“She’ll see you,” Gabriel said quietly. “Tell her what you told me. She won’t hurt you, I promise.” If she tries, I will stop her.
“I trust you,” the girl said, although her voice quivered. Joan stood awaiting them, peering curiously at the newcomer as they stepped inside. Her welcoming smile faded slowly.
“Jeanne,” Gabriel began, “This is—” He broke off, realizing he hadn’t even thought to get the girl’s name.
“Oh, I know who she is,” Joan said, her voice soft and angry. “Or rather, what she is. You were at Blois—tempting good Christian men to sin! Where is my sword? You must want a good beating!”
“Jeanne, no!” Gabriel put himself between the girl and the furious Joan. “She sees you! She has put aside her old ways and wants to travel with us.”
“Follow the camp, you mean!”
“No, just—tell her what you told me,” he pleaded with the girl. For a long moment, she hesitated, then she stepped out from behind him.
“Maid,” she said, her voice a whisper, “it is true, I have sinned. But God forgives those who truly repent, and I do with all my heart. Even Jesus forgave the woman who committed adultery, did He not?”
“I am not God or Jesus,” Joan warned, but Gabriel could tell something was happening. Her voice had grown less harsh, and her fists were no longer clenched.
“I will gladly make confession, whether you will take me with you or not. But please… w-when I see you, I want to be near you. To help you in any way I can. You have already made me better. I want to be better still. I see your face, and I can tell that God is working through you.”
“Ask your Voices, Jeanne,” Gabriel pleaded. “Please.”
For a long moment Joan looked from one to the other, her body held taut as a bowstring. “They are my best and finest counsel,” Jeanne agreed at last. “I will do ask they ask me, as I always do. But if they say go, then you will leave forever. After you have made your confession.”
The girl nodded. “I’ll stay with her,” Gabriel said. “We will be outside, by the gate.”
Joan didn’t answer, but she gave him a withering glance and turned her back on him. Gabriel felt sick, his heart aching with every lurching beat. He had done this; had driven a wedge between them. But he couldn’t just abandon this poor girl, not when she had willingly forsworn her former life to follow Joan. I might have to, he thought, and fought back despair.
They walked out by the house’s gate. A throng clustered by it day and night, hoping to see a glimpse of the divinely-sent Maiden who would free them. For a second, there was some excitement as Gabriel and the former prostitute walked out, but then the girl threw back her hood. At the sight of her long golden hair, though, the crowd lost interest.
“I had hoped it would go better than that,” Gabriel said after an awkward silence. “I’m sorry.”
“You did what you could, and I am grateful,” she said. “Do—do you think her Voices will tell her to accept me?” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “I won’t go back to what I was. I would rather die. But… where do I go if she sends me away?”
“We’ll think of something,” Gabriel answered. Perhaps the Assassins would take her, if Joan would not. “My name is Gabriel Laxart. I’m sorry—I never asked… what is yours?
“It does not matter.”
They both turned to see Joan standing behind them. Her face was incandescent, and she smiled softly. The girl’s hand went to her mouth. Oh, yes, she definitely sees it, Gabriel thought.
“It does not matter,” Joan continued, walking toward them, “because my Voices have told me to give you a new name. From this moment on, you are Fleur. Because you are a flower who has grown in the mud, and God is the light to which you now turn your face. I am sorry for my harshness. Together, we will go to confession. And then, I will get clothes for you, and when we have freed this city, you will come with me… as my friend.”
Joy flooded the girl’s—Fleur’s—face. She swayed and would have fallen had Joan not stepped forward and caught her up in a tight hug. Fleur sobbed and clung to Joan, who smiled softly, her face radiant, and stroked the other girl’s long, tangled gold hair. Her eyes met Gabriel’s, who felt the icy grip around his heart release.
She mouthed a word to him: Merci.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
ho was that? Victoria wanted to know as the Memory Corridor’s soft fog closed in around Simon.
“No idea,” he said. “There’s no mention of a girl who traveled with Joan. Every time other women come up, it’s clear that Joan had little interest in them. Most of them wanted to be prophetesses, too, and because of course she was the only one really quote-unquote sent from God, she despised them. I can’t imagine her befriending one of the prostitutes she chased off, but… well, there it is.”
Well, I’m rather glad. I like this Fleur.
So did Simon, but since he had absolutely no idea what would happen to this girl who had apparently escaped mention for over five centuries, he didn’t want to get overly fond of her. It would be bad enough when Joan—
“The Bastard went to Blois for more troops on May first,” Simon said briskly. “While he was gone, Joan rode about, met with the citizens, and so on. She also scouted outside the city, to see for herself what her troops were up against. The people threw a sort of procession for her, offering gifts and such, essentially thanking her in advance for liberating them. The Bastard came back on the fourth with reinforcements. I think we should start there.”
Are you certain you’re up for it? You’ve seen several simulations today already, and we’re heading towards evening.
“Time’s not our friend, Victoria.” He felt like Joan, wanting to move forward with the raising of the siege and being thwarted by so-called wiser heads. “Let’s keep going.”
1 MAY, 1429
“I hear you have been stirring up the English,” the Bastard said as he, Joan, Gabriel, and La Hire ate at Boucher’s table. The meal was simple and had been prepared quickly—cheese, bread, hardboiled eggs from the chickens the convoy had brought in a few nights ago.
“I have, and I have made my own examinations of their defenses, too,” Joan said. “Once we have eaten and I have shared that with you, we can finally attack!”
“Sounds good to me,” La Hire said. “I’m with the Maid. I’m ready for battle.”
Joan threw him a pleased smile. “And did you see?” she said. “You, the Bastard, and all your men—you came right through the Burgundy Gate, and the English didn’t even try to stop you!”
“There is news you don’t yet know,” said the Bastard, giving La Hire a dirty look. “We have heard rumors of an approaching English army led by John Fastolf. It’s supposed to be coming from the north.”
“All the more reason to fight! We now have the reinforcements you were so insistent on getting. The people are with us, and they are so very ready to be freed! Bastard, in the name of God, I command you that as soon as you hear of Fastolf’s coming, you will let me know. For if he gets through without my knowing it, I swear that I will have your head cut off!” Joan said, gesticulating with her knife.
Everyone laughed, even the Bastard. “Maid, I do not doubt that for a moment! I will certainly let you know.”
“Gabriel!”
He had fallen asleep in a chair downstairs, but bolted up as Fleur shook him. “What is it?”
“It’s the Maid,” she said. “She—she woke up shouting that her Voices say the blood of France is being spilled right at this moment! Madame Boucher and her daughter are upstairs with her now, helping her dress.”
“I’ll help with the armor,” Gabriel said, and both of them raced upstairs.
Poor Louis stood in the door, looking utterly miserable as usual.
“I will have his head!” Joan’s voice rang through the house. “He promised me he would tell me! And Louis, you wicked boy! Why did you not wake me?”
“Louis,” Gabriel said, “tell the squires to get t
he Maid’s horse ready for her. Have them saddle mine, too. Jeanne, let me help!”
A few moments later, Joan was in her armor and hastening downstairs. Gabriel struggled into his own armor with Louis helping him. Fleur, wearing some of Joan’s masculine garb, watched with sharp eyes and lent a hand where she could. Once Gabriel was ready, he went to the gate, where Joan, her brothers, and several of her men were waiting. The streets were crowded and noisy; Joan might well have been the last person to have heard of this skirmish.
Suddenly she gasped in horror. “Louis!” she called up. “My standard!”
“Here!” the boy cried, lowering it down to her from the window. Joan grasped it, clung to it for an instant, then inserted it into the cylinder near her stirrup. Calm visibly descended on her.
“Where’s the fighting?” Gabriel demanded.
“The Saint-Loup boulevard,” came a rumbling voice. It was La Hire, and he wore his usual expression of annoyance. Gabriel wasn’t sure with whom—with the Bastard, for not notifying Jeanne, or for the Maid herself. It was clear that many of the generals were not expecting Joan to take such an active role. “It’s not Fastolf, don’t worry—you didn’t miss that. It’s a show of our determination to end the siege. The Bastard thought if we took this smaller boulevard, it would weaken the English morale without too much of a cost to us. But they’re giving us more of a fight than we expected.”
Gabriel knew what he didn’t say—that if this French surprise attack failed, it was the English who would be heartened and the French again plunged into despair.
“I need hear no more,” Joan said. She rose in her stirrups and drew her sword.
Again Gabriel almost forgot to breathe as the sword leaped to glowing life at Joan’s touch. How was it possible that only a few could see the radiance—in both the Sword of Eden, and the girl who held it? Even if they did not see it, though, they felt something. The crowd had been noisy and anxious, milling about, eager to do something, anything. Now they gazed, mouths slightly open, listening with their whole hearts. She was their savior, and they loved her.
“People of Orléans!” Joan cried. “I promised you I had come to raise the siege, and today, at last, I will begin to do so. Know that I am only part of God’s plan. You, the good people of this city, you have consistently offered the English resistance and determination. Now, we will act! Gather your weapons. Mount your horses, and ride with me!”
The hair on Simon’s arms lifted and his heart swelled at the cheer that rose up. It was deafening, and exciting, and powerful. Joan’s face shone like a beacon, and when Joan kicked her horse forward, she, her brothers, Gabriel, La Hire, and the other soldiers were at the head of their own little army.
The excited flow bore them swiftly toward the Burgundy Gate. But before they reached it and could head east along the road to the Saint-Loup boulevard, the flow suddenly changed.
The wounded and the dead were returning from the first hour of battle.
Men limped in, supported by their comrades, slung over their horses, or borne in litters as they passed through the gate. Gabriel looked past the gate to see that several bodies, some writhing in agony, some ominously still, had simply been placed on the ground until they could be attended. The cheers and shouts of victory and defiance in the distance were now joined by the more immediate moans, and sometimes agonized shrieks, of the wounded. There was a smell that seemed somehow familiar, and Gabriel realized what it was. He had often been forced to pass the butcher’s shop and its adjoining abattoir when he lived in Nancy.
It was the metallic reek of blood.
La Hire grunted. “Most of them are English,” he said. “Come along, Maid, you’re needed at the boulevard.”
But Joan shook her head and slipped off her horse. “No,” she said, looking around slowly, “I am needed here.”
La Hire stared at her, then at Gabriel, who had also dismounted, and then nodded. “Perhaps you are, at that,” he said. “When you’re ready, those men still fighting will welcome you.”
“I will come,” Joan said. She moved to the side and out the gate, going straight to those who had been forgotten or abandoned, and dropped down beside the first wounded soldier she saw.
He lay on his back. His helmet had been removed or knocked off. A sword had sliced along his face, but that was not his gravest wound. Blood seeped out beneath him, even though he was still fully armored, the red pool revealing the true extent of the wound. Joan removed her gloves and helm and touched his bloodied forehead, careful to avoid the bleeding gash. Her other hand went to her breastplate, over the pouch hidden beneath it; over her heart.
“I am sorry it has come to this, my foe and my brother,” she whispered, and it was only then that Gabriel realized that the man was indeed clad in English livery. He had been so horrifically mesmerized by his first glimpse of war wounds that he hadn’t even noticed. “I would gladly have sent you home, had your commander surrendered. God grieves, and so do I.”
Her eyes were, indeed, filled with tears, rolling down her soft cheeks unheeded. The man opened his eyes, seeking her out. Her light was shining, soft and warm and comforting, and Gabriel hoped the dying man could see it.
“P-Pucelle,” he said. His mouth was filled with blood, which splattered as he spoke her name and trickled down the side of his face like red tears.
“Yes,” and she covered his hand with hers. “You will not die alone, and I will pray with you.”
He didn’t seem to understand. Gabriel wasn’t sure if it was because he did not speak French, or because he was too far gone to comprehend. Joan’s lips moved softly, and the man’s tension seemed to ease. He sighed, deeply, his body relaxing. A smile curved his blood-reddened lips, and then he closed his eyes.
Joan stroked his paling forehead, and moved on to the next.
French or English, it made no difference to her. How long Gabriel followed her, standing protectively over her while she prayed with dying men, he did not know, but at last, she rose and wiped at her wet face.
“None of this had to happen,” she murmured, reaching for her helm and settling it back on her head. “I begged them to surrender. But for now, let us ride to the boulevard!”
They cantered down the Burgundy road. Joan’s face was covered by the helm, so Gabriel could not see her light, but he knew it was shining. Her standard snapped beside her in the wind. They heard the sounds of gunfire and cannon blasts, the clash of steel on steel.
Joan drew her sword. “Here I am!” she cried, and her voice seemed to carry farther than it should have in that cacophony. “Here I am, you men of France! Here is Jeanne the Maid, you English! In the name of God, the tide is turning, and you shall be swept away!”
The blade gleamed, bright and hot. Lightning crackled along its length. Gabriel abruptly realized that his throat was raw as he, along with the rest of Joan’s army, began cheering madly. He kicked his horse and plunged forward, his sword feeling like an extension of his arm, his arm an extension of his heart and soul, as he charged to the relief of a surrounded group of unhorsed French soldiers.
They were outnumbered, but fought like men possessed. The English, who by all rights should have pressed their advantage, were oddly hesitant. One of them even looked away from the fight, mesmerized by the billow of Joan’s white standard. The soldier fighting him took advantage of his enemy’s distraction and plunged the tip of his sword into the Englishman’s neck at the vulnerable spot between gorget and helm.
The soldier next to him screamed and fled, racing back to the safety of the boulevard. Gabriel kicked his horse and rode him down. The English soldier fell, the horse’s hooves crushing his armor. He was still alive when Gabriel wheeled his mount back and, bending low over its neck, speared down with his sword through the thin eye slits in the Englishman’s helm.
They were falling like flies, now; falling, or attempting to flee. The roaring French followed them, like Joan’s predicted wave. Some still fought, frantically but uselessly, but most s
urrendered at once, pleading for mercy.
Gabriel looked down at his bloodied sword, and felt slightly dizzy. He ran away, he thought. He should have surrendered. I would have spared him.
He hoped the words were true.
Uneasily he turned back to where Joan was still riding, her banner flying. Her helm was off, so her men could see her face, and she was radiant.
“For France!” she cried. “For France! I tell you, in five days, the siege will be raised, and the English will be driven from our gates!”
And Gabriel believed her.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
hat was unbelievable, Victoria said as Simon returned to the Memory Corridor. The sword took the fight right out of them. She’s completely undefeatable with it.
“But she doesn’t understand that,” Simon said. “She once said she loved the standard forty times as much as she loved the sword. So she’s not using it to the best advantage. A Templar or an Assassin would be undefeatable, yes. But not Joan.”
That’s absolutely tragic, Victoria replied. She had such a powerful weapon, and wielded it so well… but didn’t make full use of it. I wonder why the Assassins never fully brought her in.
“We don’t know yet that they didn’t,” Simon reminded her. “That’s something we may want to keep an eye out for. Also, I don’t think we should be too upset that she never became an official Assassin, considering the Templars were supporting the British side during the Hundred Years’ War.”
We can be Templars, and still empathize with others. All right. I call this a good day’s work, she said, and he realized she had decided they were done.
“Wait,” he said. “We’re starting to get to the actual battles.”
“I know,” Victoria interrupted him, removing the helmet. “And I don’t like your stats. Gabriel’s had his first battle, and unless you’ve had some military experience I don’t know about, it was your first battle, too. You should eat something, then go directly to bed. It’s been a very long day.”
Assassin's Creed: Heresy Page 17