The Maid (23 page)

"We cornered them," she says. "Because of the bridge, we were able to corner them inside the fort. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late." The Goddons had panicked. They'd lowered the drawbridge that led from Les Tourelles to the mainland, and dozens of knights and generals stampeded out onto the bridge with their hands up, shouting, "Surrender, surrender!"—not realizing that the worst still lay ahead. For the Orléans soldiers had loaded up a barge below the drawbridge with pitch and bundles of sticks and straw and oil-soaked rags and had set the drawbridge on fire from below, and almost immediately the entire bridge burst into flame.

She'd seen it happen. She was standing on the northern bank of the river, and she saw the fire, lapping at the wooden legs of the drawbridge, the long yellow flames rising up and spreading fast along the planks of the bridge itself, devouring it, until there came a deep, ugly crack and a groan, and the drawbridge collapsed, sending the entire crowd of heavily armored men cascading into the river. She saw immediately that they were doomed. Because of their armor they were doomed. And she watched helplessly as they thrashed around in the river in their monstrous metal suits, grabbing at each other and calling "Help, help!" as the weight of their armor dragged them beneath the surface one by one until only two knights were visible.

One was very fat and had thrown his arms around the neck of a much smaller boy who had managed somehow to get out of his metal suit and was trying to swim to shore. "Get off me!" the boy screamed, thrashing in vain against the big, armored knight who was clutching his neck. "Get off! Get off!" he cried as the big man thrashed and pushed the boy's head under water. As soon as the boy was under the surface, the big armored man began to sink too, flailing his silver arms in the air and then sinking under himself until the surface of the river was completely still.

A moment later the boy came up gasping, blue-faced. "Swim here!" Jehanne cried, waving her arms. "Swim here!" The boy looked up and began to crawl slowly through the water toward her, but after he had taken a few strokes, he was jerked sharply beneath the surface again. "Jesus!" she cried as his head disappeared into the green water, leaving only one arm waving frantically, and then no arm—just a bouquet of white bubbles—and finally nothing at all.

La Hire stood beside Jehanne, shaking his head. "Fortune in ransoms lost right there."

She raised her head, looked at him. "How can you say such a thing?"

La Hire stared back. Spoke calmly. "Because I don't see the point in crying over a bunch of animals who've spent the last nine months trying to kill me."

"Just because they're animals doesn't mean we have to be."

La Hire looked at her for a long time.

"You think you're not? You think you're any less of an animal because you order others to do the killing for you?"

"I do as God commands."

La Hire spat. "Then God's a bloody animal too."

She did not speak to La Hire for a long time after that. She avoided him. It was easy enough to do. The siege was over. On May eighth, the morning after the French had taken Les Tourelles, the English army rode away. A curious, ferocious retreat. First the Goddons had lined up in the field outside the still-burning skeleton of Les Tourelles in full battle dress, as if prepared to fight. "We will not attack on a Sunday," said the Maid, but she led her army out to face them anyway. One by one they lined up their ponies opposite the English, lances at the ready, a herd of steel-faced monsters. "If they attack, you may fight, but only if they attack," she said. An hour passed, the two weary armies facing each other in a mysterious game of chicken. No one moving.

Eventually the commander of the English army shouted something and waved his arm backward. Then he turned his horse and rode away from the field toward Meung-sur-Loire, and his army followed him.

"Look at that," said Poton quietly.

"My God, you did it," laughed the Bastard, picking Jehanne up and spinning her around in his arms as the great storm of men and horses retreated across the fields and away from Orléans. "You little genius. You did it!"

When the people of Orléans learned that the siege had been lifted, their joy was so great that life was given over completely to rejoicing for a week. A seemingly endless string of parades and feasts and dancing and tributes with Jehanne as the deity around which everything revolved. The image everyone longed to revere and bow down to. And so she stood, as if at the center of a storm, watching in a kind of trance while thousands of townspeople swirled and roared around her, chanting her name and carrying her in a chair above their heads as they danced and wept and threw roses and made toasts; and the weather was beautiful all that week, sunny and soft and clear, the hills green and lacy, the lilies and bright yellow fields of colza flowers in full bloom, the heady smell of lilacs in the air; and Jehanne seemed part of this great flowering spring, seemed to have created it especially for them. As she sat among them—those thousands and thousands of shining eyes—smiling and waving within that strange communal trance of love, she thought how enormous man's hunger for God was, how desperately we want the thing that we can bow down to and worship, the thing that makes us open our hearts up completely, the thing that unleashes all of our awe and wonder. And it frightened her a little, for she knew very well that she was not God, knew that the people were worshipping nothing but a lamp in which God had chosen to burn for a short time, and she tried to tell them this many times, but they would not listen to her, they did not want to hear. They wanted simply to be near her, to drink in the light that was pouring from her, to sing of her miracles and her triumphs. And it was heady stuff, all this communal worship, and perhaps we should not blame Jehanne too much for forgetting sometimes that she was just the lamp, and for forgetting that one day the holy fire might go away, because who in the throes of love can ever remember the gray, lonesome days, and who among us does not hope with all their hearts that somehow, by some miracle, such love might go on forever?

The day after their victory, while the people of Orléans were beginning to sing and dance and drink in the streets, Alençon came up to Jehanne, grinning. The sight of his dark, smiling face made her take a step forward. "How are you feeling, my Maid?"

Jehanne smiled. "Better now."

"Catch any stray arrows today?"

"Not yet, you?"

"Care to take a walk down to the river with me?"

They walked down to a place where the river was broad and flat and milky green, and they sat on its bank in the grass beside the drowsy willows that hung out over the water, and were silent together, watching the late-day sunlight and the dragonflies skimming and humming above the river. As they sat, Alençon picked up her hand and held it in his own. "It's nice to see you without all that armor on," he said. Then he said her name, tasting the word.
Jehanne.
He reached up, touched her cheek.

There came the sound of laughter nearby. Bright, girl's laughter, followed a moment later by the girl herself with honey blond curls, coming down the hill toward the river, great with child. Behind her a tall, thin boy followed, loping, catching her hand and pulling her against him. A passionate embrace, long. His hands in her hair, her body pressed hard against him. The couple unaware of their audience.

Watching them, Jehanne stiffened, felt a high wall spring up around her.
Dead in two years,
Michael whispered. Pale as china, she smiled tightly, withdrew her hand from Alençon's. "We should be getting back," she said.

Alençon gazed up at her, smiling tenderly. "No, we shouldn't."

"Yes," she said, standing up and brushing the grass from her lap. "We should."

"I'm so happy I could kiss you," Charles said when Jehanne brought him the news of their victory at Orléans. "Truly you must be the Daughter of God," he said, squeezing her hands, his small eyes shining, his orange houppelande billowing in the warm May breeze. They were standing in Charles's garden at Loches, and beyond the walls they could hear the voices of hundreds of peasants who'd gathered there, shouting, "Pucelle! Pucelle! Pucelle!"

Jehanne wanted to take Charles to Reims right away.
Crown him fast,
Margaret said.
He's nothing without that crown.
And she knew it had to be done in Reims. Every French king since Clovis had been crowned in Reims. The French people would never accept a king unless he'd been crowned in the cathedral there. But here, Charles's old timidity returned. "It's too dangerous," he said, shaking his head. "There are still too many Goddon strongholds between Chinon and Reims."

He made Jehanne and her generals wait there in Loches for two weeks just to hear him say that. Said he was meeting with his council the whole time, but there were parties every night. She would hear the laughter, the music coming across the lawn, see Charles staggering around with La Trémöille, both of them drunk, laughing like fools. All the while Margaret chanted in her head:
Daughter of God, go go go. I will help you, go!

Finally she could not wait anymore. Her men were growing restless. They needed to keep their momentum, fight while their blood was hot. She walked in on Charles and his council one morning—just walked in, didn't wait for the page to announce her. She knelt down and threw her arms around his legs. "Oh, do not hold council for so long, my Dauphin!" she said. "But come with me to Reims and accept a worthy crown."

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."

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.

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.

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.