Into The Fire (16 page)

He brushes his hands dry on his tunic, careful not to sully the wool. So this is the test. If she knows him, he will be dead by nightfall if he’s lucky and by tomorrow’s dawn if he is not. He wears a white cassock with a black cincture and no shoes. He has clipped his own tonsure, shaved off his beard, darkened the skin of his face where it was pale. Even the hairs of his arms and legs are dark; he knows that it is the failure to attend to every detail that betrays men to him, and he does not intend to betray himself to anyone.

‘My lady.’ He is humble, genial; everything Rustbeard was not.

Her gaze unstitches him, sews him back together. The skin of her face, too, is darker than when he last saw her, but with sun, not dye.

Her eyes are still so dark as to be almost black, but they have a new depth. She is learning that coming with God behind her is not enough; men of the king’s court who have pandered to his favour for years are not ready to give it up. She is coming up against opposition and not all of it martial. Her hands are bruised, her nails bluntly short.

This is all he can see of her; she is still in her plate. It is dented, worn at the elbows and knees. She spends a great deal of time praying in public. From a distance, he has seen her kneeling, face turned to heaven. He is not sure it is God she is asking for help, but that, perhaps, is Bedford’s fault; those last days before Tomas left Paris, Bedford spent a lot of time saying she was in thrall to the devil. Either way, if she is going to kill him, it will be now.

She nods a greeting. ‘Brother friar, be welcome.’

He breathes out, smiles, enters. The shade is like a pail of water emptied over his head. He stands a moment, revelling in the cool. At another nod, he sits on the camp chair with its unstable legs dug into the mortar-hard ground.

The table is similarly unlevel and almost unusably small, but the parchment is medium grade; pigskin, he thinks, finely scraped and powdered. The ink smells of wine vinegar but looks thick as batter. The quill stands upright in a beaker of sand, heated but not cut, and a knife with it. He tests the blade’s edge on his thumb and finds it could kill. If he still wanted to, he could slice her throat open now.

He sits on the stool and trims the pen to an angle that suits his hand. It’s a long time since he has done this, the cross cuts and the vertical, the small shavings at the side, like snicking hairs off a chin, the long strip that denudes the quill so his hand holds a smooth, beautiful artwork.

He is pleased that his body remembers how. As with firing a longbow, it is something the hands recall when the mind has long forgotten.

He smiles for her. ‘At your word, my lady.’

‘Jhesu Maria. Start with that, as it says on the ring on my finger, and on my standard.
Jhesu Maria
. And then a new line.
Very good and dear friends, loyal townsmen and residents of the town of Troyes …
’

He writes as she speaks. His script is good, well formed, sharp on the upstroke, with strong curves and even spacing. The letters are sound made into form; a kind of magic. They whisper into ears that do not yet know they exist.

He makes small amendments here and there. Where she says ‘the king in heaven’ he says ‘the king of heaven’, and when she says ‘my father in heaven’ he writes ‘God’. It is faster, and means the same and he thinks his script is better than her dictations, and the end result is a powerful command to surrender.

Loyal Frenchmen, come before King Charles, do not fail to do so, and since there is no fault, have no concern about the safety of your lives or your property if you do so; and if you do not do so, I swear upon your lives that with the help of God, we shall enter into all the cities which should be part of this holy kingdom, and make there a good and forthright peace, regardless of whomever may come against us. I commend you to God; may God protect you, if it please Him. Reply soon.

‘Write also on behalf of the dauphin, this:

We, your king, Charles, seventh of the name, do guarantee and indemnify all those who surrender to our cause; that they shall suffer no harm to their lives or weal, nor to their gold, nor to their dwellings, unless they fail to surrender to us, in which case, we shall seize their town and much unhappiness shall fall on them.

There. Even he would open gates to this kind of pressure. Mind you, he might have opened them already. Against the French force of twelve thousand men and knights, there are perhaps five hundred men at arms inside Troyes for the whole of its defence.

They – the brave five hundred – sallied out earlier in the day, all bristling swords and proud shields and fancy hats with peacock feathers, but when they saw the size of the army they couldn’t get back inside fast enough. The drawbridge is up, the moat is full of water. The magistrates inside are either impossibly stupid or they haven’t yet heard of the sacking of Jargeau.

He sands the letter, and holds the pen for her to sign. He makes himself look away; he has much practice in schooling his face, but perhaps not this much. His thoughts lie flat across the inside of his mind.

You know how to write, don’t you? But you have to seem not to, because illiterate peasant girls can’t write any more than they can ride.

‘Have you a herald, lady? If not, I can deliver it.’

‘No, there are heralds aplenty and you are better here. We have few engineers and they are mostly with the guns. I am told you have an interest in water.’

‘Every army needs fresh water, lady.’

‘And so we need you. You will stay close.’

Of course he will.

She takes off her helm and shakes out her hair. It is longer than it was, but not greatly. It shines, like silk rope, with her sweat. To herself, thoughtfully, she says, ‘Troyes was the shame of the king. We will not pass it by.’

The king? Amongst all his other shame, Troyes is somehow unique? And then it comes to him that she means the old king, the mad king who had Matthieu and Claudine as wards, and perhaps one other, who would care that at Troyes was signed the treaty that gave France to Henry V of England, and made of the giver a laughing stock throughout Europe.

He, Tomas, takes breath to ask, but the Maid is still staring at the blank, stone walls. ‘If they don’t surrender we will have to go in, or else every other town will know it can hold against us.’

‘You are thinking of Rheims?’ Rheims, where Charles must go for his anointing, is still loyal to England and is watching carefully what happens at Troyes.

She glances across at him, black eyes, black brows, dancing. She inclines her head. ‘And Paris.’

Ah, yes. Paris. ‘It will take a great deal of money to pay twelve thousand men to march all the way to Paris.’

‘When the dauphin is king, he will pay what it takes to rule all of France.’

Not if Brother Tomas can stop him, he won’t. And the thing is, it may be that he can.

Troyes holds out for three more days.

In those three days, the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres, argues hotly in the king’s council that they should leave Troyes; that they should, perhaps, go back to the Loire. Or send the army to take Normandy, why not? It’s there and ripe for the picking.

On the third day, the archbishop suggests that Brother Tomas, by now the encampment’s foremost water engineer and an assiduous confessor – though he has not yet had the honour of ministering to the Maid – should attend the council as a scribe. Thus he sees for himself how effective is the archbishop’s persuasive technique, how plausible, how immensely charming, practicable, obvious.

Yes, Normandy is by far the better target. Bypass Paris; it’s not that important. Forget about crowning the king, or maybe do it quickly, with not much pomp; it’s not as if you want anyone really to take any notice, and you certainly don’t want to stir up the English: that would be a disaster when you have twelve thousand men behind you and the enemy has just lost its three best commanders.

Then string your army out over a hundred miles, why not? And try to keep the supply lines going while you waste men and guns on a place nobody cares about; would that not be clever?

It’s a miracle of smooth talking. Mildly astonishing that nobody has dragged the man out of the tent and struck his head from his shoulders for arrant treason, but he’s the king’s closest spiritual adviser and there’s a miasma that comes over men when they hear a powerful man speak nonsense. They nod, and think it must be sanity, and wonder at their own judgement.

Tomas wonders exactly what Bedford is paying the archbishop, and whether it is all gold, or part of it is some kind of promise for later, when English rule is complete. Whichever it is, payment is happening because, unquestionably, Regnault de Chartres is Bedford’s agent in the French king’s court. He and Tomas have not spoken yet, but messages have been sent in a complex cipher. Each knows the other’s intent.

The king’s council meetings are held in the king’s pavilion: a vast panoply of red silk that casts bloody shadows across the assembled body politic.

De Chartres is in ripe flow. ‘… the whole ride north was folly, and who cares if all the towns on the way opened their gates to us? England will soon take them back, and then we’ll be sorry we ever—’

‘Stop this! We should listen to the girl. Do these men speak from God as she does?’

Thus does an old voice float out from somewhere across the far side of the tent. It is Robert de Macon, who has fought too many battles to be afraid of anyone, and has recently dragged himself from retirement to join this new army.

Robert is not interested in the politics of court, who is in favour and who not, who wields power. He does not care that no less a man than Regnault de Chartres himself has let it be known that he thinks the Maid is a fraud. He has seen at first-hand what she has achieved, which is more than the archbishop has done.

He stands, quavering. ‘The Maid gave us Orléans, Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency, Patay. She it is who says the king must be anointed by God’s command. Let her speak here instead of these wastrel men. Ask what she thinks of Troyes.’

The king, when backed into such a corner, assents. He may not be a master strategist, but he can count and he knows that twelve thousand soldiers who think the Maid is divine outweigh one archbishop who does not.

‘Find her. Bring her here.’

Of course, it is Brother Tomas who heads out in search; this is too interesting to miss. He finds her with Jean-Pierre, the gunner, talking about the size and weight of shot they should use on Troyes and where the walls are weakest; how much powder they have and where best to store it.

Tomas stands to one side until he is noticed. ‘The king would have you speak in council, lady.’

‘Why?’ She’s busy. She doesn’t like to be interrupted.

He bows a little, self-effacing. ‘To say what must be done here, at Troyes.’

‘We have to take it, of course. I said so. Does the king not know this?’

‘His councillors might benefit by hearing it from yourself.’

‘You mean the archbishop?’

‘My lady.’ He bows again. They share a moment’s exasperation. She rolls her eyes, tucks her helm under her arm, shifts her sword belt, and follows Brother Tomas to the blood-red tent to tell the king what the king should already know.

This is the first time Tomas has seen them both together close up.

The Maid.

The king.

One is regal, and it is not the boy. The Maid’s growing legend says that when she first came to Chinon, the king hid amongst his courtiers; two hundred men in a room and every single one of them dressed in the nettle-on-white livery of Orléans. Still, she walked straight to him, and fell on her knees at his feet, then rose up, and took him aside, and told him things that made him smile for the first time in years.

They say it is proof that God speaks to her. Tomas thinks it is evidence that she knew the king by sight, one more nail in the scaffold he is building that will prove her a liar and a heretic.

He looks at Regnault de Chartres, and finds that the archbishop is staring at him, flatly, with a kind of question in his eyes. Tomas brings his palms together in piety. The archbishop pulls an acid smile and looks away. He does not look at the Maid. It may be that he cannot bring himself to do so.

She is repeating what she said earlier. ‘We must take Troyes, or others will know they can close their gates to us.’

There is a murmured upswell of support from men who want to fight and know what it takes. Hearing it, Regnault de Chartres, all emollience, changes tack. ‘My king, she is so sure. She should be given charge of the proceedings.’

The bastard king, Charles, swivels his narrow neck right and left again. His knees poke outwards, and his elbows. It is not a prepossessing sight.

Today, the king believes that Regnault de Chartres with his oiled language will keep him safe. He sees the trap that has been laid to catch the Maid, and approves of it. He turns to her his widest smile.

‘Go then, and see what you can make of Troyes. I give you command.’

The Maid kneels in thanks, but not before Tomas catches sight of the look on her face. She has had some practice in masking her thinking, but not yet quite enough. The king has not seen her in action before. Now is her chance to show him what she is, that he is not. She is not shy of the opportunity.

Before they leave the tent, the army gets word, as armies do. They believe God has set the weather for the Maid, with the crystalline sky and lambswool clouds.

Her enemies are buzzards, circling. Regnault de Chartres is foremost among them, and his ally, Georges de la Trémoïlle, the chancellor.

Together, these two pace through the camp as the men come alive, as the guns are set ready, as the powder is poured, as the wood is gathered and bundled. They peer and prod and poke and ask rhetorical questions, one of the other and back again.

‘What for does she need so much wood, my dear chancellor?’

‘I have no idea, my dear archbishop. What for do you need so much wood, girl?’

‘Watch.’

They were not at Jargeau; they genuinely do not know. As she did there, the Maid has the men set the bundles on the edge of the moat, ready to fill it. In half a day, they have enough to build a pathway to the walls.