Into The Fire (4 page)

‘To kill the witch. Yes.’

‘
No!
’ A hard fist catches his arm. Glasdale’s face is an inch from his; less. Nose to nose, eyes to mad-red, desperate eyes. ‘Not just to kill her. You have to
destroy
her. You have to find out who she is. The men say she’s a demon, but I know she’s—’

‘A girl from Lorraine sent by God to aid the French.’ Really, everyone knows this, they just don’t want to admit it.

‘Ha!’ Glasdale’s laugh is raw and ugly. ‘I will not believe that God changes sides. I shall meet Him before sundown, and if I am wrong it may be that I shall burn in everlasting hell for saying this, but He was with us at Agincourt, at Verneuil, at all the battles between and I tell you that God does
not
change sides.’

‘There’s a prophecy …’ Even the English have heard it. A seer-woman has written that France will be redeemed by a maid from Lorraine. Aided by God, of course, that goes without saying. The French want God to change sides, just as much as the English want Him not to.

Scorn sweeps Glasdale’s countenance. ‘Is Bedford so desperate that he takes on fools? Truly, I had thought better of you.’

‘My lord?’

‘Think, man. Had you heard this prophecy nonsense before Advent? Had anyone? And yet by the New Year it is old news and everyone has known it all their lives. Ha! This girl came out of nowhere, and nobody does that. Nobody. She is not what she says.’

‘What, then?’

‘How would I know? But you listen to me, Tod Rustbeard. It is not enough that you kill her; you have to expose her for the liar she is, and then use that lie to destroy every part of her memory. You must shatter the myth, choke it stillborn before it has a chance to grow. Do you understand?’

‘I do, my lord.’ He does not necessarily agree, but then he doesn’t have to. Bedford’s orders have priority and they are to kill her, however he can. When she’s dead, the stories will wither without his help.

For now, though, his nod is enough. Glasdale relaxes his grip, forces a smile, of sorts, looks over his shoulder to where the French are striving to lay their temporary bridge. In the set of his shoulders is a new certainty. He begins to move towards the breach in the wall that lets out on to the river below.

It’s not far: four paces, maybe less. Halfway, he turns back, meets Tod Rustbeard square in the eye. ‘Tell my lord of Bedford that I died with honour.’

Oh, sweet Christ.

‘Lord … No …!’ He lurches to grab at a cuff, a belt, anything. But Glasdale is already filling the breach. One raked look east to west, to the evening star, to the red line of the sun’s last edge, and he steps off into nowhere.

A swift drop. A sound like a horse, drinking, just once. Sixty pounds of plate armour and a man, into the mud-silt waters of the Loire. Nothing shows where he hits, and there are no bubbles to show he has breathed. Death may be swift this way, but Tod Rustbeard doesn’t want to think how the last few moments will feel.

He backs deeper into shadow. He is surrounded by death; it is nothing new. But here, now, he can feel its cold breath on the nape of his neck, the suck and sigh of it, the temptation to follow Glasdale. He looks across at the French, at the smug torch-lit faces, the smirks, the pumped hands, the cheers as a good man, a decent, honourable man of courage, drowns in that fucking French river.

He knows these men, French and the Scots alike; he has spent a winter clasping their craven hands, buying wine for their pig’s bladder bellies. He notes one without hair, another with a nose hooked as a hawk’s beak, a third with blazing red hair and beard that are brighter, fierier twins to his own, so that they could be brothers. It’s not impossible; who knows when else and where else his father sowed his bastard seed?

Patrick Ogilvy of Gairloch, I know you. And Ricard the crossbowman. And Hugh Kennedy and Georges and Raoul d’Autet. I know every man of you. Celebrate all you like now, you bastards, for soon I will kill you with my bare hands, half-kin or not. I will tie anvils to your necks and watch you drown in horse piss. I will …

He backs away before the heat of his fury touches them. They still don’t know he’s there; too busy staring at the place where Glasdale fell in case iron turns to cork and he bobs back up. They have a woman who fights; all the laws of God and man have been overturned. Today, anything might happen.

He slips away. He is thinking now, fast, clear-headed, certain. There are more ways to skin a bear …

In the tower are long shadows and the approach of night. He knows how it is: on the ground floor is an armoury, with the main door opposite, barred with oak, and a postern on the other side. He runs down on memory and hope and yes, it is as he remembers.

Nobody is near the stairs. The eighty or so English men at arms still living are all at the front, barricading the main door. These are his brothers-in-arms. He knows them and they know him. He calls out as he runs down the last steps.

‘Cyril! Stephen! Here to me. We have to block the postern gate or they’ll come in at us from the back!’

They trust him; he is ever the one with a good idea. Cyril arrives first. Sword and shield, no helm. Stephen is heavier, and slower. Mail shirt, a borrowed helm tied on with leather, mail gloves, a bastard sword, held two-handed. Stephen first, then.

The armoury is on his left, the racks emptied of weapons but for a pike with a shattered haft left leaning on the wall.

‘Damnation, I thought there’d be more shafts here.’ He spins on his heel, a man with fortitude, in the midst of a defence. He flashes a bright smile. ‘Cyril, find us a pike or two. Anything long with something on the end sharp enough to kill a few Frenchmen. Stephen, help me break up the racks. We can jam them across the door.’

Cyril runs back for the pikes; he’s young and ardent and doesn’t want to die. Stephen … Stephen is already dying, his throat sliced raggedly open, scalding blood a fountain in the air – step sideways, now, don’t get caught by the spume – his last breath frothing out as he tries to shout a warning – Tod Rustbeard! Traitor! – and finds his voice doesn’t work and he can’t think why, and already the light is fading from his eyes and he falls back into Rustbeard’s waiting arms, to be lowered to the floor; just in time.

‘I got the best I could, but there isn’t mu—
Oof!
’ And thus Cyril is poleaxed, the hilt of a sword smashed into the bridge of his nose so hard that the bones pop and his eyes are split open and he is crumpling before he can bring up the shield or the sword or the three pikes he has balanced across his forearms.

They clatter as they fall, but none of his fellows is listening; they’re all at the front gate, placing barricades on barricades, getting ready to hold it for the night, for the next day, for as long as it takes for reinforcements to come. It’s not a bad plan, it just needs to fail.

Cyril is still alive. Rustbeard rams his sword into his unarmoured gut. It’s blunted with a day’s use and won’t bite properly, so the first strike is a mess of mangled jerkin and barely a cut.

He gives up and uses the back edge of his axe in a short, savage chop to the temple. He’s a hammer man out of choice, and the dent it leaves is satisfyingly deep, ramming hair and skin into bone and brain. He lets the lad’s body fall back so he can drive his sword home properly, up through the belly into the air-filled mess of the chest. He feels the sudden release of pressure, the pad-pad of a just-beating heart, stilled.

There’s blood everywhere, but that is rather the point; blood and heroism are welded one to the other in French minds and he needs to be enough of a hero not to die as soon as they see him. He strips off his English colours, the red and the white, and wrestles them on to Cyril, who has lost his somewhere in the fight.

At the front gate, French rams are pounding, but he knows this gate; it will not break easily; that’s why his offer of a back route in will be so very welcome. He straightens, runs his hands through his hair so it sticks up, stiff with blood, red as a cock’s comb, and as rigid. He thinks of childhood, and summer rivers, and his mother calling across the orchards.
Chéri! Viens ici.

The postern gate is the height of a man, wide enough only to let through two at a time. It is held shut by three iron bolts, all well-oiled. The hinges sigh on goose grease; other men than he have planned secret entry or exit from here. Outside, the evening air is mellow. In Orléans, they are lighting fires of celebration, and on the south bank of the Loire. Bastards. Fifty yards away, two hundred Frenchmen are assaulting the front gate with rams and torches, pitch and hammers, blades, fists and feet.

No going back now. He steps outside, where he can more readily be seen, brings to mind the names of those he saw from the tower top, cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, ‘
Patrick! Georges! Ricard! Venez ici! Ici, au nom de Dieu! Ici! Aidez-moi!
’

A dozen men peel away from the mass and run towards him, blades out. He doesn’t raise his sword. In fact, he slams it hard and clearly into the sheath at his belt, and continues to shout. ‘Guillaume de Monterey! Laurent de Saval! I know you’re out there. Come to me here! In God’s name, come!’

They come as a pack, and he knows none of those at the front, nor they him, and his hand is heading down towards his blade, because if he’s going to die it won’t be empty-handed, when he sees—

‘Patrick Ogilvy! You red-haired bastard! It’s me! Tomas! Here! Gairloch, to me! Patrick, in the name of God, come to me here! Tell them I’m the king’s man! Tell them I’m for France!’

They are running flat out, but Ogilvy is a Strathclyde man, half Norse, with the fire-hair of the Vikings and a big, broad-shouldered body to match – truly, they could be brothers – and he breasts through the crowd, slamming men left and right, taking liberties that on other days would see him stabbed between the ribs by his own side, but this time he’s a captain, friend of the Maid, and he’s shouting, ‘Leave him! Leave him! It’s Tomas Rustbeard. He’s one of us! Leave him!’

And they are together, clasping arm to arm, beard to beard, chest to chest, and Patrick Ogilvy is gabbling in a mix of French and lowland Scots, ‘Tomas? We thought we’d lost you. We thought you’d gone over to join the bastard English.’

Well that’s reasonable, because he had done exactly that, and it would have been fantastically unlikely if nobody at all on the French side had seen him these past few days. Which is why he is ready with an answer that makes sense of it all.

‘I did. And now I’ve come back. I did say that I would.’ Stepping aside, he gestures back to the broken remnants of Stephen and Cyril and all their blood.

‘My God …’ Ogilvy is a fighting man of many years’ experience, but he grows white now, and cannot find words. A crowd gathers and, gratifyingly, more men than just the Scot are crossing themselves.

Tod Rustbeard, also known as Tomas, whose mother came from Normandy and who claims his Frenchness more firmly with each passing word, claps the big Scot about the shoulder. ‘You can kiss me later, but for now get your men in here fast, or the English will hear us and more will die who don’t have to.’

Ogilvy can move swiftly, when things are explained to him. One meaty arm sweeps back at his fellows. ‘Swords up,
mes enfants
. Let’s take these Godless bastards from behind. Tomas, you coming?’

‘Aye.’ He has not forgotten Glasdale, not his death, nor the promises made above the water in which he died. Later, he will honour them. Today, here, now, he is Tomas Rustbeard who smiles to the French and to the Scots and nods forward to the ram-pounded gate. ‘Quietly now. Shields up, swords out, and don’t miss when you’re close enough.’

He helps them with the killing and if some amongst the English side recognize him, it is only with their dying breaths and they are not in a position to do anything about it. The battle of the gate is short and fast and ugly, and of the garrison of five hundred English men at arms the last fifty surrender.

Tomas doesn’t stop to herd them into the city, but seeks out Patrick Ogilvy. If anyone can get close to the Maid, it’s him: with his red hair and his Scots air of casual brutality, he’s always close to the leadership in any fight. Tomas clasps him, arm to elbow, draws him close, brother-in-arms, at the end of a victorious battle. ‘We won! By God and all the saints, we won!’

‘By the Maid.’ Ogilvy can’t stop grinning. He has no idea the effort of will it takes not to cut his throat. ‘By the Maid we won, and will keep on winning. You’re in good hands now, Tomas. The bastard English are learning what it’s like to be on the losing side at last. We’ll push them all the way back to Normandy and beyond. We’ll be in London drinking wine from gold cups by the year’s end, just see if we’re not.’

He will not be. Here, now, Tomas swears one more binding oath to the memory of William Glasdale that, whatever else the fucking French may be doing, Patrick Ogilvy will be dead by the year’s end, and the Maid with him.

AT 6.38 AM
– the precise time is recorded in Picaut’s log book – Martin Evard, chief of the Fire Department, deems it safe to enter the saturated mess that was the Hôtel Carcassonne on the rue de la Tournée, three blocks south of the cathedral in Orléans town centre.

It is one of the few new-builds in an area of ancient, wood-framed terraces. Here bombs fell – Hitler’s or the RAF’s – with a surprising degree of precision and only this one single block was destroyed. Its replacement was not built until the early twenty-first century, by which time it was required to conform to more modern building regulations and leave a substantial gap on each of its four sides.

This foresight has prevented the entire north bank of Orléans from joining in the conflagration, although nearby dwellings have suffered smoke damage and a few have been scorched badly enough to peel paint from the shutters. In the usual course of events, insurance teams would follow soon after the police to assess the damage and define the costs of repair. Now, though, the investigation has progressed beyond simple arson. Not long after dawn, the Fire Department confirmed the presence of a burned corpse in a bedroom on the ground floor of the hotel.