The Maid (14 page)

It was right after that that they introduced me at court. Yolande's idea. Yolande, who was so quick to use me.

She had said that it was time to arrange an official meeting between the Maid and the King before all the nobles and knights of court. It was essential. "We must show them your power. Show them the miracles you're capable of."

"But I have no miracles," Jehanne said. "You know that, Majesty."

Yolande smiled calmly. "What I know is that if you want the knights of France to fight like lions for you, you must prove to them that you are sent by God."

"Is the word of God Himself not proof enough?"

"No. It is not."

Several days later Jehanne stood beneath the flickering chandelier at the entrance to the great hall, her heart hammering in her chest, waiting for the lie to begin. The room before her was packed full of nobles and courtiers in furs and jeweled tunics, hats like sailing ships. Hundreds of knights, their armor gleaming in the torchlight. Most of them craning their necks, up on tiptoe, staring at her, trying to catch a glimpse.

She knew it was wrong. She'd refused to do it at first, said it was impossible. Her saints would never approve. But they would not listen. "It's the only way," Yolande said. "She's right," said La Trémöille, eyes glittering. "It must be done." Listening to them, Jehanne felt as if she were in a little boat, surrounded by threatening green waves, high as mountains. "One display of God's power will do more than a thousand explanations ever could," Yolande said. "Trust me on this, my dear."

In the end Jehanne did as they instructed. She took off the nice new clothes Yolande had had tailors make for her in Poitiers and put on her old dirty ones. The filthy brown hose and the stained black tunic from Vaucouleurs. She let Yolande smear mud on her cheeks and her hands, mud in her hair. "I want them to see you as I first did," Yolande said, smiling. "An urchin stumbled out of the wilderness."

When the Queen was finished, Jehanne let Madame du Bellier guide her in secret down a long dripping tunnel that ran underneath the castle to the apartment of a slim, silken-voiced man who was introduced to her as Comte Louis de Vendôme. "He will take you to the King," she said.

The man was holding a small silver goblet full of amber-colored liquid. "I have something that will calm your nerves, if you like," he said.

Jehanne said that she did not want it, though her palms were sweating. Her mouth dry as dust. "Let's just go," she said miserably.

When the trumpets sounded, Jehanne and Vendôme walked together into the great hall. And it was as Yolande had said it would be: The Comte de Clermont was sitting there, on Charles's throne, wearing Charles's hat, smiling stupidly. Playing the King. As the Comte led Jehanne toward him, she repeated Yolande's instructions in her head:
Remember, they all think you're seeing Charles for the first time. They'll think he's trying to trick you. Testing you to see if you'll fall for the phony king. So let Vendôme take you up to the throne, and when you're in front of Clermont, stop and look at him for a moment. Then say out loud: "But this is not the King of France." After that, turn and walk back through the crowd until you see Charles, who will be standing with La Trémöille on the left side. Go to him, kneel down, kiss the hem of his robe, and say, "Most noble Dauphin, I am sent by God to bring aid to you and your kingdom." Then we will have them!
Yolande had crowed.
Then they will be eating from the palms of our hands!

She did it. The charade. She did it perfectly. Exactly as Yolande had instructed. When she said, "But this is not the King of France," everyone in the crowd gasped. And when she turned and walked over to Charles and knelt down before him, they gasped again, even louder this time, and she heard a buzz of whispers and talk around her.
How does she know? How could she possibly know? Incredible. Amazing.

Charles played his part. "It is not I who am the King, Jehanne.
There
is the King," he said, pointing to Clermont.

"In God's name, noble prince," Jehanne said. "It is you and none other."

Jehanne felt like she was going to throw up. Swallowed hot bile down her throat. Repeated what she'd said to him that day in his apartment so many weeks ago: "Sire, if I tell you things so secret that you and God alone are privy to them, will you believe that I am sent by God?"

Charles nodded like a puppet.

Both of us just puppets.

"I must tell you in private," she said.

As instructed, they walked together to the little oriel beside the fireplace and Jehanne repeated the things that she had already told Charles six weeks earlier—about the dream at Loches and the truth of his paternity and the details of God's mission—and Charles pretended to be shocked and amazed to hear them, and as she spoke, Jehanne's skin went cold as ice.
O wrong,
Catherine said.
O wrong, very wrong!
Jehanne could not bear it. She knelt down suddenly and clutched Charles's hand. "Look at me," she said, staring into his small pale eyes. "It is all true. Do you know that? Forget this sham. Do you understand that I speak God's truth?"

Tears sprang to his eyes. He squeezed her hands back. "I do believe you," he whispered. "God bless you, I do."

People started coming then. From all over the countryside they came to the river town of Chinon in hopes of seeing the famous Maid. The Savior of France. Hundreds and soon thousands of them, traveling by foot, by horse, by carriage, over the red-dirt roads of France in the cold April rains, their faces shining with hope, curiosity, and even among the doubters, an eagerness to see what it was all about, everyone wanting to see for themselves.

One morning Madame du Bellier drew back the curtains and let the sun flood into the darkness of the girl's room. A clear, bright, early spring morning, all the world washed clean by the rain. Crowds of screaming people had gathered down below, were pressing at the castle gates, hundreds of them. Madame du Bellier opened the window, heard the roars of the crowd, the clatter of wagons, and the clocking of hooves as horses and their riders moved across the wooden drawbridge, one man whistling, high and sweet as a songbird.

"What are they all doing?" Jehanne said, coming up behind her, still rubbing her eyes.

The woman laid a hand on the girl's shoulder. "They're here to see you," she said.

Jehanne stared down at the sea of people. "No," she said finally. "It's Him they want."

Later in the afternoon Madame du Bellier brought her a letter that had been delivered from town. It was from Metz and Bertrand.

We heard about your very great success at Poitiers and with the King at court, and so we send our congratulations and very best wishes, and also send the news that we are going to Blois now to join up with the King's army so we can have the honor of fighting for you in Orléans.

"Oh," Jehanne said, weeping, holding her hand over her mouth. "Oh."

A frenzy of activity now. Training, meetings, strategies for Orléans. The official meeting between Charles and the Maid had been a great success, Yolande said. The knights were chomping at the bit to fight. "I've never seen anything like it. They've got wildfires in their eyes!"

Every morning Jehanne and Charles were brought to Yolande's apartments for briefings with the war counselors, generals, and famous mercenaries who were flooding in from all over France, begging to meet the Maid. Yolande tacked a big yellow map of Orléans up on the wall, and the men told how it was: where the Goddon fortresses were strong, and where they might be taken. "Diarrhea hit them hard this winter, so they're weak right now," one general said. A short, ferocious-looking man with a web of scars over his face and a red velvet cloak covered in little silver bells that tinkled when he walked. "One hard push could send them running for the hills."

"One wrong push could be the end of France," said Charles.

The general made a face.

"I'm saying we must plan very carefully," Charles said. "We need a perfect plan."

The general looked at Jehanne, then winked, as if to say,
Screw plans. Let's do the hard push!

A tutor came in to work with Charles on his public speaking and to help him with his stammer. "Can't have a king with a stammer," Yolande said. They made him do all kinds of things—walk with a stack of books on his head to improve his posture, pluck his eyebrows so they did not hang so heavily over his eyes. One morning when Jehanne came in, he had an entirely new set of clothes on. A splendid mink-trimmed turquoise-brocade tunic and new tight black stockings and high polished black boots. His narrow little bird's shoulders looked much broader in the new tunic, and when he noticed Jehanne staring at them, he blushed and said, "Padding."

They'd become close by then, Charles and Jehanne. There was an appealing haplessness about Charles that touched her. She could see that he was trying to become strong, to find his dignity. But it was his clumsy attempts that endeared him to her. How he sat beside her in the chapel with his teeth chattering like dice in his head, swearing he was not cold. How deeply he blushed when Jehanne spoke of victory over the Goddons, as if it were thrilling but possibly dangerous to even think such a thing. In the afternoons Jehanne trained down in the jousting ring with Charles's cousin, the Duke of Alençon, and often, as they walked there after chapel, Charles would take a little hopping step beside her and gaze at her with wide, childish eyes. "How will it all happen again, Pucelle? Tell me again." Or he would grip her hand suddenly, with tears in his eyes, and say, "Truly? Shall I truly be king?"

At times she had nightmares. In the worst one she was galloping across the long snowfields on her horse, and the violent joy was rushing inside her, and the ten thousand soldiers were thundering behind her, but this time, when they reached the enemy forest, all of their horses disappeared. They were forced to keep running on foot, in their armor and their long, pointed metal shoes. Suddenly Charles popped up in front of her and said, "You have to carry me; it's the law. You have to carry me on your shoulders." Jehanne's heart filled with dread when he said this, but she understood that she could not refuse. So she lifted the Dauphin up onto her shoulders and began running again through the forest, and it was even more difficult for her to run now because he was very heavy and he kept slapping her head and jerking her reins in different directions. "Go left!" he shouted. "Now right! Now left, you stupid fool! Left, I said! Do you understand nothing?" Jehanne knew that the only way out of the forest was to run straight ahead as fast as she could, and she kept begging the Dauphin to let her do this. "Please," she cried, weeping and staggering under the weight of him. "Please, let me show you." But the Dauphin just became more annoyed and began hissing, "Shut up, just shut up." Soon they came to a clearing in the trees. In the middle stood a high, dark, stone tower. It was much colder there and there were strange white and gray birds flying overhead. Birds the girl had never seen before. "Ah, at last!" the Dauphin shouted. He hopped off the girl's shoulders and opened the big wooden door to the tower. Inside was a long, dark, winding stone staircase. "Here we go," he said, smiling and holding the door open for her. "Just leave your clothes here with me. I'll take care of them." Jehanne did not want to go into the tower, and she told the Dauphin this. "Please," she said. "Please don't make me." She gripped the door frame with both hands and crouched down low like an animal, digging her heels into the ground. "Go on, I'll be right behind you," he said, smiling at her with terrible pointed black teeth and pushing her forward. "You'll be perfectly safe, my dear."

She'd awoken panting and drenched in sweat. She got up and ran downstairs to the chapel in her bare feet. And she knelt there, weeping in the dark, until at last Catherine and Margaret appeared, hovering above her like two golden moths.
Hush now, darling,
whispered Catherine, pouring her sunlight in the girl's ear.
We're here.

I'm going to die!
she cried, the dream so real, so sharp that it was as if Michael had never told her that day beside the river, as if she were hearing it for the first time.
I'm going to die!

Alençon was the only one she could talk to. The only one who made sense to her. The Duke of Alençon.
Mon beau Duc.
He was Charles's first cousin—a general in his early twenties with thick black hair and dark hooded eyes, an odd roughness in his features, as if they had been carved from a block of wood. His father had been a famous warrior, killed terribly at Agincourt. Alençon himself had been held prisoner by the English for five years before Jehanne met him. Locked up in a tower in Arras, living on bread and water and mice he hunted in his cell. Finally his family had scraped the money together to ransom him, but it ruined them to do it. They had to sell off all of their lands, their jewelry, paintings, everything. He returned to his château in the Loire to find it stripped bare, just the most basic furniture left. A few tables and chairs scattered about like bones. Everything else gone. Like Jehanne, he too was hungry for vengeance. "The Duke is the only man in France who hates the English more than you do," Charles said.

Alençon hated court too. Had no interest. After all that time alone in a tower, he knew what it was like to look around at one of Charles's obscene dinner parties and think, "Who are these vultures? These stupid, laughing people?" Like Jehanne, he preferred to move. To ride and joust and hunt. Sleep outside under the trees. Cook your meat over a fire. Kill the Goddons. Drive them out of France.

He was better on a horse than anyone Jehanne had ever seen. There was no separation between him and his animal when they rode. No effort. They simply flew across the fields. He did not talk much, was comfortable in his skin, in his silence. But when he did talk, when he was among friends or speaking to his men—he was open and easy and good-natured. When it mattered. None of this chattering, this "Well, have you heard ..." Nothing wasted.

She knew she wanted him. From the beginning it was clear. She could not pretend otherwise—not with herself. Not when the thought of his skin, his dark, waiting eyes, kept her up at night. Often when she was away from him, she would think,
He's not really so handsome. He's actually quite odd looking.
But when she was near him, she ached for him as a starving man aches for food.

It was a different sort of wanting from the way she'd wanted Metz. Deeper, more alarming. Alençon did not surrender when she looked at him. His eyes were hot and silent. Holding her.

It never ceased to amaze Jehanne that he was the Dauphin's first cousin. The first time she'd met him, she and Charles had been together in Charles's chambers, and Alençon had come in the door and lifted Charles off his feet as he hugged him. "So where is this miraculous peasant?" he said, kissing his cousin on both cheeks.

"I'm right here, Your Grace," said Jehanne, who stood by the window in a dark blue tunic, looking unusually clean and lovely.

"So you are," said the Duke, grinning. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Oh no, you are welcome, my good Duke," she said, coming toward him, looking at him. Unable to stop looking at him. "I need all the royal blood on my side that I can get."

Charles and Alençon had grown up together, been friends since they were children. And through Alençon she'd seen a different side of the Dauphin too, for Charles was easy and relaxed around his cousin in a way he never was otherwise. He laughed more, would let Alençon tease him, could be witty himself, charming even. He wasn't dumb, Charles. He was just unsure. Unsure of everything.

She knew from the beginning that nothing could happen between them. Alençon was married, and Jehanne too, in her way, was married. But it did not mean that she did not want him, did not come to love him. It was a thing kept secret, flowing silently beneath everything like an underground river.