Blood Red, Sister Rose: A Novel of the Maid of Orleans

  There was a great fire out there but Jehanne shivered both for subtle reasons and for the cold. The tower was three hundred years old, Madame du Bellier would tell her later. It hadn’t been put together for comfort.

  De Gaucourt had a boy-child with him, an ill-fed pretty face. The boy wore a dusty blue jacket with black crows on it: he was someone’s page or squire.

  De Gaucourt: This is Louis. Or something.

  Boy: Minguet. Minguet’s my common name.

  De Gaucourt: But what were you christened, for Christ’s sake?

  Minguet: Louis, but everyone calls me Minguet.

  De Gaucourt: All right. Mademoiselle Jehanne, you’re welcome to him, he’s your page.

  The child smiled, bowed to her. Beside him, de Gaucourt shrugged. In his way he was as appalled by her success as Durand and the le Royers had been.

  De Gaucourt: Just remember. He’s a noble. His father lost everything to the Goddam English. You’re not to beat him up. You can thank the du Belliers for him. He’s from their staff.

  The du Belliers bowed. So did Jehanne.

  De Gaucourt’s eyes didn’t see her – all that high-born impercipience, just like last night’s.

  De Gaucourt: Do you have any other money to employ servants?

  Jehanne: No.

  De Gaucourt: The king’s first Mass is at ten. You’re to come. This … Minguet will show you the way. And the money … I’ll see the Queen of Sicily about that. She seems to be the one interested in you.

  After de Gaucourt left the boy stood there smiling in a way that made you doubt whether he was very clever.

  Madame du Bellier came up and said she knew she should have asked Jehanne to sleep with her the night before but had got some stupid fright about it. Would Jehanne share her bed that night?

  She waited for an answer. A grey woman, square, fifty years, restful.

  Jehanne felt a rash of gratitude all over her cheeks.

  Mass in the chapel of St Lawrence. Christ’s victimhood bloodlessly restated while rain throbbed on the roof. At the chancel, on opulent prie-dieus, the king and queen of France, bloodless themselves, carved from soapstone rather than from marble. Behind them the Queen of Sicily, the Chamberlain and his family and secretaries, then the sloughing Chancellor and his staff. Machet. De Gaucourt. Two dozen others. Jehanne knelt at the back.

  As the king and queen left the chapel, his heavy eyes rested without affection on her face for some seconds. She thought sweet Jesus he will let me be butchered, the same limp way he let de Giac go to be sacrificed.

  The lights were going out, the air was full of the smell of stanched candles. Members of the Council stood whispering in the half-light, making the day’s, the month’s, the era’s cliques.

  Little Minguet, noble numbskull, came up beside her, saying the King wanted her.

  Charles was waiting in the passageway outside, in a draught. There was a remote savoury warmth from the kitchens. Only Machet stood close to him and a few court officials were off out of hearing, within call.

  The King: They’re using you to pester me. Did you want that? Is that what your Voices prescribed? My mother-in-law and my Chancellor. They’ve already conferred with bankers. This morning. Before I was even up.

  Jehanne: Orleans, dauphin?

  The King: Where you come from, do they think I’ve got a lot of armies in a bag and I pull them out one at a time? Is that what your old man thinks?

  Jehanne: I know he loves you, that’s all.

  The King: What a sentimental answer that is! I might go to Spain or Scotland and live in peace.

  Jehanne: It wouldn’t be allowed.

  The king roared and his roar cracked into hoarse fragments around her.

  The King: I know that! Oh sweet God, I’ve got no peace from letting you into Chinon.

  He went and only Machet stayed to tell her about putting in an account to Queen Yolande’s treasurer. As he was going, he smiled at her.

  Machet: That’s the way to do it. Speak up, full force. That’s how Queen Yolande does it.

  But she had no need of Machet’s encouragement. She had noticed something crucial about the king: that he’d been beyond himself but still hadn’t let out the secret about blood, about victim. When he yelled at her it hadn’t been like an assault from some stranger, it had been a quarrel between members of a family. In which certain ultimate secrets are never mentioned.

  Minguet was there, shivering a little.

  Jehanne: Have you ever been to Orleans?

  Minguet: I was born there. My father worked for the duke, the great duke the Goddam English won’t give back.

  Jehanne: You’ll see Orleans again soon.

  She almost promised him the duke as well, she felt so full of potency from the way King Charles had fought her.

  Jehanne: And don’t stand smiling like that. It makes people think you’re stupid.

  To my honoured principal, etc

  Dated February 1429

  I was not invited to witness the arrival of the girl-wonder. Only knights and ladies of the court were admitted to that particular levée. Queen Yolande nonetheless had me invited to a dinner at the château de la Milieu at Chinon last night. Since the girl was present I shall describe her before I go on to detail the pretext for the dinner.

  She is about average height for a girl but very broad-shouldered. Her eyes are very large and a little protuberant. I think they too are brown, like her hair. She wears male clothes without embarrassment, as if she was raised wearing them. Apart from the clothes and the very large and penetrating eyes, I think you would see thousands of girls just like her on any journey in France or the north of Italy.

  Yolande seems very pleased with her and likes to thrust her forward, and did so at last night’s dinner. The occasion for the dinner was a remarkable diplomatic stroke brought off by Monsieur Georges de la Tremoille (Fat Georges). A month ago, Monsieur de la Tremoille suggested in council that the magistrates of Orleans should send envoys to Duke Philip of Burgundy and beg him to accept the onus of protecting the city. Since Duke Philip’s troops were in entrenchments outside Orleans, working with the English, he could accept the city only if he talked the English into withdrawing. Bedford and the English Royal Council want Orleans for the very obvious reasons that it gives them the heartland, the very core of France. Philip wants it so that he could use its weight to score off both sides at once.

  On secret orders from the Royal Council and the King, two Orleans ambassadors were sent to Dijon to offer their city to Philip for protecting. Philip took them to Paris to confer with Bedford and get English approval for the idea. But in fact the English duke was angry at Philip for being so willing to accept the city. He is reported to have said, I’d have every right to be upset if someone else takes the birds after I’ve beaten the bushes so hard. In the end the Duke of Burgundy walked out of the meeting and took the Orleans ambassadors with him. He sent an envoy into the lines outside Orleans with a trumpeter and called all the Picards and Burgundians to leave the siege. They marched away from Orleans, the English whistling them.

  Queen Yolande, who has her own spies in Orleans, has spent the day speaking to members of the council to add more colour still to the hopes raised by Monsieur de la Tremoille’s diplomatic success. She points out that the English are living in wattle huts. They have already stripped the vineyards on the north of the city for firewood and have actually been reduced to burning horse-dung for some warmth. Their floors are crawling mud. Such, says Yolande, are the conditions for knights and men-at-arms. God knows what amenities common archers and pikers find. Yolande is especially delighted by a report that Talbot makes his soldiers carry the night’s dead far up the Châteaudun Road for burial, so that the people inside the city won’t see the death rites and find hope in them.

  Her Majesty admits that the Orleanais inside the walls aren’t much better off. There is a sort of madness in a city under siege – panic, hatred, unneighbourliness. The population of Orleans is so
crowded that last month the one cannon-ball killed twelve people.

  I was present in Queen Yolande’s apartments when she told a gathering of her friends that the English Council has garnisheed a quarter of all English officers’ pay to help little King Henry win the war. There were times, she said, when the French might have considered the same course if they had ever managed to pay their officers in the first place. There was much healthy laughter at this …

  Bernardo Massimo

  Jehanne heard the news of de la Tremoille’s diplomatic coup from Yolande herself. In the afternoon, some hours before the celebration dinner of which Massimo told his principal, Machet came and fetched her from her room in Coudray. She was taken to Yolande’s apartments which were somewhere near the chapel. There Yolande maintained a staff of her own: her own chamberlain, treasurer, master-of-house, Augustinian secretary. Three ladies-in-waiting sat with her when Jehanne went in. Her secretary was transcribing onto vellum with a frown on his face.

  Yolande turned to Jehanne and told how Philip had been weaned away from Bedford. And about the misery of the Goddam English.

  Jehanne began to press her. When would an army go? Before the mud dried out? Before the vines put out new shoots?

  Yolande laughed but it was a warning laugh. It said Don’t presume!

  Yolande: It’s slow work seeing to the interests of a king. I’ve looked after him since he was ten. Since ten years of age, since he was betrothed to my Marie in the Louvre. What a ceremony that was. The mad king was called in to watch. He’d been wearing the same clothes for eight months. Isabeau the queen smelt of wild animals and lovers – the sort of lovers she takes you can’t always tell the difference. Bears and monkeys used to defecate in the corners of her conference room at the Barbette. She had a leopard on a chain. My ladies-in-waiting were terrified of it. I knew he wouldn’t survive, growing up in that family. So I took him to Angers with Marie. She was nine, he was ten. It was just supposed to be a break for him, a trip to the provinces. But I never sent him back, though he visited her when he was fifteen and begged her to get rid of the beasts and stop rutting all day. Begged her weeping. To stop rutting.

  There was still a new toughness in Yolande when she looked at Jehanne. It was like the banked venom of a mother whose boy takes up with some unlikely girl. The unlikely girl, Jehanne was permitted to observe, was herself.

  Yolande: Of course, he still wants her. There’s nothing sadder or longer-lasting than the love of a child for a totally unsuitable parent. Perhaps he wants to be loved by her more than he wants to be called king in Paris.

  Jehanne: When does the army go to Orleans? The French army?

  Yolande: If I’ve waited since he was ten, you can wait a few more weeks. That’s my point. Look, this front of fetching country arrogance you put on works in public but don’t try it when we’re talking together.

  Jehanne: Before the mud dries, though?

  Yolande: The mud won’t dry till April. It’s going to get worse. You’re going to Poitiers in the meantime.

  Jehanne: Poitiers is away. Away from Orleans.

  Yolande: You have to be examined if you’re going to be of use.

  Jehanne: I’m supposed to be more than of use.

  Yolande: God!

  She looked around at her ladies and her secretary. Jehanne saw they were all working. Two of the ladies were predictably embroidering but the other one was reading, had the power of the word in her head. That was like having Voices. Jehanne fought an urge to be apologetic.

  Jehanne: Queen, you examined me.

  Yolande: Yes, but that wasn’t recorded. You’re not to mention it. This examination is by the Faculty of Poitiers.

  Jehanne: The Faculty.

  Yolande: They’re all scholars expelled from Paris by the Burgundians. Unless they have posts down in this part of the country they’re very poor. I tell you that for this reason: they’ll want to decide that God is in you, and not demons. Because they want the English turned back. And that is true of all of us, even of Fat Georges now. I don’t say Fat Georges exactly welcomes you. But he understands Charles needs something like you and so do Charles’s people in Orleans.

  Something like you? The Voices in their heat, the pressure in the guts, they didn’t say something like you. They tolled, they roared, You! You! You!

  Yet Jehanne knew she could never improve Queen Yolande’s attitude. Yolande went on.

  Yolande: The Council can easily prove you untouchable if they want to. It would be unjust. But that’s court politics. So be grateful and come to Vespers with me.

  Yolande and Jehanne and the ladies-in-waiting met the king’s massed entourage at the chapel door. De la Tremoille was on one side, the incisive eyes which amidst all that lard had seen how to pry England and Burgundy apart. On the other Regnault the Archbishop of Rheims, looking sick. Today his cheeks were sloughing.

  There was that second’s intimate bemusement of the eyes between Charles and Jehanne.

  Charles: Good news, Jehanne. Good news.

  As everyone had said that day.

  Jehanne: I’ve heard, dauphin.

  He waved his entourage to go ahead into the chapel. Only old de Gaucourt and two knights stayed back as some sort of bodyguard. Charles took her by the elbow secretively. Exactly like a lover who wants to re-tell and have re-told his first meeting with his girl.

  Charles: A victim? A victim for my kingship? Do you mind it, Jehanne?

  Jehanne: I was born for it, dauphin.

  And at the moment he himself had no lack of enthusiasm for the idea.

  Charles: And the Voices said it.

  Jehanne: The Voices said it. And I can tell it in my blood.

  He coughed.

  Charles: So can I. In my blood. And I recognized you the second you said it, as if you were my sister or something.

  She nodded and nodded. It was all true.

  Charles: Not a word though. Not a word about that.

  Jehanne: No. Not a word.

  Charles: Don’t think it doesn’t make me sad.

  When he went back to where de Gaucourt was standing however he called out to her and there was joy in his throat, a joy in suspecting you were valid king.

  Charles: We’re having a big entertainment tonight. Acrobats, two performing bears and a play called Judith and Holofernes. Appropriate. Perhaps one day you’ll bring me Talbot’s head.

  That night she went into the Grand Logis in the king’s party, and all the court called out Noël, Noël to congratulate the Council and de la Tremoille. On red carpet beneath the dais two blindfold bears stood, paws out interrogatively, massive but trembling. They reminded Jehanne of prisoners captured from the crazy court of Isabeau, and their handlers talked to them very threateningly to soothe them down.

  Soon Charles wanted to see her again. He lived in a small room formed by screens on the ground floor of the Grand Logis. Next to it, even smaller and just as temporary, was his bedroom. Unless the whole mountain shifted, he was safe. It was no use people crowding in. In any case he didn’t like a grand entourage except on the days he was feeling temporarily kingly. So he kept a monk in the room to say the office and called in one person at a time to share the small space.

  In his little box his mood swung about crazily but the Augustinian went on intoning under his breath. Sometimes you felt it was that hissing priestly monotone that held Charles together.

  Early in their third and cramped meeting he warned the girl.

  The King: I don’t want you to nag me, Jehanne.

  Jehanne: Yes, dauphin.

  The King: Why do you call me dauphin all the time?

  Jehanne: I’ll call you king again once you’ve been to Rheims.

  The King: I told you not to nag me.

  Jehanne: I was just telling you, gentle king.

  The King: There, you forgot. You said gentle king.

  The Augustinian kept on and on saying his breviary in a murmur, part of a divine self-conversation.

  The Kin
g: Let me just look at you.

  He studied her again like a lover. Verifying her. She studied him. He still wore the faded blue gown. At his chest the cloth was violet from age. The five gold lilies sewn there were all shredding, as if he half-agreed with his mother and had no rights to them.

  Occasionally, he asked her questions about Coudray, whether she liked it there. He did not understand she had no earlier accommodation – apart from a few pubs, the farm-houses of Domremy-à-Greux, the stable of la Rousse in Neufchâteau, the le Royers’ basement – to draw on for comparisons.

  About three the king fell asleep. His bony ankles were visible. The rain on the window was a sort of rival prayer to the Augustinian’s. At three o’clock, a servant brought Archbishop Regnault de Chartres in. The king stirred and sat up.

  Regnault: It’s all done. I’ve sent letters of appointment to members of the Faculty and to Machet. I shall of course preside myself as the Council recommended.

  Jehanne watched his face flaking as he spoke. She thought if I can stand to look at you, you rotting old man, you can stand to look at me. But the Chancellor refused to see her.

  Regnault: The girl will stay at the Judge-Advocate’s place, where the court will hold its minor sessions. For full sessions it will meet at the cathedral.

  Charles: How long do you think?

  Regnault: They’re first-rate brains. They won’t rush. But then the army won’t be ready till spring in any case.

  Jehanne: Is it my examination? Is that girl me?

  Charles: What date?

  Regnault: Myself, Machet, the girl will leave on Saturday. Queen Yolande is coming too.

  Jehanne: Archbishop, am I the girl?

  The Archbishop glanced at her, went on talking to the king.

  Regnault: Maître Machet will give the girl her instructions. Your mother-in-law, by the way, has the friars preaching about her. It’s too much. The Queen of Sicily seems to have the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Augustinians, all in the palm of her hand.

  He looked sideways at the chanting Augustinian, kissed the king’s passive hand, left.

  Without warning the king behaved with exhilaration.