The Maid (28 page)

She tried. When the guard came in to take her chamber pot that evening, she hid behind the wooden door, then ran out into the hall and locked him into her cell, the guard barking like a furious dog as she ran down the dark tower stairs two at a time, down and out into the warm August twilight. There was an orchard of peach trees to the right of the tower, and the smell of the fruit was heavy in the air, sickly sweet as she ran blindly away from the castle. Soon she was into the orchard itself. Rows and rows of trees in the gathering dusk, and just beyond them, she could see salvation: a stone wall she could climb over. Then woods. Woods where she could hide.

She made it halfway through the orchard before another guard caught her. Her bare feet kept sinking into the soft, rotting peaches on the ground, and it was difficult to run fast. She kept slipping, stumbling. Soon she could hear the big guard huffing and grunting behind her, the sound getting louder and louder until at last he caught hold of her tunic and fell upon her, brought her crashing to the ground, saying, "Oh no, you don't."

She thought it was over then, thought she would be taken to England right away, tortured, killed. But it did not happen.
Instead God put His hand around the little flame of hope in my heart once more, and the flame steadied itself.

The grand high, gilded carriage of the Demoiselle of Luxembourg thundered through a high tunnel of lime green elm trees, drawn by four splendid chestnut ponies, their silken hindquarters gleaming in the afternoon sun. At the main entrance to Beaulieu Castle, the carriage came to a halt and two footmen alighted and opened the door to the cab. Out came a gray silk slipper, followed by the great rustling silk skirts of the Demoiselle herself. A tall, elegant blond in her fifties, with a long, thin, slightly crooked nose and skin translucent as rice paper. She stepped lightly and quickly across the cobblestones and made her way inside the castle. There to greet her stood her nephew Jean, who bowed low before her and smiled nervously. "Where is she?" said the lady.

Jehanne sat tied to a chair in a dim dungeon cell, her lips tight, eyes raging. The guards had been making fun of her failed attempt at escape. "Little fool slipping around in the orchard. Why didn't you just use your broomstick, darling?"

"That's enough," said the Demoiselle, and the men were silent. She stepped forward and looked at Jehanne for several moments. A puzzled expression on her face, as if she could not quite believe that the filthy, crop-haired urchin before her was the great and famous savior of France. Then she turned to her nephew, who stood back a bit, looking nervous. "But she can't be more than fourteen."

"She's eighteen."

Jehanne watched both of them, said nothing.

The Demoiselle's skirts rustled once more as she stepped farther into the cave. "You have my great respect," she said to Jehanne. "You have done things no woman on earth has ever dreamed of. Things no human on earth has ever dreamed of."

Jehanne was silent, eyes hooded.

The Demoiselle turned toward her nephew. Spoke in a cold voice. "You've always been callous, Jean, ever since you were a child. But this is a new low even for you."

Luxembourg looked at the floor, red spots rising on his cheeks.

"She can't stay here. I won't have it. Have your men bring her to me at Beaurevoir at once. I'll look after her until we decide what's to become of her."

"But Aunt—"

"This is not a discussion, Jean."

The Demoiselle took Jehanne away to Château Beaurevoir in the north. A great sprawling place with a red-tile roof and a great old pine forest around it. There, the Demoiselle put her in a different sort of tower room altogether. This one cozy and luxurious, with a thick gray velvet quilt on the bed and a fireplace, a view of the Demoiselle's gardens down below. There were bars on the window, but on the other side of the bars were the blooming roses with their full pink skirts, their perfume climbing up the tower walls and through Jehanne's window in the night.

A prettier brand of captivity. Still, the doors were locked.

The Demoiselle had no children of her own. Her husband had died when she was young, and she'd never married again. "I regret not having them though," she said. "When one gets older, one begins to see things differently." She came to visit Jehanne in her room every afternoon, taught her to play backgammon, read to her, asked the girl questions about her saints, her revelations. After a time, she began to bring her friends to visit Jehanne as well. The Three Jehannes. The Demoiselle, whose name was Jehanne de Luxembourg. Her nephew's wife, Jehanne de Bethune. And Jean's stepdaughter, Jehanne de Bar. A trio of bright-eyed ladies with their fine silk dresses, their rapt, childlike fascination with the Maid.
How was it when He first appeared to you? Did you know it was Him from the beginning? Were you not terrified during the battles, with all those men dying around you? All that blood?

But no one was as fascinated with her as the Demoiselle. "To think, no education at all," she would say, gazing hungrily at Jehanne. "Just the instincts of a genius and the heart of a lion." Soon the Demoiselle was saying she wanted to keep the girl with her there at Beaurevoir, to civilize her, teach her to read. Turn her into a lady. One afternoon she brought an armful of dresses into Jehanne's room—one brown silk, one soft blue wool with a square neck, one apricot velvet, the color shimmering in the afternoon light—and laid them out on her bed. "If you'll just think about wearing one, dear, it will make everything so much easier." The Demoiselle planned to convince her nephew not to ransom Jehanne, to let her stay on with the Demoiselle as a kind of companion. "A protégé," the Demoiselle said. "But he has to believe you want to live peacefully, reasonably. He has to believe you would not be a threat."

Jehanne walked over and looked at the dresses on the bed. She longed to touch them, but she did not dare. They seemed like beautiful but somehow dangerous objects. Things that would be deadly for her to touch.

"I understand that the boy's clothes were right for war and all that—time," the Demoiselle said over Jehanne's silence. "But it's not necessary anymore." She smiled at Jehanne fondly. "And you're so pretty too—if only you'd let people see it."

Jehanne looked at the elegant powdered woman, at the dresses, at the golden apple tart that a servant had placed on the table. She told herself that the Demoiselle's idea of prison was far better than anyone else's so far. But she could not make herself move closer to the dresses, could not make herself touch them. "It's not time yet," she said finally. "I have to wait until the voices tell me to."

The Demoiselle's lips twitched in annoyance. "You know it only makes things worse for you."

"I know it must seem that way to you."

The woman studied her for a moment. "But why? No one would ever harm you here."

Jehanne's eyes turned hard. Cold. "One of your knights shoved his hand up my shirt the other day. What do you call that?"

"Who?"

"The young one with the curly black hair. He brought me dinner."

"Aimond?"

"He was surprised when I pushed him away. Told me I should count myself lucky to have attracted his attentions. Told me only freaks married God."

The next day the young knight Aimond de Macy was gone from the castle. But the Demoiselle did not bring up the idea of the dresses again. Something in her changed toward Jehanne. She was more formal after that. A brisk, forced cheer in her smiles, a weighing look in her eyes when she thought Jehanne was not watching.

One cold, windy day in October Jean de Luxembourg stood in his aunt's parlor, watching the yellow leaves scutter across the grass. "Bishop Cauchon has offered ten thousand gold crowns for her. I've accepted."

The Demoiselle drew her head back like a snake. She looked at him. "You can't do that, Jean."

"I already have." He held her gaze. "You may not like me, Aunt, but the fact is, the girl is my prisoner. She was taken on my land, and it is up to me to handle her as I see fit."

The Demoiselle stood up. "They'll kill her."

Luxembourg walked over to the tympanon, which lay on a stand near the fireplace. He ran a finger over the strings. "Perhaps you would like to make a better offer?"

"You know I don't have that kind of money."

Her nephew looked at her meaningfully. "You would if you bought fewer dresses each month."

The woman stared at him. "How dare you!"

"I need the money, Aunt."

"So you're sending the most astonishing woman France has ever seen to her death?"

"Cauchon says they plan to give her a full trial at Rouen."

"
Pff,
" the Demoiselle said, waving a hand and blowing air out of one side of her mouth. "Some trial that will be."

"At any rate, the deal is done, and unless you want to pay ten thousand crowns for her, it will proceed as planned."

The Demoiselle glanced at the fat black pearl on her hand. "How can the King not pay?"

"Well, he won't." The young man stood before the tympanon, ran his finger back over the strings in the opposite direction, releasing a high, frivolous sound. He looked at his aunt. "And neither, it seems, will you."

Jehanne stood atop the wall of the high tower, walking slowly back and forth along the narrow edge with her arms held straight out. The sky behind her was heavy, plum-colored. The air reeked of smoke and rotting leaves.

The Demoiselle had allowed her access to the roof from the beginning, thinking to give the girl fresh air when she wanted it. "I hate the idea of you all cooped up in there," she'd said.

Jehanne stopped and peered cautiously down at the ground seventy feet below. The trees were blowing in the dark fall wind. Brown leaves scuttled across the dead grass as if in search of cover.

The guard had told her that morning that the deal was finished; she had been sold to the English. Then later in the afternoon, she received worse news. The old flap-jowled servant who came to make her fire in the afternoon had said, "They're going to kill everyone in Compiègne, you know. Every man, woman, and child over the age of seven. Burgundy's ordered his men to kill them all if they don't surrender by Saturday." He shook his head, piled dry twigs atop the big logs. "Poor fools are all there waiting on you. They think their precious Maid's going to come rescue them somehow." He looked at Jehanne. Then yawned, revealing a horseshoe of brown teeth. "Fat chance of that," he said.

It was Compiègne that drove her up to the roof. The thought of all those people believing in her, waiting on her ... For them she had climbed up on the roof's edge. For them she had walked forward into the air ...

Not that I wanted to die,
she thinks now.
It was never that I wanted to die.

A long fall, yes. Sixty or seventy feet, she'd heard the doctor say later. After the guards had carried her inside. "A bloody miracle she survived." But she'd meant only to put herself in God's hands. She prayed that He would let her live and return to fight in Compiègne, if that was His will.

She'd believed He would save her. He had saved her so many times in the past. She could not believe that He would want her to stand by while thousands of innocent men and women and children were murdered. He had told her to save France, told her it was her holy mission. How could she not try to go to them, those people who had put their faith in her? How could she turn away from them in their hour of need?

I understand nothing,
she thinks.
Nothing makes sense.

The saints tried to warn her. After being silent for so long, they returned very suddenly, all three of them shouting at her on the rooftop that afternoon.
You must not!
Margaret said, her eyes blazing.
It is the gravest of sins to take your own life.

I ignored them. I could not believe that He would have me stand by while all those people were killed. I kept seeing their faces—the little girl Catherine I'd met the morning before I was captured with the auburn hair and the knobby knees. How could He want me to stand by while she was killed, her throat cut or worse? If some wicked soldier got hold of her, she could go the way my sister did ... they'd find only her small boot later in the woods, down by the riverbank. No, He would never want that.

Abruptly she stopped walking. She looked down from atop the great dark tower. The wind was blowing cold on her face. The sea of trees rustling wildly below. She crossed herself and stepped forward.
I fall into your hands, my love.

Two guards stood on the drawbridge in the cold pink light of sunset, passing a bottle of wine back and forth. One of them went to spit off the side of the bridge, and it was then that he saw the girl, crumpled like a broken doll on the dry floor of the moat. "Jesus," he said. "Robert, come here."

Two guards run very quickly over the bridge through the fall dusk. Over the stone bridge they go, across the lawn to the edge of the moat. "Get a ladder," says one.

"She can't be alive," says the other man, peering down.

"I said get a ladder."

Down at the bottom of the moat, the first guard crouched over the motionless figure, cracked mud branching out like a web around her. He touched Jehanne's throat, his face white as flour. "She's got a pulse," he said. He lifted the unconscious girl and carried her into the castle in the gathering twilight. Wondering as he walked about the creature in his arms—the little brown-skinned peasant who seemed to exist outside the rules of this world. "Tough little thing," he said as he laid her in a bed near the Demoiselle's chambers. "Wish I was that tough," said the other.

For three days she neither ate nor drank, simply lay still, watching the awestruck circus around her. The women with their great hats and bright, astonished eyes, offering her broth, water, the doctor shaking his head, muttering, the guards defending themselves for letting her up on the roof alone. "You said it was all right," said one.

"You should have been with her," snapped the Demoiselle.

"How could we know? Who'd be crazy enough to jump seventy feet?"