree that Joan and Gabriel do appear to have large concentrations of Precursor DNA. And this is important for us to find out. Any Precursor DNA is rare today, and becoming rarer with every generation.”
Simon was well aware of that. There was, in fact, a Templar effort right this moment to track down one Charlotte de la Cruz, who is rumored to have merely a tiny bit of the precious DNA.
“Joan of Arc has always been remarkable,” Simon said. “I guess we’re going to find out just how remarkable. I know what she’s going to ask Durand and Gabriel to do for her—she’s going to make them take her to Vaucouleurs.”
“What happens there?”
“She insists on seeing the captain, Lord Robert de Baudricourt. Joan wants him to escort her to Chinon, where the Dauphin is staying.”
“Does he?”
Simon frowned. “Actually, no. Not yet, anyway. I suppose we ought to jump ahead to the next significant event. I’m not sure you appreciate how difficult it is as a historian to not experience the crucial moments. It’s gutting me to bypass even one of them. When Joan went back to Domrémy after that first failed attempt, her whole village was forced to evacuate south to Neufchâteau. They returned to see their church burned down. A few months later, Joan was involved in a breach of contract lawsuit. How could I not want to see that?”
Victoria looked interested despite herself. “What kind of contract?”
“Marital. Her parents betrothed her, and her would-be fiancé called her to court when she refused. She said she never agreed to it. The fellow’s name is lost to history, but I’m burning to find out. You can’t tell me you aren’t curious, too.”
“No, I can’t. But I do know we only have a week—correction, five days—to explore Gabriel’s memories. Once you’ve demonstrated the value of your approach to Rikkin, you will likely have more time for your own personal curiosity.”
He eyed her. “Professional curiosity. I’m not in any danger of waking up finding notes I wrote to myself in the guise of Gabriel.”
“I’m not worried about that either,” she said. But he could tell by her expression that something, indeed, was worrying her. He wondered what the next “important event,” according to the algorithm Victoria had designed and implemented, would turn out to be.
WEDNESDAY, 7 JANUARY, 1429
Gabriel held Joan in his arms while she sobbed into his chest.
What the hell? Simon thought wildly.
“It is so clear what must happen!” Joan’s voice was muffled against Gabriel’s shirt. She was crying so hard, he felt the fabric growing damp. “Why will this man not see me? What am I doing wrong?”
Somewhat alarmed, Simon reached into Gabriel’s knowledge for an update. Durand Laxart, at his son’s suggestion, had gone back to Burey-en-Vaux to be with his wife and new baby. Joan had shared one room with Catherine Royer, and Gabriel and Henri another. At this moment, Henri was at his shop, and Catherine was in the single front room that served as kitchen, dining room, and hearth.
A short time earlier, Joan had stood outside the door to de Baudricourt’s hall until she collapsed from the cold and a refusal to eat. Gabriel had brought her back, and a moment ago had been sent to tempt her with a bowl of soup. He had expected to see her exhausted but fiery, and had braced himself for an argument about returning to the castle. Instead, Joan had met him with tears pouring down her face.
Gabriel held her as he might have held a child, offering comfort and an emotion that was calm and peaceful yet left him in awe of its depth. Joan clung to him, releasing at last her tears of anger at de Baudricourt’s repeated refusals and her frustration at the impasse.
“The good people of Orléans have been besieged since October. Just today, they have suffered another defeat in an effort to get food brought in. Children hunger behind those walls, and this foolish captain will not even speak with me!”
12 February, 1429—the Battle of the Herrings, Simon thought. It was a disastrous raid on an English supply convoy led by Sir John Fastolf, who would live in infamy caricatured by Shakespeare as the drunken hedonist Sir John Falstaff. The battle’s name came from the large amount of salted fish being brought in for Lent. Jean Dunois, better known as the Bastard of Orléans, had barely escaped with his life. Joan would meet him soon.
But how the hell did Joan know?
Gabriel, too, was shocked at her words, but Joan uttered them as a simple fact, and he believed her.
After a time, Joan stopped sobbing and drew back. Her face was puffy and her eyes red and swollen, but her light was shining again. Gabriel felt his heart ease in his chest to see it; her light was more important to him than the sun. “Will you eat something now?” he asked. She looked at the soup and winced. “For me, Jeanette—I mean Jeanne?” Ever since her first meeting with de Baudricourt, she had taken to calling herself Jeanne the Maid, putting aside the girlish nickname.
Joan sighed. “For you,” she said, reluctantly.
He smiled in relief. “Thank you. I’ll bring you some bread and wine, too.” Rising from where he sat beside her on the bed, he went to the door—and froze.
In the main room, he heard a man’s voice… and Henri was still in his shop. Joan paused, lowering her spoon, her head cocked to one side. She placed the bowl down and rose, her movements fluid and deliberate, gently pushed Gabriel aside, pulled open the door, and walked through it boldly, as if all her strength had returned at once.
Another one of de Baudricourt’s men, this one so tall that he seemed a giant in the small room, was speaking politely with Catherine. At their entrance, he turned. He was about a decade older than Gabriel, clean-shaven, his dark eyes sparkling with good humor. His was a face that seemed to want to smile often.
“Just the little vixen I have come to see,” he exclaimed. “You are the infamous La Pucelle who has been tormenting my master, Captain de Baudricourt.”
Before Joan could reply, most likely with something sharp, Catherine said smoothly, “Jeanne, Gabriel—this is one of Lord de Baudricourt’s squires, Jean de Metz. He has come here to speak with you.”
Looking uneasy, Catherine offered the stranger a seat. Joan deliberately straightened and said nothing, folding her arms and glaring at this squire, as she had glared at all the others before.
Her attitude seemed to amuse him. He leaned back in the chair, stretching his long legs to the fire, and the hin
t of a smile broadened into a grin. He sighed, somewhat exaggeratedly. “My dear girl… what are you doing here? Don’t you think the king is doomed to be cast out of his kingdom, and the rest of us will soon be speaking English?”
Joan growled, very softly, and Gabriel smothered a smile of his own. This Jean de Metz had no idea who he was dealing with.
“I have come here, to a place that claims to love the Dauphin, to talk with Robert de Baudricourt, so that he may lead me or send me to the king. But he pays no attention to me or to my words.” She said this slowly and with care, as if she were talking to a child. “And yet, before we are in mid-Lent, I must and will be at the king’s side, even if I have to wear my legs down to my knees!”
“It’s a long journey, to Chinon,” de Metz continued. “Twelve days, maybe a fortnight. By day, you could be attacked by the English or their Burgundian friends, and by night, by rough men scouring the roads for coins to take and maidens like you to despoil.”
He let his gaze travel up and down her body. Gabriel felt a burst of white-hot anger, but Joan didn’t flinch. She strode toward de Metz, who got to his feet at her approach. He towered over her.
Joan looked him straight in the eye. “I’m not afraid. If there are soldiers or brigands in my way, God will make a safe path for me.”
“My, you are confident, aren’t you?”
“You have heard the prophecies,” Joan stated. “The ones that say France was lost by a woman, but will be restored by a maiden from the region of Lorraine. The wicked Queen Isabeau signed the Treaty of Troyes, and gave France away to the English boy-king.” Her eyes flashed. “And I am from Lorraine.”
“You’re not the first Maid of Lorraine—” de Metz began, but she would have none of it.
“I was born for this. There is nobody in all the world, neither king nor duke, nor any other, who can recover the kingdom for France. This kingdom will have no help, if not from me!”
Her voice, always melodious, was resonant now. Still, de Metz grinned insufferably down at her.
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