by Dan Davis
With Walt and Rob and a few brave souls who felt as we did, we rode out of St. Laurent around to the northeast to join the garrison. In truth, it was hopeless. In the wasteland north of the city, we three hundred men assaulted two thousand French.
And we were thrown back. Again and again. At one point we came close to coming around their flank to the north but a sortie from the French blocked us.
By nightfall, St. Loup fell.
We lost a hundred and fifty soldiers and forty were taken prisoner. Some of the English defenders of St. Loup were captured in the ruins of a nearby church. The rumour was that their lives were only spared at the saintly Joan's request. The thought made me sick to my stomach.
When St. Loup fell, our purpose for assaulting them was over and so we retired our northern assault and trudged back into our forts as night fell. It was not an unrecoverable failure but already I sensed the momentum turning in favour of the French.
“We must take the fort back,” I said to my men. “Take it tonight. Or at first light. Before it is too late.”
“You reckon Talbot will listen?” Rob asked.
I slumped. “No.”
The next day, there was no French attack. Whether it was the fact it was the Feast of the Ascension or if they needed to rest their men after the assault the day before, they took no action. It was the perfect opportunity for us to regain the initiative.
Instead, we sat in our forts and fretted.
In the morning, the French crossed the river from Orléans on boats and barges and by a makeshift pontoon bridge. I watched from the north bank along with hundreds of others. They came out in a great mass of soldiers and armed citizenry but of course our garrisons on the south bank were waiting for them. It was a hard-fought struggle and the French were forced back.
Joan was wounded in the counter-attack. Panic set in amongst the French and they retreated back to the river, dragging Joan back with them. Seeing the witch on the run and her spell broken, our garrison burst out to give chase as the men fled.
I did not see what happened next because the city walls hid the events from us but we all heard the story soon after. With the French in full flight, Joan, at the rear, stopped. Standing completely alone as hundreds of furious English soldiers charged her, she turned around on them, raised her holy standard, stamped the foot of the pole upon the earth and cried out.
“In the name of God!”
For some reason, this was enough to check the English pursuit. Why they did this is difficult to understand and many said that she used magic on them, either from her spell or by some magic inherent to her person. Whatever the reason and whatever really happened, it was enough to send the English back to the safety of our fort on the south bank and the fleeing French troops turned around and rallied about her.
At her side through it all, Gilles de Rais persuaded Joan to immediately resume the assault which he led in person.
His military brilliance with Joan the Maiden providing the inspiration, their attack carried the day.
With the Augustins fort in French hands, our Tourelle's garrison was blockaded. That same night, what remained of our garrison at St. Privé evacuated their outwork and went north of the river to join our strongest garrison, where I was, in St. Laurent. The last garrison on the south bank Glasdale was therefore isolated but there were eight hundred good men ready to throw back whatever came their way.
Despite her wound, Joan rallied the cities within the city and they joined the attack the next day. They bombarded our men for all hours and attempted to undermine the walls of the fort and setting fire to whatever they could. And still our experienced men were unconcerned.
All of a sudden, La Pucelle appeared with her great white banner held aloft and charged the front walls of our fort herself. As she charged by the cowering French soldiers, she grabbed a ladder and threw it up against the wall, calling out to them as she went.
“All is yours! Go in! Go in!”
The French were much stirred in their hearts and they rushed in after her, throwing up dozens of ladders to storm the walls alongside her.
One of our brave archers shot Joan with an arrow.
She was spitted between the neck and shoulder with a yard-long, thumb-thick arrow with its wicked iron point. She was thrown down from the wall and carried away. Our men knew they had won when the French assault faltered and fell back. Everyone knew that such a wound was fatal. There was no way that a man could survive such a terrible blow and the word quickly spread, even across the river, that Joan the Maiden was dead.
We celebrated in every fort and felt that the tide had turned back in our favour.
And then she emerged from the city. She was walking, leaning on her companion Gilles de Rais.
“Take heart, good soldiers of France,” she called out. “Take heart and feel good cheer, for God knows that a final assault will carry the day.”
We heard the cheering from a mile away and they renewed their attack like the Devil himself was at their heels. Our men fled and the fort, burning all over, fell just before night came.
It was a true disaster. In all the assaults, we had lost a thousand men and six hundred had been taken prisoner. With the south bank of the Loire lost, there was no point in holding the north bank because the city could be resupplied from the south until Judgement Day.
And so, just a week after Joan’s arrival, the siege was over.
Lord John Talbot ordered us to demolish our forts and siege works and we drew up our army.
The French came out and drew up before us to the west of the city.
“Attack,” I urged Talbot and the other commanders. “We can undo all that has been done if we just attack them. Our soldiers are better than theirs.”
Talbot’s eyes were fixed on the white banner of Joan the Maiden.
“They will attack us,” Walt said. “Look at them. Roaring for it.”
For a time, it seemed as though he was right but in the end they simply stood watching us for an hour and Talbot ordered us to retreat. The enemy were so close, I was certain they would fall upon our rear and rip us to pieces. But they were still afraid of us and they let us slink away.
The last thing I saw before I rode over the hill through the trees was Joan’s banner flying over the massed French army.
Beside hers flew the golden and black banner of Gilles de Rais, but I thought nothing of that at the time. It was just one more banner amongst dozens.
It need not have meant the end of the English war on the French but their aggressive use of artillery and frontal assaults influenced French tactics for the rest of the conflict.
Joan and Gilles were far from done with us.
13. The Trial Begins
September 1440
The trial began in the great hall of the castle, arranged carefully to conduct a tribunal. What a grand hall it was, with enormous, modern windows with glass panes so that the lofty interior was filled with light all the way to the rafters and beautifully carved ceiling high above. At the head of the hall on a high dais almost the width of the hall, was the chief officiating judge, the Bishop of Nantes in his purple robes. Directly behind him and above him, on a table covered in white cloth, was a great, golden crucifix, encrusted with rubies and emeralds and sapphires. Beside the Bishop of Nantes were his fellow assessors, the Bishops of Le Mans, Saint Brieuc, and Saint-Lo, along with the Chief Inquisitor of Nantes and other assessors I did not know. Serving them and the court were the typical functionaries in their gowns and caps, hunched over their tables with quill in hand to record every word spoken during the proceedings.
Also there, at one side of the hall below the judges, was the public prosecutor in his gown, my dear comrade Stephen Gosset, going by the name Stephen le Viel. He appeared composed but I knew him well enough to know by the set of his head and the way he held his shoulders that he was nervous. And why would he not be? For the hall was filled with members of the public, many of them the families of the victims of Gilles de Rai
s.
On the opposite side of the hall to Stephen, was the witness stand and beside it a huge iron cage with a bench along the rear. Empty, for the time being.
And between the judges and the public, also empty, was the huge chair reserved for the accused himself. He would be seated with his back to the public, facing the Bishops.
I sat near to Stephen, at the front of the public gallery, where I would be able to look across and see the side of the Marshal’s face during his trial. I wondered how long it would take for the tales of the blood drinking to come out. My men, including Stephen, fretted somewhat that our secrets would be revealed yet I was not concerned. No one would believe in the blood magic and instead it would serve only to emphasise the satanic nature of the crimes and the men who committed them. Whatever accusations Gilles made against me and my men, we could throw off, I was sure of it and Stephen was prepared with clever responses.
The Marshal had been provided with a small suite of rooms in the castle of Nantes where he was awarded all the customary privileges of a nobleman who had yet to be proved guilty of any crime. It was disgusting, of course, but that was simply the way it was and there was no chance of having him clapped in irons in a dank dungeon cell.
“Do you reckon they’ll declare him innocent in the end?” Walt had said, on hearing that the Marshal was held in such comfort.
“Of course not,” I replied. “Already they have an enormous amount of evidence and the Inquisitors will obtain more from the servants. Do not concern yourself.”
But I was concerned. I told myself that, if the people of his lands were denied proper legal justice, I would simply find Gilles de Rais and cut off his head. The same went for his servants, those that were revenants and perhaps even those who were not. Though they were guarded by soldiers of the Duke and the Bishop, I was sure I would be able to find a way.
In many ways of course I would have preferred to do the deed myself but it was important that I stay my hand unless there was no other choice. There were thousands of good men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, who needed to watch their master hang before them for the monstrous evil he had done to them if they were to have any hope of satisfaction. I knew this because they told me. They had come to see the trial in their hundreds, from miles all around, and the inns of Nantes were full to bursting and I met with them before the trial
“I got to see him hang,” some said. “With my own eyes.”
Others had similar reasons. “And he needs to see us before he dies. To know it was us what did for him.”
“He must burn,” others replied. “Burn and be destroyed so that come what may he has no body to use on the Day of Judgement.”
For their sakes, I hoped the trial would prove swift and satisfying.
Certainly, I had high hopes, for the Inquisitor of Nantes would personally apply their tried and tested methods to extract the necessary confessions from the accused persons.
Back in 1252, Pope Innocent had issued a papal bull authorising torture for the express purpose of obtaining a confession. The accused was first threatened with torture in the hope and expectation that the threat itself would elicit a confession. And it certainly was enough for many people, as I have often found in far less formal and less legal circumstances. If the threats failed, the Inquisitors would bring the accused to the torture chamber and show them the instruments to be used. It was oftentimes at this moment that the accused would decide to speak and in practice, many in the Inquisition moved immediately to this step because it was more efficient that way.
“Men are afraid of pain,” I said to Stephen as we watched the Inquisitors preparing their assigned room in Nantes while the tribunals were likewise being set up in the halls. “It is a simple thing to frighten them into speaking to avoid it.”
“Oh, no,” Stephen said. “That is not it at all, Richard. It is far more deeply and accurately reasoned that that.”
I sighed. “I suppose I would have to spend years in Paris listening to doctors of theology explain it to me before I could hope to understand.”
“No, no, it is perfectly straightforward. You see, the Inquisition knows that deception, the lies themselves reside in our tongues but the truth lives within the flesh. It is the body that is required to be examined in order to extract the truth from it. Lies, spoken by free tongues, are ephemeral and meaningless. Flesh and blood, however, cannot be denied.”
“I suppose so,” I allowed. “Still, these Inquisitors must enjoy hurting people.”
“In fact they often do not need to touch a person at all. And when they do, it is done with the utmost reason and care. They inflict pain only to draw out the truth, nothing more.”
“Come, Stephen,” I said, lowering my voice lest they overhear me, “look at them. I have seen men with eyes like that in every army I have fought in and against. They love twisting the knife.”
“You see a man like that every time you look in a mirror, you mean,” he said, tutting. “They are learned men, practising the application of perfectly clear reasoning. Only through torture can we satisfy the demand for truth because it is so deeply hidden in the flesh. Hidden so deeply that the accused may not even be aware of it until it is drawn out. And how can truth be drawn from flesh, like water drawn from a well, or like a knife drawn from flesh? Pain, Richard. Pain is the conduit for truth, as I am sure you well know. It is distillation of the pure substance, that is to say truth itself which is another way of saying nature itself or God, if you like, lodged in the impure flesh. Pain betrays the truth by exposing it to view through the sounds and gestures it produces. Pain causes the accused to speak involuntarily, without his own volition, and so what emerges is uncorrupted by the lies of the tongue and the wits of a man.”
“I am no expert of course but this theoretical complexity has the whiff of the alchemical, do you not think it so?”
“No, I do not think it so.”
However, seeing the Inquisitors at their business, it was clear enough that the ones before us at least took no joy in their work. It was simply that. Work.
While they began to organise the evidence, the trial itself was begun.
Rather, it was two trials, running in concert with one another. The ecumenical tribunal was presided over by the Bishop of Nantes, and the civil court was presided over by Chief Justice Pierre de l’Hospital, Chancellor of Brittany. The Bishop’s court would try the man Gilles de Rais for satanism, heresy, unnatural vice, sacrilege, and the violation of ecclesiastical privilege. The civil tribunal would deal with the charges of murder and of rebellion against the authority of the Baron’s liege lord, Jean V the Duke of Brittany. Although one might assume the civil court would have precedence due to the utmost seriousness of the crimes of murder and rebellion, in fact it was the ecclesiastical court that would lead matters. For one thing, it was under the Bishop’s authority that most of the investigations had taken place, led by Stephen’s guile and my rather brute force approach. And for another, what more serious crime could there be in Heaven and earth than heresy?
“Are you well prepared, Stephen?” I asked him, while the hall was filling with officers of the court and members of the public. It was noisy with talk and the scuffing of feet. Stephen sat at his table to one side of the hall near to the front. “Chief Prosecutor, eh?” I said to him. “The Bishop certainly has faith in you.”
Stephen sniffed. “As well he might, sir. I have prepared the arguments carefully and have full confidence in them.”
“Then why do you look so nervous?” I asked, grinning.
“I am not nervous, Richard,” he said, primly. “I am merely concentrating on my arguments regarding the charge of sodomy.”
“Why?” I laughed. “Briqueville stated he witnessed the acts himself. Many acts, in fact.”
He lowered his voice and leaned in. “That is just it. We cannot enter Briqueville’s statements into the record of evidence. He confessed fully only on those terms and the terms are being agreed to due t
o the fact that he’s a damned noble.”
“Barely,” I scoffed. “But what does it matter? You can skewer him with the charge of heresy alone.”
He ignored me and muttered almost to himself. “We can but hope the other servants confess to this charge also. Only then will his conviction in the ecclesiastical tribunal be unquestionable.”
“Surely, you cannot mean that sodomy is a greater crime than witchcraft? Than heresy?”
“Well,” Stephen said. “Sodomy is a form of heresy, in the eyes of the Church. Perhaps the greatest form.”
“What nonsense.”
He tilted his head. “Why do you think it is a crime at all?”
“Well,” I said. “It is unnatural, I suppose. Not that it stops men who feel compelled to do the deed.”
Stephen all-but wagged a finger at me. “No one is compelled to sin. We each make the choice of whether to sin or not.”
I sighed. “You have never been on campaign, have you, Stephen. There is often a man or two out of every hundred who do not mind sharing a bedroll and who venture alone together into the woods every once in a while. No harm in it, truth be told, as long as it does not interfere with a man’s duty.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
I was surprised at his vehemence, especially as I had often wondered whether Stephen engaged in an occasional sodomising himself. He liked women, that much I knew, but there was always the whiff of the degenerate about him.
“Come, Stephen, you are not innocent of these matters. You were a monk, for God’s sake. Half the lads in the priory are there because they prefer the warmth of a hairy backside to the smoothness of a woman.”
“How can you joke about such things? The law is very clear. Sodomy is a deliberate sin against God. It is an act of defiance against God’s law. An act of rebellion, if you will, even more serious than rebellion against one’s earthly lord.”
“And yet all sins are acts against God, are they not?” I was proud of myself for recalling that one from my youth. I had such lessons beaten into me quite thoroughly.