The Maid Read online

  She tried to convince him that it was safe to go, that now was the time while the men were full of triumph, while the Goddons were cowering in their caves, terrified of the Maid who'd snatched Orléans so quickly, so easily, back from them. But he would not listen. "Secure the Loire first, little Maid," the Dauphin said. "Make sure the way is clear, then I will go."

  2

  So Jehanne and Alençon returned to Orléans to gather their army. It had grown into an enormous thing by then. A whole continent of warriors, ecstatic, hungry for battle. In the two weeks they'd been gone, men had poured in from all over the country until there were two thousand knights, plus their squires and pages, plus archers and foot soldiers. Then there were the civilians. Who knows how many? Two or three thousand, La Hire said. "Soon there won't be anyone left in the villages to rescue," he joked.

  The King had put Alençon in charge of the military command, though he was ordered to "seek the Maid's counsel in all matters." And with them came the generals: The Bastard and Rais and Poton and La Hire in the lead. Rais "pouring money into the army like a madman," Alençon said. "Now that the Queen's coffers are dry." Rais feeding all the soldiers three times a day, buying new armor and artillery and horses. "I've never seen such spending in my life."

  "We are very grateful, Baron," Jehanne said when she came upon Rais in the camp one morning.

  He was atop his stallion, with a ragged young boy seated in front of him, holding the pommel. The boy was perhaps six or seven with beautiful, sleepy black eyes and bare feet, his face dirty as the bottom of a shoe. "Ah, Pucelle," he said. "The pleasure is mine." He tousled the boy's hair. "Thomas here and I were just on our way to find ourselves some breakfast, weren't we?"

  The boy nodded.

  Jehanne looked at Rais. "I'm still not going to tell you about the voices," she said.

  The Baron laughed, his red lips curling up like a girl's. "We shall see about that, little Maid," he said. "We shall see."

  By the time they rode out of the city in early June, there were more than eight thousand men riding behind her. Eight thousand men hearing Mass, confessing every morning. Eight thousand men without wine or women or cards to distract them, sober and eager to carry out the will of God.

  They went first to Jargeau, then to Meung, then to Beaugency. All Goddon-occupied towns along the Loire. All fast, easy sieges: they took Jargeau in two days, Meung in one day, Beaugency in two. "Child's play!" La Hire shouted as he planted his flag atop the bridge at Meung. In Beaugency, they didn't even have to fight. The mayor came out with his hands up, waving a white shirt above his bald, pink head, shouting, "Surrender! Please! We surrender!"

  But from the beginning Jehanne sensed Patay would be different. Patay, she thinks, pictures flashing in her mind. The sea of corpses, the screaming horses.

  Patay, my great triumph.

  Patay, the killing place.

  3

  Toward evening, after the victory at Beaugency, a messenger had come flying into the French camp. A young, sunburned boy, very thin, all neck and elbows and flopping blond hair, his horse gasping, lathered with sweat. He said that Fastolf was nearby with an army of five thousand reinforcements from Paris. Fresh, trained soldiers, thousands of longbowmen. They'd joined up with Talbot and his men, and were hiding out somewhere in the forests north of Patay. No one knew exactly where. "I saw them as they passed through Meung," the boy said. "I never seen so many longbowmen in my life."

  "Oh no," said Mugot.

  Jehanne turned, looked at him.

  "They're just waiting there," the boy said, his voice high, hysterical. "Waiting to slaughter us."

  "Don't be an idiot," she said. "We just have to find them before they find us."

  The Bastard shook his head. Said they could not handle an open battle. "Not with all those longbows. They'll destroy us."

  "No, they won't," said Jehanne. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the sky. When she opened her eyes several moments later, they were blazing. "This will be our greatest victory," she said.

  4

  We rode toward Patay. The men were afraid, but I said it must be done. My voices were clear. We must overtake them. We must hunt them down and overtake them.

  When they started to get close, Jehanne sent scouts ahead—sixty or seventy of them fanning out through the forest, looking for the Goddon camp. Alençon and La Hire had the vanguard ready to fight, and they were waiting in the forest when two of the trackers came tearing back through the pines an hour later with red faces, shouting, "We saw them! Holy Christ, we saw them! They're right here! The whole army!"

  The English were camped in a valley not five hundred yards away, under a good cover of woods and brush. "We never would've seen them," said the breathless scout, "but all of a sudden Paul and I hear all this shouting and yelling, and we can tell it's the Goddons just from their ugly accents, so we go running through the woods toward the voices, and when we get close, we hide behind some trees, and we see this huge red stag run past like its tail's on fire—a gorgeous beast, seven or eight points on him at least—and he goes galloping up over the hill, and a minute later about twenty Goddons come chasing after him, shooting at him. So Paul and I ran back to see where they'd come from, and the next thing you know, there's the whole Goddon army right there in front of us—most of 'em barely even awake yet, still walking around in their underwear and bare feet, eating their breakfast sausages."

  Jehanne saw it in her mind's eye: three thousand Goddons still rubbing sleep from their eyes, their armor scattered all around them, gleaming in the new morning sun, their breastplates and helmets and the long-jointed silver fingers of their gauntlets lying useless on the ground ... "We must attack right now," she said in a loud, hard voice. Surprise them! Surprise is the key!

  She sent La Hire and Rais riding ahead with the vanguard to attack the camp immediately. She and Alençon and the Bastard and Poton stayed back with the rear guard, waiting to launch the second wave.

  But there was no second wave. By the time Jehanne rode forward with her troops into the battlefield an hour later, it was over. A field littered with corpses and wandering, riderless horses. Fastolf had panicked, had run off into the woods with a handful of his men. All that was left were horses and bodies. A sea of two thousand dead and dying English. A small handful of dead French. No fighting. No rising fury, no voices saying Gogogogogo, no brave dash for survival, no hot rush of joy at finding yourself still alive when it was over. Just your own soldiers standing and all the others fallen. Two thousand men cut down in less than half an hour. The dying calling out for their mothers and wives, calling out for God.

  As she rode across the field, Jehanne saw a boy dragging himself toward her on his hands. His right leg was trailing behind him, the left one was gone, a lake of blood pulsed behind him. He regarded her with huge blue eyes. "Wait," said Jehanne, climbing down off her horse and running toward him.

  "I'm all right," he said. "I can get up." As if to prove his point, he pushed himself up onto his one knee and knelt before Jehanne for a moment in a swirling skirt of blood. "See." He smiled, wiped his cheek. Then his eyes went white in his head, and he fell to the ground.

  She heard a scream then. A different scream from the others. It was coming from somewhere off to her left. Abruptly it cut off. She squinted, looked in that direction, and saw more bodies, also a sagging barn at the edge of the field. Like a sleepwalker she moved toward the barn, stepping over the bodies, not even noticing them, pulled as if by a hook through the barn door and into the dim, mote-filled sunlight where she heard now a low slapping sound that she followed into a stable where a boy leaned over a pile of hay with his dark head fallen forward into the sunlight, making a slow snoring sound in his throat. Very close behind him knelt radiant, naked Gilles de Rais with a wet beard of blood, running his hands through a pile of objects on the hay, which Jehanne realized were the boy's stomach and intestines and liver.

  The boy groaned. Blood poured from his mouth. "I know
, my love," said Rais, stroking the boy's face, pressing his cheek against the boy's cheek, painting his face with the boy's blood. The Baron closed his eyes. "Oh Father, we ask that you carry this beautiful soul with you to Heaven now ... we ask that you raise him up to your throne and embrace him in your everlasting love ..." Very slowly, Jehanne backed away from the door and made her way back through the barn. Gilles de Rais never looked up.

  Outside, Jehanne walked blindly across the field, seeing only Rais's bloody smile in front of her, and so she did not notice the wild-eyed Goddon who broke from the woods to her left and came running at her, tackling her from behind and locking his arm around her neck as they fell together to the ground. And she did not think when she pulled her little knife from its scabbard and sank it into the man's throat. And she did not think when she pulled the knife out of his neck and then stabbed him there eight more times, twisting the knife and screaming "Die!" until the man stopped moving.

  5

  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.

  6

  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.

  7

  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.

  8

  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 the
m 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.

  9

  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?"