Into The Fire (39 page)

La Charité was fortified by the old king. It is not Paris, but it is not so very different. It is hard to find time alone with her. Tomas has to wait until after Mass, when he hears her confession. I had ill thoughts about d’Albret. I feared we may not take la Charité. I do not have faith.

As if they had always discussed such things, he asks, ‘What says the king in heaven?’

She shrugs. We have to take it.

He wants to ask, did the dead king tell you that? And if he did, can he explain how he proposes we might do it, now that we are without powder, shot, quarrels, arrows? Without food and henbane and poppy; without leather for boots and wood for the fires, how can we?

‘Tomas, I will not have it said that we lost for lack of courage. Write this to the people of Riom:

Dear and good friends,

You well know how the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier was taken by assault, and with God’s help I intend to clear out the other places which are against the king. But because so much gunpowder, shot, and other materials of war had been used up before this town, and because myself and the lords who are at this town are so poorly provisioned for laying siege to la Charité, where we will be going shortly, I pray you, with whatever love you have for the welfare and honour of the king and also all the others here, that you will immediately send for use in the siege gunpowder, saltpetre, sulphur, shot, crossbows and other provender of war. And do well enough in this matter that the day will not be prolonged for lack of gunpowder and other war materials, and that no one can say you were negligent or unwilling. Dear and good friends, may Our Lord protect you.

Written at Moulins the ninth day of December. Jehanne

D’Albret has grown weary of this: no glory, no riches, no honour. He is discovering what Tomas already knew, that war in winter is a ghastly, cold, mud-slick affair. All the little lords and petty earls have ridden away to their warm, dry chateaux. They have not sent more food to the army they have abandoned, nor medicines, nor powder, shot, or horses. Thus is the king’s destruction of the upstart Maid complete. Bedford might have a hand in this, but truthfully, he doesn’t need to any more. The Valois boy has seen his competition, and he will not let her prosper.

The people of the Loire hold faith; they send the Maid what they can, but they have little to spare and it is not enough. The army moves on to la Charité.

‘May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life.’

The tent is a sweep of stitched hides set on rotting poles that barely offers a roof and three walls. Sleet rolls over in freezing shoals, breaks on the men beyond, the horses, the cannon stuck in the slurry that was once a pasture. Cold, wet, starving, each is pushed as close to death as the living may reach and yet step back from it.

Inside, cold, wet, starving, are those who cannot step back. Here, Tomas murmurs the viaticum, dabs holy oil on the dying palms, temples, breast. He lays the wafer in a just-living mouth and holds his crucifix forward, where the dying man can see it without turning his head.

The dying man is called Alexandre. He holds the Maid’s hand. His eyes are fixed on her face, and when he has confessed his last few sins to Tomas – I wanted to kill the English, Father, but I nursed a greater hatred in my heart for those who had sent us here; I wanted to throw the king from the throne and set on it someone who would rule in fairness and not at the whim of men who know nothing of war – when he has said all this, his red-shot eyes reach for hers and he searches for words.

‘Tell me of the king in heaven. Will I be with him this night?’

The king in heaven? Do they all know? Tomas feels his stomach plunge and sickness tumble into the ache it leaves behind.

The Maid must not weep. She must not rage or she will let loose the horror of this place, the desolation and despair. Tomas has nothing else to give but this, his presence. He steps forward, his shoulder solid against hers.

She grasps Alexandre’s hand: a bundle of kindling; stick-brittle fingers and no warmth. She holds his gaze. Words flow, and who knows what the cost? ‘The king sits in the golden light of heaven. He sees all. He knows all. He cares for each of us equally. And he loves France above all. He loves France. He
does
love France—’

‘My lady, it is over. Come away.’

Tomas himself is not the man he was, hale, hearty, broad of shoulder and girth. He comes to her stoop-shouldered. The bones of his face make caves of his cheeks and his skin flaps loose over the shadows. He turns away from the vision of himself in her plate.

‘Who?’ she asks. ‘Who’s next?’

‘Guillard.’

Guillard fell and broke his wrist three days before. The bones showed white through his skin; the only white they had seen in over a month. They were brown, soon, with filth, and then crawling green.

She turns, frowning. He watches her struggle to remember which Guillard, where he comes from, what he has done that she can talk about, can praise, so that he goes to his Maker with her approval in his heart. She turns and turns and cannot see him, and—

‘My lady …’ Tomas’s hands bring her to a stop. ‘It’s too late. He’s gone. And the next one also.’ He pulls her to face him. ‘Listen to me. We cannot stay here. Not unless you want to condemn three hundred more souls to the same death as these. It’s my fault. We should never have trusted the king to send provision. I didn’t see this. I am sorry. But apology won’t break the walls, and it won’t keep your men alive.’

She closes her eyes. He sees her reach for help, and the desperation of receiving no answer.

Why does the dead king not come to her now? Is there some barrier that arose after the failure at Paris that keeps them apart? He brought her this far, whispering ghostly encouragement, and now he has abandoned her. If one could assault a dead man, he, Tomas, would seek him out in heaven or in hell and wring his scrawny, half-mad neck.

The Maid opens her eyes. Tomas stands like a fallen rock. Sleet shatters on his shoulders.

He meets her gaze. ‘If we leave, they will say the Maid has failed,’ he says. ‘This is why they have done this; to break you, to prove you are not sent by God because God would not let you fail. Your army knows this. Every man here will die in the mud for you if you ask them to. But I think their deaths will not prove that you are right and the king is wrong.’

He and the Maid look together beyond the lee of the tent. The men, standing in stricken rows, all avert their eyes. It is a month since they had full bellies, longer since they had a drink. They tried to sack Saint-Pierre and she wouldn’t let them; she thought God wanted French men and women to be left; she thought her father wanted it, that he would speak to her if she kept them off.

And the men listened, because they believed in her, believed that if she wanted it God must want it, and they must forgo the women, the gold, the velvets, the horses, the arms, the armour, all the comforts and riches of war.

Now they all look the other way, giving her a pretence of privacy in the heart of this stinking field. She looks to the sky, whence came her glory once. Tomas looks with her and sees only black clouds, and more sleet.

‘We’re going home.’ She says it first, as if to test the feel of it, then shouts it loud enough to reach the walls. ‘We’re going home! Leave the cannon. Leave anything you do not need. Only take care of the horses.’

At her side, Tomas gives an infant cry and catches her hand. ‘They shall not take you. We shall not allow it.’

He is wrong, of course. Regnault de Chartres no doubt plans to let Bedford have her. But those who care for her will not make it easy for him and Tomas is foremost amongst them.

The Maid is the saviour of Jargeau, the one who rescued it from English rule. The people welcome her into their town at Christ’s mass as if she were the risen Child Himself. She and her men at arms are given rooms and clean linens and mattresses of duck down and hot food. There is tar for Xenophon’s foot that has thrush-rot, and hot linseed boiled in a mash to put the condition back in his coat and flesh on his back. They offer her a chapel, bring her to Mass.

She is the destroyer of Jargeau. She led the siege, sent guns against their walls. She did not hold back the army as she did at Saint-Pierre. There is not a family that was not touched by the pillage that came after their surrender.

Their well-wishes hang sour on their lips and their eyes slide sideways when she and Tomas talk of war and England and the truces the king still hopes to make with his cousin of Burgundy. They fear that, like the cities around Paris, the towns of the Loire, too, will be given back to English rule, and English punishment will fall on them anew for daring to open their gates to France, for all that they did it under duress. Far worse for those towns who opened willingly; they tremble now at every letter that passes between the king and his cousin.

The Maid has a letter of her own, written by the Comte de Bourbon, who in turn writes on the orders of the king. Tomas reads it out, in the quiet of their lodgings, over a potage of rabbit and beans. She is still thin. They all are.

‘“Desirous of giving thanks for the diverse and signal benefits of divine greatness that have been brought to us by the actions of the Maid, Jeanne d’Ay, we hereby grant and donate from this day forth …”

‘He makes you a knight, lady.’

She is a knight. Her issue will be knights be they male or female. If she marries. If she has children. He cannot imagine it. Nor, he thinks, can the king. But her father, her brothers, their issue, shall all count themselves amongst the nobility of France and bear the lily on their arms. Her promise from the summer is made true. He remembers the oaf, Jacques of Domrémy, in a hovel, and the scorn in the Maid’s voice.

‘He makes me a knight. I should be grateful of this great honour, but I have been a knight since Jean d’Alençon gave me a horse and the king paid for my armour. I have been a knight since I rode down the English coming out of the bastille des Augustins outside Orléans. I have been a knight since Jargeau fell, and Meung, and all the towns to Troyes. I am a knight, whatever the king might say, but I have no income of my own, no gold I may give in largesse. I am dependent on a man who finds it amusing to give my keeping over to la Trémoïlle.’

They lodge with la Trémoïlle’s wife’s brother. The people nearby are kind. They bring her their rosaries to bless and will not have it that they could as easily bless them as she could. These notwithstanding, she is, in effect, under house arrest.

Tomas sees her through Christ’s Mass and into the New Year 1430. On the fifth day of January, he saddles his chestnut mare and rides along foul winter tracks for Chinon, where is Yolande of Aragon.

He has one last idea, and does not know if it can be made to work. It will require Pietro di Carignano to remain true to his word, which may be asking too much, but he intends to try.

‘
YOU HAVE TWO
choices: you tell us the truth, or we charge you with everything up to and including the murder of Dr Iain Holloway.’

Picaut is good at this.

The cells are in the station’s basement: chill, damp and unappealing. Monique Susong is visibly relieved to have been brought upstairs to the interview room, but her reprieve is short-lived. There are no windows here and the walls are painted a cloudy grey with exposed water pipes highlighted in the dull red of opened veins.

Garonne has the digital recorder set in a neat line with his iPad and he’s taking notes with the enthusiasm of a new recruit.

Picaut leans across the table. ‘Who are you?’

Brown eyes meet hers, flatly. ‘I want a lawyer. I have that right.’

‘Only if we charge you. If you’re helping us with our investigation, you don’t need one. Of course, if you push, we’ll make this more formal. And to do that, we’ll need your name. Your real name. No—’ Picaut pushes forward a single perfect portrait, laser-printed from the web. ‘
This
is Monique Susong, who works as assistant to the fashion editor of
Vogue Paris
…’

She waits.

‘Yonita Markos.’

‘Yonita?’ Picaut feels her world grow sharper. She glances to her right, to the camera feeding a screen watched by Patrice, Rollo, Sylvie and Ducat. She slides the iPad across the table. ‘Can you write that for us?’

The woman’s typing is fluent. The first letter is enough.

Jonita Markos
.

Picaut holds the Pad up to the lens. ‘So we can stop looking for a Jonathan who works at Cornell.’ Turning back, she says, ‘Who is Monique Susong?’

‘My sister. I can pass for her if you’re not looking too closely.’

‘Does she know you’re using her identity?’

‘No, that was Iain’s idea. He thought it might keep me safe.’

‘Has it?’

‘I’m still breathing.’

‘That is not always the best index of safety. Or the only one.’

‘No.’ Jonita Markos looks down at her perfect magenta nails and up again. ‘What do you need to know?’

Picaut leans back, letting Garonne catch her eye.

‘Start at the beginning,’ she says. ‘Tell us how you know Dr Iain Holloway, and why you came to France last week to meet him.’

Thus do they learn that the woman who is not Monique Susong is a molecular engineer, a fellow of Cornell University in New York State, who specializes in the extraction of DNA from old or corrupted samples.

She met Iain Holloway in Bosnia when they worked together on the identification of bodies from mass graves and their shared interest blossomed into a relationship, conducted across the Atlantic. She speaks fluent French because her stepfather was a French national. Her father was Greek; she barely remembers him.

She came to France because Iain Holloway asked her to, but she only arrived on the Saturday afternoon and he had become unrecognizable by then. Between Thursday evening, when he first called, and the Saturday evening, when she landed in Paris and rang him from the airport, he had changed from a man caught up with the thrill of a new investigation to one in fear of his life.