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

  Charles: One day I’ll take you to see my baby boy, Louis. Regnault went to Scotland to arrange the betrothal. Did you know my Louis is engaged to the Scots princess?

  Jehanne: Monsieur de Baudricourt told me once.

  Charles: Of course, she’s an older woman. He’s three, she’s four.

  His laughter was like choking. The bones of the joke stuck out crookedly as his ankles.

  Charles: The Chancellor didn’t like Scotland. So don’t take it personally that he doesn’t love you.

  He began to tell the story of the de Chartres family. The more he talked, however, the more she understood that it was a story he told himself, to prove to himself he had friends.

  De Chartres, said the king, had three brothers killed at Agincourt. He and his father had been prisoners of Jean sans Peur in Paris ten years ago. One day Jean sans Peur turned the contents of the Cabochien prison over to the Paris crowd. Now Regnault was in a basement cell, his father on the ground floor. He always believed he heard his father call out Regnault, no tears at all. The crowd took an hour to get to the basement, for the slaughtering was done by professional butchers and watched by the others: tailors, bakers, carpenters. Regnault vowed, while waiting for the craftsmen to get to him, that if he escaped he’d fast every Wednesday of his life and have no breakfasts on Friday and Saturdays. A monk, let in to absolve and anoint the steaming quarters of old de Chartres and others, somehow got Regnault out disguised as a corpse. Regnault had now kept his vow ten years, but last December had asked the Pope to dispense him from it on the grounds of ill health and because he had so much travelling to do as a diplomat.

  The king’s face glowed with the story. He was saying look, no one would desert me for enemies such as those Burgundians. Jehanne felt she ought to destroy that sort of illusion.

  Jehanne: I’ve heard both Regnault and that fat man have contracts with the Burgundians.

  For a second he hated her, raising such questions.

  Charles: How else can they find the money to underwrite my armies?

  It seemed he felt lucky to have any sort of loyalty from anyone. He didn’t want to question the terms.

  He yawned.

  Charles: I don’t think I’ll go to Vespers today.

  Back in Coudray the orders were Jehanne was to eat no supper and stay in her rooms. It was if a meeting had been arranged and she stayed sitting quietly with Madame du Bellier. Madame du Bellier embroidered, had a name as an artist. Jehanne idled with a spindle, waiting for the event.

  At eight o’clock the Queen of Sicily came in with a man about Gaucherie’s age, dressed more or less the same – perhaps a lawyer, perhaps a theologian from Italy.

  Then Jehanne saw the man’s servant carrying a drug case. A physician.

  A physician who had produced a cup from his cloak and was thumb-clicking for his servant to open the chest of drugs and pass the right mixture.

  Jehanne: What’s this?

  Yolande: A test. Just a test that has to be attended to.

  Jehanne: But what is it?

  Physician: It isn’t harmful.

  He offered her a grey mixture to drink.

  Jehanne: No.

  Yolande: Jehanne, I want you to go to Orleans with an army. I want the army to look at you and say there is our entry into Orleans, our outbreak, our victory. But first, you must pass tests.

  Jehame: What test is this?

  The physician was immobile with the proffered cup – a highly professional posture. Yolande slumped a little but chose to be patient.

  Yolande: Bishop Gelu, the great scholar, advising the Council by letter says it is appropriate that God should send someone humble to ruin the Goddams. He refers to you as a flea on a dung-heap. He says fleas from dung-heaps have often inconvenienced the progress of evil. He says women have too – he nominates Judith who sawed Holofernes’s head off, and Esther and all those other ladies. He does however warn us that it’s possible that a person could be fed to the ears with venom by other persons, human and demonic, and then be sent off to poison the king with a kiss.

  Jehanne: The test is for poison?

  Yolande: Yes. I don’t think what Gelu describes is possible. I think our friend the doctor here thinks it’s insane. But Gelu has suggested it and so it must be attended to. Drink up.

  Jehanne: It’s going to make me feel strange.

  Physician: For a moment, Mademoiselle. No more.

  Jehanne drank. Her head tolled and her ears blocked. She repressed vomit when it was already at the back of her throat. Receding bile burnt her palate.

  Jehanne: Dear God. I very nearly sicked up.

  Yolande: You were supposed to.

  Jehanne’s eyes were closed. She did not see the physician’s servant move behind her. He was young and large. One of his arms wrapped her at the middle, the other hand smothered her face. When her mouth opened to attempt biting, the doctor’s hand, suddenly ungloved, rushed down her throat. When she was sick the brisk servant had suddenly moved from behind her and caught the mess in a bowl.

  She was trembling from the terrible possession they had taken of her. The doctor stirred the bowl with a long-stemmed spoon, lifted gobbets of the matter, sniffed with distaste. Other liquids and powders were dropped into the bowl and changes – if there were changes – were noted.

  Physician: Maître Gelu was one of the greatest of French brains. Perhaps he’s a little too old now.

  Yolande: So?

  Physician: It’s just vomit. What Gelu suggests might be possible with a toad, but a young woman is not a toad. And the king wouldn’t want to kiss a toad.

  Yolande put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, gingerly, aware of the girl’s outrage.

  Yolande: It all goes to show …

  The girl thought men are so damned harsh. What if they ever beat me up, raped me, used weapons on me?

  Jehanne: Well what?

  She was weeping gratefully for the big brows of fire dazzling her in her apartments in Coudray.

  Messire: Be wise as the rose bush …

  Madame Catherine: Jesus’ sweet rose …

  Messire: Rest in your place. Obey the wisdom of the soil …

  Madame Catherine: Respect the gardener …

  Madame Margaret: Sting and puncture all uprooting hands …

  Messire: Be wise as the rose bush, sweet rose …

  Madame Margaret: But impatient for the spring!

  King Charles called for her again the following afternoon. When she reached the cramped royal closet she found a narrow-chested boy sitting with the king. At the first sight and in some lights he looked younger than Minguet. At a second look you saw twenty or so, a grown man who wouldn’t get bigger.

  As Jehanne was brought in the runt jumped up and made the sign of the cross. Then he danced up to her.

  Man: This is the dear girl?

  Charles nodded. He wasn’t enthusiastic.

  Man: Alençon. Jean.

  Jehanne: You’re related, Monsieur?

  The family likeness was there: the boniness, the lost mouth and suspect eyes.

  Alençon: The king’s cousin.

  Jehanne: The more princes turn up the better.

  Charles told her – in a bored voice, as if Alençon had reminded him of the story too often – that Alençon had been captured by the English at Verneuil when he was just a boy, fifteen years.

  Alençon: I’ve barely paid off the ransom. All my estates are in Normandy. The English have them. So it’s hard to raise money on them. I’ve been five years in prison …

  Charles yawned.

  Charles: I suppose you’ll want some military award? Marshal of France maybe?

  Alençon turned gracefully to his sacred cousin, arms outstretched as if hard put to it to contain the fullness of the honour.

  Alençon: If my royal cousin could find a place …

  Charles: Your royal damned cousin has more places than he has men to fill them.

  The young duke kissed the king’s forehead and
rushed back to Jehanne.

  Alençon: I believe you hear Voices? I was out early this morning shooting quail when a Dominican arrived at Saumur – full of you, so to speak. I called my beaters off.

  Jehanne: You didn’t mind if others took the birds?

  Alençon: What?

  Charles: I think, that Jehanne is echoing what Bedford said to Philip of Burgundy over Orleans.

  The king was, in fact, almost asleep.

  Alençon: Oh yes. Do your Voices mention Normandy?

  Jehanne: They have enough trouble arranging for Orleans. All people do is set me tests. They even hunt through my puke. But they won’t send me to Orleans. Let alone Normandy.

  Alençon: I have to put up at an abbey. My wife and mother-in-law and myself. A cousin of the king! Having to find board at a monastery.

  Charles: Things will improve. Things will improve. Don’t talk any more …

  In the silence you could hear the monk murmuring some rollicking Latin hymn from the minor hours. The king went to sleep.

  Now the duke and Jehanne had to whisper.

  Alençon: Have you ever soldiered?

  Jehanne: No.

  Alençon: Have you ever carried a lance on horseback?

  Jehanne: No.

  Alençon: My dear girl! Have you a horse?

  She had and had forgotten. She’d handed it over to a groom before climbing the mountain three nights before.

  Alençon: We’ll send your page for it. They have a pretty fair tilting yard over in St Georges’s.

  Jehanne: St Georges’s?

  Alençon: The garrison fortress, next door. I know the armourer. Come on.

  She frowned at slumped Charles.

  Alençon: Come on. Don’t be polite.

  The armoury of St Georges’s was a stone barn. The armour of lords and knights in garrison or court at Chinon stood on racks marked with the heraldry of each owner. But there was spare equipment for visitors. The relicts of dead or forgetful soldiers.

  Jehanne could tell that the armourers were laughing as they strapped her into a cuirass and plates. Thin-legged Alençon looked ridiculously over-balanced in upper armour without leggings. Perhaps she did too, but that wasn’t the only reason they were laughing. It was the quaintness of being ordered to mix elements considered unmixable: steel and woman, thorn and rose.

  They gave her a cloth cap to put on and over it went a helmet. They latched it to her cuirass. There she was in a private hard-sided world where the light was different. She felt distinct guilt. I oughtn’t to be here, she felt. Not on anyone’s orders. Even Messire’s.

  She wondered if she could still breathe in there.

  Alençon gave a muffled and metallic order to the armourers.

  Alençon: Put the visors up!

  She could feel fingers and thumbs working on the sides of her helmet. The visor lifted. It was still a different way of living, inside that steel. When you got used to the weight on your shoulders you began to feel a little drunk, vain, gifted, potent.

  Alençon: Tilting lances! Light ones!

  They waded into the yard where Minguet held the horses. He had already put tilting saddles, high at front and back, on both the mounts.

  Jehanne: How do I get up?

  Minguet: I’ll get you up there. That’s what pages are for.

  When he’d managed it, he led her off to the tilting ground. It was levelled ground on the north end of the summit. A white fence ran down its middle, and towards the end of the course and on the far side of the fence a target shaped like the upper quarters of a knight on a saddle hung from an arm that could be spun.

  Alençon showed her how to rest the lance on the bracket on the right breast of the cuirass and sight it across her body for the target. His small hand had trouble keeping his lance up, but Jehanne felt comfortable with hers. He had been in prison since he was fifteen. Was he a good tutor?

  Alençon’s face inside the helmet was shedding sweat.

  Alençon: It’s harder than it looks. But you seem to have the gift.

  He explained how the target should look as if it were facing the middle of your lance as you began your run. You had to hit the target from the front, never to turn your lance across your body to strike the target from the side. Otherwise you could be torn off your horse or break your ribs.

  So he kept on giving hints as his hand strained and his face sweated.

  Alençon: I’ll show you.

  He galloped his horse, but put the lance into the target too glancing and sidewise, and was pulled forward sharply across the high pommel and the horse’s withers. When he rode back his slight face glowered with a sort of disapproval of himself. There was heat rash down the side of his chin. Behind a hand, Minguet was laughing at him, like an equal.

  Alençon: You see what can happen? Be careful.

  But she knew she didn’t have to be. What a strong family the family of Jacques from Sermaize are. Because she had no strain carrying the lance. She knew what angle to carry it at. She was under a sort of inspiration, some expert spirit wouldn’t let her miss. She hit and span the target three times out of three.

  Alençon: You’ve done it before.

  Jehanne denied it. She liked the way he accepted her talent, his mouth slightly agape.

  He whispered.

  Alençon: Then there is virtue in you. You’re not yourself. You’re being moved.

  Jehanne: Perhaps.

  Alençon sat still on his horse and watched her do it some more times. Then he noticed she was weeping.

  Alençon: What’s the matter? Why the tears?

  Jehanne: I don’t want to be good at this.

  Alençon: I’d love to be able to do it.

  Jehanne: I know.

  She could have told him it’s the simple things the saint-and-demon-struck can’t do. Like menstruate, treat their people normally.

  Alençon: You have a genius, a genius for it. Let me give you a horse. That horse of yours …

  Jehanne: You’re broke, my lord. I heard you say.

  Alençon: Not that broke.

  He had dropped nearly all the courtly mannerisms he had shown when they’d met. A child of twenty, he whispered again. He liked whispering.

  Alençon: I want you to talk to my wife and mother-in-law. Would you? Because they won’t let me campaign. You know what they’re like. They say you’ll ruin us if you get taken prisoner again. If I give you a horse …

  Jehanne: A little horse?… something comfortable?

  Alençon: Yes. Will you come up to Saumur and talk with them?

  So she rode up to Saumur one rare sunny Wednesday. She could tell the Duchess of Alençon was grateful to see she was so lumpy, unwomanly: she trusted her husband’s new enthusiasm more for that reason. She was twenty, but she was older in the head than him, was sharp and pretty. It was she who had raised all the mortgages to buy her husband back after he had gone for that short bloody gallop at Verneuil. It was she who knew the exact dimensions of their poverty, which wasn’t – Jehanne noticed – like the poverty of ordinary people at all.

  For their apartments were crammed with wine, tapestries, chaplains, heraldic servants. Billeted at St Florent, in the suburbs of the abbey, were two hundred men-at-arms with their squires and archers, all getting pay from the duke. It seemed that if princes went broke, it meant they had to start spending bankers’ money rather than their own. But nothing else changed.

  Duchess: Jean isn’t very mature.

  Alençon: Yes I am.

  Duchess: No you aren’t, my darling. He was captured at the age of fifteen and the English warden in le Crotoy treated him like a son.

  Alençon: It wasn’t all a picnic. The English were getting ready to pike me that day I was on the ground. I didn’t have any breath and I had too much armour on – we’d sat in it all morning, on horseback. Imagine, dear girl. Then an officer noticed the huke I was wearing. He said don’t touch him, he’s royal family, you stupid bastards. He would have saved my duchess a lot of troubl
e by not coming along …

  The duchess smiled at both the duke and Jehanne with the sort of unmasked indulgence people use only on very small and easily out-foxed children.

  Duchess: Nonsense, Jean. It’s a fact though that we’ll never be out of debt until the splendid city of Alençon is taken back off the Goddams.

  Jehanne: I can’t promise anything about Normandy.

  Duchess: I see.

  Jehanne: Let him come with his soldiers though. Let him. I promise he’ll be safe.

  Duchess: I’ve had him back only a year.

  Suddenly, Jehanne could see how deep in physical love the duchess was with her boyish duke. Jehanne felt loss, a movement in her womb, a shiver of love and longing for this sharp maternal girl who fell open like a rose when the duke went to bed with her.

  Jehanne stood up, sweating from love and conviction.

  Jehanne: I’ll be with him. Nothing will go wrong.

  Alençon: Can’t you tell, my duchess? There’s virtue in her.

  The duchess shook her head a little. Finding virtue in people, she half-implied, was another of his child’s games. However, she was impressed.

  Alençon had given her a light Barbary mare. It wasn’t as easy to ride as farm-horses, or the horse Lassois and Alain gave her, or the big black Belgian she got from the Duke of Lorraine. It moved with delicacy, a feminine sort of spirit was in it. Coming out of the barbican above the town she felt that she was sitting lightly on top of the morning, on the back of God’s hand. And the hand was definitely moving, even if the movement was temporarily southward. She wanted to make someone pay for it being southward. She decided to pretend she didn’t know about Poitiers, that she thought she was on her way direct to the army at Blois.

  There were five knights banneret with her, their squires, archers, pikers. They loudly crossed the Vienne by a bridge at the quays and went south.

  Jehanne: Where will we meet the Queen of Sicily?

  Knight: At Loudun, Mademoiselle.

  Jehanne: Loudun?

  Knight: Yes.

  Jehanne: Loudun’s away from Blois.

  Knight: You have to leave all this to me, Mademoiselle.

  Jehanne: Damn you, Loudun’s south, away from the army.

  Knight: You have to ask the Queen of Sicily about that.