The Maid Read online

  I wish they would listen to me, Jehanne said. I wish they would just leave ...

  They will not leave until you make them leave. You must make them leave.

  I'm scared. I don't want to fight.

  God is with you. Lay down your fear and rest in His palm. Let Him carry you forward. Let Him show you what must be done.

  I know what must be done, the girl sobbed.

  Silence then. A rustle of feathered sunlight in the high corner of the room.

  Oh, don't go yet, she cried. Stay with me, please. Will you please stay with me tonight?

  Already they were fading into the air.

  Go soon, darling. Go soon.

  14

  "We have to attack. My voices say now." She stood, eyes blazing, across from the Bastard in the cold, stone war room of his ruined château, her small brown hands laid flat on the great parchment map of Orléans that lay before them on the table. Around the table stood the other generals. All of them crowded around the map. "Let's not be hasty, my dear," the Bastard said.

  "Perhaps you will allow us to fill you in on the extremely complicated workings of this situation first," said Gaucourt, his mouth curling slightly. His freckled lips repulsed her.

  A bitter cold gray morning, as if spring had never come. A fire of damp green wood hissed and smoked in the hearth. A cold wind blew in through a hole in the roof. Jehanne looked at the men. "Your workings mean nothing," she said. "My council says the time is now."

  "I understand that," said the Bastard, "and we are most grateful for your council, but Lord Fastolf is riding toward Talbot with reinforcements as we speak. They'll be here before we can take any of their forts. We must wait on more men. I've got the garrisons from Gien and Montargis and Château-Renard on the way. We'll attack once they're here."

  La Hire made a face. "Fat lot of good that will do."

  Jehanne stared at the Bastard. "The Baron de Rais has just returned with our army. I tell you, we are enough."

  "Only half of those men are soldiers," said Gaucourt. "The rest are just farmers with pitchforks."

  "An angry farmer is better than a soldier for hire any day."

  Gaucourt shook his head. "I agree with the Bastard. We can't risk a botched attack."

  La Hire bunched up his lips. "I don't see why not," he said. "It's not like things are going to get any easier once Fastolf's here."

  Alençon nodded. "Indeed."

  "Look, I don't think you understand how thoroughly they have us boxed in here," the Bastard said to Jehanne. He stabbed his finger at the waxy yellow map, pointing out the black squares of the English forts that had almost completely encircled the city. "Now they've fortified the Church of Saint Loup, and they're planning to seal off the Burgundy Gate from there. If they succeed, we're finished," the Bastard said. "No one will be able to get in or out."

  "So we take Saint Loup first," said Jehanne.

  "When more troops arrive, and we know where Fastolf is, then we take Saint Loup."

  La Hire and Alençon glanced at each other. Jehanne leaned in very close and put her finger in the Bastard's face. "Bastard, in God's name, the moment Fastolf arrives, you will let me know. If he gets through without my hearing of it, I promise I will cut out your heart and swallow it whole."

  Rais laughed.

  The Bastard gaped at her. "You're out of your mind."

  "No. I'm telling you the will of God."

  15

  She woke up shouting. It was later that afternoon, in her room at the Bouchers' house. Jean Pasquerel was dozing in a chair by the hearth with his Bible resting on his chest. Aulon was snoring loudly on the floor. It's begun, Michael whispered. The blood of France is flowing in Saint Loup. Hurry, love. They've begun without you. Jehanne was so shocked she could not see clearly; her body seemed to act on its own.

  "Raymond!" she screamed. "Where is my armor? Bring me my armor! Come get me dressed right now!" Someone else seemed to be shouting through her mouth. Aulon sat straight up, blinked at her. "What's happened?" he said. "They're fighting," Jehanne screamed. She ran out in her bare feet into the hall. She felt like a puppet, pulled by strings. "Raymond, Mugot, where are you?"

  She ran to the window and looked down into the street for her two pages. Two men were walking slowly up the cobblestone hill, leaning on each other as if drunk. One had an arrow coming out of his throat. He was making loud gurgling sounds. As if he were trying to cough. The other man's arm was gone entirely below the elbow. He clutched a piece of cloth to the stub, but the cloth was soaked a dark ruby red, and as he moved along the street, blood dripped through his fingers onto the stones. "Sylvie," he called in a ragged voice. "Sylvie."

  Madame Boucher came running up the stairs toward Jehanne, panting. "What is it? What's happened?" Charlotte came up the stairs behind her. Jehanne could hear Aulon in the other room, fumbling with his boots.

  "They're fighting without me," Jehanne shouted. "Where is Mugot? Where is my armor? Get me dressed! Someone get me dressed!"

  Madame Boucher looked at her. "I know where it is," she said in a calm voice. "Stay here, Charlotte and I will help you." She looked at her daughter. "Come with me."

  They worked quickly, binding Jehanne's breasts with linen strips and then helping her into her heavy chain mail shirt, buckling the silver breastplate and the harness onto her chest, fastening the besagews under her arms and the greaves onto her shins. The heavy steel gauntlets onto her small hands. She could hear a woman wailing out in the street. "Oh, Luke. Oh, Jesus, help us." Suddenly the front door banged open and Mugot burst in. "I'm here," he shouted.

  "You're too late," Jehanne snapped.

  She left the house so quickly she forgot her standard. Mugot had to pass it through the window to her down in the street. "Follow me to the Burgundy Gate!" Jehanne shouted, and she rode the white horse so quickly down the street that sparks flew from its hooves.

  16

  The men were already in retreat when she arrived at Saint Loup. She saw French soldiers running across the fields toward her, swarms of them running and riding down the hill away from the fortress, running and riding for the Burgundy Gate. At the sight of them, the fire rushed through her, hot and wild. She watched herself stand up in her stirrups, watched the hot possession come into her eyes, watched herself scream, "No, men! We will not retreat today!" Jehanne screaming at the bloody, mud-painted men coming across the fields toward her and screaming too at the fresh troops she saw beneath a row of maples. Hundreds of soldiers and militiamen with their horses and ladders and hatchets and axes on the ground nearby. Poton with a great crowd of mercenaries. Rais with his Breton knights and archers. Men who had not fought yet that day. She saw herself raise her standard high and wave it across the blue sky, and in a bold voice she shouted, "On your horses, men of France. This day is ours. Saint Loup is ours, men! Ride with me now!"

  The rest comes back to her in pictures, as if she were looking down on herself from the air. She watches the girl in armor ride across the trampled green, shouting words she has never heard before, orders and exhortations that have never occurred to her. Fight with me now. Fight for your lives. God is with us, men. This is our chance. Get behind me and ride for France, for your families, for your lives. Get these bastards out of our country, men, out of our land. Run toward them, raise your hammers and axes and take their heads, their hearts, their eyes, their livers. Show them that we will not stand for their thievery and greed any longer. Show them that this is your land and that you fight for it with all of God's mighty strength behind you.

  And at the sight of the furious galloping girl in her bright armor with the white satin banner of God held high over her head, a collective ripple went though the men. A surge of fury like a wave washed over them, carried them forward. Alençon looked at his knights with hot eyes and shouted, "You heard her, men. Avant!"

  La Hire was already on his horse, holding the animal's reins tight in one hand as it pranced and flared its red nostrils. He laughed. "Here we go
," he said.

  "Avant!" shouted Rais, running to his horse, and then they were shouting orders at their knights and at the uninjured retreating men on the fields who were so moved by the sight of the girl that they too turned on their heels to follow her, screaming back toward the fortress.

  Down the hill they went, a thunder of hooves and battle cries, swinging their axes and claymores and hatchets, some faces already painted red with blood, others red with fury, until suddenly a black rain of arrows from the sky was upon them, and the dappled-gray warhorse that was running beside Jehanne screamed and jerked its head toward her, an arrow sunk deep in its shining black eye. But there was no fear inside her now. Only a wild heightening of the senses as the saints chanted in the girl's ears, Go go go go go go go, and the holy fury pounded in her like a drum as she shouted, On, men! On! Today is ours! The men surged forward, leaping from their horses when they neared the old church and swarming like a colony of silver ants toward the high palisades and the corps of English soldiers who were standing guard outside.

  It all happened very quickly. A brief, ferocious fight. The English were so stunned by the sight of the wild-eyed Maid galloping toward them on horseback and the sudden roaring charge of soldiers behind her that they fell easily, quickly to the French. La Hire, roaring like a bear, cut five Goddon throats in the first three minutes. Rais, howling, staved a Goddon's head in half with his great jeweled ax and watched, delighted, as the wet, pink brains fell out onto the ground. Alençon sprang from his horse upon the shoulders of an enormous, bullet-headed Goddon, knocked him into the mud, grabbed the man's great spiked hammer, and slammed it in his red mouth, shouting, "There! Die, fiend!"

  Very quickly, the ground was red with blood, the air loud with the groans and screams of the dying. La Hire's men lifted a wooden ladder to the wall of the church, set it into the stones, and scrambled up it to the wooden walkways of the palisades. There, a row of filthy-armored English guards stood in a line, passing a pot of spitting oil to a horse-faced redheaded man who stood above the ladder, leering down at the climbing Frenchmen. "Pour!" shouted an English soldier, and a golden wave of oil splashed onto the face of La Hire's young page, Daniel, who fell shrieking to the ground. "Pour!" the English soldier shouted again, but before the horse-faced man had a chance to pour again, La Hire swung his long ax and hacked into his pale neck, sending the red head spinning high into the air and down into the mass of warring men below.

  Running along the rooftops, Rais caught sight of a plump, sweating boy glancing over his shoulder as he hoisted himself up onto the high crenellated wall of the bell tower. He laughed and caught the boy's ankle. "Where you going, fatty?" he said. He pulled the boy toward him, tickled his ribs, and the boy fell shrieking backward through the air, down inside the inner courtyard of the church where the rest of the English soldiers were running and screaming in sudden panic, trying desperately to escape.

  Jehanne stood at the foot of the ladders, shouting her soldiers on, filling them with her fire. "Up, men! Up now! Saint Loup is ours! The day is ours!" and she was focused so intently on urging her men forward that she did not watch where she was walking and stepped directly onto a caltrop. She looked down to see a wet, red, metal spike sticking out of the top of her foot. "Oh," she said, sitting down sideways on the ground.

  "Get her off the field," Alençon shouted to Aulon, as he knelt beside her, his face freckled with blood.

  But Jehanne would not hear of it. "I'm fine," she said, clutching Alençon's shoulder as she pulled the sharp weapon out of her foot. "Let go of me. I'm fine."

  Now, Michael was whispering, Now now now. And so she struggled to her feet and went on. Pushed her men away and charged up a ladder with the white JESU MARIA banner in her hand, waving it above the men's heads, and seeing the muddy battlefield below thick with blood and the bodies of dead Goddons, she shouted, "Follow me now, men! Everyone over the wall. Saint Loup is ours!"

  A frenzy then. So many Frenchmen scrambled up the ladders and down the stairs of the keep into the courtyard that the English inside didn't stand a chance. Six of them were pushed from the ramparts with cut throats or pierced hearts, their silver-suited bodies landing with a thud on the floor of the courtyard, and as soon as the Goddons looked up and saw the hundreds of Frenchmen descending upon them, they lay down their weapons, raised their hands high above their heads, and shouted, "Surrender, we surrender!" One boy, shaking, sobbing, backed against the wall, crying, "Please, Jesus, I surrender!"

  Jehanne looked with wild eyes at Rais. So much fire was coursing through her she felt as if she were floating above the ground. "What's he saying?" she shouted. "I can't understand."

  "They're surrendering," said Rais, laughing. He pulled his curved dagger from a dead man's eye, the rubies in its hilt catching the sunlight. "It's over. They surrender."

  Then came the wildness. The French soldiers running wild through the church, screaming and laughing and tackling one another, throwing their metal helmets and shields on the ground. Shouting, bouncing, drunk with joy and fury—astonished to find themselves alive among so many of the dead. Jehanne felt it too, thought she'd faint from the thrill of it. Alive. She was alive.

  She walked around like this, blindly, for perhaps half an hour after the Goddons surrendered, stunned and marveling at the sudden miracle of life, the fresh sweet air in her lungs, the delicate brown beauty of her hand, the glittering blue sky overhead. Everything ringing slightly, everything unreal, tilted and glowing, much brighter than usual, as if she were looking at a painting. "Oh my," she said quietly. "Oh my, oh my."

  Some time later she found herself sitting on the ground in a pool of blood with her legs stuck out in front of her like a rag doll, staring blindly at a pile of bodies stacked up against the church wall. Up until then she had not seen them. Had seen only a group of colorful shapes, a mountain of silver and mud and bright red paint. Among the shapes, a few sharp details—a plump, unmoving hand with a gold crest ring shining amid a nest of dark knuckle fur, a man kneeling and moaning, holding the shining brown purse of his liver carefully in front of him—but they had no meaning. It was just faraway pictures, just a long, blurred tapestry on the far side of an enormous silent canyon.

  And then suddenly, it wasn't. She heard a strange, wet snoring sound to her left, and she saw a thin, curly-haired Goddon with a prominent Adam's apple lying on the ground beside her with blood pumping steadily out of his chest. She saw his chapped yellow lips moving. "Car-face," he seemed to be saying. "Need car-face."

  Slowly Jehanne got up and walked over to him. She knelt beside him and took his hand. "What is it?" she said. "Tell me what you need."

  The man licked his yellow lips, then said it again. "Car-face."

  Jehanne repeated the word silently to herself. Then abruptly she stood up and shouted, "Get the priests in here right now. These men need to confess."

  She spent the night sitting in the Church of Sainte-Croix. Staring straight ahead of her. She did not pray. She did not sleep. She sat in the pew, staring, thinking, Why don't I feel anything?

  17

  In the beginning I was not upset. I was too excited to be upset. You have to understand what it's like, charging all at once like that, throwing yourself into that madness. That sea of fury and death. You know only that you must get through, that if you do not fight your way through the wall of men in front of you, they will devour you. So you fight as you can, as you must, with your sword, your teeth, your hands. You'll do anything to make it through, to make it stop. Anything at all.

  It takes you over, war. As soon as you enter the field, you become part of the great Red Machine, a wheel inside the great Red Machine, rolling and rolling forward, fighting your way toward silence. Stillness. There is no thinking, no time for consideration. There is only doing what you must do in the moment, what seems best in the moment. And there's a beauty to it, working like that, letting the ancient instinct take over, the drive that says fight or die. Kill or die.

  It
happens so fast. At once very fast and very, very slowly. As if your body is moving faster than it's ever moved, and at the same time a hand inside your mind is very slowly, calmly sketching a picture of everything that happens. Recording everything. And only after it's over, only once the great Red Machine has ground to a halt, do you know what you've done. No, even that's not true, because after it's ground to a halt, the fire is still racing through you. Maybe you drop your weapon, maybe you start dancing around, dancing and shouting and laughing and banging up against the other men, screaming because you're alive, more alive than you've ever been. You've killed them, and you're still alive, and it's a long time before that fire burns down and you find yourself sitting in a corner, staring blindly at a tall silver and red pile in front of you, and only when you realize that the pile is a pile of the dead, do you begin to understand what you've done. You don't feel it yet, but the name is there in your head. The name that tells you who you are. The truest self, the one you can never know until you've fought. You see that you are the one who fights. You see that you are the one who kills.

  18

  It happened very quickly after that. In a week it was over. They took Les Augustins in one day, Les Tourelles in two. The day after Saint Loup was the Day of Ascension, and Jehanne declared that they would not fight on a holy day. Instead she sent another letter to the English, had her archer shoot it up over the walls into Les Tourelles. The English soldiers just laughed, called her names, threw rotten cabbages at her. Rais was with Jehanne and Aulon that day, seated beside her on his stallion at the edge of the ruined bridge as her archer let the arrow fly. When Aulon repeated the names they called her, Rais turned white as salt. "Who dares say such things to the Maid?" he shouted, the cords in his neck standing out like wires. They laughed at him too, but they shouted their names out anyway. "Thomas Parry and John Cotter," they cried.