Into The Fire (21 page)

‘God’s …? Ha!’ The snigger is stifled for care of his faith, not the Maid’s, he thinks. ‘If she’s of God, He works through the King of France. The old king, the one whose wife got her sons from his brother. This one’ – she nods up the hill to the cathedral – ‘is no more king than I am. And she’s no more a maid from Lorraine.’

The king’s bastardy is yesterday’s news. The Maid, though … Tomas leans forward, a man enthralled. ‘And yet there was a maid. Her brothers are here. And her father.’

‘I don’t know who they are. But I fought with the one who calls herself Maid when I was ten years old and she was seven. It was the day of Agincourt. The day my father died. I won’t forget it.’

‘You fought with a seven-year-old girl on the field of battle?’ Truly, he knew the French were insane, but …

‘Don’t be daft! We were at Rouen, waiting with the ladies and the king for news of a great victory.’

She laughs again, more throatily. She is not a bad-looking girl. Her hair is the colour of good straw, and it shines in the sun. Her features are thin, with a knife’s edge to her cheekbones and blued thumbprints beneath her eyes. Her mouth is generously wide; easy to imagine it working. Her breasts are small, wasted for lack of food, but still they are more than he has seen since …

He looks away. A dazzle of gold catches his eye, from the porch of the great house at the head of the street. The Maid, who else? She has a surcoat of cloth of gold, set off with silver buckles, shining armour, and the helm that bares only her face, and not all of that. Even today, she wears armour. She has a lot to prove, or to hide.

What do you not want us to see? Are you deformed under there? Do you carry marks that would give you away? Or is your face just too well known?

He drags his attention back to Claudine, to the grubby shift and third-hand gown, to the clogs worn through at the heels.

‘In what way, then, did you fight with her?’

‘In the courtyard. Matthieu and I had been sent out to bring in firewood. We were carrying bundles past the stable yard and she was there, fighting with de Belleville.’

‘Who?’

‘Jean of Harpedene, whose father was sieur de Belleville-en-Poitou. We were … my father was a man at arms with the sieur d’Orléans. He fell when Duc Charles was taken.’

Tod Rustbeard fought at Agincourt. He was in the company who took the king’s cousin, deemed the most dangerous man in France. He may have killed her father. It is entirely possible. ‘I’m sorry.’ He lays his hand on hers. ‘That must have been hard.’

She thinks about this, as if newly. ‘The old king was kind to us, after.’

And the father, perhaps, had not been? He can imagine that. ‘So the heir of Belleville was fighting with the Maid. What kind of fighting? Were they wrestling? Hitting each other? What?’

‘They had sticks like swords.’ She slashes the air. ‘They were pretending to be knights. Like the men on the field. De Belleville was twelve. I remember, because he thought himself almost a knight.’

‘And what about the girl who became the Maid? Did she think of herself as a knight?’

Claudine sneers. ‘Always. She carried a stick that was supposed to be a sword, and charged at the tilt as if she was riding a horse. She was strong for her age, and she fought hard. Sometimes they duelled, one against the other, but this time, because of the day, and the battle, it was a melee. We went to de Belleville’s side – he was almost a lord – and the Maid called for help and young Jean d’Alençon came, who was only—’

‘Four years old. His father died on the field of Agincourt. He became sieur before nightfall.’

‘Exactly. So he was too young really to fight, and she hated that. She always wanted a fair fight. Like a knight. So she called again, and Huguet came, who was de Belleville’s friend and later became a priest, and so we were even, three against three, and we pushed them back so the Maid was behind a water trough and then she jumped out and was going to take me hostage, I think, or maybe …’

Claudine drifts to silence, lost in memory. He waits. There is nothing to be gained by pushing now, and everything to lose. He wants to take this girl and make her sober. He wants to pay her enough gold to buy a new shift: think! Clean linen next to your skin! And a new gown. You could have red wool. The ladies of Rheims love red wool. And a hood for the winter, and good leather boots that will keep your feet warm. And …

‘Claudine?’

‘She came and spoiled it.’

‘Who did?’

‘We called her the Princess. The king’s daughter. The king’s …’ a long, slow leer ‘… bastard daughter.’

That word. It strikes him like a knife to the chest. He is grown now, it shouldn’t hit him thus, but there’s no denying it does.

Something must show on his face. Claudine grabs at his arm. ‘Sorry, but it’s what she was.’

‘Nevertheless, you called her the Princess.’

A shrug. ‘She behaved like one. We saw her hardly at all; months passed at a time when she didn’t appear, and then, when she did she was with la Petite Reine, or my lady of Aragon, or someone else who dressed her in silks and tied ribands in her hair. She looked like a statue. Marble. Perfect. If anyone came from God, it was her. His daughter. She was … an angel.’

He has heard a lot, these past days, about the old king’s bastard daughter. He has caught a glimpse of her from a distance once or twice, although not close enough to say if she is truly an angel.

He knows her name, though, everyone does, and her story. She is Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Odette de Champdivers, the king’s mistress, known universally as la Petite Reine for the obvious reason that the real queen was vast as a toad, and in any case, didn’t live anywhere near the king. When he was in Paris, the Queen was in Chinon. When he went south to the Loire, his wife travelled north. They kept well apart from each other and the King’s sun rose and set in the eyes of Odette, the girl from Burgundy. They say her name was the last word he spoke, but still, she was left destitute when he died, and her bastard daughter with her.

A lot of people, it seems, were left destitute after the old king’s death. Claudine, Matthieu, and now la Petite Reine and her child. Six years on and Odette de Champdivers is dead. Her daughter, though, is the protégée of Yolande of Aragon, brought back to the court from her exile and legitimized by the new king’s decree, the stigma of bastardy wiped away as if it had never been.

It’s useful, evidently, to have a pope in your pocket. A holy father who, for sufficient gold, can make everything right. Your father was not married to your mother? No matter; God may hate bastards, but now you are no longer hated, you are the king’s beloved sister, fit to betroth a man who has an income higher than the king’s, if the wagging tongues are right.

Thus did Marguerite the bastard become Marguerite de Valois. And then in May, soon after the relief of Orléans, she was betrothed to Jean, her childhood friend who had lately inherited his title of Belleville-en-Poitou, making him one of the richest men in France. Not a bad lot for a girl got out of wedlock.

In a different world, she would be queen. After all, nobody questions that she is the old king’s true daughter, while everybody, even the king himself – both kings, actually, old and new – believes her brother is not the old king’s son.

Claudine’s head sinks on to her folded arms, cheek to elbow, ear to wood. She wets her finger in a puddle of wine and draws a sword on the rough bench. Tomas brings his own head down, chin balanced on his interlocked fingers. He is eye to eye with her, as with a child. ‘She broke up your play fight, the angel?’

‘She … No. The Maid went to her. They were …’ A scowl. Two fingers crossed, one atop the other, inseparable. Claudine is not part of their closeness. A wound from the past, an exclusion, even then. ‘But it was the king who broke it up.’

‘The old king.’

She nods and nods again, and keeps on nodding, as if her head has forgotten how to stop. ‘He was nice. He was good to us.’

‘But he broke up the play?’ Don’t stop now. Please God, don’t stop now. How often do men say that to her? If she was only wrapping her lips around him, he might say it aloud. He catches her eye, smiles, does his best to be friendly, interested, unthreatening.

‘It was the day of the battle. Agincourt. The king took her to ride on his own horse, Poseidon. His battle mount.’

‘His daughter?’ The old king was a bad ruler, but he was the best horseman in the land. Tomas tries to imagine the fragile angel that is Marguerite de Valois being taught to ride on one of the king’s war mounts. The royal horses were notoriously savage. He fails.

Claudine gives a sly smile, brings one finger up to tap the side of her nose. ‘Not the angel. She was never a rider. He took the Maid.’

The Maid, who, at the age of seven, could ride. The Maid, whose father had taught her.

Who was she? Who was her father? Did he die with yours at Agincourt?

So many questions, and no chance, now, of any answer. Claudine’s eyes may be open, but the spark is snuffed out. She is gone to him. He might rouse her with slaps and cold water, but he can’t do that here.

And perhaps this is enough. He imagines Bedford’s face when he tells him that he has a witness who will testify that the Maid was a ward of the old king, who treated her as well as he treated his bastard daughter, because the angelic princess didn’t want to ride, and in her stead the mad king found a girl who absorbed everything he could teach her of chivalry and horsemanship.

With his prize secure, Tomas settles back against the sun-warmed walls of the smithy and watches as the citizens of Rheims abandon themselves to revelry.

The fountains may not flow with hippocras, but it is as great a spectacle as any he has seen. Even the dullards have realized by now that this is a thing that will never be repeated, that they will want to remember, to rehash, to tell in all the gold and glory into their ageing years.

Men kiss women and women kiss men and three quarters of a year from now Rheims will sigh sleepless through the nights to a rash of new-born infants, the boys all called Charles for a change, and the girls Jehanne or Jeanne or Jeannette. Already, you can see how they will look.

An hour or so later, Brother Tomas departs the smithy and the gently snoring Claudine and wanders through the town. His cassock picks him out for a man of God and men and women come to kneel at his feet for a blessing. He has no shame; he gives what they ask and if the God who oversees all this cares that he is not a real priest, there has never been any sign. His father was a bishop, after all; maybe he is close enough.

Up on the high table, the king’s six-year-old son, heir to the newly confirmed throne, is being shown to the crowd. If he lives to inherit the crown – if there is a crown for him to inherit – he will be Louis XI of France.

Just now, he is no more obviously regal than Henry VI of England who is a few months his senior. Stiff in cloth of gold, he waves where he is told and when he is told at whom he is told, which is everyone. Tomas waves back, one amongst thousands. He walks on.

Through the crowds, from time to time, he sees Bertrand de Poulangy, and Jean de Metz, Jean d’Aulon, Louis de Coutes. All the Maid’s men are out today and they look every inch as sober as he is. He avoids their gaze, slouches, pulls his hood over his face, keeps walking.

In the mellow evening, the crowds begin to disperse. Tomas finds a bench outside a tailor’s shop and leans back against the wall with his hood flopped over his brow, to shield his face from the sly evening sun.

He is within reach of the flat-faced butcher and his son; the father round the corner, lounging outside a weaver’s shop, and the son further away, sitting on the dirt, weaving willow twigs into baskets. That’s where they were when last he stepped away to relieve himself.

He is within sight of Jacques of Domrémy, the peasant farmer who claims to be the Maid’s father. A fat, fleshy individual, with a drinker’s broken veins webbed across his cheeks, he has spent all day punching his fists in the air, screaming her name with the rest, raising toast after toast in other men’s wine, and nobody telling him to stop. Not today.

Tomas thinks it might be an interesting thing to seek this man when he is sober, and talk to him. Tell me about your daughter. Do you really expect us to believe it was you who taught her to ride, to manage a war horse better than most men in the kingdom? To wield a lance with such accuracy? They say she killed twelve and captured twice that many on the field outside Orléans on Ascension Day. Once, I did not believe it. Now, I rather think I do.

She has read Homer, I’d swear, and Caesar. Can you write? Can you even read? Because I think she can do both of these things, although someone with a quick mind has impressed upon her the need to appear unlettered. And if that wasn’t you, then who? Who has the wit, the understanding, the knowledge, to take the ward trained by a king and turn her into God’s miracle for the French? It certainly wasn’t you, but it was someone who understands what she is, and who knows that France needs her.

And then another conundrum. If the Maid is the king’s ward, who in the name of all that is holy is the maid from Domrémy, of whom an entire village speaks only good things?

Perhaps the bench was not the best place to sit, for Jacques lurches closer, making yet more noise in his daughter’s name. Nobody has had the bad grace to point out that he is said to have beaten her the first time she tried to come to Chinon.

He shouts her name again, and men around him cheer, somewhat flatly. He is a bore to the marrow, but it is growing dark, and he lives by the sun. The time comes when even he must take leave of all his hundreds of new friends and head off to his lodgings, swaggering, un-sober, dressed in new clothes that his daughter has clearly bought for him, or the king on her behalf: fine wool topcoat, good boots, a hat topped by three feathers, dyed crimson. Useful, that; a man can follow it. Three men, in fact.

Tomas rises slowly, adjusts his own tunic and sandals, turns the corner and nods to the butcher out there in the fading light, who nods to his son. He lifts his hand to his head and makes a mime of three feathers, touches a piece of red linen that drapes loosely from the eaves. They nod, father and son, and ease into the dusk.