Into The Fire (43 page)

He has some courage; in the last three strides, he brings his shield to the fore; gules and argent chequy, no other signs. She aims her lance for the centre. Caught in a place where time has become syrupy, Tomas sees the fine adjustments that bring her tip true, sees the tension of the brace, the breath that will hold through the impact.

His own breathing stops. His horse gathers itself. It, too, is coming new to this, but learning fast. Together, they ride through the contact and do not wince or veer away.

The Maid’s lance is built for war. It does not shatter; rather, her enemy soars back over the nearside quarters of his horse.

D’Arras is not fully armoured: a breastplate, greaves, a helm, gloves; no great weight. He can rise, and does, but this is the Maid, and she is mounted on Xenophon. She is not going to ride past him and engage someone else.

She slews her horse to a halt, throws its weight back, lifts its forehand, turns it on its quarters, and as it comes round to face him she has already hurled her lance to her squire and drawn her blade, the new one, got for her by Yolande. This one will not break.

She bears an axe in her off hand; no shield. Her enemy knows, then, that he is done. He flings his own shield away, brings his sword to the guard, but he is slow and war sings through her veins.

Her blade cracks his away, and stops right on the brink of his throat. The skin parts, releasing a thin thread of blood.

‘Yield.’ A clear, crisp word, singing out across the field.

‘You are the Maid?’

Of course she is the Maid. Who else rides with cloth of gold surcoat on her breastplate and Fleur de Lys on her shield? The king could do so, but is it likely that the king might ride against an armed knight?

She says only, ‘Yes.’ And takes her blade back a hand’s breadth, enough to kill him if she makes the stroke.

‘I yield.’ He raises his blade, balanced across his hands. ‘To you. Only you.’

Thus is Franquet d’Arras taken; the bandit who has been terrorizing the surrounding area for months now. He is not a big man, and while he has not made himself wealthy on war, his sword is the best on the field. She takes it from him, feels the balance, tries it in the sheath at her side, and chooses it over the one she has been using.

It feels like an omen. The king made her a knight, but by her own actions she is giving her men plunder and honour. From this skirmish alone, they will raise ransom and horses, arms and armour the worth of half a thousand livres tournois.

The Maid could ransom d’Arras. He would like that; it is said he came here only to match against the Maid on the field, and having done it, he can pay his ransom and go on his way.

She has other ideas. She turns to Louis de Coutes. Her page has grown in the almost-year he has served her, and not only with the death of his brother. He is a young man, now, not a boy.

‘Send to the Duke of Burgundy. Tell him that I will exchange Franquet d’Arras for Jacquet Guillaume, who led the revolt in Paris over winter.’

There were those in Paris who did not want the Maid to give up her assault on their city. They banded together and attempted a revolt from within, but one of their number was captured and gave up their names to Bedford’s torturers. The uprising was crushed before it could begin, its leader arrested. The Maid, not unreasonably, considers herself responsible for his welfare.

The page goes at her word. The Maid’s company waits in Lagny-sur-Marne, eating, drinking, swapping stories. The Maid prays that Burgundy will treat her page as a herald, and not as a traitor. She looks always to the sky, awaiting the word of her father, which does not come.

On the third day, de Coutes returns, lean and cautious, while the Maid is in conversation with the magistrates of Lagny. The town, now that the king has gone south again, has offered board and keep for all four hundred of her men. The page bows to the Maid, hand on his heart. He is a good, godly boy. Youth. Young man.

‘My lady, the duke sends me to tell you that Jacquet Guillaume died a traitor’s death in Paris.’

He swallows. His eyes flick left and right. They alight on Tomas. What can I say? He nods. Tell the truth. Tell what you are told to say.

The boy takes a breath. He
is
a good, godly boy. ‘I am to tell you that the same awaits you when you are taken.’

She carries d’Arras’s blade at her hip. For a moment, it seems as if she might seek him out in his boarded room and drive it into him, for rage, not for the threat against her, but the death of Jacquet Guillaume.

Tomas lays a hand on her arm. ‘Lady, there are others for whom he may be exchanged. We must but ask the men of Paris who else still lives that we may—’

‘No. My lady, if it please you, we should have him; the men of Lagny-sur-Marne.’ The chief magistrate of Lagny steps forward. He is a sturdy, black-haired father of six, strong in his affection for the king, stronger in his hatred of Burgundy. ‘This man, d’Arras, is a traitor to France. Before you came, he committed many acts against us. He murdered our sons, raped our daughters, left our wives as widows and children as orphans. He stole our horses, our arms, our provender. Lady, if you love us, you will give him to us, to show that the king’s justice rules in Lagny as much as it does in Tours or Chinon.’

What can she do but let them have him?

A court is summoned. Franquet d’Arras is brought in. Without his armour, he looks like a petty thief, caught stealing bread of a morning. He would beg, but he has his pride. And in any case, he can tell that there is no point.

The people of Lagny try him of their own volition, and in their own way they find him guilty of treason, theft and murder. The Maid plays no part, not in the sentence, nor when they hang him at dawn the next morning.

They leave Lagny and head north, towards Compiègne. The King of France has ordered the citizens of that town to surrender to their enemy, to Bedford or his vassal, ‘our cousin of Burgundy’.

With polite – so very polite – regret, Compiègne has declined. Its citizens wish to remain French. That is, they wish to remain subjects of the king so recently anointed in the eyes of God at Rheims cathedral, should it please him.

It does not please him. You will surrender to Burgundy. It is our wish. The king names them all traitors for defying him. The massed armies of Burgundy grow by the day and the townsfolk are stocking up on powder and shot. This is the next Orléans, and if the Maid wants to win fortune and favour for her mercenary troop, if the Maid wishes to crush Bedford and make France wholly French, then Compiègne is the place to be.

AT THE STAKEOUT
in the northern ghetto, neither Garonne nor Rollo has any idea that Cheb Yasine left their care earlier in the morning. Both are suitably chastened by the news that he has been to visit Picaut and returned under their noses, but their being chastened doesn’t plug the gap in their surveillance.

Picaut calls in Sylvie and the team begins to set up ways they can watch more closely.

‘Things may be bad, but if he starts wreaking vengeance on Christelle Vivier, the past few weeks will look like a holiday. Do I make myself clear? I want to know when he picks his nose, when he kisses his kids, when he writes his emails. And I want to know what he’s telling his people.’

Rollo says, ‘If Patrice taps their emails, we could—’

This is dangerous: even the sound of his name makes her guts roil. ‘Patrice is working on the unsolved ciphers. He’ll be back on stream tomorrow. Today, we use old-fashioned policing.’

Picaut takes Sylvie with her to visit the priest. She feels the heat of Garonne’s gaze on her back as she leaves.

The drive west proves, as nothing else has done, that the press really are leaving her alone. In Cléry Picaut parks outside the basilica’s northern entrance, leaving Sylvie in the car.

‘Watch the priest’s house. Let me know who comes in, who goes out.’

‘Are you going to be safe on your own?’

‘Cinq-Mars is dying of throat cancer. He can barely stand up. If I can’t handle him, it’s time to find a new job.’

Inside, the basilica Notre Dame at Cléry-Saint-André is deserted, as it has been on every visit she has made.

She has the phone number the priest wrote on his card the day before. On the third ring, he answers.

‘Cinq-Mars.’ The last shreds of life have left his voice. If a ghost could speak, this is how it would sound. Picaut takes a breath, makes herself look around at the grey stone, the hideous marble tomb just inside the entrance.

To the listening hush, she says, ‘Prosecutor Ducat sends his best regards. Shall I come to your house to arrest you? Or would you rather meet me at the basilica where you can start telling me the truth?’

He stalls just long enough for her to think she’s lost him, then says, ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

She waits.

Sylvie sends a text.

P
RIEST ON HIS WAY
. H
E LIVES OPPOSITE
. C
AN’T SEE ANYONE ELSE
.

Picaut lingers by the tomb that is a copy of a copy of the one Louis XI made for himself before he died.

Louis XI.

In English: 11. Picaut feels that singular sensation of pieces coming together, of a blurred image coming into focus. She is thinking more clearly this morning than she has done for months. She doesn’t have a whole picture, but she has at least a forward step, which is better than nothing. It’s gloriously, magnificently better than nothing and she wants to share it. She thumbs open her phone and writes a text to Patrice.

lii = L
OUIS
XI?

‘Can I help you, capitaine?’ The priest’s footsteps sound like feather-fall. He comes up behind her, slim as his own shadow; a knife-edge of a man, with translucent skin to match his voice. His eyes have sunk into his head and his hair looks as if it is falling out with every step he takes.

He is carrying something in both hands and for a brief, charged moment she thinks it’s a gun, but he moves into the light and it becomes a flask, from which foul-scented steam rises.

He smiles crookedly. ‘Chinese herbs have to be taken to a particularly rigid timetable. And yes, before you ask, they taste every bit as bad as they smell.’

‘I thought your God disapproved of anything unFrench and un-Christian?’

‘Not according to our new pope. Now, we recognize that what God makes He cannot despise.’

‘But you’re not in any hurry to meet Him in person, your God?’

‘He will call me when He needs me. Until then, I have a duty to remain where I can do His work. Why are you smiling?’

‘I was wishing my father were still alive. He’d have enjoyed you.’

‘Do I take it we won’t meet in the hereafter?’

‘At least one of you will be wildly disappointed if you do.’

He does his best to show amusement. ‘My life is doubtless the lesser for having missed him. And perhaps what comes next will surprise us all. I spend rather more time considering the possibilities of this than I may have done in my youth.’

‘And do you spend time considering how obstructing the police makes the world a better place?’

‘Capitaine Picaut, I have not lied to you.’

‘You haven’t told me the whole truth.’

‘I have told you the two things you need to know: I did not kill Iain Holloway. I don’t know who did.’

‘But you do know why. You know that what he found cost him his life?’

She waits. He looks down, looks away, looks back at her. ‘This is possible, yes.’

‘Something he found here, in your basilica. Something to do with Louis XI?’

‘Yes.’

She waits. He waits. At length, ‘You are going to have to tell me what it was.’

Father Cinq-Mars studies the floor a moment, sweeps it cleaner with his foot. ‘You are aware, I imagine, of the Nuremberg defence?’

Picaut leans back against the wall, arms folded. ‘I’m surprised that a priest wants to draw parallels between his Church and Nazi Germany.’

‘Which, of course, I do not. And yet, however unseemly, there is one notable similarity: I am under orders and they constrain what I can tell you.’

‘No.’ Picaut moves to stand directly in front of him. ‘They don’t. The Church does not have authority over civil law, as any number of recent child abuse cases in any number of countries should have taught you. You can tell me here, or you can tell me in custody, but you
will
tell me. Unless you’d rather I went directly to the bishop? Assuming he’s the one giving the orders?’

‘Unfortunately,’ his cavernous eyes give the lie to the word, ‘you can’t.’

‘I think you’ll find there is very little I cannot—’

‘The bishop has just been made a cardinal. He is at the consistory in Rome. He was summoned last week by the holy father and he left twenty-four hours before Iain Holloway met his demise. Unless you wish to issue a summons to the pope, you will have to make do with me until the end of this week.’

Which is exceptionally convenient, except that even Picaut, atheist and daughter of an atheist, does not believe the Church would make a man a cardinal simply to get him out of France.

‘So then …’

He studies the floor again and when he looks up he is older, in greater pain, infinitely more weary. ‘Capitaine Picaut, I am a man for whom each moment is precious. What can I do that will persuade you to leave me in peace?’

‘You can tell me – in detail, missing nothing – why Iain Holloway came here and why he left in such a hurry. You can tell me what he found that led to his death, because whoever cared enough to kill him is very likely also lighting the fires that are destroying Orléans, and I would like to find out who it is before anyone else is burned to death.’

He ponders a moment, as if asking the questions of his god, and then gestures to the pews. She wants to know what answers he heard, but all he says is, ‘Shall we sit?’

‘You may. I prefer to stand. It’s easier to move fast if I have to.’

He eases himself down on aching joints. When he looks up at her, a small smile lights his face. ‘Do you enjoy living in this state of heightened awareness?’