Into The Fire (34 page)

The rest of the army is gone, dispersed at the king’s command. The king, in his contrition, has sent his own covered wagon to transport the Maid away from la Chapelle which, now that her army has disbanded, is no longer safe.

Eight horses pull it, all black. Tomas considered sending them away, bringing in oxen, great grey carthorses, anything that wasn’t black, but there are limits to what a priest can do to offend a king, and it matters more that the Maid is transported in safety. He still is not sure they will be allowed to go where he thinks they should.

At his instruction, they lift her from the dank, shuttered room, out across the untented campsite to the wagon. Inside, he hangs bunches of rosemary from the hoops, and posies of small yellow flowers he found near the river bank when he went to weep over the destruction of his bridge. He has heard that the colour helps to balance out the henbane and hemlock and she is still sleeping under their influence, although he is running out of boar’s gall and without it he dare not give her the rest. He has seen men die and will not take that risk.

He gave her a half dose at dawn and has enough to repeat it on arrival, but that’s it until he can restock in Rheims. Rheims loves her. It must be to Rheims they go, or at worst, Orléans. The king may yet intervene.

‘Lay her here, on the right, the south side as we travel east. Put the testament at her head, and her sword and armour on the left. She will not want to be parted from them.’

He has never taken this care with anyone; not a lover, not his mother, not his father as he lay dying. Even d’Alençon stepped carefully round Tomas in the days before the duke was sent north to Normandy, partly for his temper, and partly because he knows things they do not.

Here is another irony: for years, Tomas hated his father, and the godly men who took in the unwanted youth who arrived knocking at his gate. Now he is daily glad of their teaching, and considers the price they extracted a pittance, willingly paid. ‘Leave me with her,’ he says, and they do.

D’Aulon rides up front with the wagoner. Louis de Coutes sits on the tail boards. Like that, ponderously, with their horses tied behind – not the devil-horse, of course; some unfortunate groom has that in charge – they roll east.

She wakes sometime after noon. He is grinding cloves with goose grease to make an ointment for the wound and, feeling her stir, looks up. She is watching him, or he thinks so. Certainly, when he lays down the pestle and mortar, her eyes track the movement of his hands.

‘My lady?’ Does she know? Has she heard any of the night-long, acrimonious row at her bedside? ‘My lady, I can give you—’

Her hand is a rank of talons, striking his wrist. ‘No. No more. I need to rise. Are we going to Rheims?’

‘Rheims, yes.’ He nods. ‘Unless the king orders something different. He may do. We have not seen him.’ He loosens her grip, finger by finger. ‘My lord d’Alençon has been ordered north. He asked me to—’

‘He refused you. Why?’ So she did hear the night’s muted conflict in the dark, dank room in which he, Tomas de Segrave, endeavoured to put right the wrong he had wrought and d’Alençon, knight of the royal blood, refused to put aside his wife, marry the Maid and lead a coup against the king.

‘He said it was not his duty to break France on the wheel of his own ambition. Nor mine.’

‘Nor, evidently, mine.’ Her black gaze slides away from him, to her hands. She picks at the counterpane, finds a thread of gold, teases it free. ‘Did anybody hear?’

‘I am still alive.’

A faint smile, a nod, and her eyes flitter shut. She is blue about her mouth and on the high bones of her cheeks. Her skin has an unnatural sheen. He reaches for his satchel, finds the henbane and the hemlock and poppy. Maybe, if he can reduce the proportions, and find some mandrake root—

‘Tomas, put that away. I will take no more.’

‘Lady, your leg—’

‘Is it unclean?’

‘It wasn’t this morning.’

Every day, at sunrise and sunset, he lifts the bandages and lets the odours rise, sifting through the notes of healing, raw-red flesh for the telltale scent of mouse urine that is the advance herald of gangrene. Not yet. Not yet. And not yet. If she stays clean, he might find God again.

She flexes her ankle, an interesting experiment. He watches the flush of colour cross her face, the sweat leak from her temples. He thinks she will stop, but she is who she is, and the next he sees she is bracing her palms against the palliasse.

‘My lady, no! Please, I beg of you, lie still. You must not exert yourself.’

‘Then lift me. I grow weary of looking always upwards.’

She has lost weight. He is not remotely at his full fighting bulk, but even so he is twice her size, at least in girth. He could lift her one-handed. He uses both hands, with care, over many minutes, until she is sitting upright, cushioned on three sides, hugging her arms across her chest, staring out of the back of the wagon. Her teeth are locked, her fingers white at the knuckles, where they grip and counter-grip.

The king has sent heavy silks for her blankets. He wraps one about her shoulders; it is blue, with the Fleur de Lys eternally repeated in gold.

‘I could make you—’

‘No.’

‘Rosemary, valerian and elderflower. Trust me. Just those. You shall see me put them in the water and heat it.’

He has a travelling brazier, such as they use at sea. It rocks with the roll of the wagon. He heats the water, drops in a hand’s length of dried rosemary branch, and a loose fistful of dried elderflowers, small, brown flecks, and valerian, rolled into balls. He stirs them clockwise and speaks aloud three Ave Marias in slow succession over the rolling boil, pours two beakers, lets her pick one and drinks the other, first. ‘My mother taught me this. It helps, I swear.’

They watch each other through steam. A fine line grows between her eyes. He has seen it before, when she is thinking through a strategy from end to end. He waits. He is good at waiting. Even so, when she speaks, it is not what he expects.

‘Have you told Bedford who I am?’

What?
He nearly knocks the brazier over. ‘Bedford, my lady?’

She stares at him. He has never been afraid of a woman before. He has rarely been afraid of a man. Except Henry, of course, the late king; everybody was afraid of him.

She glares at him. Her lips press in a hard white line. She says, ‘You know who I am. How long have you known?’

His bowels lurch, but he has made promises to himself. He squares his shoulders, as in battle. ‘Truthfully? I wasn’t certain until the day of the king’s coronation.’ He is about to mention Claudine, but Claudine is dead, and he does not know how much responsibility he bears for that. He says, ‘But I knew before then.’

‘How?’

He meets her gaze. ‘Did you ever meet the old King of England? Henry?’

Her mouth hardens. Her drugged eyes dip and widen. ‘I was at Troyes, at the signing of the treaty. He didn’t know who I was.’

‘You were a maid in the retinue?’

‘I served as the old king’s squire.’

Of course you did. He is beginning to feel a sneaking respect for the old King of France, this man who made a fool of everyone while they thought he was the fool. He stifles a laugh, too high and nervous. ‘What did you think of him?’

‘Henry? He was arrogant. I wanted to kill him. I was aggrieved when he died too soon for me to do so.’

‘Arrogant? Yes, but with reason. He was the best warrior England has ever seen.’

‘I am better.’

‘Which is how I knew you had been trained by the king.’

‘Don’t flatter me, Tomas. We have passed beyond that, surely.’

Oh, my lady, I hope so. He locks his clasped hands on his elbows, gauche as an apprentice lad. ‘My lady, I have witnessed both of you at war. You are perhaps as good as Henry. You are not better.’ Honesty. Claudine notwithstanding, he has promised himself that.

She lets it pass, closes her eyes, finds whatever it is that is keeping her awake, opens them again. ‘You didn’t answer my question. Does Bedford know?’

Sun into iced-black water. Too many more of these and he will cease to breathe. He shakes his head, and then has to hold it with his hands, fingers wrapped about his temples, pressing the plates of his skull together. He has heard of men who cut circles out of their skull, to let out the vapours. He thinks, just now, that it might be a good thing to consider.

‘I told him you were a ward of the king. I did not tell him that the king had trained you in all the ways of war.’

‘Why not?’

Because after Montépilloy I learned to despise him? Because even as I built the bridge, with the places by which it might be destroyed, a bit of me hoped you’d see it? Because even after you fell, and the king did all that I had planned, if I could have persuaded d’Alençon to marry you and seize the throne, France could be the place we all want it to be?

Because I have, I think, loved you longer than I know.

How many men love her? How little does she care? He finds the wine that he has brought, empties the beakers, pours, adds water in generous measure, drinks. ‘How did
you
know? When?’

‘That you are Tomas Rustbeard?’ She shrugs. ‘When did I not?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘I fought with you at Jargeau and back to back at Meung. There is no greater intimacy than that.’

She may be right, although at this moment, in the intimate space of the wagon, he does not wish to believe her.

‘So you knew me when I came back? At Troyes?’

‘Of course. And if you had gone to the lengths of counterfeiting your own death, it must be for a reason. What could it be except that you were Bedford’s agent? I had you followed afterwards. Bertrand wanted to kill you, but I was taught never to let an enemy out of my sight if I could avoid it.’

Tomas looks to the wagon’s foot. The page has not moved. It may be they are not overheard. He has to believe so. ‘Who else knows? Besides Bertrand?’

‘Jean de Metz, who brought me from Chinon with Bertrand. The lady Marguerite de Valois, of course; she knows. And her betrothed, de Belleville. And Huguet, the priest.’

The lady Marguerite. There was a time when he thought he was in love with her; he did not know what depths his heart could measure. Of course they all know. Of course.

‘They will kill me now.’

‘Not unless I tell them to. Answer me: why have you not told Bedford? He would use it to complete his destruction of me. Certainly Regnault de Chartres would.’

‘Which is why I will not.’ His hands are clasped between his knees. His shoulders are drawn so tightly together they may crush his chest. ‘Lady, I erred. I gave my allegiance to my father’s people, when I owed it in my heart to my mother’s. I know this now: I love France. I will work to make her whole. I cannot expect forgiveness, nor will I ask for it, but I will give my life to undo the harm I have done.’

‘Did you know they were going to destroy your bridge?’

‘Lady, I ordered its destruction before I ever built it.’

Her eyes fall shut. He thinks she has left him, and frets. Sometime later, flat-voiced, she says, ‘Tomas, some things cannot be undone.’

‘Nevertheless, I will spend my life in trying. But first we must make you well and I fear the king’s physicians may not minister to you as we might wish. We shall take you to Rheims, to Marguerite, who loves you. Maybe the king’s mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, may be persuaded to come. She knows the truth of you, I think? Yes, so with her and de Belleville and Father Huguet, all who have known you since childhood I believe, we can keep you safe and make you whole again. If you can …’

But this time she really has left him. Her fingers lie pale on the blue silk, her head tilts on to the cushion. There is colour in her cheeks. He takes the mug and sets it down before it spills, slips his own hand into hers and like this sits with her through the day, that he might know when next she wakes.

At midday, the wagon turns south. He stands, goes forward, pokes his head through the covering. ‘This is not the way to Rheims!’

D’Aulon says, ‘We’re going south. The king has ordered us to Gien-sur-Loire.’

A three-day journey. He subsides back into the shade. Charles, by grace of God King of France, is planning to give Rheims back to Bedford. He feels it in his water, in the sick marrow of his bones. The magistrates will be hanged for treason. All those revellers, the infants conceived in joy, will be broken.

When the Maid wakes, and he tells her, she lapses fast into fever. He gives her the remains of his hemlock and poppy and sends ahead into Gien for the bile of a gelded boar.

HERE IN GIEN
is another rented room, taller than the cell in the inn at la Chapelle, broader, sweeter smelling. Set along the walls are a dozen sconces filled with Venetian oil that burns with a bright, smokeless flame, and on the bed a goosedown mattress, layered with satin sheets in blue and gold.

Everywhere is blue and gold, everywhere lilies: on the bedhead and the tables; the floor tiles and the cabinet of lapis-inlaid walnut that has been given to Brother Tomas to keep his medicines in; on the poker and the linen and the bowl that holds the comfrey for the compresses. Everywhere, as clearly as if it were the king’s thumbprint, is the Valois mark. She is mine. Mine. I am king. The Maid belongs to me.

Tomas wants to throw them all out, and cannot. The Maid cares nothing for the wall hangings, but reacts to confinement the way a bear reacts to the cage.

‘He is never going to let me go, is he?’ She paces the room, the radius of her circles inverse in size to the number of people around her. Small now, when here is Tomas, and Yolande of Aragon, Marguerite de Valois, de Belleville and Huguet Robèrge, all come, as he had wanted, to care for her.

Together, these few make up one faction of the king’s court. Periodically, the door of her sickroom is darkened by the other faction, by Regnault de Chartres and Georges de la Trémoïlle, who bring apples studded with cloves and strong-smelling unguents and stand as ghouls over the bed.