Into The Fire (62 page)

‘… and to the end. This night, I will rest with our holy father in heaven. You must live on until He calls you to Him. And you have this choice. Will you live in a France that is free? Or will you take the yoke of servitude under a foreign king? I, who go now to eternal freedom under God, instruct you to ask this of yourselves each night. I ask only this, and that you pray for me.’

He cannot breathe. Almost, he cannot see.

Beside him, men wring their noses into their sleeves, heel dry their eyes, wrap their faces in their hands. He cannot see Cauchon, but Nicolas Midi is here on his left, stricken, and Jean de la Fontaine on his right, shuddering, and all about, men are crossing themselves.

Thirage no longer looks like a man whose vocation is pain. As a gentleman with his newly wed, he ushers her on to the pyre, a step at a time, settles her amongst the faggots, moves aside a sawn plank and sets it at an angle away from her, to make her comfortable.

Chains are already stapled to the post to hold her arms. He fastens them now, speaking to her all the while. Nobody can hear what he says. The wind is freshening from behind, not enough to blow the flames away, but enough to raise them up.

Let it be swift. Dear God in heaven, let it be swift.

‘A torch!’ He hears that; everyone does. A thousand inbreaths suck all the air from the market place. A white-faced boy tosses up a torch. Thirage catches it, hesitates, turns to her, speaks again. She shakes her head, emphatic.

Is he offering her poppy? Still she will not take it.

Oh, my dear …

It should be now: a thrust, a plume of smoke, a crack and flash of flame, but there is some more fiddling with wood, and a sack of straw called up and opened and great creaming fistfuls stuffed in amongst the wood at her feet, and on either side, where the wood rises to waist height. A boy cries something from a rooftop; an exhortation for speed, or a cry to desist; either is possible; neither is heeded. Time stretches, every heartbeat counted.

And now, dear God, at last, the torch, blazing, thrust into the pyre’s heart, in a place beneath her feet, where has been left a gap. The straw is about it; a fast catch, tongues of flame a-leaping, a surge of smoke, white as snow.

Because he is who he is and is what he is, Tomas watches the sack that flaps in Thirage’s left hand. He sees – he thinks – the flicker of the fine rope, almost a wire, that comes out of it, the loop that snakes out towards the stake.

Certainly – almost certainly – he sees her head snap back, her eyes flare before the smoke hugs her close, and then the flames. He sees Thirage’s shoulders rip out taut, as the smoke claims him, too. For a big man, he is putting a lot of effort into holding that sack. And then he releases it, throws it into the hissing, roaring, ravening blaze, staggers back beyond reach of the heat. His chest is blistered where the oil has caught.

She does not scream.

For the rest of his life, Tomas Rustbeard knows that she made no sound as the fire claimed her.

In his nightmares, weeping, he watches her gown catch light and flare, sees the flesh char and burn, peel away from her bones. He sees Thirage take a long-handled hook and strip her gown away to prove she is woman, but she is dead by then, and dead still when the fire burns down to ash, and is built again, at Bedford’s order, to reduce that ash to dust.

But she makes no sound. Not here, not now, not in his nightmares.

Nothing.

My dear, oh, my dear.

Let it have been merciful.

Reuters; Tuesday 4 March: French local election results

The results of the mayoral election in Orléans show a record turnout and a landslide of unprecedented proportions. Eighty per cent of those eligible voted for Luc Bressard, deceased. By agreement with all the relevant parties, his cousin, Annelise Bressard, will take his position on her release from hospital. A memorial service will be held on Sunday for all those killed in the recent fires. A minute’s silence was observed throughout France at eleven o’clock this morning in remembrance of the dead.

Captain Inès Picaut has been moved from the intensive care ward and is recovering from smoke inhalation and burns. Her condition is said to be stable.

While many of the foremost authorities have come close to suggesting that the woman we came to know as the Maid of Orléans cannot have been an untrained peasant girl, most stop short of saying it explicitly, largely, I think, because there has been no obvious candidate for the post.

This novel grew out of an article about a Ukrainian orthopaedic surgeon who found a set of bones of a woman in her late middle age in the basilica at Cléry-Saint-André. That woman had, in his opinion, been trained to wear armour and ride a warhorse from an early age.

The article is here:
http://www.misterdann.com/euraratstake.htm
and I record my debt to Serguei Gorbenko below. If the bones are genuinely those of a woman who had been trained to ride a warhorse in full armour from her youth, and if she was Marguerite de Valois, we have to question the identity of the woman who died at the stake.

She must have looked broadly similar, although when someone has had their head shaved for execution that similarity doesn’t have to be exact. She must have cared very deeply indeed for the woman whose place she took. A martyr complex would help make sense of it, and isn’t unheard of – we are in an era where young women were reared on stories of worthy saints guaranteeing their route into heaven by earthly suffering. Thus we have the Maid’s half-sister, who is as close as I could imagine, and has all the necessary prerequisites.

I cannot, of course, prove any of this. For those who wish to continue with the magical thinking of the accepted mythology: good luck. For the rest, I am sure this isn’t the only interpretation of the events of the past, but it’s the one I prefer.

For those who need to separate fact from fiction: I have endeavoured where possible to include those words and letters that are recorded in history. Her letters to the citizens of Troyes and of Riom both still exist. We should remember that her letters were written by a clerk, and at her trial she denied having spoken some of the words that were written in a letter to the king of England – with the implication that the clerk miscopied. This may or may not be true; we have no way of knowing.

Her words were recorded daily at her trial by a number of notaries who then combined their notes to produce a fair copy, which was then copied out again in French and Latin and distributed to every court in Europe at the trial’s conclusion.

Two things need to be taken into account.

The first is that eye witnesses who spoke at her rehabilitation trial say that the words recorded were, in certain key respects, not the words she spoke. This must be the case, because eye witnesses say that she was interrogated by as many as six men speaking at once, who interrupted each other and herself in their answers, and that the interrogations lasted from three to four hours in the morning and two to three hours in the afternoon, and the trial transcripts do not contain enough recorded dialogue for even one morning session at this rate. We do not have a record of which areas were false and what she truly said.

The second is that she was a girl of around nineteen years old, being questioned by massed numbers of men of ultimate authority. They asked questions that were designed to elicit specific answers, by which they could reasonably charge her with heresy. They were not seeking after truth. They never asked how she was able to do the things she did, how she gained her strategic and tactical skills, how she learned to ride, to wield weapons, to couch a lance. Simply to acknowledge she had done these things was unthinkable, and even after the trial, she was referred to as ‘the girl known as Jehanne, who consorted with the “fiende” known as the Maid’. There was a degree of denial which separated the girl in front of them from the one who had faced down Bedford and the massed knights of England at Montépilloy. That was another agency, it couldn’t have been a living girl. The question, then, was whether that agency came from good sources or bad, and they had to prove the latter in order to taint the anointing of the French king, and so make way for a fresh anointing of their juvenile monarch, Henry VI.

All this notwithstanding, I have used the words recorded in her trial. Whoever and whatever she was, throughout her time in the public eye, the Maid demonstrated astonishing fortitude, intelligence and courage and I honour these above all else.

One final historical note: the plaque in Orléans celebrating the names of my countrymen who fought for the city does exist, and therefore they existed. My apologies to Patrick Ogilvy who was (almost) certainly not as I have made him.

To find out more about the history and the writing, join the conversation at
http://www.mandascott.co.uk
and #IntoTheWoods

Manda Scott
Shropshire, 21 June 2014

Amongst the enormous wealth of material, the following bear further reading:

Castor, Helen:
Joan of Arc

DeVries, Kelly:
Joan of Arc: A Military Leader

Hobbins, Daniel (trans):
The Trial of Joan of Arc

Pernoud, Régine and Clin, Marie-Véronique:
Joan of Arc: Her Story

Sackville-West, Vita:
Saint Joan of Arc

Sullivan, Karen:
The Interrogation of Joan of Arc

Trask, Willard (trans):
Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words

Wheeler, Bonnie and Wood, Charles (ed):
Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc

As ever, the list of those who have given of their time, expertise, good humour and assistance is virtually endless, but there are some names without whom, genuinely, this novel would not exist.

First, heartfelt thanks to Serguei Gorbenko. I have put a link to his website in the Afterword, but want here to acknowledge my debt to him, and my thanks. Serguei and I corresponded by email during the early stages of writing and I was able to confirm the initial reports of his discovery. We continued to exchange pleasantries until the outbreak of unrest in the Crimea at the start of 2014. Despite many emails sent into the heart of the Ukraine, I have not heard from him since. It is my hope that he remains alive and that he approves of the layers I have added to his initial concept.

Thereafter, wholehearted thanks to:

—my agent Mark Lucas, who has been instigator, encourager and midwife of this project, and without whom there would be no book. We share a love of all things Gallic, which helps. Mark: I am endlessly grateful.

—Patsy Irwin, publicity director at Transworld Publishers, who went far and away above and beyond the call of duty to bring this book to fruition: Patsy, without you it would not have happened. I am forever grateful.

—Vivien Thompson, production editor at Transworld, who rescued me on the most important day of my life, who merged versions, corralled proofs and made life so very much easier – heartfelt thanks.

—Stephanie Cabot, my US agent, whose fresh insight and incisive reading helped to polish the text. Stephanie, thank you for believing in us.

—Ellen Goodson, also of the Gernert Company, who honed the text, and caught the loose threads. Ellen, your perspicacity, clarity and good humour have transformed the editing process.

—John Barratt, historian, author, mine of historical information and outstanding organizer. John, you have made life so much simpler in so many ways. I am in awe of the breadth and depth of your knowledge, particularly when it comes to medieval Europe. My pavants shall ever be pavisses in your honour.

—Rob Low, a highly accomplished historical author and fellow member of the HWA committee, who read an early draft. You are one of the treasures of my writing life.

—Mike Jecks, accomplished fellow author and medievalist, who read the later drafts for accuracy, and who offered tea and sympathy in Devon, for which I am ever grateful.

—Tony Gallucci, medievalist and friend, for words of encouragement and checking of drafts.

—Amy Weatherup, friend, core-reader and spotter-of-anachronisms, for reading one of the later drafts, thank you hugely.

—Sally Ford, Francophile and linguist, for her outstanding help in ensuring that the contemporary story was accurate, and for reading the final draft so swiftly and with such integrity.

—Mary Hannigan, who posted textbooks from Cambridge when I needed them. As ever, any errors in interpretation or fact are mine alone: nobody else bears any responsibility.

There’s a slight gap here where I thank those academics who wish to remain anonymous because putting their name to a project which flies in the face of ‘accepted history’ is academic suicide, even when that accepted history belongs in the realms of piskies and flying pigs. Thank you for being so gracious.

Finally, and for ever, thanks to my editor. Bill Scott-Kerr is one of those fonts of serenity in an increasingly manic world. Thank you for wisdom, patience and insight. Thanks also to the stellar team at Transworld, particularly to Gavin and Suzanne for getting the website going, to Lyndsey, Polly and Lucy for making the world of publicity turn smoothly, and to Alun Owen who weaves connections amongst the bookshops in the West Midlands. Especial thanks to Nancy Webber, copy editor without equal. And a thousand thanks to Phil, for maps, design and clarity.

Thanks to the dreamers, especially those who came to the Valley at midsummer, and to Shivam for letting us use his tipis. The soul recharging of that time and place were exceptional.

Thanks to Sue and to Tilly for keeping me sane and sorted.

And last, but never least, heartfelt thanks and love to Faith, for equanimity, love and balance, and for taking over dog walks when I needed more time in the days – and for letting me have another cat.

Over the past two decades, Manda Scott has brought iconic historical figures back to life, reimagined and rebooted for the twenty-first century. Her crime novels have been shortlisted for many awards including
Hen’s Teeth
for the Orange Prize and
No Good Deed
for an Edgar Award. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages.