Inside, the Franciscan found the girl sitting with Madame Rabateau. She had spindle and distaff and was working very fast with them. At first she wasn’t very warm. She’d seen too many theologians lately.
Franciscan: Queen Yolande sent me, Mademoiselle. I’m just back from Vaucouleurs.
Jehanne: What did you do in Vaucouleurs, Brother?
Franciscan: I talked to General de Baudricourt. I talked to your people.
He saw the spasm of pain in her face. The spasm of guilt.
Jehanne: Is the general giving up the town this Easter?
Franciscan: After the Duke of Burgundy had his argument with Bedford, he let Monsieur de Baudricourt keep Vaucouleurs. To spite the Goddams. And for a cash consideration.
Jehanne: Whose cash?
Franciscan: The general’s. He paid it himself. He took out a mortgage with Italian bankers. On property he owns at Bugeaumex.
Jehanne: But he began some special tax to cover himself?
Franciscan: No.
Jehanne: No.
Franciscan: He said tell her … meaning you … tell her I bought Vaucouleurs back out of my own pocket.
Her body glowed for his sentimental gesture.
Jehanne: Did you go to … to Domremy-à-Greux?
Franciscan: I met your father.
Jehanne: How is he?
Franciscan: He finds it hard to talk about you. Your mother talks more freely. Your father said you were always a good girl.
Jehanne: He never told me that.
Franciscan: He said he heard you were staying with relatives and were under the guidance of a good knight, a man called …
Jehanne: Bertrand.
Franciscan: That’s the name. Then he heard you’d started dressing as a man. He went to Vaucouleurs to talk to you but you’d left two days before.
Jehanne: He used to call me his favourite little cow.
Franciscan: He put me on to a lady of the locality. Madame Aubrit.
Jehanne: Dear God.
Franciscan: She asked me if you’d told us about Voices. If you’d told the king. I said yes. She said Dear God. Just like you.
Jehanne: Thank you for telling me all this, Brother. I like your style better than some of the others …
Franciscan: Some of them are questioning whether there can be virtue in someone who won’t do what their old man tells them. But there are precedents. Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem when he was twelve. That was some sort of disobedience …
Jehanne: Thank you for the kind words.
Yolande had Italian banking officials in her apartments all day, the eternal Monsieur Bernardo Massimo, the Poitou representatives of the Perruzzis of Florence. All the paperwork kept her rosy.
In Orleans, she told Jehanne, the English had occupied the slopes of St Loup, a suburb on the east of the city. Throughout March they built a bastion there of mounded mud and timber palisades. From it they could watch and command the road to Gien and the river upstream from Orleans. In Holy Week they finished a massive redoubt on the le Mans road to the west of the city. They named it London – nostalgically. They would be building others, Yolande told the girl. The reason for the bastions was that they didn’t really have enough men to surround Orleans and needed somewhere to run to if the Orleanais shook off their phobias and decided to assert themselves. So, anyhow, ran Yolande’s reading of events.
In April it became known that the Commissioners were writing their report for the king.
Yolande: Charles wanted to be here before this. But he’s had a stomach infection. Besides, he gets sudden enthusiasms and then goes all floppy for weeks. You mustn’t mind him, Jehanne.
Jehanne: Will they tell him to give me troops?
Yolande: Their style isn’t to give instructions. It’s more to say there’s no reason why he shouldn’t.
In the second week of April the Master of Requests came to Poitiers. He called Jehanne to an interview with Yolande at the queen’s apartment, and when Jehanne got there she found Regnault the Chancellor in the room.
Master of Requests: Mademoiselle Jehanne, you didn’t meet me. I was in Italy on business when you arrived at Chinon. The king wants me to tell you the findings of the Commission he appointed to investigate your nature and the validity of your requests. The Commissioners find that you should not be sent away since what you promise is so great, even if the promises are unfounded. The king should not be too hasty to accept you either. But he should continue to test you by two means – first by praying for a sign, secondly by continual enquiry into your life, morals, motives. Now since you’ve come to Chinon he’s applied both methods. The king has kept you close to his royal person for six weeks, for although he has not been all that time with you himself he has appointed the best brains to be with you and the Commission is a limb of his sacred person. In the time you’ve been observed you’ve shown no evil, you are direct, honest, simple, good, and a virgin. When asked for a sign you said the sign would be Orleans and that was that. Now since the king’s Commissioners haven’t found any evil in you and since we can only test your claims about Orleans by sending you there … Is anything the matter, Mademoiselle Jehanne?
There had been a massive and omniscient wink from large Queen Yolande. Like a trunk closing.
Master of Requests: Please listen … and since your answers have been consistent, the Commissioners say the king might be rejecting help in rejecting you, rejecting the best of help, rejecting the Spirit of God. That is the essence of what they find. Now Monsieur Regnault wants to warn you.
Monsieur Regnault looked better, the face pallid but firmer in texture. Perhaps the papal dispensation allowing him to eat breakfast had been granted.
Still he didn’t look at her. He could have been talking to Yolande.
Regnault: You have to be given a chance to beg off. You’ve said that there’s a divine guarantee working in you. First Orleans, then Rheims. If nothing happens we’ll know you’ve been lying on heaven’s behalf. The penalties are high …
She thought: I’m not going to put up with all this princely ignoring of me.
Jehanne: If I’m lying there’ll be none of the king’s men left to punish me. But I’m not lying.
For the first time his eyes came to hers. She could see that he understood perfectly what her track was: that she’d be sacrificed, hanged, piked by soldiers, burnt perhaps. Burnt dear God! He knew it was all going to happen: he made her certain about it, was even pained by its prospect. The muscles of her legs began jumping.
Regnault: You’ll have to wait and see if we’re doing you a service.
Yolande: Don’t discourage the girl.
But the chancellor’s eyes had withdrawn, he wouldn’t be giving her anything more.
Master of Requests: Mademoiselle Jehanne, the king requires you to travel with a supply column to Orleans. Entering the city won’t be easy because the English have earthworks and forts on all the approaches to the city from Blois and on both sides of the river …
She felt terrible power in her guts, her dead, her unassailable womb.
Master of Requests: You will of course be travelling with royal officers who know how this sort of operation is carried out.
She whispered.
Jehanne: Oh Brother Jesus.
Master of Requests: You will travel to Blois by way of Tours. There the Treasury has ordered armour for you and there you will speak with the king …
Jehanne: Armour?
She remembered the sense of entrapment it gave.
Yolande: You can’t campaign in shirt and stockings.
All at once there was a long silence. No one had, for the moment, the talent to break it. It seemed that everyone there, even the queen, Machet, the Chancellor, the Master of Requests, knew everything that was going to happen, had the scent of all her possibilities in their nostrils. The scent in particular of her royalty and death.
Riding to Mass next morning she saw a long column of horsemen moving down the rue St Etienne. Madame Rabatea
u plucked her sleeve as if to say they ought to move aside and let the group pass.
Jehanne: But why?
Nonetheless doing what Madame Rabateau said.
She saw Monsieur de Gaucourt leading the column. Machet sat beside him in a brilliant coat, ermine and cloth of gold. And then Alençon rode past her, looking sober as a lost brother returning in a dream. Behind him, wearing a cap of fur, and miserable with the morning cold, the king. Then lords and knights, archers, pikers, monks, stewards, a hundred people.
Jehanne: The King. The King’s been here?
Madame Rabateau: You have to understand, he isn’t a strong man … Queen Yolande tells me he’s simply afraid.
Jehanne: Afraid?
Madame Rabateau: Of what’s been started here. The mortgages. Committing the army.
Jehanne: He doesn’t have to be afraid. I’m the one …
Madame Rabateau: I know. I know.
There was a little room to ride after him on Alençon’s little gift-horse between the walls and the flanks of the column and under the unsafe balconies. Dauphin! She screamed over the chatter of knights, the noise of hooves. Dauphin! She galloped after him. He deserved to be flogged.
In her short gallop up the side of the convoy she understood she was immune from punishment. Anyone could have pulled her up with an arrow or a drawn sword. But she had the same amazing amnesty from all discipline as those mock kings had in old stories. Who were appointed by true kings to have one hectic season of royal authority before they were killed for the king’s health.
Jehanne: DAU-PHIN!
De Gaucourt had wheeled back from the head of the column.
Her horse ran in under the muzzle of his and rebounded off its shoulder. It was going to fall but there wasn’t room. Her own leg was crushed sideways against the wall of a shop-front and the horse got back its balance by dancing furiously on its hooves.
De Gaucourt: Jehanne, the king will see you when he wants to. In Tours.
She could see that Alençon too had turned back and was frowning over de Gaucourt’s shoulder. De Gaucourt seemed petulant that the king’s escape from Poitiers hadn’t evaded her. There was a childish exchange of insults between the girl and him.
De Gaucourt: He doesn’t talk to pig-girls who call him dauphin.
The king was already looking over his shoulder saying softly, wearily Let her through, let her through.
Jehanne: You came close to breaking off my leg at the knee. I hope you can manage the same trick with the Goddams.
De Gaucourt: Sow!
Jehanne: Cretin!
De Gaucourt: Bitch!
Jehanne: Bloody peasant!
Charles: Let her through, let her through.
The king’s nose glowed weirdly in the morning cold. Some cold blue royal stones sat on his fingers, outside his gloves.
Gaucourt let her by. Riding towards Charles she could feel the bruising of her leg. She looked up at the king on his big Belgian horse.
Jehanne: I’m your truest mother – not that whore who keeps pet monkeys and not even Yolande. I’m your mother in Brother Jesus and you need my blood. Why won’t you damn well talk to me?
Charles: Do I have to talk to you all the time?
Jehanne: Do you believe me, dauphin?
Charles: I don’t have to talk to you all day. Or is that the contract?
Poor Charles was trying to do the remote act with the eyes that Regnault and Fat Georges were so good at.
Jehanne was speaking quietly now, was a woman offended to her roots.
Jehanne: You saw me every day at Chinon.
Charles: I don’t have to be the same all the time. Then I was excited. I didn’t know how much trouble was involved.
Jehanne: I want to be with you. You’re my only love.
Charles: And I respect you, I respect you. Fair enough?
Jehanne: Then you should have told me you were here.
He actually showed his teeth.
Charles: Because you’re my mother? Motherhood’s a very sore subject with me.
Jehanne: You should have let me know!
Charles: You would have bullied your way in.
Jehanne: I’m not a bully.
Charles: My God!
Jehanne: All my blood is for you.
Charles: Don’t talk about it all the time!
Jehanne: I beg your pardon, dauphin!
Charles: What do you want? I’m buying you armour. I’ll give you horses and a flag with my lilies on it. I’ll make you my limb. All these soldiers understand it. Otherwise you could be dead already for your continued lack of politeness.
Jehanne: Except Monsieur de Gaucourt. He doesn’t know I’m your limb.
Charles: It’s nothing to crow about. Scapegoats get away with murder. Till their throats are cut.
Her eyes stung and she started crying at his crass manners. Pain blazed in her damaged knee-cap.
He closed his eyes.
Charles: Will you let me go now?
Jehanne: You’re the king, dauphin. You go where you wish. And talk to who you want to.
She backed her palfrey to the wall where Alençon the giver waited. The royal column began moving again, watching the girl as they went by. They seemed so many eyes ratifying the existing arrangement.
Alençon: If you see the furniture wagons outside the bishop’s place, ask them to hurry.
Jehanne: Yes.
He put his hand on her wrist.
Alençon: My little soldier.
Jehanne: Don’t talk down to me, Monsieur.
He shrugged, he was a little hurt. But she couldn’t have him taking over the dominance in their relationship. My little soldier!
Alençon: How’s the horse?
Jehanne: First-rate. Otherwise Monsieur de Gaucourt would have really skittled us.
Alençon: Not a word to anyone. But they’re talking of naming me commander-in-chief.
Jehanne: I hope it’s true.
Even she knew it was an honorary title. The authority would be with strange men – la Hire, the Bastard – of whom she’d only heard fables and legends.
In Tours there was an armourer by appointment who took her measurements for a steel suit. To be made quickly. While she stood in his front room and he ran around her chattering, Jean de Metz knocked on the door and wanted two mail suits for himself and his man de Honnecourt.
His eyes narrowed. He said Jehanne as if he was looking at her across a river. His eyes said no high-class armourer’s going to be very sedulous about me and poor bloody Honnecourt.
She heard him talking to one of the armourer’s journeymen about mail.
Jehanne: Listen, they tell me that mail won’t keep arrows out.
She spoke too loudly and eagerly because of the illusion of distance between Jean and herself.
De Metz: Neither will this stuff.
Jehanne: They tell me it depends on how the arrow strikes.
Armourer: You have to be a little unlucky for an arrow to pierce steel. A bolt will, of course, there’s no protection against bolts. But mail …
Jehanne suddenly thought it’s all useless, this stuff. It’s only old-fashioned politeness that forces a person to get fitted out with it.
De Metz: It’s a matter of finance. I don’t suppose you offer credit …?
Armourer: I’m sorry, sir. I’m holding so many credit notes from the Treasury. I have to raise credit myself. On the credit. The banks are the only ones who win.
Jehanne: I’ll talk to Queen Yolande. You ought to have a steel suit.
De Metz: I wouldn’t want that.
The ancient brutal eyes of Jean de Metz, who had started in the business at the age of twelve, warned her off arranging favours.
She would have liked to give him rights to her suit – she didn’t want her armour. It would be like living in a perpetual dusk.
The king was feeling well in Tours and being a canon (honorary) of the cathedral agreed on a Thursday to touch people for king’s evil on the steps
of St Gatien. Yolande, Chancellor Regnault and the girl went there and stood behind him. But the clergy had made it their own spectacle: canons of the cathedral flanked the king and the dean read a vast speech in Latin to the scrofulous people in the square. At its close the sufferers made a long and patient line up the stairs. They were interested, you could see, in how bad the person in front was: had the glands ulcerated yet, had they split open into a permanent sinus? This column of people with awesome throats wavered forward like phantoms in distorting mirrors. There were babies too, carried by mothers. Elected early in life to the king’s evil.
Each victim the king touched on the head with a gloved hand. The glove would be burned later. The glove took the disease from the sufferer, the fire took it from the glove, the upper air took it from the fire.
At each touching a priest intoned a formula that said, The King touches you, the Lord God restores you.
And across the square a thin deacon in a green dalmatic was taking three sols from everyone who had been touched.
The canons started processing back into the cathedral with the glove that had soaked up so much swelling and putrefaction. The deacon strolled across the square squinting into the open velvet mouth of the collecting bag.
Jehanne took the king’s elbow.
Jehanne: Should they sell your touch?
She pointed to the thin deacon. He had reached the cathedral stairs and had put on a face less fiscal to pass his lord king and dignitaries.
Jehanne: They shouldn’t sell your touch.
Yolande: Come now …
De Gaucourt: For God’s sake!
Jehanne: They can’t sell the king’s touch!
Charles: It’s all right. They’re building an ambulatory at the north end.
The deacon bowed and went through into the nave.
Jehanne: You know how much it’s worth to them? Three sols a time! They value the king’s touch at three sols.
De Gaucourt: People can’t pay more. For God’s sake!
Jehanne: Sir Deacon!
She had yelled. She heard the Chancellor sigh behind her. She rushed into the cavernous dusk of the church. Under the great vaulting the little deacon looked as if he might bolt with the bag of sols, down the nave past the sepulchres of dead bishops of Tours to sanctuary beyond the chancel.