Evangelista's Fan

by Rose Tremain

  He was riding to La Vallée to ask for Cecile’s hand. His mother and father had waved and grinned as he’d set off: ‘Such a beautiful girl, son. So striking! We wish you joy and success.’

  His thoughts, as always, had already landed on Cecile. They caressed her shoulder. They lay trapped like butterflies under her lavender-coloured cloak as she put it on and walked out of the house carrying a basket.

  What was she going to put in the basket? Branches of blossom?

  A thought is seldom trapped for long. It can travel anywhere. It can make decisions.

  Montjoy’s thoughts escaped from under the cloak. They walked with Cecile through the damp grass. They hid in the shadow of her skirts, high up in the darkness between her legs. They were touched in a caressing way as she took each step.

  So then he had to slow his horse, dismount, walk to a stream, try to clear his head. ‘You’re running too fast,’ he told himself. ‘You’re not her bridegroom yet.’

  He knelt over the stream and cupped icy spring water and splashed his face. He gasped. There were days in a life so momentous they seemed to alter the size of the world. His heart felt as colossal as a cuckoo bird. The sky above his kneeling figure expanded and expanded, wider, fatter, closer to heaven than it had ever been.

  He sat down on the grass. His horse grazed and flicked his tail at the spring flies. There are splendid lives, he thought. There is bravery and there is luck. There is ingenuity. A woman’s shoe can be yellow . . .

  There were yellow flowers at the stream’s edge. Montjoy wasn’t good at the names of flowers, but he sat there for a long while, admiring these particular ones.

  Agincourt.

  October 1415.

  In this desolate wood, Montjoy looks for something green, something that will be soft to the touch.

  This fear that he can’t name has seeped from his mind, down and down all through him and touched his heart like a ghost and then his sphincter, and now he’s crouching down and defecating onto the dry bracken.

  He can see nothing green, nothing soft to the touch to wipe his arse with. He has to scrape up handfuls of harsh bracken and fallen leaves and clean himself with these. As he pulls up his stockings, he feels like weeping.

  The wood oppresses him. He’d come into the wood to find a moment’s peace before he has to complete his ride to the English camp. But the wood feels dead.

  Leaving his horse tied up and the standard leaning against the tree, he makes his way back towards the ploughed field under its curtain of mist.

  He walks forward, his feet unsteady on the frosted ridges. He can sense, now, that the mist is going to clear and that the day may after all be fine. Already, there’s more light on the field.

  He looks down at the earth. He wonders who works this land, what crop he has in mind for the year to come. The loops of Montjoy’s indigo hat fall over his eyes. He is standing now on the place where the very centre of the battle will be. Here, where his feet are, an English soldier will fall, his lungs pierced with a lance, blood bursting from his throat. All around him will lie his doomed compatriots, souls vanished into the air. This is the crop to come: in an ecstasy of death, this land will be seeded with the English. And it will be his task to count them – his and the English heralds’ – to make an orderly tally, even if limbs or heads are severed and fall some way from the torsos. All heralds must be precise. They mustn’t look away. Afterwards, he will say to his nephew, Roland: ‘I saw it. It took place near the castle of Agincourt. But you couldn’t call it a great battle. It was too one-sided.’

  He is aware, suddenly, that a lot of time has passed since he set out. Far ahead, he can hear the English resume their pathetic hammering. And this comforts him, somehow. His fear has lessened.

  He strides back into the wood and unties his horse. The horse is trembling with cold. He slaps it gently to warm it.

  He mounts and takes up his standard. He faces his horse towards the light soaking through the rising mist and rides on.

  La Vallée.

  April 1412.

  Sitting by the stream with the sun warm on his nose, Montjoy rehearsed his declaration of love and his offer of marriage.

  He imagined Cecile standing with her back towards him, looking out of a window. He went down on one knee, but she hadn’t noticed this. Her shoulders were very still. He said: ‘Cecile, I think it must have been apparent to you for some time that I consider you to be the centre of my universe . . .’

  He imagined her smiling – so now he’s going to propose to me! – but trying to conceal the smile.

  He said: ‘And really so it is. Or rather, it’s more than this: you have actually altered the way I see the world. Before I met you, my life seemed so small, so circumscribed. But together, you and I could become masters – or rather, I mean, master and mistress – of a fine destiny!’

  He decided it was wise, or at least diplomatic, to ask Cecile at this point whether she, too, felt the earth transformed by his presence at her side. And he imagined that she turned from the window and came running to him and pulled him to his feet and said: ‘Yes, Montjoy! Yes. I feel the earth transformed!’ And then he kissed her.

  The kiss was so heavenly that Montjoy, alone by the stream, let it last for several minutes. His eyes were fixed on some vacant spot, unseeing. Above him flew thrushes and finches. Fleets of minnows sailed by him in the water.

  When the kiss was over, Montjoy looked around him. At dusk, he would ride back this way with Cecile’s promise to be his wife locked inside him like money locked in a box. And always, after today, when he rode this way, he would feel that this was hallowed ground – the spongy grass, the yellow flowers, the icy stream – because it was here that his future came to meet him.

  A bee buzzed by him.

  He got to his feet. He and the bee were moving to the same enchanted, perfumed destination.

  Agincourt.

  October 1415.

  One of their scavenge-parties, sent out to gather nuts and berries and firewood, sees him coming with his flying banner from far off. Two of the party stand and gape at him; two others start running back to the English camp.

  They make him feel smart, these bedraggled English, carrying bundles of sticks. His blue hat no longer feels ridiculous, but slightly stylish. He bounces high in the saddle.

  He is memorising the Dauphin’s instructions: ‘Look, Montjoy, the thing is perfectly simple. The English can’t possibly win. We outnumber them five to one. If they can’t understand this simple arithmetic, do a demonstration with pebbles or coins or any damn thing that happens to be at hand. They are about to be overwhelmed. What a marvellous word! Overwhelmed. I love it. Right?’

  And now, as the mist disperses, he can begin to see the English camp. It huddles in among some thin trees. Just as he’d envisaged, the men have made themselves hovels from sticks and bracken. There are a few threadbare tents. Smoke rises from a dozen small fires. He can see soldiers grouped around them, trying to warm themselves. They turn their white faces towards him.

  Montjoy has never been to England. He has been told that one corner of it lies under water, but that elsewhere there are great forests, older than time. And these men that he sees look half drowned to him, or else, with this pallor they have, appear like people who live perpetually in a wooded darkness.

  He slows his horse. Like grey ghosts, English soldiers have crept out of the trees and stand staring at him. What honour for France can there possibly be in slaughtering people already half dead? What honour for the heralds to oversee such a massacre? He thinks of Roland. In the tender privacy of the boy’s tree-house, Montjoy had once said to him: ‘Roland, there are two things that have counted with me in my life and one of them is honour . . .’

  But his thoughts are interrupted, because now he realises that a group of men-at-arms is approaching him. They have formed themselves into a square. In the middle of the square, Montjoy can glimpse something bright. It is the crown on the King’s head.

&nb
sp; Montjoy takes off his hat. He dismounts. Carrying the standard and leading his horse, he moves forward on foot. And in this moment (he can’t say why) a fragment of his earlier fear lodges in his heart and he sees coming towards him, as if in a dream or a vision, not Henry of England but his beloved Cecile, wearing a garland of yellow flowers round her hair.

  He falters. Then he urges himself on. He is aware, now, that hundreds of the English ghosts have come out of the trees and are gazing at him.

  He bows to the King. When he looks up, he sees a squarish, bony face and a complexion less pale than those around him. The regard is soft and the voice, when he hears it, is gentle.

  ‘Well, herald?’

  ‘Sir,’ says Montjoy, ‘I’ve come from the Dauphin. He and all the nobles with him urge you to consider your position. They estimate that your army is outnumbered by five to one and they feel that, to save your men from certain death, the best course you can follow is to give yourself up for ransom . . .’

  Montjoy sees one of the men-at-arms belch silently. He decides that two things keep these people from fleeing back to Calais: drink and the presence of their King.

  ‘What is your name, herald?’ asks the King.

  ‘Montjoy, sir.’

  The King smiles. The men-at-arms appear to stare through Montjoy at the piece of ground over which he has just travelled.

  Still smiling, the King says: ‘Montjoy, say this to Prince Dauphin. We would like to remind him that there are very few certainties on earth. Extraordinarily few. When I was a boy, I kept a stag beetle in an ivory box. I used to speak to it. And one evening, it spoke back to me. Until that time, I’d been absolutely certain that a stag beetle was unable to talk.’

  The King laughs. The men-at-arms turn their anxious eyes from the field and look at their monarch.

  ‘So you see,’ says the King, ‘one never knows.’

  ‘What did the beetle say, sir?’ asks Montjoy.

  ‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a word or two. It was the unexpectedness that struck me. So there you are, herald. Your Dauphin can believe in his certainty or not as he pleases. It makes no difference to us. We will not be ransomed.’

  The ghostly faces have clustered near to the King and are trying to listen to what he’s saying. They stare and blink in the sunlight so foreign to them. They scratch their bodies through their clothing.

  ‘God go with you, Montjoy,’ says the King.

  Montjoy bows. The King and his men-at-arms turn round and walk away. Montjoy replaces his blue hat on his dark head.

  La Vallée.

  April 1412.

  There was the house. There were the doves, like winged thoughts, on the roof. Smoke drifted up from one of the stone chimneys.

  Montjoy was still rehearsing his proposal as he dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a servant. Then the servant informed him that Mademoiselle Cecile and her parents had gone to visit a cousin struck down by a tumbling weathercock. They were not expected back until late afternoon.

  In the tableau Montjoy had seen in his mind, there had been morning light at the window where Cecile stood while he told her about the alteration to his world. And he liked things to proceed as he’d imagined them. So now he hesitated: should he leave or should he wait?

  He decided to wait. The servant led his horse away. He sat on a stone wall and stared up at the sky. Then, he walked to the orchard where the apple blossom was in flower and stood near to Cecile’s beehives. The traffic of bees to and from them absorbed his attention for a long time. He kept picturing the honeyed world inside. He decided that the thing in nature Cecile most closely resembled was a cluster of bees. She moved in ways that he couldn’t fully understand and yet all the while there was purpose in her.

  Cecile discovered him in the orchard. He’d fallen asleep in the sun and was dreaming of the sea. When he woke and found Cecile standing above him, he believed, for a fragment of a second, that she was a ship in sail, moving past him and on.

  She was laughing. Montjoy realised how ridiculous he must look, asleep in the grass like a peasant boy. He scrambled to his feet, straightening his tunic, running a hand through his hair. Desperately, he searched for words.

  Before he found any, Cecile held out her hands for him to take. He noticed then that her face was very pink and her eyes wide. She was wearing a white dress.

  ‘My friend!’ she said, ‘I’m so glad to find you here! So happy! That you should be here – and sleeping like a child – is somehow perfectly right. Because I’m in such a state! You can tell just by looking at me, can’t you? I’m in such a state of pure joy!’

  ‘Are you, Cecile?’

  ‘Yes! And you are just the person I want to share it with. You’ve been such a sweet friend to me and now I can tell you my wonderful news! What day is it? I’ll always remember this day. Always and always. Now ask me why!’

  ‘Why, Cecile?’

  ‘Because Monsieur de Granvilliers proposed to me this afternoon. I’m going to be married! I’m going to have a wonderful life!’

  Cecile let go of Montjoy’s hands and went dancing off round the orchard, twirling her arms above her head. Montjoy saw that the shoes she was wearing that day were also white and it occurred to him that the grass would soon stain them. The grass appeared dry, but it wasn’t. He could feel its dampness on his buttocks and against his shoulder blades and all down his spine.

  Agincourt.

  October 1415.

  Returning at a canter, Montjoy soon leaves the smells and sounds of the English camp behind. He doesn’t stop to look at the field or the wood. He isn’t thinking about the battle to come, but about the kind of voice a stag beetle might possess. Up in his tree-house, Roland makes up different voices for the wind and the stars. Some of the stars don’t speak, only yawn.

  The Dauphin is at lunch with his favourite counts and dukes. They’re eating blackbirds.

  ‘God, Montjoy,’ says the Dauphin, ‘you’ve been an age. What happened?’

  Montjoy is very hot after his ride. He can feel sweat in his hair.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he says. ‘I explained to the King how far he’s outnumbered, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘He refuses to be ransomed. He seems willing to fight.’

  The Dauphin picks up a blackbird and bites it in half, crunching the little bones. He speaks with his mouth full. ‘Did you explain it properly? Five to one. Did you show him?’

  ‘There wasn’t an opportunity to show him, sir. His mind is made up.’

  ‘Well then, he’s a fool,’ says the Dauphin. ‘A bumptious fool. It means that he’s now going to die. Simple as that. Every single one of them is going to die.’

  The Dauphin eats the second half of his blackbird. He spits out a piece of bone and wipes his mouth. ‘Get me the Constable of France, Montjoy,’ he says. ‘We’ll get all this over with tomorrow. I’m tired of being here. And the food’s ghastly. Off you go.’

  Montjoy backs out of the Dauphin’s tent. He feels tired. He feels he could lie down anywhere and sleep.

  La Vallée.

  April 1412.

  Out of politeness, he had to pay his respects to Cecile’s parents before he could leave. They told him that Monsieur de Granvilliers had hinted at his intention to marry Cecile back in January. Cecile’s mother said: ‘We’re very flattered. This is a very good match.’

  Montjoy wanted to say: I love her better than Granvilliers. She alters my earth. I’d sleep with her in my arms. I’d buy her any number of pairs of shoes.

  But he kept silent and only nodded.

  Then he rode back along the way he had come. The sun was going down and glinted red in the fast-running stream. He tried not to think of anything at all. When he got to the clump of yellow flowers, he looked the other way. His horse stumbled on a stone and he wished he could become that stone and feel nothing.

  Montjoy’s parents were eating dinner when he arrived back at the house. They looked up expectantly from t
heir soup and put down their spoons.

  Montjoy stood in the doorway and looked at them. For the first time in his life, he envied them with an aching, fathomless envy. They had lived side by side contentedly for thirty-one years. They still shared their bed.

  He put a fist up to his mouth. Through the clenched fist, he said: ‘Cecile’s not in my life any more. So please don’t mention her again. She’s in the past and I don’t want to speak about it. It or her. I don’t want to talk about any of it. Ever.’

  He turned and left the room before either his mother or his father could say a word.

  Agincourt.

  October 1415.

  He has been summoned by the English King, three years his junior.

  It’s getting dark. The rain that came in the early morning has stopped and a white moon is rising. And under the white moon lie the French dead.

  He and his horse have to pick their way among corpses. There’s a shine on them and on the fouled earth where they lie.

  For the second time in Montjoy’s life, he asks himself, as he rides on into a gathering dusk: ‘Why was something as terrible as this not foreseen by me?’

  He remembers the Dauphin’s mockery: ‘They won’t last half an hour!’ He remembers his own imaginary words to Roland: ‘You couldn’t call it a great battle. It was too one-sided.’

  He’s a herald. Heralds ride in the vanguard of events they announce. They watch and assess. They bring the expected after them. But not him. Despite his eminence, despite his optimistic name, the unimaginable follows him like a shadow.

  He doesn’t know precisely how this day was lost. He tried to follow what was occurring. He kept weaving in and out of the wood, trying to see, trying to get a picture. He heard the English arrows fly. He saw a cloud of arrows fall on the first line of cavalry, heard them clatter on helmets and backplates, like hailstones on an army kitchen. He saw some horses go down and their riders fall, helpless as saucepans in their armour, kicked or trampled by hooves.