The Crippled Angel (37 page)

And everything woke up, and returned to the moment.

“Burn her,” screamed Bolingbroke, beside himself with rage and frustration. “Burn her.”

The crowd murmured and shifted, knowing in their souls if not their minds that something extraordinary had just passed. A company of men-at-arms moved forward to drag an unresisting Joan from the cage.

No one noticed that the placard that hung about her neck had changed. No longer did it read
Sorceress.

Now it simply read
Shepherdess.

Neville leaned down and took Margaret’s hands, helping her to her feet. She stared wordlessly at him, and he smiled, and pulled her gently against him.

“I have had enough of great doings, my love,” he said. “Shall we go home, and watch over our children?”

“Mary…” she said.

Neville laughed, his hands circling Margaret’s waist and lifting her high in the air in the full joy of the moment.

“Mary has given us back to each other,” he said. “It is a precious gift that we should not waste.”

Margaret’s mouth trembled, and the tears in her eyes spilled over, but she finally managed a smile. “I had not known—”

“None of us did,” Neville whispered, lowering her so he could kiss her. “None of us knew that Mary was our salvation.” Then he grinned, and hugged her to him before gently moving her away from the square.

Behind them flames started to lick at the still figure tied to the stake.

“Let us go home,” Neville said, “and to our lives.”

Isabeau de Bavière savoured each lick of the flames, each spreading scorch of Joan’s flesh. She watched as the flames enveloped Joan’s feet and ankles, and shuddered in pleasure as the girl’s skin bubbled and burst before it caught aflame. She leaned forward, her eyes bright, as the flesh of the girl’s calves rippled then dissolved into blackened agony as they charred. She gasped with delight as Joan’s shift suddenly roared into flame, obscuring the girl’s face and turning her hair into a roaring inferno.

She moaned, triumphant, as the dying girl’s tendons snapped in the heat and her limbs jerked as they cooked.

And finally, Isabeau de Bavière sighed, replete, as Joan’s chains melted in the heat and her charred and unrecognisable body fell into the cauldron of flames in a scattering of sparks and a sudden, surprising, sizzle of melting body fat.

Isabeau’s only disappointment—and it was indeed a profound one—was that the girl had not made one sound, not one moan, not one cry, not a single screech, as she had died her agonising death.

Joan’s composure had not faltered for one instant.

Joan sat in the thick grass of the mountain meadow, half dreaming in the warm embrace of the sunlight falling about her. Sheep ranged in a thick creamy crowd in every direction, and Joan thought she had never seen sheep looking so fat and so healthy.

She sighed, contented, although she knew there was yet one thing she needed to do. She rose, cast her eyes about the sheep once more to satisfy herself as to their safety, then walked down the meadow.

Tuesday 10th September 1381

continued…

T
harles slouched in his chair, listening to the lacklustre minstrel warble on and on and on about the beauty of the sun and the sky and the cursed green shaded meadows. The minstrel’s playing was execrable, his voice worse, and the manner in which his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as though it were a ball on a string was quite repulsive.

But if the minstrel didn’t sing and play, then Charles would be left alone with his thoughts. Worse would be the rising memory of his mother’s twisted, bitter voice, reminding him of his constant failures. None of that did Charles want to think about at all. So he stared as if entranced at the damned minstrel, concentrating on the man’s pitiful music, and using it to keep thoughts of his failures at bay.

He’d travelled with his entourage far enough south to reach one of Isabeau’s castle outposts. It was a wretched place, full of draughts and crumbling walls and damp bedding and narrow, dark windows. Charles could not wait to move on to…to…well, to anywhere, most probably Avignon which was far enough away from everything nasty
and problematical to be a safe haven. Charles was certain that Pope Clement would give him a sweet palace to live in, and trumpet mightily about how the dark English king had stolen Charles’ throne (without actually making any move to force Charles to try to regain his lost realm), and entertain Charles once or twice a month at the papal table; more frequently, perhaps, if Clement entertained ambassadors or diplomats from far-flung places.

If Avignon proved too close to France for comfort (what if Bolingbroke decided
Avignon
was worth invading for its rich array of papal jewels and gold?), then there was always Constantinople. Charles had heard great stories of Constantinople’s wealth and sophistication—even the streets were paved with gold and gems—and the quality of the minstrels and scholars there…

Bolingbroke would never, ever, surely, try to pursue Charles as far as Constantinople.

But even as hope waxed in Charles’ thoughts, a niggling horror buried that hope so deep it brought instant tears to Charles’ eyes.

Wasn’t Constantinople packed, not only with wealth and sophistication, but also with the most fearful and skilled of assassins? Could not Bolingbroke—
or his own mother, more like!
—ensure with a hefty payment Charles’ own death from poison? Or a well-placed knife? Or from the fangs of one of the hideous serpents that Charles had heard about?

He sobbed out loud, covering his mouth with a lace-trimmed neckerchief, and waved the minstrel away.

For some minutes Charles sat in pathetic despondency, weeping into his piece of lace, and wondering what terrifying end awaited him. Whatever it was, Charles knew it would be both painful and humiliating, and would be bound to involve his mother curling her lip in disgust at his inability to even die gracefully and courageously.

Then something—a noise, a movement—disturbed him, and Charles slowly raised his head.

Joan—
impossible, impossible
—stood in the doorway of his solar, wearing nothing but a simple robe and light
hooded cloak…and, remarkably, carrying in her hands the crown of France.

Except this wasn’t Joan, was it? It couldn’t be, for the girl glowed with a gentle radiance and, as she stepped forward, Charles realised that Joan was diaphanous to the degree he could see straight through her.

Charles hiccupped in terror. This vision of Joan was most apparently a spectre—Joan’s spirit come to torment him for abandoning her.

His sobbing increased as he cowered deeper into his chair.
Would the bitch never leave him alone?

Was she going to pursue him into and beyond both their graves?

Joan glided forward, her expression becoming more gentle, more loving the nearer she came to the cowering, sobbing figure in the chair.

Strength, Charles
, she said, her lips barely moving,
and courage and daring. These I finally bequeath you.

And her spectral hands lowered the crown onto Charles’ trembling head.

Isabeau had just begun her descent of the steps to dismount the stand, the scent of charred flesh still lingering enjoyably in her nostrils, when the first agonising pain gripped her.

It felt as if a great hand had seized her heart and was slowly, inexorably, squeezing.

She stopped, one hand gripping the handrail of the steps, one hand buried deep in the folds of her gown above her chest, and stared goggle-eyed into the distance, as if her pain had opened to her a vision other than that of the rapidly emptying castle square of Rouen.

“No,” she whispered, her hand twisting within the folds of her gown as another, stronger, pain tore through her. “
No.
”

“
No
,” he screamed.

Her hands let it go, and Charles felt the full weight of the crown rest on his head.

And something happened.

He blinked, and very slowly straightened in his chair. He blinked again, and stared into Joan’s loving face. “What have I done?” he whispered, his tone completely altered from its normal, fretful whine.

It is not what you have done that matters
, Joan replied, her lips again barely moving,
but what you
will
do. Gather your sheep, your grace, and make your meadow strong and safe.

And then she was gone, in less than the blink of an eye. One second she was there, the next Charles was once more alone in the chamber, the only reminder of Joan’s spectral visit the crown on his head.

“No,” Isabeau said, her knees buckling, her chest and shoulders afire with the agony coursing through her, and she did not hear her daughter’s anxious voice behind her, nor feel Catherine’s hand on her arm.

“No,” Isabeau said again, still staring before her at a scene that no one among her companions could see. “You are a peasant-born bastard…a
bastard.
You have no right to that crown. Take it off! Take it off!”

Charles suddenly stopped just as he reached the door of the chamber. He stared back into the apparently empty room, and his face was terrifying in its might and purpose and utter contempt.

“I am the son of my father, Louis,” he said. “But even were I the son of some peasantish fellow, I would still do what I shall do now, and win back this kingdom from the foul grip of the English. Madam, your day is done, and
I
have done with your lies and curses. Begone.”

And he turned and, striding from the chamber, slammed the door shut behind him.

Isabeau jerked in one last, dying breath, and twisted about on the steps to stare into Catherine’s and Bolingbroke’s faces directly behind her.

“Do you think to have killed her?” she gasped, and, crumpling into an untidy pile of grey silk and pale, bitter flesh, died.

Monday 16th September 1381

“     oly Father,” the secretary said, bowing deeply, “a man claiming to be the King of France awaits in the antechamber. He demands to see you. I have told him that—”

“The King of France?” Clement said. “John? No, no, John was murdered by England’s boy-king, was he not? The one then murdered himself?” He sighed. “One finds it so tiresome to keep up with all these regicides.”

Clement paused, affecting a frown as he glanced about the sumptuously appointed chamber within the papal palace at Avignon. So much more civilised than that mosquito-infested hall the peasant-pretender Urban inhabited in Rome…

“Ah, so this must be Charles, yes? The whore’s son?” Clement gave a short laugh. “What is he here for? Protection from an imagined shadow? The last I heard of him the idiot had fled Paris and was seeking asylum in the south of France. And now he is here? I suppose he wants to beg a corner in which to cower.”

“I am here to beg nothing,” a voice said, and Clement jerked upright in his chair.

A man had pushed past the guards at the door (How? They had instructions to skewer anyone who tried to gain admittance without permission), and now strode towards the papal dais.

He did not look like the Charles that Clement remembered meeting some three or four years ago.

That boy had been a quivering mess of uncertainty and fear; this travel-stained man now approaching moved with the confidence, the courage and chilling murderousness of a warrior. This was a man who not only knew what he wanted, but who knew he was going to get it.

And, now that he’d halted only two paces from Clement’s chair, the Avignonese pope could see quite plainly why the guards had allowed this man entrance: there shone a cold light from his dark eyes as if supernatural power burned within him.

Clement hastily crossed himself. “Charles—”

“I have no time for courtly politenesses,” Charles said, stepping forward one pace.

Clement slid his shoulders up his throne, almost as if he thought to escape over the back of it. Around the chamber he could feel the breathless stillness that had gripped the score or so of attendants and clerics who stood about, and Clement was suddenly very well aware that whatever Charles chose to do in this chamber, not a hand would be lifted to halt him.

Sweet Virgin Mary, what had happened to change him?

“I have come,” Charles continued, “to seal a bargain between us.”

Words of a bargain reassured Clement. “How dare you enter my chamber in such a disrespectful manner? How dare you—?”

“I dare,” Charles hissed, and took the final step between himself and Clement, leaning forward so that both his hands rested on the arms of Clement’s throne, and his face hovered not a hand’s span from the pope’s, “because I have spent too much of my life playing the fool to have any time now to waste on fools. Clement, we could be good for each other.
We can guarantee each other’s safety and success and prosperity. Does this appear a bargain you could summon some interest in?”

Clement’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed, your grace. But perhaps you would care to sit somewhere other than in my lap while we discuss it?”

Charles’ mouth twitched, and he gave a brief nod, stepping back to sit in the chair that one of the attendants had scurried to place behind him.

“I need money to wage war,” Charles said as soon as he had seated himself.

“Against?”

“Who else? The godforsaken English. I want my kingdom back, and I want to make it strong.”

“And so you require me to make available the funds to allow you to do this. What assurance have I that you can—”

The coldness in Charles’ eyes intensified, and Clement fought to keep himself from again sliding back in his throne.
Sweet Virgin, this man has the power within him to accomplish his purpose by himself—he hardly has need of an army.

“And when I have won back France,” Charles continued, his voice low, his eyes not wavering from Clement’s, “not if,
when
, then I will use France’s power and wealth and influence to bolster your claim to the papal throne, and to extend your power throughout Christendom.”

Even had not Clement so implicitly believed in Charles’ ability to do just what he claimed, it would be worth backing a three-legged donkey if it stood half a chance of bringing the power of France behind the Avignonese claim to full papal authority.

Especially when the enemy threatened with destruction was the English king…and the English throne had always backed the Roman Urban’s claim to the papacy.

“Would you not like to see the hope of England drown in the mud of France?” Charles said. “And would you not like to see your hopes take root and flower in that same soil?”

Clement smiled, the expression every bit as cold as that in Charles’ eyes. “I think we can come to a ready arrangement,” he said.

In twelve hours Charles had his funds, in ten days he had a basic force behind him, in four weeks he had overrun Aquitaine and was advancing on Normandy. Before him Charles carried a banner of the Maid of France, depicting her in full armour before the gates of Orleans, while behind him rode an army that swelled every day with thousands of Frenchmen who flocked to both Charles and the banner of the Maid.

Suddenly, France had found hope in the one man least likely to provide it.

Suddenly, France had found its soul and its heart and its courage.

Joan’s work was done.