The Maid Read online

  "What would you do with it?" said La Hire, grinning.

  "Buy more cannons," she said. "A lot more."

  The Baron stayed beside Jehanne all night. Hardly spoke to anyone else. "I cannot tell you how I have been looking forward to this, dear Maid," he said when Alençon introduced them. He was dressed in a long leopard-fur cloak, his posture inclined slightly toward her, his dark eyes glowing. He had, Jehanne saw as he kissed her hand, extraordinarily long eyelashes—thick, black, curling lashes that a girl would have cherished. And a sprinkling of pale brown freckles across his nose, which somehow surprised her. "I believe we have much in common," he said.

  Jehanne scratched her neck. "Oh?"

  "Like you, I am a passionate servant of our Lord," he said, eyes shining. "But thus far, He has not honored me with the extraordinary communications He has bestowed upon you."

  Jehanne smiled tightly. Was silent.

  The Baron leaned in closer. Lowered his voice. "I too am a student of prophecies and constellations, séances to banish the demons, the Dark Ones, alchemies to harness nature's bounties," he smiled, his eyes pulling at her like magnets. "We made gold in my kitchen last week."

  "I'm not interested in any of that," Jehanne said, seeing clearly that he was mad, but feeling slightly hypnotized by him nonetheless.

  "Still, perhaps at some point you will honor me with a conversation about your visions? Your voices?"

  "I don't talk about them unless I have to."

  "No, of course not." The Baron smiled back at her, undaunted. "But perhaps at some point you will share your secrets."

  "Probably not," said Jehanne.

  She was seated next to him at dinner. Several times during the meal, La Hire, who was seated on the Baron's other side, tried to engage him in conversation, but the Baron waved his hand, as if to bat a fly away. "Tell me what it was like," he said after they'd eaten, and the platters of stork bones were being cleared away. The Baron had had several glasses of hippocras by that point, and his voice was deep and velvety, purring. Jehanne felt as if she were sitting beside a tiger. "Talking to God ... seeing the saints with your own eyes ... you must tell me."

  "No," Jehanne said. She drank deeply from her water glass.

  Rais laughed out loud. "Just no?" he said. "Just like that?"

  "Just like that," she said, fine hairs of pleasure and pride tickling her insides.

  He stared at her. "I can't remember the last time someone said no to me."

  "I said no to you once already, when we met," Jehanne said.

  The Baron was silent, looking at her. "Careful," he whispered. "I'll start worshipping you."

  Jehanne blinked. "If you want to help, you can buy three new cannons for my army. We need them. But I won't tell you about my voices in return. If you buy the cannons for us, you give to the future of France. Nothing else." Jehanne stood up and nodded at Alençon, who was watching. "My good Duke, would you be so kind as to walk me back to the château?"

  "He's charming, I'll say that," Jehanne said as they walked uphill together through the spring darkness. "Crazy, but charming."

  "I don't like him," the Duke said.

  Jehanne smiled, the pleasure of Alençon's jealousy running over her skin. "His money's good. His army's good."

  The Duke was silent. But when he left her at her door in the château, he said, "Be careful, Jehanne. He's dangerous."

  Several days later, sixty black horses appeared outside Jehanne's tent, pulling three enormous cannons. The boy with the obscene pink mouth stood and read from a scroll. For the future of France, from the Baron Gilles de Rais, April 26, 1429. The boy looked at her. "My lord also instructs me to tell the Pucelle that if she should require anything else for her holy mission, he will be very happy to provide it."

  7

  You must warn them, Catherine said in the night. She was sitting on the side of Jehanne's bed, stroking the girl's cheek, her breath sweet as oranges. Warn them before you spill their blood.

  Yes, Jehanne said. Yes, I will.

  The next morning Jehanne took her oily-nosed page, Raymond, into the pine forest behind the stage and dictated a letter to the English at Orléans.

  To you, Henry, King of England, and to you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of France, obey the King of Heaven and abandon your siege. Surrender to the Maid sent by God the keys of all the good towns which you have taken and violated in France. Take yourself off to your own land, for God's sake, or else await tiding from the Maid, whom you will soon see, to your hurt.

  La Hire snorted with delight when she showed it to him. A smile breaking through the web of scars. "Should give them a good chuckle."

  "Why?"

  He laughed. "Because it's fucking funny, sweetheart."

  The fire rose then. She slapped him hard across the face. "This is not a joke."

  "Hey," said La Hire blinking, throwing up his hands. "Enough."

  "I'll say what's enough," said Jehanne.

  That evening Jehanne sent Ambleville, her small, freckled herald, to Orléans to deliver the letter to the English generals. A week later he still had not returned, and there was no reply from the English. Only a hysterical letter from Ambleville's fiancée in Orléans, saying he'd planned to spend the night at her family's house but had never appeared. "Bastards are holding him captive," said Alençon.

  They never saw him again.

  8

  They rode out from Blois toward Orléans on the twenty-seventh of April. Jehanne and her army of four thousand men. Men come from all over France to fight with her. Soldiers and civilians alike, swept up in a wave of righteous fury as they marched north alongside the Loire, the priests in the lead, singing Veni Creator Spiritus. Behind them came the enormous company of monks and generals, the soldiers and the train of supplies for the people of Orléans: six hundred wagons piled high with beans and bread, axes and sulfur and grain. Animals by the hundreds, cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, all herded by peasant boys, grinning as they walked, whacking the animals on their hind flanks with sticks and passing skins of wine between them.

  The weather was growing warmer now, softer every day. There was a raw green smell in the air, the cool bitter smell of soil, onion grass. Clusters of poppies swayed alongside the road. The long sadness of winter was finally in retreat. You could feel it in the men, the sudden jolt of life that comes with the first warm weather. Jehanne rode out in front beside Rais, conscious, suddenly, of her dirty face, her borrowed horse. The Baron sat atop the gleaming black stallion he called Nutcracker, his long white manicured hands holding the reins loosely in his lap, a big diamond ring on his finger.

  "How are you today, dear Maid?" he asked.

  She shrugged. She was already sweating. "This armor will kill me before the Goddons get the chance."

  He smiled. "I don't think it was meant to be slept in."

  She knew they all mocked her for sleeping in her armor. Knew it and did not care. It was the only way she felt safe sleeping among them in the night. A virgin among four thousand soldiers. Even now, she could feel the Baron watching her with his hungry eyes. Saying that one day she must come visit him at his castle in Brittany, Machecoul. He talked about his life there, the chapel with the gold-leaf ceilings, the Flemish tapestries, the frescoes, the marvelous choir boys, and as he talked, she thought, Why is he so desperate to impress me? She looked at him, said nothing.

  The Baron coughed, changed the subject. "Have you thought about what our strategy should be once we reach Orléans? Has your council spoken to you about this yet?"

  Jehanne was silent for several minutes. At last she said, "My strategy is, we're going to find the English and ask them to surrender. If they do not surrender, we're going to destroy them."

  Later that afternoon, the heat became unbearable. The sun stood straight overhead, beating down on them like a hateful eye. Rais sat fanning himself with his black velvet hat. "God's blood, what I'd do for a lake to jump in," he said.

  Jehanne turned, spoke sh
arply: "Do not take the name of God in vain, my lord. Take back your words right now."

  Rais smiled in disbelief, eyes wide. As if he'd been told a good, but possibly offensive, joke.

  She stared back at him, did not blink.

  "All right, I take it back," he said, raising his hands in mock surrender.

  "It's not a joke," she said. "God won't help us if we make light of His power."

  "No, I—of course, but—"

  She cut him off. "And I promise you, if He doesn't help us, we're all going to die." She shook her head, clucked her tongue. "This is the whole problem," she said sadly. "We say we love Him, and we beg and weep and pray for His help, and then we turn around and curse Him or evoke His name over something silly like wanting a swim. How can He possibly believe we're taking Him seriously?"

  "But I meant no harm. I wasn't think—"

  "I know you weren't," she interrupted, "but He wants us to think. Why should He take us seriously if we don't take Him seriously? If you invoke the greatest power in the universe every time you feel like a swim? Look at this country. Our last king was a madman and a murderer, and his wife was so greedy and heartless that she bartered away her own country to the English. Our armies go around whoring and looting the churches and stealing from the peasants. Our nobles are so busy drinking and going to balls and squabbling over land and screwing each other that the English have stolen our own country right out from under us. And the peasants are in such a state of terror and despair that they've all abandoned their villages and taken to worshipping the Devil, gone to live in the woods like wolves." Her eyes flashed. "And you ask why, why is God allowing this to happen? What else can He do? He gave us the gift of life, the gift of this beautiful world, and we're making a mockery of it."

  The Baron lowered his gaze, flushing. "Many sin because they are in despair."

  "But that's when they should be praying," Jehanne said. "If their despair has so overtaken them that they are without hope and can no longer live as decent human beings, nor even ask for His forgiveness, how can God help them? If they cannot open their hearts to Him, if all they do is drink and sleep with whores and rob people and curse God's name, how can He possibly help? How can He believe that we want anything except to die in misery?"

  Jehanne was aglow, her cheeks red as fruit. The Baron sat gazing at her with the eyes of a child.

  9

  A three-day journey to Orléans. They camped in the fields at night, stopping an hour before sundown, when the sky was deep pink, and taking their horses down to the river for water. They splashed the cold river water on their faces, their filthy necks. Often Jehanne took her boots off and stood in the icy water in her stocking feet, numbing her blisters, wishing she could unbind her aching breasts. Soon the sky grew dark and the fires blazed like great orange lamps strung across the countryside as far as the eye could see. Around each fire sat a group of men, eating stew, sharpening their swords, passing leather pouches of wine back and forth, a tangible happiness among them as they sat under the the enormous black sky and the whorls of stars, far away from their homes, their fields, their wives, men among men, alive and free and on their way to fight for their freedom, for their country, for God. No one knew what lay around the next corner or over the next hill. No one knew if they'd be alive in a week. And there was so much beauty to life because of it, so much intoxication in the blue night grass and the lowing cattle, the dark rustling trees, the breathing night forest, the high, wild sky, and the men's faces shining in the light of the campfire, some of them singing low bawdy songs about wenches and fools, others beating drums, playing flutes, and in former times there would have been whores among them, tossing their hair, flashing their shoulders in the firelight, but now there were none. In the night Michael came to her and whispered, You do well, darling. You have them all spellbound. They'll do anything for you now.

  ***

  In the chill light of dawn on the last morning of their journey, Alençon stood over Jehanne in her tent, grinning. "Ready to go kill some English?" he said, extending a hand. Stiffly she raised her arm, allowed him to pull her upright in the great clanking metal suit. When she was standing, she lifted her metal arm and rubbed her neck. Nodded her head back and then forward. Shook the dust out of her hair. "Ow," she said.

  Alençon watched her.

  "You all right?"

  Jehanne nodded. "Let's go kill some English."

  The priests said Mass for the entire army and passed communion in a damp field, among the thousands of men, as was done on days when battle was foreseen. Front and center, Jehanne knelt, her dark head bowed, her armor shining, Jean and Pierrelot on either side of her. La Hire and Rais and Alençon and Poton kneeling behind her. And what would you think of this, Father? she wondered. Would you still be proud if you were here now? Or would you hate me the moment you saw me in front of all these fine warriors? Hate that it was I and not you leading them on? She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and the priest placed the piece of bread on her tongue. She swallowed the Body of Christ. Felt his love rinse though her like sunlight. Then the priest wiped the edge of the chalice with a handkerchief and placed the gleaming rim of the cup between her lips. He tipped the cup and she drank the wine. She swallowed the Blood of Christ; she remembered his sacrifice, the thin, pitiful body hung up on the crucifix in the desert heat, the glory of his sacrifice, and as she did, she felt the lifeblood surge through her. "Spiritus sancti, spiritus sancti," droned the priests. Then she prayed. Let me get it right.

  She wanted to confront the English right away—as soon as they reached Orléans. That was how she'd seen it in her dream. That was what the voices had said. Be bold! They needed to go straight to Talbot's forts north of the city and tell them to surrender. If they refused, she would attack before they had a chance to call for reinforcements. "We must strike hard and fast," she said to the generals before they left camp that morning.

  She spent the day preparing herself for it. The fighting. The horror. They'd ridden all morning in the climbing spring sun and soon were sweating in their heavy steel suits. As they rode up and down through the rough, hilly country, Jehanne warned herself of what lay ahead. She sat on the back of her horse in that killing armor, the steel biting into her armpits and thighs, thinking, You are going to see Hell today. Hell like you can't imagine. Men and horses are going to scream and bleed and die, and when they do, you must not waver, Jehanne. You must shout and charge and hold your banner high. Remind your men that they are fighting for France, for the life of France, and for their own lives. Remember it is God's will, she thought. Remember what they will do to all of France if they have the chance. It is us or them.

  By mealtime, the wind had come up and heavy purple clouds had blotted out the morning sun. The day had grown cold and threatening. Angry, the girl thought, her heart roaring in her chest. Angry like me. They stopped briefly to eat and water the horses, but she could not eat, nor could she calm herself enough to sit down. She walked slowly back and forth in the monstrous armor, the red rage rising up inside her. She thought, This is who I am now. This is who I must be. God's Righteous Beast.

  But there was no fight that day. Her generals betrayed her. They didn't take her to the English forts north of the river at all. They led her to the wrong side. The south side, across the river from Orléans, and far east of the city. Miles away from Talbot and his main forts. It was some time before she realized it. They'd paused on a high ridge outside Orléans to survey the territory. From there she'd been able to see the near-complete ring of Talbot's forts and the enormous city itself. Orléans sat along the northern banks of the Loire, surrounded by high, thick walls, its tall fortress towers rising in black, pointed silhouette against the gray sky. Long funnels of dark smoke rose up from the English forts that circled the besieged city. There was only one gate they hadn't managed to seal off yet. That was the Burgundy Gate, on the far southeastern end of the city.

  Jehanne had no interest in this area—she wanted to ride
straight into the heart of the action. That was what she'd seen in her dream. Cross the river into La Beauce, go to the English encampments, confront, attack. In the war council the night before, she'd stabbed her finger at Talbot's forts on the map and said, "There, that's where I want to strike." Poton nodded and said, "That's where we're headed," and even smiled at her for the first time.

  But it was not where they were headed. Instead they'd stayed on the south side of the river, only bringing the troops and the great, dusty, ambling train of supply wagons and animals to a halt once they were a ways beyond Orléans and miles away from the key English forts. "What's going on?" Jehanne shouted when she saw what was happening. It was raining by this time. Thin, cold streams of water were sliding down the girl's neck beneath her armor. Her saddle was growing slippery. Kicking her horse, she galloped up to the front of the caravan where Poton and La Hire were riding side by side. "We're on the wrong side of the river! What are you doing? There's not even a bridge here!"

  And here was Poton's second smile. Poton, with his yellow chick-feather hair plastered to his forehead, his neck thick and red. "Surely you didn't mean to attack the English forts today—not before we've delivered the provisions to all those hungry people inside the city ..."

  "Of course that's what I meant!" Jehanne shouted. "The council stated plainly that we are to confront the Goddons right away." Michael had said, Go straight to Talbot. Demand surrender. If he refuses, attack.

  "Ah," Poton said, rubbing his chin, clearly enjoying himself. "Well, it seems we've had a misunderstanding then, because I have instructions here from the Bastard of Orléans himself to stay on the south side of the river and ride well beyond the city walls so that the supplies can be ferried across the river and then sneaked into the city through the Burgundy Gate after twilight." He nodded with his chin, down to the riverbank where scores of boats were waiting.