Into The Fire (46 page)

Over the past ten days, the archbishop has become one of her constant companions. Nobody has suggested that he is Bedford’s paid man, but everyone knows that he spent all last summer negotiating a series of pointless treaties with Burgundy that expressly prevented the Maid from assaulting Paris when she could have taken it.

In the eyes of the world, if anyone is the architect of her failure, it is Regnault de Chartres, but he claims now to have seen the error of his ways.

He no longer hates the Maid. He certainly doesn’t believe she is a fraud. Au contraire, she is the saviour of France and it is his duty to watch over her spiritual welfare. He joined her company on the month’s first day and follows her as a fawn follows a doe, nose to tail. Tomas hates it.

He is here now, in the governor’s dining hall in the keep at Compiègne, where they have been brought by a sleep-dazzled chamberlain, after a day’s excursion that has seen them add a hundred men to their army. It is late. Boys run for kindling and heartwood and soon the fire spits and sighs and climbs up the chimney.

Over the hearth, red light gives life to the dusty tapestries, to Moses, parting the sea; to Joseph, reading the dreams of the pharaoh; to Lazarus, rising. The Maid’s company gathers close, and the archbishop closest. He stands with his arms wide, his chest turned to the flames, hogging the heat. He has mud in his hair and moss stains on his elbows. His hawk’s nose is blue with the after-taste of fear of the dark spirits that gibbered in the forest as they led their horses through; he was not happy, then. He is not happy now, but warmer.

‘I shall bid you goodnight, what’s left of it.’ He rolls his hands into his sleeves. As if struck by a fresh thought: ‘Is there a boy with lights, perhaps? A rush light? A lantern? And someone to build up the fire in my chamber? I find I am in the heights of the tower; closer to God, but colder, I think.’

Of course. For the archbishop, anything. Boys are called, with rushes, a fire basket, tinder, kindling, logs. They troop together out of the room. The governor himself goes to fetch heated wine; for the archbishop, nothing is too much. De Chartres bows once again and departs for his chamber in the heights of the castle.

‘He is gone,’ says Tomas heavily. ‘To work out how he can betray us.’ He has thought this for days now, but this night he is sure; call it instinct, call it the shadows around the archbishop’s eyes, call it an old memory, rekindled, he is not sure whence it comes, but he is certain. ‘Bedford and Burgundy know too much of our movements and he is the one the most likely to be telling them. If the governor is helping him, he’s got it easy. If he isn’t, then he has some other way of getting the information out.’

There is a brief, explosive silence.

‘Guillaume de Flavy loves this city. He’ll be walking his line with care, doing what de Chartres demands, and not a whit more.’ Pierre d’Arc speaks, from the place beyond the firelight where he sits with his back to a wall and one knee drawn up to his chest. He is older, by far, than the day when Tomas met him by a river; a better rider, a better fighter; a man now, versed in politics, not a green country boy.

‘He’ll do what de Chartres tells him to do. We can’t trust either of them.’ That’s Jean d’Aulon, the Maid’s squire. He, too, has grown in the past twelve months.

A year ago, he looked shocked if a man died in his presence. Now, he would kill the archbishop with his bare hands if only someone asked it of him. He watches the Maid with naked hope in his eyes, but he knows well enough that she can’t: the king is turning a blind eye to her being here. Regnault de Chartres’ presence is the price.

So she does what she always does, which is to ignore the archbishop and focus on the ways by which they can assault Burgundy, and so Bedford.

Leaning on the wall by the fire, she says, ‘We need to break the encirclement or they’ll lock us up in a siege and the town won’t hold against it. The Burgundians hold Margny under Baudot de Noyelles. Jean of Luxembourg is a couple of miles upriver at Clairoix; and Montgomery holds Venette for the English an equal distance to the south. We must take each of these if we are to break them: Margny, Clairoix, Venette, in that order.’

To d’Aulon, ‘Find someone awake who knows the lie of the land and have him sent to me.’

Tomas looks across at her. He is oddly hollow, clear-headed and tired at the same time. ‘It is yet night. Do you not wish to sleep, lady?’ He can ask this, now; they are close enough.

‘No.’ She is distracted, thinking of too many things. ‘Sleep will not come tonight. We must plan for tomorrow.’ She leans over, taps him on the arm. ‘I would go to the chapel to pray. Will you come with me?’

Of course. He would follow her into hell and back; she knows this. He follows her into the small, cold church, kneels on cold stone, mouths cold prayers to a God who may still be listening. All the while, he watches the Maid. She may be busy-headed, but she seems happy, at peace. She is fighting. She is leading men. This is what she was born for.

Later, she speaks to men d’Aulon brings to her who know the land, and they make plans: Margny, Clairoix, Venette. How to take them, and with what, and when.

Guns. Everywhere, the engines of war turn the air black with their powder. They punish the ears, drown the cadences of Mass. After, Tomas and the Maid go to the top of the wall and look out. D’Aulon and Pierre d’Arc follow up soon.

They have not slept, any of them. They do not need to speak now; from moment to moment Tomas knows what the Maid needs, what she wants and what he can give her.

He follows her up and they stand together atop the tower, looking south, towards the River Oise. In the meadows, the thorn blossom is out. Petals fall in snowy drifts with each cough of a gun; today, blizzards. Above, the sky is an aching, desperate blue. Already the crows gather. They taste blood on the winds of tomorrow.

From the belly of Burgundy’s line, a bombard heaves and grunts. They watch the shot soar, weightless, see it break apart on the wall, see the whole wall shiver at the blow. The stone beneath their feet bucks like a bull.

Pierre d’Arc joins them. He and his brother are the least used to guns. He flinches at its power and has barely recovered before another follows, and another. Yesterday’s bombardment was less than half the ferocity. He pats his hands over his ears, checking they are still attached to his head. ‘They surely know you are back here, lady.’

‘They do, don’t they?’ And how could they know that unless someone has signalled them?

Last night, Regnault de Chartres asked for a room in one of the highest towers and Tomas did not understand why. Put it down to lack of sleep and a night spent creeping through the dark trying to see where he was putting his feet; put it down to carelessness, or stupidity, but he did not think to send someone out to see if lights flickered from the casements through the last hour of darkness. This morning, though, he will wager his life that if there were no signalling lights, then a boy went willing through the postern gate with a message. An archbishop can command a particular loyalty on little more than the strength of a smile.

There is no point in laying this out. What’s done is done, but she is looking at him as he looks at the tower, and there is a question in her eyes. He says, ‘Lady, Regnault de Chartres remains your enemy.’

‘He will betray me if he can.’ She nods, smiling. Later, he remembers that smile; the grief within it.

Now, something sharp twists in his chest. He is like Jean d’Aulon. One word from her and he’d push the archbishop from the top of the tower. He asks, ‘What will you do?’

‘Fight. What else do I ever do? We should arm ourselves. Today, I think, will be bitter. We should break fast.’

The archbishop is in the dining hall, his hands clasped behind his back, watching the preparations with apparent fascination. He holds tight to a cloak of vair, bundled against the morning’s chill. A hundred squirrels died for his comfort; their fine white belly fur glistens in stripes between the black of back and flanks. He still hugs as close to the fire as he did in the night.

The hall is lit with wax tapers ingrained with sweet oils. Their light melts in shades of blood and amber across his shoulders. Seeing the Maid enter, he tilts his head, presses one long finger to his cheek. ‘My lady, cloth of gold!’ He speaks like this often these days, in tedious exclamations.

As she passes, he reaches out to grasp at her chest. Were she not armoured, this would be an indecency that would require someone to call him out. Tomas, in his guise as a cleric – he will have to drop this, soon, he so very badly wants to fight – cannot touch him. D’Aulon is an optimist; this might be his chance. He raises a brow, leans his head her way. She signals him no with a shake of her head.

The archbishop seems to reach in, piercing flesh and flat white bone, knifing through to her heart, but is only testing the fabric of her surcoat, folding it between his fingers.

De Chartres’s smile is serpentine; is her sin pride or hubris? He will not say. ‘Such a glory! Perhaps when you are done with the day’s travails you will tell me whence it came? I might have one like it perhaps, to give to the king?’

She tilts her head. ‘I will tell you now; it was a gift from the people of Rheims, for bringing their king to them for crowning. I’m sure they would happily give him a like one themselves, did they think he might have use for it.’

‘Ah.’ A revelation. Rheims, of which he is archbishop, is bestowing gifts upon the Maid. A hardness flickers behind his eyes. He might speak, but beyond the walls the great gun coughs again. Even here, in the heart of the citadel, they feel the tremor as the walls hold against it. Pierre d’Arc crosses himself. The archbishop does not.

The Maid tips her head towards the door. ‘Perhaps you would like to go out and tell Burgundy, now, how much he needs to join with France? Then we can all go home and plant our crops and enjoy our summer in peace.’

What can he say? De Chartres’s shrug is the very soul of regret. ‘My lady, you know where my heart lies. Were it possible …’

‘You would do it. Of course. And so Burgundy’s obduracy must be held back by other means. We shall not let Compiègne fall. That is clear. Do you understand?’

Burgundy. Not ‘my lord’ or ‘the duke’; she addresses him as an equal. More and more, she skates close to claiming royalty. De Chartres, always sallow, yellows to the tint of rat’s urine, but her words were not for him, they were for Guillaume de Flavy, the governor, who has entered by the side door to the chamber. His, this city, his the tapestries that cover the walls – Moses, Joseph, Lazarus – his the pain of assault, redoubled because the Maid is here. He must be torn, surely, if de Chartres is his patron, but this town is his ward? Where does his loyalty lie?

Of him, the Maid asks, ‘Have your guns begun to fire back?’

‘Lady, they are making dust of the enemy.’ He is solid, blunt, unyielding.

She nods to him. ‘Let me go to them. There are things we can do to ensure their safety.’

Under her tutelage, his men spend the day rearranging the guns of Compiègne in the way they did outside Jargeau. Three shots and move, then one and move, then two; never more than four, and no fixed rhythm: they spin a dice for the numbers and spin again if they roll a five or a six. They score several strikes against the great bombards and are happy.

In the late afternoon, with the sun lying bright and low, Tomas is sent with fresh orders to the men of the town. He summons the archers, crossbowmen, gunners and sets them about the north side of the walls and on the barges that are strung across the river.

All about, men string their bows, set foot to stirrup and load their machines of war. Bolts and arrows bristle. Strings are taut, and faces behind them. All day they have fired their guns, but they are no more comfortable with this distant killing than they are with suffering its consequences. They ache for the Maid to bring the enemy within range of a decent bowshot. At the drawbridge, the windlass girns.

Tomas calls across to Louis de Coutes. ‘Make ready my lady’s horse!’ The other pages run to the call.

When they reach the bridge, the Maid’s grey-white devil-horse is not there. ‘Where’s Xenophon?’

‘He’s lame, lady. He trod on a stone and bruised his sole.’ The page holds the reins of her second horse, a dark bay courser. It is big enough and well-schooled, but it lacks the fire of devilry.

She chews her lip a moment. Tomas says, ‘Lady, if you wish to remain here, we can send out my lord of—’

‘No. We ride out. You may stay back if you wish.’

‘Never, lady.’ It stabs him, that she can still say this.

They mount. She casts her eyes over the men. They are about two hundred, all mounted, four men per lance. Above Louis de Coutes floats the Fleur de Lys in gold on white. She is gold. Her horse should be white and instead it is the colour of old blood. This isn’t right.

‘My dear and loyal friends.’ Her voice takes flight on the still air. ‘The men of Burgundy have spent all day on the guns and they are weary. They have come to skirmish in the meadows and they have taken their horses home now, with orders they be fed and watered. This is our chance to hammer them into the ground, to show Duke Philip that he dallies with France at his peril. Are you with me?’

‘Aye!’

Louder. ‘Are you with me?’

‘Aye!’

Once more, the loudest. ‘Shall we do this together?’

‘
Aye!
’

On which, they sally out across the bridge of eleven arches, on to the causeway that leads across the water meadow, towards the Burgundian emplacements.

Stone chimes under shod hooves. Sun strikes helm and vambrace, breastplate and shield and lance. They are the might of France. The Maid turns to salute Guillaume de Flavy. Tomas turns with her, sees the governor’s arm raise in response, sees the black and white vair of Regnault de Chartres at his side, thinks this is wrong, my Lady, my Lady, it is not right, but it is too late to speak aloud, for they are in the charge and he must set his thinking forward, forward, steadily forward, not yet at a gallop,
mon brave
, we shall go steadily, and
there
– ahead – they have seen us! Thanks be to God, the Burgundians are coming out to meet us.