“What a pretty prize,” Jeanne said, eying him up and down. Every other person from the merchant ship was now dead but for the two crewmen she’d leave at the next port to take word that the Lioness of Brittany had struck again. She lay down her axe and stepped closer to him. Elyas had been raised under Charles de Blois’s roof. Probably loved the evil son-of-a-bitch. Jeanne had heard that Charles thought fondly of the boy, and had toyed with giving him one of his estates in Brittany. That would never do.
When Elyas de Blois’s eyes met hers, his face bloomed with something like triumph. He began to mutter, too low for her to hear. A green fire surrounded him in a halo, and the two crew members holding Elyas dropped to the ground, dead. Elyas’s eyes glowed bright chartreuse as the words reached a crescendo.
“Volez, magie, et vaincrez le mal devant moi!” he cried at the top of his lungs.
The green fire blazed about the boy, crackling like lightning. It left his body and made straight for her.
Green fire surrounded her. Jeanne’s eyes streamed tears. She almost wished it would work and take her so she could re-join her husband, Olivier.
Life was not so kind.
The fires extinguished and she was left standing, unhurt.
Elyas’s face fell with dismay.
Jeanne smiled at him, pushing the now-dry mane of her hair back from her face. “You underestimated the Lioness, mon garçon.”
Elyas waited for his death.
“Take him to my quarters and ensure he’s well-bound,” Jeanne said instead, picking up her axe again and jumping back to her black and red ship. She left her crew behind to clean up the mess.
She’d play with her prey before she ate it.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
Elyas de Blois had been imprisoned in the captain’s quarters for hours, but the Lioness was nowhere to be seen. Every creak of the ship made him start in fear. The quarters were spacious for a ship, sumptuous and lavish. He was tied to a post against one wall, his legs bound in front of him. The bonds were tight enough that his fingers and toes tingled. He watched through the porthole as the sun set and the light in the room dimmed. Why had the spell not worked? The king himself had given it to him. Elyas had been at court the previous summer, and in the middle of the night he’d been woken by a servant and brought to the king’s bedchambers. Elyas at first wondered if he were to be the king’s new lover. But that was not why the king had called for him.
Another man was in the room as well, dressed in a hooded black robe. Elyas learned who he was later: Guichard de Troyes, a powerful bishop who had been tried for sorcery, maleficia and poisoning. He was accused of killing Queen Jeanne de Navarre, invoking the Devil with other priests and a sorceress who later turned against him. De Troyes’ chamberlain was tortured until he confirmed the story, and then dozens of other voices also spoke up against de Troyes.
Yet after a few years, de Troyes was released, and rebuilt his reputation. He offered to be the king’s personal sorcerer. Though Philip VI was said to loathe magic in all its forms, he recognized the need for the power and protection it could provide. Guichard de Troyes became a spider in the web of the court
If Elyas had known all that when he first met the sorcerer, he might have screamed and run from the king’s suite. Instead, he was told a tale of a vengeful woman who took to the seas and left death in her wake. Her piracy had long been a thorn in the king’s side. His health was failing, and one of his wishes was for the Lioness of Brittany to die before he did.
Elyas learned that Charles de Blois had assured the king he was trustworthy. Elyas still did not know whether to be grateful to his cousin or curse his name. Charles would never have agreed to sorcery. He was the most pious man Elyas had ever met: he wore hair shirts beneath his clothes, flagellated himself until blood ran down his back, and wrapped coarse ropes about his body so that they chafed.
Elyas had no choice but to agree to be the bait in a trap for the Lioness of Brittany. He was given a locket to wear around his neck. Within it were magical herbs and animal parts to focus power. The gold of the metal was embedded with magic. All he had to do to unleash the spell was speak the incantation while looking the Lioness in the eye.
He’d done all they asked of him. The magic of the strongest wizard in France had not worked. Jeanne de Clisson did not have so much as a singed eyebrow.
How had this happened?
He had hoped, so badly, to kill the Lioness. The king would reward him. Elyas would, finally, no longer be terrified of Charles de Blois.
Instead, Elyas would not live to see the dawn.
The door opened and the Lioness entered. Elays forced himself not to flinch. He’d die as a man, not as the simpering, frightened boy he’d always been.
Jeanne de Clisson stared at him silently, arms crossed below her bosom. He’d built her up in his mind over the last few months as a fearsome witch. Out there on the deck, she had been.
Now, her hair had dried into messy brown curls about her face. She was nearly fifty, her face lined with time and tanned from the sun, her strong-boned face attractive. She wore no paints or perfumes like the ladies at court, nor did Elyas expect she’d worn a dress since she took to the sea. She was clad in men’s clothing; loose trousers, a white shirt and coat, a sword belt slung low on her hips. She’d borne seven children, yet she was trim and muscular from life on a ship. Jeanne de Clisson, with her calm stare, did not seem mad with revenge, yet she must be, to give up everything she’d known, all her possessions, to have sold her very body, to become a pirate and cause as much woe to France as she could.
“Elyas de Blois,” she said, coming closer and sitting down, crossing her legs. Elyas stared at her leather boots, no longer wishing to meet her gaze.
“How did you survive that spell?” he asked, helplessly.
He glanced up at her, and saw the glimmer of madness lurking behind her eyes. “Who sent you?” she countered rather than answering. “The king or Charles? Both?”
Elyas hunched his shoulders. He felt bruised and battered, and he could only hope he wouldn’t give everything up when she began to torture him.
“Charles probably would have trouble arranging a meeting with a wizard, what with his faith to the Lord,” her mouth twisted with irony, “and being a prisoner of war in England. So, the king. Let me guess: he told you this spell was infallible. You would receive the bounty on my head, a title, perhaps an estate given to you by Charles once he’s released. You would live the rest of your life in luxury, find a pretty, well-born girl to marry, and have the perfect life until you died an old man in your sleep.”
She made his desires sound so pathetic.
“Charles and Philip are not in the business of making people’s lives easier.”
Elyas gaped at her informality. Though a breach in etiquette was nothing compared to murdering her way across the English Channel.
“You know what they did to me,” Jeanne said. “You know why they deserve to suffer.”
He had studied every detail of her life. He’d learned about her long-departed husband, Olivier de Clisson. He had been friends with Charles de Blois for years, but was persuaded to side with Edward III when the English king decided he had a clearer claim to the Breton throne than Philip VI. When King Philip learned of Olivier’s deal, he invited him to a joust on French soil, and promptly had him arrested. Many believed that it was Charles de Blois who told the king about Olivier’s defection, and Elyas thought that was likely true.
There was only one course of action imaginable—once the other lords of the region learned of Olivier’s leanings, many others would have followed suit, and Philip VI might have a civil war on his hands. So on August 2nd 1343, Olivier de Clisson was found guilty of treason and beheaded. His headless corpse swung from Montfaucon in Paris, and his head was impaled on a lance over the Sauvetout gate in Nantes in Brittany.
Jeanne de Clisson had brought her sons to stare up at the rotting head of their father. That was when the m
adness took hold, according to legend. She swore she would stop at nothing to have her revenge on the king and Charles. She sold all her lands and belongings. Some swore she also sold her body to the highest bidder.
For six years, she had attacked ship after ship, selling their cargo to the English. Judging by the gold and treasures here in the captain’s quarters, she was a rich woman now. Three of her sons, all youths, served with her, witness to every brutality.
Her revenge would not stop until Philip VI or Charles de Blois was dead.
King Philip had plenty to contend with. The war with England, and France’s recent defeat at the Battle of Crécy. The death count was high, and rationing had pinched the populace hard. The Black Death spread across the land, killing subject after subject.
But the king was fixated on this woman who had smuggled goods to the English during the Battle of Crécy, who took weapons and stores meant for his soldiers, who beheaded noblemen and prominent merchants.
Elyas had been sent here to end her, and he had failed.
Would she claw out his eyes, disembowel him, or inflict some other evil he could not imagine? She had to be a witch, the way the green flames had not harmed her.
“I know that the king’s justice can be harsh…” he began, and winced as Jeanne cut him off with a rough laugh.
“That was not justice. My husband fought for the French, but your cousin decided he was a traitor and convinced the king. Olivier is dead because of Charles and your king.”
Elyas had never been a silver-tongued diplomat like many members of his family. Especially Charles. His cousin could have talked Jesus into committing sin, if he didn’t consider such a thing unspeakably blasphemous. “It was not justice,” he agreed, though his stomach twisted to be speaking treason against his sovereign. “But is this—what you are doing—any better?”
Jeanne looked him over with a new intensity. Her lips tightened, deepening the small lines by her mouth. “Everyone whose life I’ve taken has committed crimes.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. His imminent death made him bolder. “There was a boy on La Gracedieux, just a cabin boy. Fourteen years old. Is he dead?”
Jeanne shook her head. “He’s one of the survivors. I usually keep the youths alive. He’ll be dropped off at the next port.”
Anger flared within him. “He’ll never recover from the death he’s seen at your hands. He’ll never be the same person he was.”
“I’ll never be the woman I was before Olivier was murdered.”
“You don’t know the deeds of every man you’ve killed, unless you’ve powers greater than any I’ve ever heard of. Who are you to enact justice any more than the king?” Jeanne blinked in surprise. Elyas guessed that no one spoke to her so bluntly. Truth might be his only chance. “I know as well as you how cruel and how heartless Charles de Blois can be.”
Jeanne considered him. Elyas’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, but he didn’t look away from her, not even to blink. “Yes,” she said, quietly. “Perhaps you do.” She came towards him, slinking like her lioness namesake. Elyas pressed himself back against the post as she untied his bonds. “Let us speak properly before I decide what to do with you.”
He stood up. She was a head and shoulders shorter than him. She motioned for him to sit across from her at the table. His muscles had cramped from hours in the same position, and he did not move gracefully. He stifled a groan as his muscles loosened, blood returning to his fingers and toes.
Jeanne rested her elbows on the table, interlacing her fingers.
“I saw you once, you know,” he said. “You and your husband came to visit my cousin. I was eleven.” She was a completely different woman. Still strong, but a different kind of strength hidden by fancy dresses and hand-stitched lace.
“I don’t remember you.”
“I was hiding behind the curtains. I wasn’t allowed to dinner that night.”
He’d had scraps thrown to him like a dog, and not enough to fill his belly. Back then, Elyas was always being punished for one infraction or another. Sometimes real, sometimes imagined.
“You seemed happy,” he said, remembering her easy smile, the way she held her husband’s hand under the table. Olivier was Jeanne’s second husband. She’d first been married when she was twelve, to Geoffrey de Châteaubriant. They had two children before he died. But Olivier and Jeanne…even at eleven, Elyas had seen the love that sparked between them. Charles de Blois had no love for his own wife. Had he been jealous?
“How did Charles treat you?” she asked, her eyes bright with curiosity.
“You know what kind of man he is. It drove you to piracy. What do you think living under his roof for five years did to me?”
Elyas had to prove to her that he was as much a victim of Charles de Blois and the king as she was. It was his only chance.
“Tell me,” she commanded.
He managed to raise an eyebrow at her. “All the grisly details?”
“Oui. Everything.”
And so he told her of the whippings, the starving, the nights left out in the cold. Charles de Blois found so many ways to harm him without anyone else finding out. In front of others, he was the doting uncle, the generous man who had taken his brother’s youngest son onto his estate for education and care. But he received little of either. Elyas had always known what kind of man his uncle could be, but he never told anyone, for fear of being disbelieved. He should have tried; he knew the laws now. Charles shouldn’t have harmed a hair on his head, for it would mean forfeiting his fostering fee and broken the alliance between the branches of the Blois family. But as a frightened child, he thought that was the only life for him. That pain was the only path to salvation.
“So you agreed to the spell to give yourself freedom over your own life.”
“If I refused, the king would have killed me.”
“That, too.” Her eyes held no pity, but she regarded him differently than when she first entered the room. Elyas did not know if that meant she would spare him.
“Why didn’t it work?” he asked. “They said that it was foolproof. I said the spell correctly.”
“All men are fools, and it was made by a man. So it could not have been foolproof.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the amulet that had once contained the spell. The gold was warped, and when she opened it, Elyas smelled singed dried plants and animal fur.
“On anyone else, it would have worked.” She reached into her blouse and pulled out another amulet. It looked like a large, ancient coin, marked with occult symbols. Once, it may have been bright copper, but now it was caked with verdigris. He could sense the power radiating from it. The air smelled like a stormy night, with lightning about to strike. She held it in her hands and it glowed violet. Her curls rippled in an unseen wind. She slipped the amulet back against her skin, and the room seemed to brighten.
“I was a pirate on land before I took to sea,” she said.
“Yes.” Elyas knew this, as he knew so much else about her. She had raised a force of men, but soon decided it was safer on the water.
“You know of Thébaut, n’est-ce pas?”
“Bien sûr.” One of her most famous crimes was sacking the garrison at the Chateau Thébaut.
“There was a wizard there, hiding from your king. He gave me this in return for sparing him and his family, if I promised to do as much harm to the king as I could. It seemed a fair trade. While I wear this, no magic can harm me.”
He debated lunging at her and plucking the amulet from her neck, leaving her vulnerable. But for what? The spell was spent, and she’d have her axe in his gut before he could leave the room. “Then why would he part with it? Wouldn’t it leave him vulnerable?”
She laughed. “Not when he was the only man on Earth who could conjure them. I’m sure he had others. I was sceptical at first, thinking it was a trick, but it has saved my life more times than I can count. You’re not the first assassin sent my way. You’re unlikely to be the last.”
“You may as well kill me,” Elyas said. “If I go back without your head in a bag, they’ll impale mine on the Sauvetout gate in Nantes.”
One side of her mouth quirked. “That’s true enough.”
He didn’t let her see his fear. “All I ask, madame, is that the death be quick and painless.”
“Painless until you wake up in hell for dabbling with witchcraft?”
He swallowed. She was cruel to tease him before she killed him. “Yes, until I do penance for my sins in the next life.”
She leaned close to him, pushed the hair back from his face. She did not look insane, or angry. Only sad. She kissed his forehead, and Elyas closed his eyes, tears falling down his face.
“I can do that,” she whispered. She went to a cabinet and brought out a bottle of wine, pouring it into a silver goblet. From another cupboard, she took a twist of paper and emptied powder into the wine. She held it out to him. “Here,” she said. “A little alchemy of my own.”
He took the goblet in hands that shook. “Will it hurt?”
“Not a bit.”
He took a deep breath. “Merci. I’d…I’d rather drink poisoned wine than have my head struck off with an axe.” It was her preferred method of executing the French noblemen she came across.
“Drink, Elyas.”
He lifted his glass to her. “To the Lioness of Brittany, the most feared pirate on the seas.” He couldn’t help but admire her. She did not bow when tragedy struck her, but fought tooth and nail. His life, by contrast, was failure after failure. Had he ever made a decision that was all his own?
Too late for regrets.
He drank the wine quickly. She waited with him, holding his hand until his eyes closed.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
Jeanne de Clisson looked out at the dark smudge of land on the horizon, sipping a glass of dark red wine. The sea was quiet, the sky clear, the wind perfectly guiding them towards the shore. The Black Fleet sailed, holds full of cargo from the scuttled La Gracedieux and other ships fallen prey to the Lioness. As the men and women around her worked, Jeanne allowed herself a brief moment to rest her feet and let her thoughts drift as she finished her wine.
Cranky Ladies of History Page 30