Into The Fire (42 page)

The king has got her back. He has made her a knight, but he will not let her fight. He is holding her on the tightest of leashes. She must remain under his roof, as a part of his household, ready, in theory, to give her advice to His Majesty, except that her advice is never sought.

In March, the court moves near to Sully-sur-Loire the better to see how it is being assaulted by England; in particular, by a mercenary captain, Franquet d’Arras, who is raping women, slaughtering boys, stealing horses, all in the guise of helping Bedford retake the lands lost to the Maid.

The king watches. He does not intervene. In her chambers, the Maid paces.

Her father no longer drives her, no promises now, no oaths unfulfilled, just a desperate, burning desire to mount Xenophon, lift her blade and take to the field. Her need is eating her alive; each day she is thinner, more fraught. And so, against the pull of his better nature, Tomas has found a way to make it happen. Now. Tonight.

He seeks out Marguerite, alone, before the time of parting. These past weeks, she has been the only one who could calm the Maid; she brought her small things to eat that diverted her attention. In the past days, she it was who argued most strongly that the Maid must go to safety, not danger. Nobody else would have dared say it. She did, and was overruled. Her purity sears him, and her pain.

He wants to say, I am sorry, but it would not be true. He cannot meet her eyes.

A porphyry statue stands on the table, a foot high. It is Saint Catherine of Siena, who evaded marriage by giving herself to Christ, and lived, for a while at least, only on the host. Her eyes are Marguerite’s eyes, her hands Marguerite’s hands.

He asks, ‘Did you sit for this?’

‘No. I would not make of myself a saint.’

Yes, you would. He has seen in her the fervour, the way her lips part when the priests speak of martyrdom. He has seen how she cleaves to this saint, patron of young girls who starve themselves half to death.

There was an epidemic of half-starved girls as the fourteenth century gave way to the fifteenth, and nobody had resolved thirty years of Great Schism. It seems that having more than one man claiming infallibility in God’s name caused the gentle-maids of Europe to seek stability in hunger. Certainly, now that there is only one pope, they seem to be feeding themselves again, but not Marguerite. She looks thin. He thinks she has barely eaten these past few days, since his plan was fleshed out.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and in this moment, he means it.

‘Do not say so. This is what she wants. She is afraid that the king will give Rheims back to the English as proof of his “good faith”. Already he has ordered Compiègne to surrender to Bedford’s forces.’

Tomas says, ‘Compiègne will not surrender, whatever the king orders.’

Marguerite lifts one shoulder. ‘It might if the Maid does not go to stiffen its resolve. And so you will take her.’

He nods. ‘I will.’

‘And you will keep her safe, while she does what she must do to make France whole again.’

‘Yes.’ And then I will bring her back to you. I swear it. He kneels. She lays her hand on his head. Her palm is cool, her touch surprisingly firm. ‘Go well, Tomas. Do what you can. Do not make promises that you cannot keep.’

Later, in these same rooms, the two women embrace: both dark, slim, slight. They could be sisters, but that the Maid is taller, broader in the shoulder, with the arrogance of a knight.

They are framed by the light of a fire, and the lesser light of the wall sconces. The air around them crackles with regret, loss and longing, and it is not all from Marguerite; the Maid looks as heartbroken as Tomas has ever seen her. Minutes draw past, and might become hours, which they do not have. He takes a step forward. ‘My lady, it is time to leave. The king’s guards are distracted for a very short time only.’

The king’s guards are presently being given a somewhat long-winded report by a scout as to the latest progress of this bandit, and all he has done. The Maid is not invited to this council, nor any other of the king’s. She is not permitted to ride out with him. She is not really permitted to ride out at all, although she has done so, perhaps once a week, since Christmas. As one might imagine, she is going mad with inaction.

She rounds now on Tomas, her priest. ‘You don’t trust Pietro di Carignano?’

‘I trust him as much as I trust any man who offers himself for hire.’

‘We have not paid him.’

‘Exactly. So I say again, we must leave swiftly, while there is time and before he changes his mind.’

Step by step, he prises the Maid away, draws her towards the door. His lasting memory of Marguerite is of colour and light, the liquid dapples of the sconces rolling over her green damask, her hair loose about her shoulders; her skin is clear, her eyes bright.

Truly, she is an angel. A part of him hurts to leave her. She smiles for him, through tears. ‘Take care of her, Tomas.’

‘I will do my best. God keep you safe.’ He bows. He has been unchaperoned with two women, but he is a priest; nobody cares. He steps back and closes the black-oak doors.

No guards stand there. He has no idea for how long they will be diverted. He hefts the pack at his shoulder; he has dark cloaks, and other things they will need if this night is successful. And he has a small pewter flask, containing a distillate of hemlock, in case it is not. He does not wish to burn.

‘This way, lady.’ He holds up a lantern of tin and thin, translucent ox horn which scatters light pale as buttercups in summer. His cupped palm shields the flame as much as do the shutters. By varying the tightness of his grip, he can let the light leak out between his fingers, not enough to scare the rats, but enough to see that he and the Maid don’t risk treading on them. He swallows on spit the texture of egg white, kicks at a scurrying tail, pushes on.

‘Tomas, you are worried. Did you not bring a knife?’

‘I brought two, lady. But if we kill the king’s men we will die for it, and not swiftly.’ She may be a knight, but he has met their kind; they will kill her as a peasant.

She knows. It would appear she does not care. ‘The Earl of Salisbury lost his jaw to a stray shot outside Orléans in the winter before we relieved it. He was eight days dying. Will it be longer than that?’

Probably not. I am not sure that it will seem like a blessing, though.

Again, he says, ‘We are not here to kill guards. We need to be out of here and gone before they realize it. To the left here, and down. We go out under the wall.’

Every town in France, it seems, has tunnels going out under the walls. This tunnel is supposed to reach clear to safety. One has been dug from the outside expressly to meet it. He has not tested this assertion. It is one flaw in the plan; not the only one, but by far the biggest. If Pietro di Carignano has lied, if he has told one single untruth pertaining to all that is planned, Tomas will eviscerate him.

Thinking of this helps fire his belly as the tunnel narrows, the ceiling drops. They have the choice of crawling or crouching and the Maid won’t crawl so they bend double, hobbling.

The air is stale and smells of terror and rat urine. He has never been a tunneller; he can admit without shame that he would never have the courage. He has never fought below ground either, although others do.

Twenty paces and an obstruction ahead. The width narrows so there is only room for one. He gives the Maid his lantern, lets her go ahead. His heart pounds. ‘Turn right ahead, lady.’

Thirty more paces and he feels the bite of frost and wind, sharper than the cellar-chill. His bowels churn. ‘Lady, the lant—’

She has already thought of it. One swift smother and they are in darkness, blundering by feel, fingers on mud, on wood, on stone, on—

‘Stop.’

Her voice in his ear. He stands where his last step took him, on uneven ground, with spoil of the new tunnel under his feet. This much is done, that someone has broken into the tunnel coming out from under the wall.

He seeks stars, the moon, the light of men’s eyes: anything. His hands slide up his sleeves. He is going to abandon this pretence of priesthood; it does him no good. Both knives are loose, then they are in his hands, ready. He can throw if only he can see something to throw at.

‘Tomas …’ She grips his shoulder. ‘Here.’

Here, if he makes a quarter turn to his left, is starlight, enough to see by. And here, Pietro di Carignano, soft-soled, face darkened with fire ash, smiling.

‘My lady.’ He is not a big man, half Tomas’s girth, a head shorter, dark-haired, dark-skinned, wiry. He handles his blade well. And since the hell of la Charité, he has been back to his home and raised a new company of men to come and fight with the Maid, or so he has said.

No money has been paid, or asked. These men come, allegedly, for the honour of fighting in the Maid’s company, although there is an understanding that there will be plunder; never again the restraint of Saint-Pierre.

From tonight, the Maid no longer fights for the King of France. She is a mercenary captain, no better – but no worse – than Perrinet Gressart, whom she fought in the winter’s mud, and failed to defeat.

Tomas can see no sign of the Piedmontese. How would you hide two hundred men in the meadows of Jargeau? Are they lying flat on the soft spring turf? Where, come to that, are Jean d’Aulon and Louis de Coutes, who were sent ahead on a pretext of finding a smith capable of shoeing Xenophon without being killed? They took the horse, of course; that was the point, so it’s possible they’re dead and the horse gone. He doesn’t want to be near her if she finds that has happened.

‘Lady, may it please you?’

Pietro di Carignano is insufferably polite. It pleases the Maid. She follows close enough to wet his neck with her breath. Tomas trots after them, down a slope, up again. They crest the hill. Below, a mass of mail and arms, padded for hush. Horses shift and twitch. Their scent is a floor, a solid thing he passes through as he steps down the slope’s far side: warm, dense, mellow-sharp. A big white-grey lifts its snake-head and snores out a greeting, not quite a whicker. Xenophon is too well trained for that.

She runs. In near dark, the Maid runs to her horse. He is glad Marguerite is not here to see this, her heart would shatter.

A man offers his looped hands for her to mount. Another lights up a torch, sending flickers of sooty flame across the assembled mass of men. A third passes up to the Maid her breastplate and helm. D’Aulon is here, after all, and Louis de Coutes. Somewhere close are the two brothers d’Arc. Since Christmas, they have been made knights, and their village is free of taxes for ever. They have remained with the Maid, though; they want to fight on.

For Tomas, her priest, the men have brought his wall-eyed chestnut mare. He is secretly pleased; he has come to like the beast. He mounts. Now is the time for him to give what he has brought. He opens his pack, draws out his gift, rolled, tied with a riband of blue silk. Even in this light, the gold glimmers.

‘My lady.’ He holds it forward.

She eyes him a moment.

He says, ‘It is safe.’ He reconsiders. ‘Almost safe.’

She laughs, and he laughs with her, and then doesn’t, because she has taken his gift and shaken it out: a surcoat in cloth of gold. It is not the one she wore at the coronation; the king has taken that back. She knows this. Her brows dance, asking a question.

They are in public. They have to be careful. Aloud, for everyone to hear, Tomas says, ‘The fabric is a gift from the people of Rheims. The king’s sister, Marguerite de Valois, stitched it with her own hand. The lady Yolande thinks you should wear it, and so do I. You should be seen, now, for who you are.’

He sees the sudden shine at her eyes, the prick of tears unshed. She has fixed her own breastplate. And now she fixes her own surcoat, sliding it on, tying the loops at the side with the dexterity of a lifetime’s practice.

Two men bring forward the blazing resinous torches. She is a vision in gold. She looks out across the men, surveys their mass. Two hundred Piedmontese, plus two hundred loyal Frenchmen raised by Jean de Belleville.

When Montmorency came a day too late to Paris, he brought fifty men at arms and was considered a strong commander. She has eight times as many.

She sets her horse three paces back, so she is apart from them, and, lifting her hand as priests do, and kings, casts her voice out, cold and clear across them. ‘While you are in danger, I will not flee. While you fight, I shall fight at your head. While you sleep, I shall be vigilant.’

It is a knight’s oath. They cannot cheer her, not here. Scabbards hiss and creak, harness chimes. In a quiet that presses on them all, four hundred men lift their blades in the yellow light and now he, Tomas, cannot speak for the tightness of his throat. Henry was like this. Nobody since.

He heels away tears. She turns her horse towards him. She is smiling as he has not seen her since before Paris. Two months of planning, paid in a moment. ‘Well, Tomas, where do we go that our men may make their names and their fortunes?’

‘Where the fighting is thickest, my lady; where Bedford seeks to retake French towns. North, I think, towards Compiègne. Lagny-sur-Marne is on the way. There are those in that town who will aid you, however many men you bring.’

‘
GO
!’

The sudden end to waiting. The sway-into-stillness of the lance, the sword, the mace, the axe. The soundlessness of too much sound, of four hundred men – the Maid’s men – all armed, armoured, horse-bound, implacable in their purpose; free.

For a moment Tomas too knows the freedom. He has no lance, never has had, never will have, but in this moment he comes as close as he ever can to being a knight. He is a horse’s length behind the Maid when she singles out her target: a flashy rider on a flashy bay sporting a blue velvet cloak and swan feathers in his hat who shouts to the men on either side of him, raises his sword and circles it clockwise in the flashing air so that there is no question but that this is Franquet d’Arras, the bandit captain whom the king has ostensibly come here to hunt. But the king is not hunting him. And the Maid has seen him. D’Arras too has no lance, and his archers are fumbling their strings and he is caught between the stream and the hedge with nowhere to run.