by Mark Alder
He saw her, pulled up his hose and reset his codpiece – an elaborate thing in the shape of the elephant of myth, complete with that savage beast’s blood-red tusks. Isabella had often noted that the way of nature seemed to be that more elaborate the cod-piece, the more disappointing what it covered.
‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, I have been all of a piss this evening. Too much wine, I wager. I can never sleep on the eve of a battle, too keen to . . .’ He smacked his fist into his hand. ‘Get to it!’
‘Indeed, My Lord. May I drink a cup with you?’
‘I would be enchanted.’ Isabella noted that her ability to bewitch the more common men did not extend to the Duke of Orléans. Was he, like her dead husband, one of those who preferred men? Or was it the protection of his royal blood? Or both?
She stepped inside his tent. A few listless boys sat about the place, one sharpening a sword.
‘Gilles,’ said the duke, ‘you’ll wear that to nothing. Enough of sharpening, you could split a boar’s thistle with that now.’ The boy did as he was bid.
Isabella smiled. A boy pulled back a chair for her and she sat. She was pleased that the duke at least did not indulge the military affectation for camp stools and the like, but had transported a full set of decent furniture with him. She had been offered the best chair – high backed, carved with the images of tumbling swallows.
‘A rare day we face tomorrow, Lady.’
She crossed herself. ‘Indeed. Boys, leave us, I wish to speak to the duke in private.’
The boys looked a little shocked, which told Isabella they had little experience of queens. Orléans waved his hand and they vacated. She didn’t like that. They should have left immediately without waiting for his instruction. These are the days in which we live, it seems, all deference and propriety gone.
‘Ma’am.’
‘I come to you, Duke, in order to speak most secretly.’
‘I’m not sure I’m the right one for secrets. You know I am no statesman. Nor warrior neither, if truth be told.’
‘Yet you lead a division tomorrow.’
He paled. ‘I do. The reserve. To sway the direction of the battle once the mess of fighting’s done. I should think your good angels will have settled it by then, anyhow. What?’
‘I think not. The angels seem rather inclined to my grandson,’ she lied. Having already paled there was little paler the duke could get, but he managed it.
‘You have told the king?’
‘Yes, but he seems not to care. He forbade me or any other from mentioning it. This is why I come to you. To steel you, sir, to bolster your resolve. Tomorrow, though the fight may be savage and the killing great, you must do your duty by your king and God.’
Orléans put his hand to his chest. ‘Lady, I shall . . .’ He seemed unable to finish the sentence. There were tears in his eyes.
‘Tell me.’
He swayed from side to side, his head downcast. After a period of silence, she said again. ‘Tell me.’
‘I come from a great line of warriors.’
‘Your brother John is a lion. Your family the pride of France.’
He gave a little mew, and pawed at the air with his hand.
‘I am not of such stuff,’ he said. ‘And my only virtue is that I know it.’
‘You are too hard on yourself, sir. You do well enough in the lists.’
He laughed. ‘Do you know how many great knights have been forced to make idiots of themselves with lance and sword before me, just because of who I am? And still half the time it’s all I can do to win.’
‘So what happens tomorrow?’ Isabella had thought to put the fear of God into Orléans, shake his resolve, but she saw there was no need for that.
‘I go out and I . . .’ He waved his arm around in imitation of sword swipes. ‘I have to lead. I have to go first. The English have said they will give no quarter.’
‘That’s probably bluster before the battle. Who could ignore the chance to ransom you? You know when my husband left me to the Scots, it was their bickering over me that gave me the chance to get away. They started fighting each other, so rich a prize was I. You are no different. If I, a lady, can escape . . .’
He picked up his lyre.
‘You are more of a man than I,’ he said. ‘Did you not lead your army at Orwell, when outnumbered twenty to one by your husband’s forces? Did you not vanquish those forces and set yourself and your son upon the throne?’
Isabella let his words sink in. The walls of the tent seemed to breathe in the hot September night.
‘I did.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Would you like me to ride alongside you? I wear the Crown of Light. They are my angels. I’m sure you will be protected. I will take the charge, if you like, I have done it before. I rather enjoy it.’
He bowed his head.
‘I could not ask . . .’
‘You are not asking. I am offering. I will ride beside you and pray that the angels watch over you.’
‘Why are you doing this for me?’
She stood and smiled. ‘Because I wish to see France prosper on the field. We cannot lose for lack of purpose.’
So it was that Isabella sat with Orléans’s division at the back of the field on that sweet September morning, a coat of boy’s mail about her, a borrowed sword at her side. In front of her was the meat of the battle, the ones who needed most to fall – the king’s battle, his banners like a field of golden lilies. In front of that, wide and deep, was the battle of the Dauphin, a sea of leaping dolphin fish, men-at-arms to the front, horses behind. They would not make the mistake of Crécy. The footmen would advance, invulnerable in their armour, and slaughter the archers before the cavalry engaged.
The English line was thin by comparison – their trenches dug, their stakes positioned, their archers set. The devils rose in columns behind them, a thick smoke of winged worms, stone skins, blasted crows, the buzzing fly men and the writhing snakes of the air.
Orléans crossed himself.
‘Cousin,’ she said, ‘this is France. Those devils cannot move a step forward until the ground is won by the men who travel with them. If my grandson cannot make this England, he cannot fight upon it with those unholy creatures. And see how our angels tower!’
At five points around the field, though distant from it, columns of light shone – sunset red.
‘I say, they’re running away!’ said Orléans.
At the back of the English lines, the baggage train was moving, that was all. Would the French fall for it? They would not. ‘Hold! Hold!’ came the cry from the front. She’d see about that. She spurred her horse forward, through the king’s lines, to the ranks of knights in the Dauphin’s division, up to the Dauphin himself.
‘Cousin, the English are in retreat. Press your advantage!’
‘It’s a trick, Lady. They want us to repeat our old errors.’
‘You have no valour! The angels will not engage for cowards!’
She turned to the knights behind us.
‘The English are slipping away! With me! With me!’
She spurred her horse forward through the footmen. Three knights followed her, eager for glory, then six followed them, then twelve them.
‘Hold! Hold!’ cried the Dauphin but he could not make himself heard. His footmen broke order to allow the cavalry through, but not quick enough. Some fell beneath the hooves of their own horsemen; some just fell. Isabella pulled down the visor on her helm and spurred her horse forward. She heard her own breath sawing, felt her heart racing as the horse took off. A sound like rain, a thump in the chest. Her horse had sprouted an arrow but it kept going, its thick caparison protecting it well. Another thump, and another. Her horse was resembling a hedgehog but still it kept on. An enormous jolt, a cry of animal pain and she was flying. But Isabella had been falling off horses since she was four years old and she rolled out of the collapse, coming up to standing. She drew her sword.
Around her was chaos. The English had
dug little pits to trip the charging horses and now mounds of men and animals were piling in front of the hedges. Two more thumps – two more arrows shattering against her mail. She was calm. Now she had to make her way back to Orléans, but that would not prove easy. The charge of the French horse went on and on, and she hid behind the body of a fallen destrier to stop herself being trampled.
The angels were taking shape. No longer columns of light but huge creatures, two female, three male, pointing swords and spears to the battle field. Beside her Étampes sat down. He did not recognise her; his eyes were vacant, his helm half torn off. Étampes, in line to the throne one day given a lucky series of calamities. She took out her misericord.
‘Satan!’ she said. ‘I call you. I call you. The last day is here. Come to the earth!’
She stabbed Étampes hard in the throat, driving the dagger between his jaw and his gorget. He turned to look at her, an expression of mild surprise on his face. Then he died. Footmen were pouring in now but the arrow fire was immense. She felt a nick as a lucky shot got through her mail and gambeson.
The French threw themselves like devils at the English hedges. Not all the horses had fallen by any means and knights hacked away, trying to find a way through the thicket of staves and briars. She looked back. King John was readying his charge. The archers in front of her ceased fire and she took her cue, mounting a loose horse, its caparison all quilled with arrows, and turning for her own lines.
The English foot were advancing over the tumble of men and horses. A charge now might be decisive. She was done, though, shouldering her horse back to where Orléans was. He was trembling, white.
‘I thought you had deserted me,’ he said.
‘Never.’
‘You are brave, madam.’
‘I am of France.’
A great shout and the second wave of horse went to it, but now it was carnage. They headed for the English foot but the archers had flanked them. No longer were they aiming for the thick armour on the horses’ fronts, but at the less protected sides and even the rears. A storm of arrows hit the charge and the animals screamed in torment, bucking their riders from their seats, falling, tripping others, the tripped falling and tripping still more. It was as if a wave hit a harbour wall.
‘Satan, Satan,’ she said under her breath. ‘Our God is a god of blood and pain, of the blood of the martyrs, of Christ’s blood on the Cross, of the wars of Cross and Crescent! The blood royal calls you to earth. These are the last days. Come forth and play your part as the prophets have foretold.’
John, magnificent King John, vessel of such holy blood, a living holy grail, lowered his visor and spurred his horse to the fray. The arrows were almost done, no more firing, the bowmen pouring into the battle from the sides. Now the Black Prince’s ostrich banners bobbed into the fray. The English were all committed and the battle was in balance.
‘Now?’ said Orléans, his voice shaking. ‘Now? Lady? Now?’
The great angels towered enacting movements of striking and killing. Were they ready to join the battle on the side of France?
‘My Lord,’ said Isabella, ‘I fear the day is done. The angels have cursed me and told me that we anger God with what we do today. They will engage for the enemy.’
‘What to do? What to do?’
‘Why, die, My Lord, die, most certainly, and face the wrath of God eternal, for our loyalty to our king says we must.’
‘No. If he is gone, then who is to rule? I mean, the Dauphin is down there, all his sons. There’s only me. I am too valuable. I must. We must retreat.’
‘Yes!’ said Isabella. ‘Retreat and find our way back to God’s pleasure. Defer to the angels. Yes.’
Orléans nodded.
‘God is against us!’ he cried to his men. ‘Withdraw, withdraw. Save yourselves !’
The great mass of the French reserve wheeled its horses, its footmen dropping their spears and bills as they scrambled to retreat.
Banners went down. She saw Tancarville’s standard, and Étampes’ and Marche’s and Bourbon’s, fall. So much royal blood. Just kill the king. Why don’t you kill the king, you useless idiot, Edward? The fleur-de-lys was now locked against the ostrich feather, the fighting so loud and intense.
A party of English bowmen skirted the action, a hundred yards away. They nocked. No need to worry about them at such a distance.
Isabella looked to the skies. Something was coming towards her. A knight, in all the colours of a stained glass window, a knight so rich in colour it was as if the light of the sun itself flowed in his veins.
A tear came into her eye.
‘Mortimer!’ she said. ‘You have come from Heaven.’ He stood before her, as radiant as the dawn.
‘My love,’ he said, ‘you have worked mightily to release me. I am so near to regaining the world, from stepping through the gate of Heaven.’
‘I have missed you for so long. But you are not yet here? Then how can I see you?’ She wiped her eye and when she tried to remove her hand, she could not. An arrow fixed it in place, its head deep in the socket and she, to her surprise, was almost dead. Time slowed but she could feel her life running out.
‘Will I go to Heaven?’ she said. But there was no reply.
Would she go to Hell? Perhaps, but if she did then its king would not be there to torment her.
‘Satan,’ she said, ‘come.’
She fell from her horse, and the English horse overran her, trampling her royal blood into the soil of Poitiers field.
18
In times of plague, in times of war, in times of turmoil and uncertainty, when grief strikes like a viper at the heart and love seems gone from the world, there remains, as always the problem of how to make a living.
Osbert, drunk in the streets of Paris for so long after Gilette’s departure thought to return to the court, concoct some story about why he had been away but, by the time his months of drinking had come to an end – all his money gone – there was no court to return to. When he tried to enter the palace of the Louvre, he found it shut up, along with all the grand buildings in the middle of Paris.
There was not even anyone to ask. John had ridden south to face the English, five angels leading the way. That had been a month ago. People scuttled from place to place; they did not walk with any confidence, as if at any second expecting an arrow to strike them or maybe a bolt from the sky.
Things were falling apart.
October was warm but blowy in Paris and he took himself to the royal woods at Vincennes to look at a tree – the last greenery in the city itself having been burnt some time before the Romans got there, he guessed. Oh Gilette, how could you? I gave you my heart and you traded it for what? The liberation of the poor, a dream. You took a key from me but left me in irons. Such melancholy and self-pitying thoughts bred like street rats in his head.
He saw his first dead man on the corner of the Hôpital de la Trinité. He was not in good shape, having clearly been in the ground a while by his state of decomposition. But he stood looking around, gazing up at the great edifice of the hospital.
‘I am free,’ he said. ‘But it is a strange freedom. I do not know what to do.’
Osbert, who preferred to limit his conversations with the dead, went to hurry past but he saw another dead man there, pulling himself from the earth of the hospital cemetery. Now a family emerged, a dead and rotted mother helping a dead and rotted child from the grave. All around the ground seemed to boil, as the dead rose up.
‘Oh, shit, it’s the last days, isn’t it?’ said Osbert. ‘God, I repent. Fully, without condition. I repent. Judge me as you will but know that whatever I did, I was made in your image. By you. So whatever I’ve done, you are partly to blame.’
More dead people arose all around him.
‘Are you all right?’ said Osbert to a young girl, half her face eaten by worms.
‘They prodded me with pins. For ever. It is wonderful to be free of them.’
She sat down on the g
round and looked around her. He made the sign of the cross.
‘God bless you,’ he said.
‘He did not do that. He cursed me. The torment was terrible. I lied and said I was too sick to go to mass. They burnt my tongue eternally for it.’
You knew the rules! Osbert was tempted to say, but did not.
He walked the streets. All around the dead were rising, looking around in confusion, hugging each other for comfort. The ordinary folk ran for the churches and their homes. He, who had harrowed Hell, was less easily spooked.
For the sake of God, the boy did it, thought Osbert. He broke the walls of Hell. But where was Lucifer? Where was the bright one they had been promised? Or where was God, to judge, to condemn and bless and tidy these stinking corpses from the streets? This half-hearted end of the world was good for no one.
He ran to the Louvre. He would need to consult all the wise people he could, to use holy relics to . . . To what? He didn’t know what to do. The king would know, surely the king would know. But where was the king?
His hangover was hot in his veins and the city was suffocating him. He ran for the walls. No guards, but only more of the dead wandering around in confusion. He walked for he didn’t know how long, until he came to the royal wood at Vincennes.
But when he arrived, he could not believe what he saw – common men roasting the king’s deer on fires they had made of the king’s wood, a nervous guard around the château, its portcullis firmly shut. The dead were not here – or at least not yet.
Osbert reined in his mild outrage – he had been in the court too long to feel that a commoner feasting on venison was something that could ever be right – in favour of trying to cadge a meal. No luck there.
‘God’s shit,’ said the man at the fire, ‘it took me all day to bag this. I’ll not part from it cheaply.’