by Dan Davis
“God bless you, sir,” one of the men said. “I heard you found a boy in the night and we was wondering, me and my wife, if it’s our little Michel?”
Another man shuffled forward and bowed, before looking up. There were tears in his eyes. “Is it my Jean, sir?” he sobbed, sucking in a great big gulp of air. “Is it my fine boy, Jean?” He sank to his knees and held up his hands in supplication.
All at once, they all began speaking, asking questions, begging me for answers.
“Dear God,” I said, turning to Ameline. “We must go down to them.”
7. Oaths Sworn
June 1440
My arrival the night before had woken the whole village and Paillart had told them what had occurred and to send word out to the neighbours. And so word had spread as quickly as lightning and parents from all around had come in as quickly as they were able to in the mad hope that it was their child who had been found, even if theirs had disappeared months or years past.
Their hopes were quickly dashed, of course.
The boy’s parents were an old couple from just a few miles to the east, the father a cartwright named Pierre le Charron. Their boy was named Guillaime and had been missing for two days.
Both fell to their knees by the bed and wept and thanked God. I turned to leave but the mother cried out.
“You saved him, sir. You saved my sweet boy. God love you, sir, God keep you and watch over you.”
Their gratitude was almost more than I could bear but far worse was the sight of the other parents outside turning to leave when the boy’s name and parentage was confirmed. It was heart-breaking to see their hopes crumble but I had an idea that I might have caught them at just the right moment. At least, perhaps, it was worth a try.
“Wait, please,” I called out. “I beg you.”
After much cajoling and pleading, I had them come into the church. The priest was wizened and sickly but kind enough to allow the use of his nave, though he was suspicious of my intentions. They all were.
The sun had come out stronger that morning and the light shone through the narrow windows high up on the walls of the nave and poured in through the open door, along with the faint smell of spring.
Standing by the altar, I noted that the parents were angry and fearful. They did not know me and so they did not trust me but I had won a certain level of renown from my rescue of young Guillaime and they came in, clutching their hats and hoods to their chests and crossing themselves. It was a small church and was soon filled with scores of local people, from Tilleuls and the neighbouring villages. Their anger and disappointment were palpable but the fact that they came at all suggested something else.
It suggested that they felt some hope.
Perhaps, I thought, I was imagining it. That it was wishful thinking on my part. But they were there and they stood to listen to me address them.
I could bellow words of inspiration at a company of unruly soldiers before battle but standing before the eyes of those grieving families I found my words dried in my mouth.
“Thank you, all.” I coughed and cleared my throat. “I am sorry that I rescued just one boy last night. I wish that I had found and brought back all of them. But I suspect that is not to be. What is worse, I suspect that can never be. You know in your hearts that this is true.” At this, I saw many heads drop and many sighs sounded. I glanced over to catch the eye of Ameline, who returned my look. She nodded, a tight, determined set to her lips. “You all have suffered. For many years, you have suffered, and you have had no justice. And no hope of justice. Until now.” At that, a few heads lifted. “Some of you may know me, or my colleagues. We have come from Nantes with orders to take sworn statements from those who would bear witness against the man who has committed these crimes against you.”
“It is not a man,” a voice called out. “But a monster.”
Many called out their agreement.
“A monster, yes, indeed,” I said. “A monster who is served by monsters. But they must be arrested and tried as men, in court, and when they are found guilty they will be hanged.”
“That’s too good for them,” a woman shouted. “They need to be burned!”
This brought another chorus of agreement.
“I wish it also,” I said. “But there will be no trial.” I looked around, letting my words echo.
They muttered in confusion and I let them feel baffled for a moment.
“There will be no hanging. And none will burn.” They stared back at me in disbelief for offering hope before snatching it away. “There will be no justice at all for those you have lost until the good people of these lands come together and bear witness to these crimes.” They began muttering to each other again. “All those who lost their children, I ask that you make your sworn statement. A statement sworn with your names and entered into the records of the official investigation. Once we have enough of these statements, a warrant will be issued and the criminals will be arrested.”
“That will never be done!” a man cried out.
“You ask us to risk all,” another said. “Add our names? Accusing him, in public? It will be the end of us, sir. The end!”
A woman wailed. “We have other children. Who will care for them when we ourselves are carried off?”
They erupted into endless objections.
“Who are you, sir?” someone called out, and then repeated until the others quietened. “Who even are you to come here and speak thusly to us? Where do you come from? Who do you serve?”
Another man answered. “Pipe down, Gerard. You know he saved Pierre le Charron’s boy? Give him his due.”
“He saved one boy and I’m supposed to bow down at his feet? I ask it again, who do you serve, sir?”
I held up my hands. “It is a fair question.” The muttering died down. “I say, it is a fair question. You do not know me. We have arrived in your midst and we are asking the world. Now, I will tell you. But before I tell you, I ask you to listen. We were brought here, myself and the lawyer Stephen who some of you have met, along with our men who have gone with us to guard us. We were brought here under the strictest orders not to reveal the full nature of our employment to anyone because to do so would risk the success of the investigation itself.” They grumbled but I held up my hands. “Have I not said I will tell you?” When they calmed themselves I continued. “And I will tell you because I trust you. I trust that you will today do what is necessary and you will add your voices together with such force so that nothing can stand in your way, no matter what the monster Gilles de Rais hears about it. So, I will tell you. It is the Bishop of Nantes who directs this investigation. It is he, along with his dear friend, Milord Jean the Duke of Brittany, who will issue the warrant for the Baron de Rais’ arrest. It is the Bishop of Nantes who will sit in judgement of his crimes. Our demonic Baron de Rais will be finished. And this will happen. But only after each of you sits down with me and my lawyer to make your sworn deposition.” I waited for them to digest what I had said. “Now. Who here is willing to step forward?”
Silence.
Feet shuffled on the floor and people glanced left and right. At the back, I saw someone duck out and then another two, and I was certain the trickle would turn to a flood and I would be left standing alone with the priest. Assuming he stayed.
I sighed. It had been worth a try but I was expecting too much from them. They had been subjugated by terror for years and now I was asking them to throw off their caution for a stranger’s promise. It was too much.
“I will do it.”
Turning, I found the one who had spoken and stepped forward.
“Ameline Moussillon,” I said and bowed my head. “Truly? You wish to make a sworn statement? Are you certain?”
Her gaze did not waver. “I am.”
“Well, then, mademoiselle, you have my sincere thanks.”
“No,” she said. “It is I am who am thankful. You have come and you have shown through your actions that you mean what you say. Bec
ause you are here, you have saved Guillaime le Charron from a fate he would have shared with my dear brother. His name was Jamet and he was taken and I know in my heart that he is dead now. He was murdered. Murdered, like so many others, by the Marshal. He was murdered by the Baron Gilles de Rais of Tiffauges. We all know it but none of us can speak it aloud. Well, I shall speak it. I shall swear it, in writing, and I shall speak the words in a court or anywhere else required of me so that the Marshal is punished for his crimes. You have my word.”
I nodded to her, struck dumb by her bravery.
Beside Ameline, her father stood looking down at his daughter, leaning on his stick. He seemed astonished and horrified in equal measure and I was sure he would berate her and order her to know her place and send her away. The physician looked around at the villagers, who all were staring at him also, waiting to see him quash his daughter’s reckless courage.
Drawing himself upright, he hobbled forward half a step. And then a step further. Lifting his chin, he looked around at the entire congregation.
“Some weeks ago, I went to see the Bishop of Nantes. He sent some scrawny little episcopal lawyer to speak to me in his stead. I told that young man I wished to make a statement. To give evidence. To bear witness to the crimes and to name the criminal. But my courage failed me. I did not make the statement.” He cleared his throat while the villagers muttered in surprise. “But I will do so now. My daughter has shown me today what courage is. And for that, I am grateful. So yes, sir, I will make a sworn deposition. I will do it, yes. I will do it.”
As he stepped back, he wiped his eyes with his spare hand before wrapping that arm around Ameline’s shoulders. She patted his hand and glanced at me.
That was all it took for more of them to step forward and offer their support. At some point during the meeting, Walt appeared and he came forward while people were giving me their names.
“You had an eventful night then, I take it?” he said, grinning and jerking a hand over his shoulder. “By the way, I just see someone hanging around that I reckon you might—”
“Find Stephen,” I snapped. “Get him here immediately before they change their minds.”
I was right glad that morning by what had transpired. With a mountain of witness statements, it seemed certain to me that the Bishop and the Duke would have to act in issuing the arrest warrant for Giles. And then even his private army of two hundred expert soldiers could not save him.
But it would not be so simple.
And what is more, there was someone else watching from the shadows that morning in the church in Tilleuls.
Someone small and hooded and all-but unnoticed, keeping expertly to the darkness, who would soon scurry back to Castle Tiffauges and report on everything that had transpired.
If only I had given Walt a moment to speak, we might have avoided so much of what later occurred. But such is the way of things and sometimes all we can do is regret terrible events and missed opportunities. And to move on from regret we must somehow come to terms with what happened and our part in it.
My regrets, my guilt and my sense of failure, stemmed from the day the Maiden of Lorraine arrived at Orléans and began undoing all that had taken a century of war to achieve.
8. The Maiden at Orléans
April 1429
In May 1429, eleven years earlier, we were with the English army outside of Orléans. Our siege around the city was not one of continuous trench lines ringing the walls. We never had anywhere near enough men to undertake such works nor could we have hoped to man them, even with the army of Burgundy in support. Instead, we had constructed a series of small forts that covered strategic approaches. We had seven strongholds on the north bank and four on the south and one on an island in the river.
From the start, we had meant to assault the city from the south across the bridge that led into the middle of the city but the garrison had defended well and we had fallen into a strategy of grinding them down over weeks, months, and years.
I was not there but I heard well from the grumbling of the soldiers that building the series of forts, the siege outworks had been bloody difficult. The garrison sallied out endlessly to assault our men and tear down what we had made whenever they could drive us off. But our men were veterans of such warfare and could not be resisted for long. Because we did not have enough men to stop the flow of enemies entirely, they could still get some supplies in and men out but that could not be helped.
On the south bank, covering the bridge into the city, we had a huge defensive complex, made up of linked forts. Guarding the approach to the bridge from the east was a fort, while to the west of the bridge complex was another fort which also guarded the bridge to the island of Charlemagne, which had yet another fort to protect it.
On the north bank, to the west of the city, was the great fort of St. Laurent, the largest of them and where the commanders resided. I made sure that was where me and my men lived also, to be close to the heart of the English command.
In hindsight, I should have tried to take effective command of one of the other forts instead.
North of that, ringing the city were a series of others that guarded the approaches. These were wittily named, London, Rouen, and Paris, because they sat across the roads that led ultimately to those places. The massive forest that supplied the city’s wood and charcoal lay to the northeast and we had no forts there but we moved freely there in force. Far to the east, about a mile from the city, we had our final fort named St. Loup. This covered any approaches from upriver, however, it was almost totally isolated from the rest of the forts and would struggle to receive reinforcements, should it be attacked.
And attacked it was. But not yet. Not until she arrived.
“It’s only a matter of time before the garrison surrender,” men told me when I arrived at the forts with the supply convoy and our remaining barrels of herrings.
“Is that so?” I asked them, after touring the forts myself. “What makes you so certain, friends?”
“The Earl of Shrewsbury Sir John Talbot is in command now,” they said, “and he knows his business well enough, does he not?”
“I suppose he does,” I replied.
“Mark my words, lads,” one old soldier named Simon cried out. “I been doing this for close to thirty years, now, so I have. I know my business even better than Shrewsbury and I know that the city will certainly fall by this coming summer.”
“Perhaps even before the end of spring,” another soldier said.
“Any day now,” another claimed.
“Summer,” Old Simon said to me. “Mark my words, you lads, mark my words. We’ll be in there, raking the silver and gems into our purses, by the end of summer.”
“The fall of the city is not the objective of our efforts,” I said to them. In return, they scratched their chins and frowned. “It is the gateway to the south, is it not? You men surely know that when Orléans falls, it will secure the northern half of France above the Loire for the English and will so open the way for us to assault and crush the forces of the Dauphin Charles in the south.”
“Course, that be true enough, and all,” Old Simon allowed. “But first, they’ll surrender and we’ll get rich. Right, lads?”
They cheered his witless confidence but even a fool could see that the stakes could hardly have been higher, especially for the French in general and for the Dauphin Charles in particular.
It was not only the general soldiery who were convinced that they need do nothing other than sit on their arses for a few months to achieve victory. Indeed, how confident were the lords of England also that Orléans would fall, and how resigned the city’s denizens and leaders were to that very thing.
In March, the Bastard of Orléans offered to surrender Orléans to Burgundy. The terms were incredibly generous. Humiliating, even. The enemy proposed that Burgundy would be able to appoint the city's governors and half the city's taxes would go to the English. The other half would go for the ransom of the imprisoned Duke
of Orléans, they would pay ten thousand gold crowns to Bedford for war expenses, and the English would be allowed to pass through the city, and so our army could assault the Dauphin and win all of France for England, forever. All of this, France itself on a platter, in return for lifting the siege and handing the city to the Burgundians.
The regent, Henry V’s brother, the Duke of Bedford said no.
He was convinced that the city was about to fall anyway and so he would have all the plunder and possession of it for the English. Why on earth, I am sure he thought, would he hand it over to the damned Burgundians?
Not only was the opportunity thrown away, it naturally annoyed the Burgundians so much that they took their army away from Orléans.
While all this was occurring, we began to hear hints about a witch who was coming from the east.
I did not know this at the time, but it seems that vague prophecies had been circulating in France concerning an armoured maiden soldier who would rescue France from destruction by feat of arms. Many of these prophecies foretold that the armoured maiden would come from the borders of Lorraine.
It just so happened that this witch was coming from Domrémy, on the borders of Lorraine.
“It’s nought but a barrel-load of arse pimples,” Walt said, spitting.
It was finally a warm day and we sat on fresh grass with the sun on our backs supping beer with a few hours to spare in between our duties. I would rather have enjoyed the day in silence but soldiers are the world’s greatest gossipers, save old women and new mothers.
“Perhaps it is the truth,” I replied.
Walt scoffed. “What, some little girl marching with soldiers, dressed as a page boy, is going to save France?”
Rob looked up at the sky, as if seeking inspiration. “They say she is no longer dressed as a page but now wears full plate armour and helm. Just as it is foretold in the prophecy.”