The Maid Read online

  10

  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."

  11

  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.

  12

  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.

  13

  The fire outside Alençon's tent burned sideways in the wind. A ragged red flag swaying and shifting in the night. Jehanne was sitting on a log, staring into the fire, when Alençon stepped outside and saw her there. He held a dented pewter cup of wine in one hand. "What are you doing, little Maid?" he said.

  She looked up at him, flames crackling and dancing behind her head like a halo of fire, her cheeks flushed with heat. "We could just go," she said.

  The Duke smiled, sat down on the log beside her, stretched his legs out in front of him toward the heat. "To Paris?"

  She nodded. Picked up a stick and poked idly at the coals. "Who knows when the King will stop with this truce nonsense. We're losing men every day. We need to go now."

  "You want to go without his permission?"

  "What can he do to us? If we lose, he'll scold us. If we win, he'll kiss our feet."

  The Duke scratched his chin. Closed his eyes, drinking in the heat of the fire. "He could do more than scold us, you know."

  "He won't. He likes you too much and he's too afraid of me." She turned her face toward him. "I can't stand this anymore. Paris is just sitting there, waiting for us to grab it, while the King frets and second-guesses himself. All of my voices tell me now is the time; we must act, Duke. I'll never forgive myself if we don't."

  "We can't take the King's army. The Baron de Rais and Poton will come with their men, of course, but that makes us five hundred at best."

  "I don't want the Baron," she said.

  Alençon smiled. "Without him, we are nothing. Hardly enough to take a bridge, much less a city."

  She nodded. Was silent for a time.

  "So five hundred, then," she said at last.

  "It's not many. I don't know if it's enough."

  She touched his cheek. "You forget the angels."

  The Duke smiled. "And how many angels are there with us?"

  "More than you can count," she said.

  14

  They rode out a few days later, just before dawn. Jehanne and Alençon and their corps of warriors. Poton with his troop of ragged mercenaries. Gilles de Rais with his glittering circus. Jehanne could not look at Rais. Could not speak to him. She turned her horse and rode away when she saw him coming toward her. "Hail, Pucelle!" he shouted. Jehanne did not respond.

  It was a clear, windy autumn day. The first real chill was in the air, and Jehanne's horse was frisking and straining to run beneath her. She looked over at Alençon, who rode up grinning alongside her and kicked his horse into a canter, so she urged her horse forward as well. Soon she and Alençon were galloping over th
e sloping yellow fields, racing through the goldenrod toward the rounded hills; and the sky was very blue and the air smelled of wood smoke and the wind was roaring across her face as she rode, roaring cold and fresh through her hair, and it seemed to her that the old magic was upon them then. That they were righteous and blessed, and on their way to carry out God's holy mission. Surely He'll protect us, she thought. Surely this is His wish.

  They made camp outside Paris, in the town of Saint-Denis. Jehanne and Alençon and Rais and Poton and their five hundred soldiers. On their first night there, she awoke to the sound of laughter. High, flowering laughter floating out across the night field. Girl's laughter. And something else too. A drum. She sat up and pushed back her blanket. Her eyes wide, her ears snapped open like a cat's. Into the blackness she peered, the high yellow campfires blooming like otherworldly tulips against the deep night sky. Again the laughter. Jehanne's nostrils flared. Quickly she scrambled to her feet, picked up her sword, and followed the sound through the tall grass. Creeping. Silent. Ahead to the left, through a stand of pines, she saw a fire larger than the rest, a raging fire around which a motley crowd of soldiers had assembled, and around which a young brown-skinned woman danced to the drum in a long red skirt, feet bare, dark curling hair long and loose and gilded in the firelight, shoulders and teeth gleaming as she went around the flames, skirts pulled up in her fists, her throat long and smooth, as a small, smiling man patted the drum with the heels of his hands and the soldiers cheered and laughed.

  She walked into the circle. Walked up to the dancing girl in the red skirt. "What are you doing here?"

  The girl was not impressed. "What does it look like?"

  "We're just having a bit of fun, Maid," said one of the soldiers.

  "You know whores are forbidden in my camp."

  "Why, because the men have to remain pure for battle?" the woman said in a scornful tone.

  Jehanne looked at her.

  The dancer spat on the ground. "Everyone knows you don't have the guts to attack Paris."

  Jehanne smiled, then raised her sword over her head and hit the woman with the flat of it so hard that the sword broke in half. The woman fell to the ground. Everyone around the campfire stood frozen, eyes wide as coins. Jehanne stared back at them. "I said no whores in camp."

  Jehanne sighs now, leans her head against the wall of her cell. "I knew it was wrong," she says. "I knew I would pay for it. But the fire in my blood was so strong. All the months of waiting on the King, of watching my beautiful army drift away, of sitting around in those ridiculous castles, waiting. I could not bear it anymore. I knew my power was fading; I could feel the magic draining out of me little by little every day. A terrible feeling. Like watching your own blood pour out of your body. And I did not know why. I prayed more than ever before. I lay on the floor in the churches for hours, begging for guidance, for help, for strength. But something had broken. The winds had changed. And all I knew was that I had to recapture Paris, that the English had to be run out of France, that this was what God had instructed me to do, and that no one seemed willing to listen to me anymore. The King went back to being a coward, the soldiers went back to their whoring and drinking. It was as if they could only bear so much holiness. As if they suddenly had to go back to being animals again, and no matter what I said or how many times I told them God could not help them if they behaved this way, they would not listen. They wanted wine, rest, women, laughter, food. They'd had as much of God as they could bear."

  15

  The duke of Alençon was standing in her tent when she awoke. Unshaven, unwashed, a dark look in his eyes. Jehanne sat up, rubbed her eyes, blinked. "Is it true?" he said.

  "Is what true?"

  "About the whore?"

  "What did they say?"

  The Duke glanced at the floor. Then back at Jehanne. "That you hit her so hard over the head your sword broke in half. She may not live, Jehanne."

  She looked away from him, her ears ringing with blood.

  "Did you do it?"

  Suddenly her face broke and tears poured down her cheeks. She nodded, pressed her fingers against her eyes.

  "What were you thinking?"

  "I didn't mean to hit her that hard," she said, sobbing. "They know they aren't allowed to have whores in camp."

  The Duke knelt down beside her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

  She looked up at him with red eyes. Spoke in choked, sodden words. "Nobody listens to me anymore."

  16

  She stood in the high pines along the eastern edge of the camp that ran downhill toward the river. She had a place there. A small clearing just above the riverbank where the earth was carpeted in brown pine needles, and the trees were very tall and very old, and there, in that same place, were some young pine saplings with their feathery, light green needles, fernlike in their delicacy, fanning out silently in the still cool air with the old alligator bark of the ancient trees behind them and the long golden river sliding over the rocks beyond. In this place, the black branch of one thick old tree reached out far over the river, and its smallest branches trailed along the surface like fingers, and the light fell and glittered wonderfully on the water, and she could feel her God there, inside of her, could be gentled and calmed by Him as she watched the sun pour down in long shafts and then splinter out across the surface of the water like shards of a shattered mirror. She rested her hand against the rough trunk of the tree and then leaned her whole body against it, soaking in the silence, the curious comfort of leaning up against something so old, listening to the never-ending movement of the water. After a long time, she knelt down and pressed her palms against the earth. She bowed her head. Forgive me, she said. Forgive my wickedness. My temper. My violence. My impatience. Her shoulders slumped. Please forgive me.

  17

  "It occurs to me, Charles, that we could go ahead and let the Maid attack Paris."

  "Is that not what you've been advising me against for the last month, Georges?"

  "Indeed it is, but I've realized that there are several things we have not properly considered here."

  "And what are those?"

  "The first is that the Maid is actually very popular in Paris. Far more popular than you. Possibly more popular than Burgundy too."

  "Mmm."

  "So it occurred to me that if she does manage to get inside the city, the people might well rally behind her and put her on the throne instead of you. Perhaps that's even what she's hoping for."

  "That's insane."

  La Trémöille shook his head. "Paris is afraid of you and your family, Charles. They believe your parents destroyed their country. Whereas the Maid, well, the Maid has accomplished a great deal of good for France in a very short period of time."

  "What is your point, Georges?"

  La Trémöille smiled. Stroked his lips with two fingers. Knew he was conjuring terrible memories from Charles's childhood now. The older brothers poisoned by Burgundy, the whore mother shaming him throughout the city, disinheriting him, calling him a bastard, the poor mad father shrieking in the halls of the Louvre. "Well, it seems to me that it would be best for all concerned if the Maid did not succeed in her attack on Paris."

  Charles cocked an eyebrow. "She doesn't have much chance of it without my army behind her."

  "Indeed. But if she attacks Paris without your support, that's not going to look very good for you either. People will say,'Why did he not support the Maid? It's his fault that she lost.'"

  Charles was silent for a little while. Thinking. "So either way it's terrible. If she gets into Paris, there's a good chance the people will put her on the throne. And if she fails, everyone will blame me ... as always ..." Charles closed his eyes, pressed his fingertips against his eyelids. "Oh Jesus."

  "Yes. But this morning I thought, Well. What if our army goes along with the Maid to Paris, marches right up to the walls with her, but doesn't attack? Is secretly forbidden from attacking?"

  Charles blinked.

&nbs
p; "So she attacks with just the five hundred men she's got now?"

  "Yes."

  "Then she will fail and her reputation will be ruined, but—"

  La Trémöille smiled. "None of it will be your fault."

  18

  "Somehow Alençon convinced Charles to bring the army to us in Saint-Denis. I don't know how. He rode away from camp one day, and when he returned, his eyes were very bright, and he came running toward my tent. "Guess where I've been."

  Jehanne smiles. "He was so kind, Alençon. He tried so hard." She exhales, regards Massieu in the blue predawn light. The old priest nods, looks as if he might weep. "But there was something off about it from the start. The King's army came along with us, but not one of them would look me in the eye. Men who just a few weeks earlier were kneeling at my feet. Calling me the Daughter of God. Calling themselves the Maid's Army. None of them would look me in the eye now. At some point I realized that Charles must have ordered them not to attack. "Humor her. Go with her to Paris. See how things are there. But do not, under any circumstances, attack." I could feel it. They were no longer mine. Not the way they'd been in Orléans. I tried to lead them on anyway, shouted at them to fight for their freedom, begged them to fight for their freedom, but the whole time I knew it was falling apart. I knew my days were numbered."

  19

  They attacked Paris on September eighth. The Festival of the Nativity of the Virgin. A holy day. A day, which, in previous times, Jehanne would have declared off-limits for fighting. But such piety did not seem possible to her now. The soldiers were restless. The generals were pushing to attack. "If we don't hurry, we'll lose our chance," said Poton. "This is it." The fire inside her was roaring, desperate, the drum pounding a steady chant: Attack, attack, attack.