The Maid (24 page)

I remember flowers and I remember people. People as far as I could see outside the cathedral, an ocean of them packed into the streets, up on the roofs, and on wagons and bridges, standing on the hills outside of town. It was more people than I had ever seen or would ever see again, all of them shouting and crying and cheering, and the sky full of flowers, petals swirling and falling as the King came out in his new crown and splendid robes, and I remember that there were parties afterward, parties for weeks, it seemed, and I remember that I smiled and that I tried to be happy, but I was not happy.

I was not happy.

After Patay, Charles had come to meet them at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. He said they could go to Reims now. "You've done it," he said as she walked toward him, his lips trembling, his eyes shining with tears. "You miraculous creature, you've done it."

"God did it," Jehanne said, thinking of the dead man with the knife in his throat. Thinking,
But who did that? Did He or did I?

A strange time.
The time of celebrations and lies.
A sense of shadows gathering, viciousness whispered behind her back, plots made in hallways and staircases, a sinking feeling beneath the revelry. Death standing, smiling, behind the banquet feast. She found herself longing for home, longing for her mother and the sheep and the fields of Domrémy, the safety of the
bois chenu.

At moments, for hours at a time, the people's joy buoyed her up, carried her along like a ship surging over the sea, for it was not the people who disliked her. To the people, she was the Daughter of God, she deserved to be worshipped and adored. They came flooding into Gien from all across the country to join the great procession through the summer countryside toward Reims until Jehanne's army alone consisted of ten thousand men, all of them willing to fight without pay, to be a part of the Maid's holy mission. No, it was the churchmen and the King's counselors, La Trémöille and his friends, who frightened her, who made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. They were the ones who glanced at her sideways at the banquets, who pinched their lips and shook their heads when they saw the Dauphin asking her for advice.

The coronation only made it worse. They hated the fact that she'd entered the great cathedral right beside Charles in his bare feet and nightshirt, carrying her white banner and walking next to him as they made their way down the marble aisle toward the altar while La Hire and Alençon and the Bastard and Rais walked behind, Rais carrying the flag of France, the
oriflamme,
Rais whom Charles would name Marshal of France later that day. They hated the fact that she'd remained beside the King throughout the ceremony, watching as the Archbishop anointed him with the sacred oil and then dressed him in the long, purple velvet houppelande with the ermine mantle, watching as the Archbishop slid the gold ring over Charles's thin finger and lowered the golden crown on his small, bumpy head. They hated that she'd stepped up near Charles in the nave as he turned to face his people as their king, and more than anything, oh, more than anything, they hated that the loudest roaring of the day came when the Maid stepped forward and took her place at his side.

She had heard the churchman behind her gasp when she did it, heard a sharp, ugly cough from La Trémöille. But she would not step back. She stood beside Charles, both of them weeping, and she thought,
I did this. I, the peasant girl, and God inside me, together we did it. It's real.

Afterward, when the sky was full of flowers and the streets of Reims were flooded with people, she saw one of the churchmen and La Trémöille whispering together outside the cathedral, whispering and glancing over at her, and when she saw them, a dark shadow passed over her heart. A voice in her head said,
Yes, I will die soon.

Jehanne sat beside the King at the feast that followed the coronation at the Palace of Tau and at all the celebrations that took place that week. Jehanne smiling and talking, laughing, receiving her admirers, the steady stream of people who came to her with shining eyes, kneeling and bowing their heads. "Astonishing," they said as platters of oysters and songbirds were laid on the table. "Never have such wonders been done, never on the earth." Gamely she told stories of the triumphs and Orléans and Patay. The flaming boat full of pitch burning down the drawbridge. Glasdale and all his knights falling into the river at Les Tourelles. The great red stag that led them to triumph in Patay. But once the compliments were finished, once the adulation had spent itself, what was there to say? "What next?" they asked, and Jehanne said, "Paris is next. On to Paris." But the King looked away when she said this, coughed into his hand, and grimaced, muttered, "We'll see."

Everyone admired her, but no one much liked her. No one dared ask her to dance. When she spoke of God, the churchmen looked at her with naked envy. When she spoke of more war, the courtiers looked nervous, hesitant. It was too much to speak of more. To speak of Paris. What had happened was so astonishing that no one dared to think of
more.

She understood. Part of her understood. She saw the necessity of it.
A rest.
But her blood wanted only to be on a horse, fighting, completing her mission, charging toward the horizon, charging away from the accusing eyes of the dead man whose throat she'd cut, the man who woke her every night at Reims saying,
You'll join me soon enough, witch. Soon enough you'll be one of us too.

She had no place in celebrations, in breathing and letting it all sink in. She sat beside the King and smiled, lifted her glass of watered-down wine for toasts, told herself,
Enjoy this, relax, it is necessary,
but it was not possible for her. As the glasses clinked and glittered, as Charles caressed his new mistress's plump white shoulder and the generals leaned back in their chairs and waxed nostalgic about the joy of sleeping out under the stars, about how they had almost retreated at Saint Loup and how they killed the giant at Augustins, the war drums inside Jehanne beat hard. Not voices now, but drums pounding:
Gogogogogogogo.
Drums pounding:
Notimenotimenotime.
At times, when she was alone, they grew wild, desperate. She stood before the gilded oval mirror in her bedroom at Loches, looked at herself and said: "You'll be finished in a year. You must complete your mission. Take Paris now, while you can."

And later, when she lay awake at night in her splendid silken bed, staring at the ceiling, it seemed that only Christ would understand this peculiar and lonesome sadness, this terrible knowing that the end is near, this desperation to do what must be done before the curtain falls, while those around you, those who could not possibly know the future, want only to ride the pleasure while it lasts, to celebrate how far they'd come and be grateful for it. To live.

The day after the coronation Jehanne dictated a letter to Philip, the Duke of Burgundy.

Prince of Burgundy, I pray of you—I beg and humbly supplicate—that you make no more war with the holy kingdom of France. Withdraw your people swiftly from the towns and fortresses of this holy kingdom, and on behalf of the gentle King of France, I say he is ready to make peace with you, by his honor.

She knew Burgundy would not surrender. She knew Burgundy would never leave Paris until he was dragged out by the hair. But she knew too that she must ask.
Give them a chance,
Catherine had said in Orléans. Catherine, who had not spoken to her since Patay. Not one of the saints had spoken to her since Patay.

She did not consult with the King or anyone else before she sent the letter. She sent her own herald to deliver it to Paris.

The Duke did not respond.

The King rose from his bed in the early light at Château-Thierry. Left behind the smooth, curving back and tiny rose-brown nipples of his mistress, and walked into his sitting room in his white nightdress, hair trailing down his back in thin, oiled tentacles. He sat quietly by the window, watching the mist rise off the river. Georges de La Trémöille found him there. "Well, King, what will you do now?"

"Whatever the Maid's council tells us, I imagine."

La Trémöille looked at Charles. "Really?"

"What would you suggest, La Trémöille?"

La Trémöille pursed his lips. "All respect to the Maid, Majesty, but if you keep letting a seventeen-year-old holy freak lead you around by the nose, it's going to be difficult for the rest of Europe to take you seriously. Why not use your new power to negotiate a bit with Burgundy? Why waste all this money on battle when you're already sunk to the neck in debt? Why kill when you can make peace with words? Why not show the people what a wise and powerful king they've crowned, show them that you will end this war like the nobleman that you are?"

Under a hot, damp, green sky, Jehanne paced the roof of the castle, unable to keep still. "This is insane," she said. "You cannot do this. Burgundy will never honor any truce you make with him. You know that."

The King stood nearby, gazing into the fish pool, watching the trout he was going to eat for dinner as they moved slowly through the water, their thick gray backs shining in the sun. "He's just buying himself time," she continued, her face very red. "He's trying to keep us from attacking while he fortifies the city, you know it."

"What I know, Maid, is that we are in a very different position with the English now than we have been in some time, and if there's any way to use our advantage to create peace, I want to find it."

"But Burgundy doesn't believe in peace," Jehanne said. "He's proven it over and over again. You know this. You've seen it as well as I have. He has no idea of honor or fairness, all he cares about is snatching as much of France as he can."

The King turned his head, looked off toward the frothing green vineyard on a nearby hill. "There is much that you cannot possibly understand about the ruling of a country," he said quietly. "And while I am eternally grateful for all that you've done for France, I am also asking you to trust me when I say that negotiating for peace is the best course of action for now."

Jehanne rubbed her hands over her face. "But we're in such a good position right now; after the coronation and all the victories we had this summer, the English are terrified of us. I know we could take Paris if we attacked now. I know it!"

The King continued looking at the vineyard. Studying it as if he might find wisdom there. "Be that as it may, my order to you is to rest and enjoy your victory for a time now. Let me consider carefully the best way to proceed."

Jehanne opened her mouth to speak, but the King shook his head. "That will be all now, Pucelle. Thank you."

The action, when they finally took it, was a slow zigzag of advancing and retreating in the general direction of Paris. A perfect map of the King's uncertainty. When Jehanne got his ear, poured some of God's fire into it, they surged forward. When La Trémöille was there, whispering silken words of negotiation and appeasement, they fell back. No one could tell what Charles would do next. Would he retreat to the Loire, or would he travel to Paris after all? No one knew. More than anything, it seemed, he was enjoying being king. Enjoying traveling through all the towns, soaking in the worship, the adoration after all those years in the shadows. All the towns that the English had occupied brought him their keys that summer. Soissons, Laon, Créchy-en-Brie, Provins, Coulomiers, they all came back. Pledged their allegiance to France.

There were huge crowds wherever they went. Enormous. In one village it took them six hours to go half a mile. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people would line up in the roads, thronging Jehanne and the King as they rode through, shouting and reaching out to touch the King's hands, thinking that the Holy Ampoule had given him the power to cure the sick, the blind, the crippled. Reaching out to Jehanne, believing her the Daughter of God, begging her to touch them, to cure them of plague, blindness, leprosy, sterility. "I can't do anything," she said, but they didn't listen. "Just one touch, Pucelle," they said. "Just one."

It took them thirty-six days to reach the outskirts of Paris, the town of Compiègne, and by then, many of the Maid's best knights had grown restless and drifted off, returned home to their harvests, their wives, their families. The Bastard and La Hire left in mid-August. "Sorry, darling, but I'll grow old waiting around for Charlie to get his balls up," La Hire said, hugging her hard, the bells on his cloak jingling as if there were something to be happy about. Pierrelot stayed on. "I'll stop when you stop," he said to Jehanne, but Jean left, saying the family needed him in Domrémy. "Someone's got to keep old Jacques in line," he said in a joking tone, but no one laughed.

The first hints of autumn had begun to surface by then. A few orange trees among all the green, a chill edge in the air some evenings—and as it happened, the men's thoughts returned to their real lives. Cows. Taxes. Wheat. Sex. Wine. You could feel it: the miraculous summer coming to a close. The days growing shorter. The grand momentum slowly but surely dissolving.

It was the letter from Bedford that changed things. The letter that the Duke of Bedford sent to us in Compiègne at the end of August. A page of insults. He called the King a bastard and a murderer. Called me a dissolute whore. Said if Charles and I wanted Paris, we would have to fight him for it. It was a provocation, obviously. He was nearby with his troops, we knew that. He was spoiling for a fight. But Charles refused. Would not consider it. Would not even respond to the Duke's letter.

I behaved very badly then. I wept and shouted, said he was gutless, a coward—anything I could think of, anything to get him angry, to make him fight back, but he just stood there looking at me, very quiet. I could see that I exhausted him. Could see he was growing tired of me. "Be patient, Jehanne," he said. "We're having good talks with Burgundy. Let's see what a little diplomacy will do.
"

Three days later we learned that
thirty-five hundred English knights were marching toward Paris to fortify the city. That was what the truce accomplished. That was what his diplomacy did. It gave Burgundy enough time to turn his city into a fortress. And still Charles refused to fight. The next week Charles and Burgundy made yet another truce.