Into The Fire (61 page)

The Maid is smiling, as if this is part of a game played since childhood. She is still gentle, still relishing their presence. ‘I have made this bed, I must lie in it. I did know. From the start, we did speak of this.’

Hanne won’t have it. ‘Not really. Not like this.’

‘Yes, like this. How else? Come to me …’ They embrace, woman to woman. They are so very much alike, except that the Maid is smiling, strong, kind. Who can find kindness for others, who faces death in a fire? He should have killed her when she was on the field at Compiègne. He could do it now, still, and then himself …

She strokes Hanne’s head, over the drab linen veil. ‘None of this is your fault. I should not have been taken at Compiègne. And I could have recanted long ago; that I have not is for my own honour, and for France. I will not have them say that the king was crowned without the sight of God.’

Hanne is angry. She grips the Maid’s hands in her own. ‘You have not given yourself to God as I have. You have not promised Him your body, your soul, your mind.’

‘I had not before I came here. Now … our father speaks to me, and he is with God. So now I have promised Him these things.’

‘Not as I have. Our father speaks to you of war, of France, of the ways the kingdom may be made whole under one king. But did he not also promise you deliverance? I heard you in the court, day after day, “My counsel tells me that before sentence, I shall be freed.” Did you not say that? Was it not true?’

‘I believed it to be true when I said it. Maybe I misheard. Or perhaps there are different kinds of freedom. Just to see you is to be free. I shall die in happiness, for this.’

‘Then I shall follow you to heaven. All my life, I have prayed to God that He might take me, and now He will. You don’t understand. God calls me, not you, to be at His side; for France, and for our souls. You must be here, to help the armies. Who else knows the ways of war that Papa taught you?’

‘Chérie, it cannot be.’ The Maid sweeps up her hands, and – afterwards Tomas thinks there must have been divine action in this – the veil on Hanne’s head slips off. In shock, the Maid’s hands fall away. ‘Hanne … You’ve shaved your head—’

Tomas takes the Maid’s arm, the first time he has touched her without express permission. He feels her stiffen, but not greatly; she does not hate him yet. That will come later.

Now, using words they agreed, he says, ‘We are sent to shave your head for execution. If she is to take your place, she must be like you. They will not see beyond a face that matches yours, a thinness of body, and a woman who goes to her death praising God and France. She even shares the mark on your neck, and they must have seen it, some of them.’

‘What if they have? It makes no difference. You must know it cannot happen.’

‘It can. It has to. She will starve herself to death if you die; she has almost done it already. She has the poppy and the henbane, the belladonna, to take if she needs it, though I think she won’t. And France does need you: d’Alençon, La Hire, Arthur de Richmond; they will all still listen to you, and with that we may win. My lady, I’m sorry. One day, you may forgive me.’

He is serious.

So is she. ‘No! You cannot do this!’ She throws back her head. ‘Help! Gua—’

He has brought a maul, a small one, wrapped with felt. With it he delivers the crack on her skull, short, sharp, hard. He is a past master of swift suppression.

She falls.

He catches her, so thin, so very strong.

Hanne is already doffing the nun’s habit. Her hands are steady, her gaze is a caress. Over and over, she speaks her thanks, and when the change is done – the nun, overcome by grief, must be helped out, but what surprise, when women are so feeble? – she embraces them, one by one.

‘Tomas, Jean, Huguet … I shall take your names to heaven with me. I shall tell God of this and it will weigh against all else you have done, and prove the stronger.’

‘Guerite …’ It
is
her name, now; she is a warrior, as much as the Maid, only she fights differently. He cannot speak. He weeps as he has never wept, so that the world blurs and his words will not stick together. ‘Take the poppy. It is enough, I swear it. You shall feel nothing.’

‘And go to heaven with my eyes closed? I don’t think so. They would know, anyway, and I will not have it said of her that she was not strong. She would hate me for that, even more than she will already.’

‘She will hate all of us.’

‘And as your penance, you will live with that, and in time you too will know God’s grace.’

When they leave, with the Maid insensate between them, Hanne is kneeling in prayer. He has never seen her so radiant.

THERE IS A
moment of perfect crystalline stillness as Picaut holds everything separate in her mind: the forensic detail of the skeleton, Iain Holloway’s ciphers, the DNA results, Luc’s elliptical references to truth – and adds to them all that her father taught, all that he believed.

Then it all snaps together and he was right. Her father was right. Every part of everything he said was correct. He was
right.

I am so sorry. I should have had more faith.

The fire is taking hold, the heat a wall. She knows the pattern of it. She looks up. Lise Bressard lies in the Maid’s chapel, tied hand and foot; a woman, left in a fire to die.

Lise found it very touching, didn’t you, cousin? The love that gives itself in sacrifice
.

Their eyes lock. Lise’s mouth forms a single word. ‘Leave.’

‘No.’ Picaut is armed. And here, tonight, now, she is not afraid of fire.

She rises up, slides forward into the chapel, gun out. ‘You are not going to die. I won’t allow it. We’re going to get you out of here.’

The fire encircles them. Smoke curls about her throat. The ropes tying Lise Bressard’s feet are tied with professional security and Picaut has no knife. By the fire’s light, she is untying, pulling, stretching. She bends to use her teeth, gains traction, wrenches her neck left and right.

‘Inès, you have to leave. Get out now, while you still can.’

That’s not worth an answer, and anyway she can’t speak with a mouth full of rope. She feels the knot give and slides her thumb into it, frees her mouth. ‘Where’s Landis?’

‘Here.’

She whips round. He’s at the entrance to the chapel, cold-eyed; ever in control. He is armed, but he hasn’t had the practice she’s had; his gun is still rising when hers is already in the aim.

She says, ‘Forget it. I was never going to be Luc’s kingmaker, and I’m not going to be his martyr now.’

He’s beyond listening. He fires. She slews, rolls, fires back. She was right, the Beretta’s trigger is very light indeed. It may be that she fired first. She thinks this is possible. She is supposed to shout a warning, but there isn’t time. She sees Landis’s head snap to the left. His throat bursts open. He falls back, hard.

From beyond the smoke, Cheb Yasine shouts, ‘Nicely done, Capitaine! My cousin will piss on him from heaven. Now we must all get out!’

She had forgotten he was there. He shouts again in Algerian and she hears three more spit-silenced shots and then the sound of men running.

‘Go!’ Lise again. ‘Please, Inès. There’s no point in us both dying.’

‘No.’

She spends precious seconds teasing the silk apart and then Lise’s legs are free. ‘Your hands. Quickly. You’ll run better with your hands free.’

‘You can’t. They’re too tight.’

She’s right. It will take more time than they have.

She has no intention of letting the fire devour them. She wants to take the bones but cannot. The living matter more than the dead. More, even, than proof that her father was right.

‘We need to get your jacket over your head so you can run through the fire. Bend your elbows in …’

The leather is thicker than it looks. It takes two tries to flip it inside out.

‘Go straight for the door. Don’t stop.’ A push between the shoulder blades. ‘
Go!
’

Lise goes.

Head down, half blinded by her own jacket, Picaut follows.

The fire is a living beast, hunting her. She takes a breath, holds it, takes a leap and rolls into smoke and fire and heat and no clean air. She dare not breathe in. Her face is scorched, her eyes hurt. Flames reach for her, batting at her back, her arms, her legs.

‘Lise?’ She looks left, right, sees a shape moving too slowly, and not, she thinks, in the right direction. She trips over a chair, pulls herself up. They have barely gone five feet; not nearly enough. She hasn’t breathed yet. She’s going to have to breathe. Ahead, a scream, cut off.

‘Lise!’ She has to breathe to shout; a mistake. She blunders forward with lungs full of smoke. Tears stream down her face.

She cannons into Lise’s hunched form, grabs her arm, pulls her up, but she’s not moving anywhere fast. She swings round, and Lise is not who she sees.

Luc.

He has Lise, holding her with his other arm. He’s stretched between them now, gripping Lise with his left hand, pulled by Picaut on his right. Which is his gun hand. She wrenches it aside, feels the burn of the shot past her arm. She thinks it goes past her arm, but she might be hit. She brings up her own gun, pulls the trigger twice … three times … and hears no sound. The gun has not fired. She has run out of rounds.

She still has hold of Luc’s arm, and leans all her weight into pulling him round, towards her, away from Lise. She remembers what Patrice did, and slings out a high kick, not a full capoeira roundhouse, but enough to make him flinch back, draw his hand up to his face, let go of his cousin, who is still alive enough to cough. And if she can cough she can fucking run.

‘Lise, go!’

She doesn’t stop to see what happens. She has Luc off balance and she cannot let him regain his feet, or bring up his gun. Digging in her heels, she leans back, dragging him round, twisting, wrenching at his elbow, both hands on his wrist, his forearm across her body, a particular twisting pull that Garonne showed her, an age ago, when she was young and new and he was not—

She feels the crack of breaking bone. Luc lets go, howling, and she falls away, but she has his gun now, and, choking, flailing, eyes streaming, struggles to bring it round, to point it at the mass of where he was before the smoke took over, to fire and fire until this gun, too, is empty.

And then to stop.

Her mind is achingly, brilliantly clear. Somewhere ahead is the door, lost in a tunnel of smoke. Somewhere nearby, burning, are the bones that prove her father right, the remains of a woman trained for war who did not burn but lived to a good age, carrying the marks of her youthful injuries.

Marguerite de Valois: I did not burn her bones. Keep her safe, please.

They are not out of reach. Possibly not out of reach. It’s worth a try. Here, she suspects, is proof that whoever stood on the scaffold in Rouen was someone who cared enough to want the Maid to live. Do we speak of love? We must, I think.

She turns back into the smoke. By feel, she strives towards the place where Lise was tied. She doesn’t need much: a femur, a pelvis, a humerus, the skull. If she can bring two or three of these, enough to match with Iain Holloway’s samples, it will be proof enough.

Her fingers close on bone. She is breathing smoke. And Éric is right: in the smoke, there is little pain. She is here, dying in a fire, holding the woman who did not. And with her other hand, she grasps at Luc, who planned to destroy them both.

Flame blooms around her. She thinks of Patrice. It may be she speaks his name. Certainly, she can hear him saying hers.

‘Inès! Inès! Let them go. They’re dead. Don’t you die on me now. Don’t even think about it.
Inès
…!’

SHE IS SO
small, the pyre so great.

They will not let him near her. Bedford has secured for him a place on the wooden viewing platform, along with Cauchon and Warwick, Talbot and Jean de la Fontaine, Nicolas Midi … all the men of France and England who have caused this to happen. They are upwind, and a hundred paces away; they plan for the hottest of fires, which no man may safely come near.

She is shriven, blessed. They have dressed her in sackcloth and she could not look more effortlessly pure. The crowd should jeer, women should throw their clogs, or old food; men should show in graphic mime how they would desecrate her still-warm body. Nobody speaks; since she came out of the castle, her shaved head pale under the thickening sky, the crowd has held silence.

The sun stabs through a weakness in the cloud. She looks up, bathes in the pale gold light: a friendly fire that carries her the last two strides to the stake.

The pyre is bigger than any Tomas has seen. Walking past, the air was sweet with the scents of resin and sawn wood. They have set it on a plinth, so she may be raised up, and seen.

Thirage himself is half naked. He has oiled his flesh for this, his moment of fame. Never will he burn anyone, man or woman, as well known as this; never will there be a greater crowd. The market place at Rouen is full, all the overlooking windows are full; boys and young men line the rooftops.

There is a moment’s conference, maid to man. He steps back. She is left alone. Jump. Hanne, my dear, just jump. You might die; is it not at least worth a try?

But no, she looks round the crowd, finds him, or so he fancies: he promised he would be here, bearing witness. Jean and Huguet have the other part and he tells himself it is no easier; they will be with the Maid when she wakes, and they will bear the brunt of her fury. He thinks he has dosed her enough to get them to Belleville. He is not sure.

So he thinks she is watching him when she begins to speak, but it may be Cauchon, who is close, and at this distance all she is really looking at is a mass of black-robed men and one white friar.

‘
Mesdames et messieurs
, bishops and priests, lords and ladies of France, let the one who is about to die say this to you: nothing happens beneath the blue sky but God wills it. No battle is won or lost, no life begun or ended, but at heaven’s decree. If I have erred at all, it is in listening to the voice of God, who has said always that France shall be whole and …