Into The Fire (28 page)

She shows the traverse, left to right and right to left, the perfect bend to the heel. She shows a passage, though only a little, because it is hot and he has carried her in full armour all through the day and it is hard for the horse to trot on the spot.

She shows a pesade, forelegs slowly raised on a perfect angle, because she can. At the end, she shows the strike to the rear that so discomfited the herald at Jargeau. They have heard of this, the English; he told them. Tomas feels the ripple of anxiety pass through the lines. Somewhere far back, a man raises an ironic cheer and is swiftly hushed.

D’Alençon can’t let her do this alone. He presses forward, and then La Hire, and together, all three, they shout challenges to the English knights to come out and ride against them, hand to hand, to show who is best.

This is not a new thing. In other wars, in long campaigns, even in sieges, the knights of one side often ride out to offer challenges one to the other. They fight and feast and then retire behind their lines for the duration of hostilities. In truth, the knights on opposing sides are closer to each other than they are to their own peasants and villeins.

Surely, then, this is the time when Bedford will come out. If he were to kill this woman, one on one, it would change the whole nature of the field. The English might be outnumbered, but they were outnumbered at Agincourt, at Verneuil.

Come
on
! Tomas stands in the dirt and watches three French knights put on a display of riding worthy of the great masters and all the time he wills Bedford, his master, his lord – the man whom, in a world of disrespect and cant, of broken loyalties and treason, he holds in highest regard – to step out and match the challenge.

He does not.

Not Bedford. Not Warwick. Not Gough. Not Percy. Not one English knight has blood red enough, hot enough, sure enough to ride against this Maid. It’s as pitiful a display of cowardice as has been seen on the soil of France since their annihilation at Crécy, and that’s saying something.

In the late afternoon, with the sun sliding for shame behind the horizon, the Maid and her train ride back, disgusted. In the dark, like the craven he is, Bedford marches his men away.

If the French were to follow him now, they could turn them at bay, at the very least, and have the battle they want. To assault a retreating army is almost always a victory. And if England loses Bedford they lose France; everyone knows this.

But the king is afraid. There is no other way to look at it. Charles VII, by grace of God King of France, most badly does not wish to fight. And so he will not let anyone else fight. Harsh words are exchanged between the Maid and her king, in the unprivacy of his tent, but Regnault de Chartres is in there making sure he will not change his mind.

Thus Bedford escapes.

Bedford, who is also afraid.

Afterwards, Tomas stands for a while by the horse lines, weighing his next action. In the current chaos of the French camp, it would be easy to sneak away, to follow the English army, to catch up with the lord who leads it and ask him why he chose not to fight.

He bridles his horse, but does not slide the saddle on its back. What would he say? I saw the fear in your eyes and I despise you?

He wants this not to be the truth, but he was there. He
knows
it wasn’t just the men at arms who were afraid of her, with their superstitions and their herd panic, but also the knights, the great men of England: Bedford, Warwick … Everyone.

And so in the evening, when he stands at the camp fire and calls God’s scorn on the English in the company of Frenchmen, he does not silently apologize within.

He prays with the Maid at sundown and then, at her invitation, joins her in her tent for a meal. They are five in addition to the Maid: d’Alençon and La Hire, as ever, plus de Belleville and his priest Father Huguet, are made welcome. And, newly among them, Brother Tomas, the Augustinian friar.

She is different with them, less victorious, less cheerful. In fact, Tomas sees anger for the first time in the sharp, clipped measure of her step as she paces the length of her tent, in the terse restraint of her language. She will not curse the king, but by heaven she wants to.

Their conversation boils down to this: the army is dwindling. The king in heaven tells her to take Paris. She counts on these men present to help her so to do and they willingly promise their aid. Brother Tomas gives his oath with all the rest.

THEY MOVE BACK
to the village of la Chapelle Saint-Denis to the north of Paris and plan for action. And throw the plans away because the army is smaller now. And plan again.

Brother Tomas is party to all the planning. He has proved himself useful and continues so to do, offering suggestions that make sense.

‘If you’re going for a gate, go first for Saint Honoré to the west. It’s the least defensible, though I have heard that Bedford has bought in Genoese crossbowmen to bolster the courage of those inside.’

‘Have you, Tomas?’ La Hire looks at him, narrow-eyed. ‘You hear a lot.’

‘I’m a priest.’

‘You wouldn’t break the confidence of the confessional?’

‘Never!’

He is sweating when he leaves, but d’Alençon lays an arm across his shoulder. ‘Don’t mind him, he’s on edge for lack of fighting. He hasn’t seen action since Patay.’

‘None of us has.’ Everywhere has surrendered, even Soissons. Compiègne threw open its gates before the Maid ever reached them, and the people celebrated in the streets. Bedford ran rather than fight. Only Paris is holding out.

D’Alençon says, ‘We’ll be well when the king gives permission for the attack on Paris.’

‘Will he?’

‘He must. We can’t bring up an army and then just stand here and do nothing …’

But the king has Regnault de Chartres whispering in his ears, telling him how close is a treaty with Philip of Burgundy, and now wants this more than anything. Burgundy is his cousin. He wants France whole and his family whole and he has been given to understand that God will not love him if he does not achieve this.

The men are restless. D’Alençon has been back to Compiègne once to beg for permission to attack, and has been rebuffed. D’Alençon, it seems to Tomas, is close to mutiny, and d’Alençon has a reasonable claim to the throne, being a distant cousin of the king’s and married to the king’s uncle’s only living child. Bedford would smile to hear of possible mutiny in the French ranks, but Bedford is in Calais, calling in more troops from England.

Tomas walks through the village, past lines of tents and fires, listening to the murmurs of discontent. He knows the sound of an unhappy army, and this is it. Each day, men slip away back to the harvest and the comfort of their wives. Another month and there will be no army at all. Delay and delay. That’s all it will take to destroy her; a constant stream of delays.

He was offered lodgings in the village inn, but, like the Maid, he has refused, and camps with the rest in a tent. Through the evening, they listen to the golden notes of young Raoul de Coutes, younger brother to the Maid’s page. He has begged to join the greatest army in Christendom, and how could anyone deny him when his brother has served her half a year?

He is a songbird, so they discover, pouring out clean, high notes in praise of God and France. The Maid gives him gold, and promises to let him hold her standard when the fighting starts.

They sleep soundly, and wake, and still the king has not given permission. The day promises to be a long one.

Tomas is standing at his own fire gnawing at a hunk of hard cheese, when a small man with a lazy left eye shuffles past and offers the observation that the Brother’s horse is lame in the near hind and did he want it seen to?

Really? If this is the best Bedford has got, Paris is in trouble. ‘Give me a moment and I’ll come and see. She was sound enough yesterday.’

He flexes his left arm back and forth. His elbow pains him hardly at all during the day, and is held now by a loose cord that loops about his neck, not pinioned to his torso. He strips off the cord and tests it. Usable. He has a knife strapped to his forearm. He tests the draw and finds it smooth. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Bedford but … all right, he doesn’t trust Bedford. Nobody in his right mind trusts Bedford and Tomas has been out of touch for over a month; there’s no telling whether he’ll be deemed to have outlived his usefulness.

He walks easily down to the tethering yards and finds a big, bluff man, with eyes that at least look in the same direction, pretending to examine the wall-eyed chestnut mare that is his current mount. The boss-eyed messenger leans on an oak stump, cleaning beneath his fingernails with his knife, whistling, the very picture of un-innocence.

The bluff man says, ‘Bedford wants to know what you plan. It’s been over two months since you said you had a way to get rid of the Maid.’

‘If he’d taken the field at Montépilloy, all this would be over by now.’

‘You want me to tell him that?’

‘If you like.’

The man spits. The mare lashes out. She’s been even-tempered up until now and Tomas wants to keep her that way. He catches the bluff man’s fist as it swings back, clenched. ‘I’ll thank you not to hit my horse.’

They straighten together; two men of a height, eye to eye, chin to chin, fist to fist. He slides his hands into his sleeves and takes a step back, making space.

‘Your plan?’

The knife hilt fits to his palm. The handle is cherry wood. He rubs his thumb on it, loosely. He has a plan. Of course he does. ‘Go to Regnault de Chartres and tell him this …’

He gives it in short, easy sentences that cannot be confused, and has them both repeat it back to him. When they can do it verbatim, he lets them stop.

‘Then find Bedford, and tell him that he needs to get King Henry’s squalling son to Rheims, or he won’t be acknowledged as king by the French.’

‘Rheims is in French hands.’

‘Then he’ll have to take it back, won’t he? Because the French have remembered where their kings are made in the eyes of God. And it’s not Paris. If you’ll excuse me?’

‘
BRACE IT THERE.
There
, damn you!’

‘You shouldn’t swear.’

‘Oh, for— Right. Thank you. Just fix the brace there before the whole thing comes down on our heads.’

This is nearly the last brace. Tomas has been building this bridge since noon and now it is midnight. The harvest moon, a week off full, stands high overhead, spilling pale gold almost-daylight on to the river, the land around, and the bridge he is building. He stands in the river, his habit hitched high. His balls have drawn up halfway to his navel and still the water laps at them. He is happy.

‘One more and we are finished. Put it here, between the bank and the first upright.’

Three men act on his order. The sound of hammers on nails is loud enough to wake all the men of Paris, sleeping in their fastness a quarter of a mile away, behind the thickest walls in Christendom. At least now he can curse without being hushed by Maurice and the other carpenters. He does so, leaning back against the baked mud of the river bank.

‘Brother Tomas?’ The Maid is on foot, not on her devil-horse. She appears on the heights of the bank, looking down. ‘How much longer?’

‘We are finished, lady.’ He has had steps cut in the bank, and ascends them now, pulling his habit out of his belt as he goes. The moon spins his shadow ahead of him. His bridge casts black lace on to the milk-moon water, a ripple of possibility. A direct hit from a gun the size of the Rifflard might destroy it, or a keg of raw gunpowder strategically placed. Two kegs, actually, one at either end, would break its back, and Tomas knows exactly where he would put them.

Failing that, it will hold against anything the armies of either side can throw at it, and while it stands it gives d’Alençon a chance to flank round and assault the Porte Saint-Denis while the Maid is setting all she has at the Porte Saint-Honoré. All they need now is the king’s assent.

‘My lady …’

The Maid has her back to him, looking away. If he still wanted to kill her, it couldn’t be easier; her men are spread out around in a ring, facing out. He says, ‘Would you try your bridge?’

‘In time.’ He expects her to turn, smile, walk across his planed planks, offer a compliment or two. She stares away from him, into the night. ‘La Hire will escort the men back to la Chapelle. You may go with them if you wish.’

Which means, obviously, that he may choose to remain. ‘You will stay here, lady?’

He feels her smile more than he sees it; she is still turned from him. ‘Do you think the Parisians know that we’re here?’

‘I’m sure they do.’

‘So, what would you do, were you them?’

‘Well …’ If he were behind the walls, knowing that Paris had never been taken by direct assault but always fallen to treachery from the inside, he might spend his time and his money rooting out any possible dissent, sew the odd churchman in a sack and throw him in the Seine, behead a few butchers, flay a few flayers, hang a few stewards from the gateposts of the various lordly hotels.

He’d build up the fortifications and bring in powder and mercenaries and make sure the latter were well paid, all of which Bedford has done, and as far as he knows there is nothing else planned.

On the other hand, given the basic principle that one does not wish one’s enemies to gain any kind of victory, and the men inside, the Frenchmen into whose hands the safety of Paris has been entrusted, might not know what is or is not planned …

The Maid is watching him.

He says, ‘I would have destroyed the bridge before it was complete.’

‘Or?’

‘Or I’d wait until it is finished, and then blow it to pieces.’ He speaks the thought as it takes shape in his mind. ‘That would be the better boost to the morale of the defenders, and inflict the greater damage to those who would attack my city.’