Into The Fire (47 page)

‘For France!’

Once more, the devastation of hoof beats. The shimmer of armour. Here is a thicket of lances, iron points unwavering. Soon, the moment when she lowers her lance and picks her man. His shield bears crossed quarters, gules and vert, with something Tomas can’t quite see – a lion, perhaps? Half the English have lions in their arms and there could easily be English knights here – on the two red quarters.

An outbreath, held, the shudder of impact, the crisp strike, the shattering of bone and flesh as the enemy’s chest is crushed. Her horse gathers the force of the strike. It’s not the quality of the grey-white devil-horse, but it’s still one of the best on the field.

She draws clear, passes on even as the light dies from the surprised white-gone-purple face. Tomas is after her, looking down at the remains of a man newly dead. Surprise, he reads, not fear; a death so swift there is no pain. This is why they fight, the men of France, of any nation: that they might die like this, in glory, with their friends around.

He swears himself an oath that tonight, before them all, he will relinquish the cloth of his order and become again a man at arms. He may not be a knight, but he is as good as the d’Arc brothers; better.

The enemy scatters before the might of French arms and the feet of French mounts. They are run down, and again, but it matters that they not go too far into enemy territory; there lies ambush and disaster.

‘Collect!’

The routed troops are running back into the rows of whitewashed stone and timber that is Margny. The Maid’s troop gathers, comes together, raises palms in breathless greeting. Nobody is lost.

Behind is a ridge of high ground; sunlight catches iron on the heights. Tomas says, ‘We’re being watched.’ He has the sharpest sight of them all. He narrows his eyes, gains more depth. ‘Four men,’ he says. ‘And one just gone, riding hard to the north.’

‘They’ll be sending for Jean de Luxembourg at Clairoix.’ The Maid bends her mount round her heel, lifts it into a canter. ‘Fall back. Let them come out again. We’ll get in another assault before their reinforcements arrive.’

The second charge is a repeat of the first. The Maid drives Burgundy’s men back to their own lines, kills a handful, cripples the morale of the rest.

‘One more drive. Just one more and we’ll break them!’ She is joyous, a hawk loosed from the fist. She is all that any man could wish to be, to hold, to love. Tomas wants to raise her fist in his hand and shout, ‘This is France! See? See! This is the true France!’ God, if only d’Alençon had put aside his wife and married her …

Others see something different. ‘Lady, we must retire.’ D’Aulon is at her elbow. ‘See, over there? Luxembourg’s men.’

He is right. Reinforcements have come; a mounted company, riding hard. They are perhaps five minutes away; there are knights amongst them, some lances raised, some bowmen.

She says, ‘We can fit in another charge. We can—’

Tomas says, ‘No, lady, look to your left.’ Men. They are too far away to see the colours, but they are in force, three or four hundred, perhaps, come from Venette, maybe, or somewhere else close.

‘Lady …’ Her squire dares speak against her now; out of friendship, she has granted him that power. ‘You must retire. Come back in to Compiègne.’

‘No! We have them on the run. We can force them out of here. We
can
—’

But they are gone, her knights and men at arms, edging back, horses sidling across the drying causeway flags, not knowing if they are charging or retreating.

D’Aulon stays. And Louis de Coutes. And the d’Arc boys, Pierre especially. Perhaps half a dozen altogether mill around her, unwilling to leave.

‘Lady, please come back.’ Louis de Coutes is tugging at her reins. ‘Please. They are too many. Everyone else is going back. We’ll be caught out here. They want you more than anyone.’ His eyes are wide with fright. ‘What will it do to those inside to see you taken?’

They are off the causeway now, in the harsh, sour water meadow. Ahead are the Burgundian forces, behind and to their left are the English who could hail from anywhere within a five-mile radius. There’s enough noise here now to draw the crows from the sky, and the carrion feeders of Bedford’s army are hungrier than crows.

From entirely the wrong direction, Tomas hears a voice he knows bark an order. The tone is unmistakable. He does not hear the content, but terror fills it for him. Frantic, he spins his horse. He has been looking outward for the enemy, towards the English, the Luxembourgers, the Burgundians, but of course the enemy is behind: Regnault de Chartres, spilling poison in the ear of the governor.

‘Lady, they are closing the bridge!
Jehanne!
’

Never has he said this name. She spins to the sound. And so she, too, sees that at the bridge into Compiègne the archers are hopping off their boats; the men with guns are already in through the drawbridge. Men are waving their arms, their bows, their guns.

Somewhere high up is Guillaume de Flavy. They feel his words, if they cannot hear. Hurry, hurry, for the archbishop has ordered me to close the gates and he outranks me as the sun outranks a candle. I cannot go against his order. Hurry, before it is too late. Only come in, Lady. Come
in.

The Burgundians are running up out of Margny now, scenting a possible victory after a day of losses. Men at arms converge on all sides. So it’s a fighting retreat.

‘Lady, you must—’

‘I must see my men back safely inside. I will not leave those who fight for me outside to die while I run for safety: a captain’s first conscience is for the men.’

‘Body of Christ, woman. They will
burn
you.’

‘They have to catch me first.’ She grins. His heart will break. ‘Go in, Tomas. I’ll follow.’ She glances across at her page. ‘Take the standard back in.’

De Coutes will not move. ‘No, lady, I will stay with—’

‘Go! For your mother’s sake. For the loss of your brother, please go.’ He would stay but how can he when she invokes these two? The look he throws her is all pain, but he turns about and the Maid switches her attention to Tomas. ‘You too. Go.’

‘Lady, I will not—’

‘I order it. If de Chartres wants me dead, I will not give him your life too. You know enough, now, to make sure France is made whole. Besides, you can’t fight, not as you are. I won’t have you hamper me.
Go!
’

He does not have the will to stand against her. He just … doesn’t. He turns away and the last he sees is d’Aulon and the man who is not her brother, Pierre d’Arc, who has not turned his horse, but is grinning savagely, swinging his sword, screaming, ‘Come on, you bastards! We’re not beaten yet!’

It’s not so far back to the bridge, and not far across it, ten arches, eleven, to the gate. Guillaume de Flavy is there, grey-white, shaken. Whatever de Chartres has said or done, the governor cares for the Maid. ‘Why doesn’t she come in? I have to close the gate. I
have
to. Burgundy has said he will burn us all: men, women, children. I can’t let them in. It will be carnage. Why does she not hurry?’

‘She wants to see the men all safe.’

‘Who’s left?’

‘I’m the last, almost.’ But he’s not, there are still half a dozen out there, dallying, not wanting to be seen to leave her; men who don’t understand how to take an order. Men with more – or less? – courage than he has.

Guillaume de Flavy is weeping, but his hand, once raised, falls. A scream of rope and iron. A dozen heartbeats, thirty, sixty, and the bridge is up and it’s too late for Tomas to change his mind, or he’d throw off his habit and run out naked, sword in one hand, shield in the other. He cannot stay at the gate. He runs up to the top of the wall, three steps at a time. Bile fills his mouth, stings his teeth.

She is riding. Men are coming for her. She is bright gold against their verminous, mouldering dull-mud-greys and greens. He watches as she stands her lance upright in the soft soil, takes up her axe and draws the sword she took from Franquet d’Arras.

They go to join her, left and right, good men on both sides: d’Aulon and Pierre d’Arc. Good, but not the best. She holds her horse – God, but he wishes it was the devil-beast; Xenophon would keep her safe – one last heartbeat. A nod to her companions. She lets Tomas go.

She is free. As nowhere else and no other time, this is the
mêlée à outrance
that every knight lives for. He sees her released from the cares of captaincy. Here is life: an open meadow with knights and men at arms and archers and pikemen and all she has to do is kill. And survive.

And yet, they are so many. Why does she not turn and run? They are three hundred against her and she is lost in the sea of them, striking left and right, as men come at her stirrup. They know her. Their cries carry on the still wind. The Maid! The Maid! The Witch!

The words float up to the heights of Compiègne, to Tomas de Segrave, weeping. Her sword sings as she slices down at the hands that grasp her. Her axe is the chorus, iron on iron, on cloth, on mail. Her horse dances, spirit made flesh, but it is not the best.

A knight comes at her, full-breasted, face on, mace and shield. She lifts the horse and the knight’s face dissolves in a plash of blood. She spins away, slash, chop, kick, courbette, capriole, kick out behind. Another man falls away, but there are more, coming on either side.

‘Come back. Lady, come back.’ Tomas is on stone, but he is on the field. He is shouting, and she is not listening. He will not believe she cannot hear.

‘It’s the fucking bitch! Get her!’

Someone tugs at her arm on the left. She wheels the horse, scatters men like spilled apples, cuts out and down, swings back, one in front, a swordsman with a great-sword swinging, right, and she spins, and there’s a hand grasping her doublet to the right: ‘I’ve got her! Get that fucking horse!’ and hands laid on her bridle and the horse is not evil, it does not kill for the temerity of touching it, and she wrenches it round and there is a moment when she might break free and then she is sailing back and off and—

‘Jehanne!’

‘She’s down! Get her!’

Pierre d’Arc’s round valley vowels: ‘Bastards, get back! Leave her be! Get off! Get
off
!’ and her horse, somewhere, grunting in pain, because men are wrenching his bridle and a single man’s face looming over her, ‘You’re mine; do you yield?’

‘
Jehanne!
’

Tomas is running now, down the stairs. Forget the bridge; there are other ways out of this godforsaken place. He has both knives in his hands. He is scrabbling at the gate. Big arms wrench him from behind.

‘No, Tomas. Don’t go. She wouldn’t want it.’

Guillaume de Flavy was at Rheims when the king was crowned. He fought the English at Rouen, at the relief of Saint-Martin-le-Gaillard. He is as much a knight as Poton de Xaintrailles, as La Hire. And he is weeping as much as Tomas. But he will not open the gates of his town when there are four, five hundred Burgundians outside and more pouring on to the field every moment. ‘Don’t go. Do not go. I will not let you go.’

Tomas does not see her taken. Does not see the moment when she kneels and yields her blade. He is on the wrong side of four inches of oak, on his knees, howling.

And then he stands, and by the quiet inside, and the cheering outside, he knows there is nothing left to do.

Except one thing.

‘Where is Regnault de Chartres?’ His knives are in his hands. His blood, charged and ready. For this, he has the courage. ‘Where is he?’

Nobody knows.

They search and they search and he is not found. Regnault de Chartres is no longer in the town. While the Maid was being taken on the field beyond Compiègne, the Archbishop of Rheims made his exit. Nobody doubts that he has safe passage, that he will journey through the English and Burgundian lines untouched.

‘What will you do now, Tomas?’ Guillaume de Flavy is tight with cold and fear. He knows where the blame for this will lie. And that Burgundy will not stop until he has punished Compiègne for its harbouring of the Maid. On both sides, now, his name is a curse.

‘I will go to the king. We have Talbot, Suffolk, Scales languishing at our pleasure. We have half the English nobility in our prisons and she has taken them. They will make an exchange for her. They must. They cannot refuse.’

THE HÔTEL JEAN-JACQUES
Rousseau, campaign centre for the
Front National
in Orléans, is situated a block east of the cathedral in a street whose northern end dates back to the fifteenth century.

The hotel is the first of the late-forties buildings south of the bomb line. Until recently, it was tidy but tired; a reminder of post-war privations. A post-millennial EU grant has recently transformed it into one of the most sought-after venues in Orléans, and the fact that Old René made several on-record comments deriding the grant as Nazi guilt-money hasn’t stopped Christelle Vivier’s election coordinators from using it as their base.

On a normal day, Picaut could walk down to it from the station, but the press are still camped on the steps leading up to the front door and are very likely doing the same at the hotel. In the absence of Lise Bressard to lure them away, she has little choice but to make a run for her car. Sylvie sprints beside her, flash in new Nikes. They depart, with press motorcycle outriders herding them like sheep.

Inside the hotel, the new decor is still fresh from the refurbishment. Spotless slate floors meet marble walls against which stand vast, waist-high vases packed with lilies that make Picaut sneeze. The elevators are silent, but for the hiss of a smooth ascent.

Christelle Vivier’s press office is in a penthouse suite on the sixth floor, where giant windows run from floor to ceiling on three out of the four sides and the sun-polished air runs so thick with coffee it makes Picaut’s head spin just walking in the door. Clusters of young men and women in sharp suits stop what they are doing to watch her.

Troy Cordier, taller than the rest and spectacularly blond, detaches himself from the farther group and strides across a dozen metres of snowy carpet to reach her, hand extended as much to stop her moving forward as in greeting. His white teeth gleam.