The Maid (26 page)

She woke in the pale first light to an aching leg and no memory of why it ached. It had been too dark to pitch the tents when they made camp, so they'd built a scattering of campfires in a long, flat meadow several miles outside the city and slept around them, wrapped in the cloaks and blankets they had with them. The temperature had dropped in the night—Jehanne's cheeks and nose were red with cold, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that the field around her was blue and soft with dew, and that her blanket wore a pale skin of dew and that the dew also hung in the trees alongside the meadow, making them seem like a world of ghosts dissolving in the first light.

She reached down and touched her thigh. Felt that it was wrapped tightly in cloth. When she touched the cloth on the top part of her thigh, she felt a sticky dampness that sent an chill down her spine. Now she remembered. The failure. Her failed promise to enter Paris.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the cloak she'd folded up on the grass and used as a pillow. When she opened her eyes a little while later, she gazed up at the pale blue-white sky and thought how recently such a sky had seemed like the sky of a new and powerful France. Her France. A place of God and faith and victory.
No more,
she thought.
Not anymore ...

"Maybe I wanted it too badly," she says to Massieu. "Maybe it mattered too much. Maybe God saw that I had become afraid of dying, afraid of losing my power. Maybe the power had corrupted me, made me proud and vain and arrogant, and so He decided to take it away. I don't know. I am only human. But why keep filling me with the urge to fight, filling me full of such wild fighting fire that I could hardly sit still, and then thwart me at every turn until I knew not how to serve Him or whom to trust? Why not let the fire die out, why not let me return to my mother and Domrémy and the sheep?

"Oh, I cannot tell you the pain of it, what it felt like to have all that warrior fire raging inside, all that hunger to run and ride and fight, my blood singing,
Go, go, go,
and yet not being able to go. Being cut down, betrayed, humiliated over and over again every day when all I ever wanted was to serve Him, to carry out the mission He'd given me.

"Maybe I was too hungry. Maybe I was too proud. Oh, but I was only seventeen, Lord. Why would you not forgive me my flaws? Why punish me for the very urges and fires you poured into me?"

In the morning she shook Alençon's blanketed shoulder until he snorted and sat up suddenly. "What is it?" he said, a wild look in his eyes, as if wolves had been chasing him through his dreams.

"Let's go. We have to attack again."

The Duke rubbed his eyes. Looked at her. "We don't have enough men. It's impossible."

"For God, nothing is impossible," she said.

He sighed. Looked at her. "What do your voices say?"

Jehanne did not answer.

They were quiet for some time.

"It will be over for me if I fail now," she said at last, looking at him. "Everything will be over if I fail."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

It was a small company of warriors that rode out of camp that morning. Jehanne and Alençon and perhaps seventy others, looking more like exhausted wanderers than great knights and generals of war. Gilles de Rais was not among them. Gilles de Rais and his men had ridden off that morning without a word.

They did not approach Paris by the pig market this time. Instead they rode to a place several miles down the river, where Alençon's men had constructed another bridge several days earlier.

It lay before them, a rough, crooked wood structure that rose over an expanse of glittering green water and landed on a bank of Paris that was barely walled or even fortified, for the deep, broad Seine had seemed a worthy defense by itself. Jehanne let out a whoop of joy when she saw it. "It's wonderful," she said. She looked at Alençon with shining eyes. "Oh, my Duke, you are a worthy man."

She turned and beamed at the men. "Now we shall have them, men!" she shouted. "Paris will be ours this day!"

The Duke looked at the ground. As he did, there came the sound of hoofbeats behind them. He and Jehanne turned toward the road, where a man dressed in a blue satin tunic embroidered with a gold fleur-de-lis was riding toward them on a small chestnut pony. "Message from the King," he said, when he and the panting horse stood before them. A small, fox-faced man with large, moist eyes that began to look almost tearful as he took in the bridge and the small troop of warriors. He pulled a scroll from a sack on his saddle, unrolled it with a long W of regret carved in his forehead, and read: "I, King Charles VII of France, command that the Maid and the Duke of Alençon and their men return immediately to Saint-Denis where a matter of great urgency awaits them."

The girl glanced at Alençon. Then she turned to the messenger. "We're about to mount an attack here. What is this matter of great urgency that requires our immediate return to Saint-Denis?"

"His Majesty did not say," said the sad-eyed man. "I'm sorry."

Later that night they learned what had required their immediate return. Jehanne and the Duke and their knights were gathered around the campfire in Saint-Denis, eating in heavy silence when a boy, breathless and red-faced, ran into the flickering circle of firelight and stood panting with his hands on his knees. When he could speak, he said, "They've burned the Duke of Alençon's bridge. The King's men have burned down the Duke's bridge."

Jehanne looked at him. "You lie."

"I do not," said the boy. "I stayed behind to see what would happen, as the Duke himself instructed me to, and around sunset I saw them ride in and douse it with oil and light it on fire with their torches." he said. "I swear on my mother's life. The bridge is gone, it's just smoking cinders now. The river has washed most of it away."

Jehanne looked at Alençon, her heart banging in her chest.

"He would not do that," Alençon said. "Charles would not do that."

The messenger put his hands out in front of him, as if to ward off a blow. "I'm just telling what I saw, Your Grace. They say the King's preparing to return to the castle at Loches in the morning," the messenger continued. "I rode past their camp. They're packing everything up."

Jehanne's nostrils flared wide, like those of a horse. "That bastard," she spat. She threw her stick down in the fire and walked off into the darkness.

She spent the night alone in the forest. Wandering blindly through the spindled black world of shadows in the high old pines, screaming a deep and terrible animal scream, as if her own infant had been gutted before her eyes. Through the dark corridors of the trees she walked, howling those raw, inhuman sounds, screaming for hours, for years, it seemed, until at last she collapsed at the base of an evergreen and wept, her armored back heaving, her face pressed against the trunk of the old tree as if it might whisper an explanation to her, as if it might lift her into its arms and gentle her against the unfathomable night. "Oh God," she whispered. "What am I to do?"

In the morning, the rain fell softly through the layered branches of the pines and down onto Jehanne's cheeks and hair. She stood, wiped her face with her hands, and then walked out of the forest. Her eyes were cool, as if she bore no relation to the creature that had grieved so wildly in the night. The camp was still silent when she reached it. The low, dying fires hissing and steaming faintly in the rain, the men lying on their backs with their mouths open, some with empty wine casks in their hands, others with whores, their limbs entangled, oblivious to the rain. Jehanne continued walking. When she reached her own campsite, she packed a sack of clothes, saddled her horse, and rode down the wet red-dirt road into the village of Saint-Denis.

A silent ride. The world had changed overnight. It felt distant to her now. Foreign. For the first time she saw God nowhere. The fields were just fields, green and damp. The trees, just trees, wood and leaves. The sky gray and flat and having nothing to do with her. None of it having anything to do with her. And there was comfort in this somehow, in the numbness, the cool remove. A strange relief in seeing the world around her as simply a world of things, no Godthings or magical things, no loving things or beautiful things. Simply things. They did not touch her. They were nothing to do with her.

The rain dripped quietly off the slate roof of the old abbey church in Saint-Denis and the high, crooked oaks that sheltered it. Jehanne stood in her armor, still as a scarecrow at the altar of the famous church, a small, sturdy figure cast in silver. The church was dim in the rain that day, and she enjoyed the fact that it no longer sang to her. That the stained windows did not throw rainbows on her face and that the flicker of candles no longer filled her with the urge to weep with joy. And she thought that even if it had been a glorious day, a day of sunlight and warm spring breezes flowing through the open windows and green trees rustling outside, she would not have cared. She looked at the many rusted suits of armor that hung on the walls of the church. Hundreds of them, ghostly metal war shells that had been shed and donated by those knights wounded in defense of France, to honor the King and the realm.
Warrior selves hung up to rest. Warriors saying this life is finished, I have no more use for this hard metal skin, for this killing suit I donned in the name of God and France. Take it from me.

Slowly she lifted her silver helmet from her head and laid it on the stone floor before the altar. After that came her breastplate and her greaves, her gauntlets and her besagews and her chain mail, until it all lay on the floor before her in a metal heap, lifeless, surrendered, and Jehanne stood in her brown linen tunic and stockings, small and pale, looking at the armor with cold eyes, as if it belonged to someone else.

Most of the volunteers had left already, had decided to make their own way back to their homes in time for the harvest. And so it was perhaps just two hundred men who rode sullenly out of Saint-Denis along the southbound road, some cracking jokes about finally getting back to their sweet Loire pussy, about sleeping in a decent bed, about getting a decent breakfast of ham and eggs and fresh hot bread. But most of them were silent, watching the mud puddles in the road before them, their mouths pressed into expressions of bitterness and regret.

Jehanne remained calm, expressionless even, when they reached Gien several weeks later and the King announced that the army would be disbanded. And she remained calm in a private meeting in his castle, where he informed Jehanne and Alençon that they were dangerous influences on each other and were forbidden from ever fighting together again. "Separate now and let me never hear that you have reunited lest you face certain death," he said, looking not into Jehanne's eyes, but at her forehead, as he did with his servants.

Even at these words, Jehanne flinched only slightly. Then the stone face returned. A stone face that remained as she and Alençon stood together outside the castle while his carriage was packed by the servants. Remained until the driver was in his seat and the horses were pawing the earth, and at last Jehanne brought herself to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry," she said.

Alençon shook his head, smiled. "There is nothing to be sorry for."

"Well." Jehanne said, looking off at the trees. "It's all over now."

"Only for a little while," Alençon said, touching her cheek. "Just until Charles gets over his temper."

Jehanne understood. Saw that he could not bear to admit otherwise. So she forced herself to smile. "Until next time, then."

The Duke flinched. "Let us hold you at least," he said, pulling her against him. He held her there for a long time, breathing in the scent of her hair, clutching her to him tightly. "Jehanne," he said, as she pulled away from him.

She smiled. "Until next time," she said again. And she stood and watched as the carriage drove away, growing smaller and smaller in the afternoon light until it vanished completely, and only then did she permit herself to weep.

She spent the rest of the fall with the King and his court, wandering from castle to castle, waiting for her wounds to heal. Pierrelot and Aulon remained with her through that aimless season. Loches, Meung-sur-Yèvre, Bourges, Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier. They stayed only a week or two in each place, until the stench of shit and sweat and rotting food overwhelmed them, and then they moved on. Leaving their green watermelon rinds and mutton bones on the floor for the animals that would inevitably take up residence there in their absence. The King was polite, but kept his distance. No longer did they pray together in the Rose Chapel. No longer did they ride their horses along the river.

Jehanne slept badly, awkwardly, in her fine soft bed. She had terrible nightmares, fought a thousand losing battles in her sleep, saw Bertrand and Mugot die again and again, saw Gilles in all his monstrosity, rode through fields of the dead in her sleep, woke screaming in the night. In the daytime, she let servants bathe and tend to her wound with clean hot water and fresh linen bandages. She accepted visits from various noble well-wishers and gawkers. She smiled grimly through countless royal ceremonies and rituals, biting down hard on her cheek to keep herself from falling asleep.

In Bourges she stayed for several weeks as the guest of Marguerite La Tourolde and her husband, Rene de Pouligny, the King's treasurer. She went to church each morning with her hostess, listened numbly to the sermon. The words sliding past her like water, sounds without meaning. Afterward, crowds of women came and gathered around her, smiling hungrily. When they spoke, they stuttered and blushed and trembled and begged her to bless their rosaries. "An honor, dear Maid." "A joy," they said, kissing her hands, the hem of her skirt. "Marguerite has told us so much about you," one said, falling to her knees. "Would you touch my beads, Maid?"

"Touch them yourself," she said. "God will heed your prayers better than mine."

One afternoon Marguerite took her to the bathhouse in town. "I dare say it's a spiritual experience," Marguerite said. Jehanne sat naked and sweating in that strange, steaming cave until she thought her lungs would burst. Then she stood, reached into a bucket, and splashed cold water on her face. A feeling like lightning cracking in her brain. Jehanne gasped, blinked at the icy water, shaking it off her face. When she opened her eyes, Madame Tourolde was staring at her backside. "What happened to you?"

The girl looked over her shoulder at her own buttocks, which were pale as flour and covered with an angry red riot of sores and blisters and dark purple scars from past offenses. Jehanne blushed and touched her left buttock. "From the armor," she said, sitting down quickly. "And the saddles."

The woman frowned. "But why hasn't anyone tended these for you?"

Jehanne shrugged. "Nothing to do for saddle sores but wait for them to heal."

"But you must rub oil on the ones that have closed up. Otherwise you'll get awful scars."

She regarded the woman bleakly. "Madame, aside from you, no one's ever seen that part of me naked. I don't expect anyone ever will."

"But your husband. Surely one day ..."

Jehanne set her jaw and stood up. "I'm hot," she said. "I need some air."

A strange, unreal time for Jehanne. And stranger still when she returned to Charles's castle at Loches. Every day hundreds of visitors lined up outside the castle walls to meet Jehanne, begged her to kiss their ailing infants, their blind eyes, their crippled legs. Others appeared at the castle, claiming to be holy women and vision-seeing daughters of God with messages for the King.

One cold day in October, a woman named Catherine de La Rochelle came to see Jehanne. She bore a letter from the King, asking the Maid to speak to her and see if she was legitimate. A strange-looking creature—long-necked and heavy-hipped, like a gourd, with wide, hectic green-gold eyes and a slight tremble when she spoke. Jehanne sensed immediately that she was a liar. The woman claimed to have been visited every night for the last six months by an angel in white who instructed her to go to the King and tell him of a secret cave filled with gold that God intended for him to pay his army. Jehanne's eyes flickered at the mention of money for further battles. "You say she comes every night?"

"Oh yes!" the woman said.

So, for two nights Jehanne sat in a little chair beside the woman's bed, forcing herself to stay awake, but the angel in white did not appear. On the second night, the woman awoke around midnight and raised herself up on her elbow, smiling a sly little smile. She smelled like rotten mushrooms. "You must be awfully cold out there. Would you not like to come and share the bed with me? 'Tis nice and warm."

"I'm fine here."

She gazed at Jehanne with beseeching eyes. "Maybe if you told me of one of your visions ..."

Jehanne looked at her.

"I am so longing to hear what it was like for you. The saints, the angels coming to you in the night, whispering in your ear." The green-gold eyes were shining, a desperate, hungry light in them. "Won't you tell me? Won't you come get warm in bed and tell me?"

Jehanne stood up. "You're a filthy liar."

A gasp from the woman. "Oh no, never! I just hoped you might say a little bit. I just—" A sob coming in her throat then. "Oh, God forgive me. I wanted to meet you so badly, to talk to you, to hear—"

"Get out of here," said Jehanne, her heart suddenly furious, insulted, that she should be reduced to this, interviewing false prophets while France so desperately needed her help. She walked to the door and slammed it shut behind her.

Increasingly, as the wound healed, the blessed numbness that had tranquilized Jehanne's heart diminished. She began to feel restless, to dream of riding in the hills and sleeping outside under her blanket with the cold, fresh night air on her face and the enormous swirling night world of stars and darkness overhead. Sometimes, when she could not sleep, she stood by her window and looked out at the sky and the dim, humped, blue-black countryside, and it amazed her how much smaller the night sky seemed when seen through a window. And though she knew it was the same sky she'd known when she'd slept with her men outside in the fields, it did not seem to her like the same sky at all. She did not feel a part of this sky, as she felt when she slept out in the open beneath its enormous dark shoulders. She did not feel it pulsing in her blood the way it had the night before a battle when she knew it might be the last night, the last stars, she ever saw. And she understood the strange beauty of war then, the way it brings the world to life for its participants, makes each moment shimmer simply because it exists, makes each blade of grass a marvel, makes the humblest bread seem a delicacy, the dash of a squirrel up a tree trunk, an adventure, a thing of wonder. And she saw then that she missed the war, that she'd felt at home in it, among the filthy soldiers and the horses and the fires and the trees, in a way she'd never felt anywhere else. In war, she'd had a purpose. She had belonged. She'd known why she was alive. In court, she was just a curiosity, one of the King's collectibles, sitting on a shelf.