by Dan Davis
A messenger, I thought. A man. A man who could lead me to my brother. “I can believe it,” I said. “He attempted it before, centuries ago, with Mongols instead of Turks. Where is this messenger?”
He shrugged. “Long gone. Two years past.”
“Tell him nothing,” Joan snapped. “Traitor.”
“He dies,” Gilles said. “What can he do?”
Joan looked me up and down, noting the blood pooling at my feet.
“So William made you both,” I said. I wiped the blood from my mouth. I knew I would have to rush Joan and somehow reach her before her knife could mortally injure Ameline. “How many more of you are there?” I asked. “Who else have I missed all these years, other than you?”
“We are the last,” Gilles said, his head dropping.
“We are the faithful,” Joan said, raising her voice. “The only ones who had faith all these long years. We worked, we toiled. We were nothing, nothing at all, until he lifted us up and gave us eternal life and the true purpose. Oh, the glory. My angel, my sweet angel. How we toiled for thee.”
“How did you so toil?” I asked, shifting forward.
She tossed her head back, smiling. “We began a rumour, a prophecy, that a maiden would come and save France. An armoured maiden from Lorraine. And then we worked to better ourselves. To learn the art of war and the war of art. Theology, poetry, philosophy. How we toiled. What riches we made. Always, we spread the word that the maiden would come. And then, when the time was right, I fulfilled the prophecy that I had written for myself two centuries prior.” She laughed, a mad, peeling laugh and her knife pressed at Ameline’s throat.
“Let her go or I shall kill you,” I said, taking half a step forward.
“If you come closer, I will kill her,” Joan said. “Then kill you all the same.”
We both knew that if I did nothing, I would bleed to death on the floor and nothing would stop her killing Ameline and the children.
“No!” Gilles shouted.
His voice was filled with sudden and powerful anguish that I did not understand.
And then I did.
For I turned in time to see Rob come through the doorway with his bow in hand, an arrow nocked and pulled to his cheek. Blood streamed down from a gash on his head but his eyes were focused and his arrow point did not waver.
Joan was frozen in shock but Ameline was so close beside her.
I started to cry out to wait but Rob did not hesitate.
He loosed his arrow, the cord whipping through the air.
Rob’s arrow hit Joan square in the chest and she fell back, dragging Ameline down with her.
As I lurched toward the two women, Gilles hefted his sword with a cry and ran forward, his wounds forgotten in his despair and his rage. I twisted, raising my knife and preparing to meet his attack once more.
But he was not coming for me.
His eyes shining with mad grief, he swung a wild cut overhead and brought it down, meaning to split Rob’s skull in two. Surprised by the sudden flank attack, and the speed and ferocity of it, it was all Rob could do to raise his left forearm to protect his head and rush in to grasp his attacker.
The sword blade sliced through Rob’s arm above the wrist and his hand tumbled to the floor as Gilles and Rob clashed together, both growling like beasts.
Ameline screamed as she struggled to get away from Joan who grasped her long hair in a hand.
I rushed in and fell on Joan, breaking her grasp and pulling Ameline away to safety before pushing her aside. Blood poured from my wounds as I looked down at Joan. The great arrow, a yard long and as thick as a thumb, had run her through the chest, wedging itself fast between her ribs or perhaps in her spine.
Turning, I watched Rob, one-handed now, stabbing Gilles in the guts with his own sword as he stood over him. It was done.
Beneath me, Joan gasped, her arms flailing. It seemed that she had lost the ability to speak and perhaps to stand.
“You killed all those children,” I said. “It was you and him together.”
She coughed up a mouthful of blood and spat it out. “My lord comes. My lord comes to begin a new age. And... to kill you.”
I scoffed. “I have stopped him before. I shall do so again.” I looked up at the children in the cage and at Ameline, who hunched against the wall. “Look away, children.”
“Do not kill her,” Gilles cried from the centre of the room, pleading. He crawled away from Rob, who tracked him slowly with his sword at the ready.
I pulled her up by the hair, cut into her neck and threw her across the room into the fireplace.
“Joan,” Gilles wailed, slithering forward. Rob moved to finish him off.
“Leave him be,” I commanded.
Rob stopped, confused.
Gilles fell to his knees deep in the fireplace and reached into the hearth to drag Joan out. Before he could do so, I grabbed the nearest lamp and threw it at them. It smashed and the oil burst over Gilles and Joan, immediately bursting into flame.
They screamed as they burned and as they died, clutching each other to the last, the flames burning hot until they screamed no more.
“Rob?”
“I’m alive,” he said, clutching his arm while he stared at his severed hand where it lay on the floor. His face was white.
“Ameline,” I said.
She stared at me, her eyes white in her dirty face. “Get away.”
“I will not harm you.”
“You are like them?” she asked, eyes flicking to the burning corpses. “A drinker of blood? Ageless. Monstrous.”
I knew I was dying and could not bear that she would think so badly of me after I was gone. “Ageless, yes. But not like them. Never an innocent.” Slumping against the wall, I eased myself to the floor and closed my eyes. “Be sure to free those children, won’t you, Rob?”
He moved toward the cage. “Might need two hands, Richard.”
“I will do it,” Ameline said.
“God bless you,” I muttered, feeling myself going.
“Blood heals you?” she asked.
I nodded, not daring to ask. She had suffered so much and suffered it because of me. I could not ask her. Better to die.
“Drink mine,” she said, taking up my knife.
At heart, she was ever the healer.
Rushing down the tower, I cut off the head of the blind crossbowman who lurked still, hoping to catch us as we escaped.
We reached Walt, mere moments before he died, and I withdrew the bolt from his neck, spilling even more blood from his terrible wound. He clung on to the last vestiges of life for long enough to drink of Ameline’s blood and was healed. Rob also drank, and soon his stump stopped bleeding and began to mend itself. Together with the children, we made our way out the building. The townsfolk of Orléans had heard the commotion and greeted us warily at first until we explained that we were agents for the Bishop of Nantes and had freed the children from the Marshal’s soldiers. Then, they gave us wine and food and bandaged our wounds and found us rooms at an inn.
Two days later, we escorted the children and Ameline back home, to Brittany.
23. Invasion
Oct 1440
Poor Rob. The loss of his hand meant he could no longer draw his bow and that more than anything else broke his heart. We had all known men who had suffered such injuries in battle and so knew also that it takes a man time to come to terms with becoming an invalid. He had to learn new ways to dress and care for himself, and to eat and fight. But one thing that we had plenty of was time. And life is easier when one has servants to help fasten your clothing.
Walt had taken a bolt to the neck and had bled so profusely and come so close to death that even with days’ worth of blood in him, the skin where the wound had been remained scarred and he spoke with a hoarseness that he had not had before.
“You might never shoot a bow again,” Walt rasped at Rob on the road back to Nantes. Ameline and the children slept in the chamber upstairs at the
inn while we toasted our survival below. “But what a final shot that must have been, eh? Wish I had seen that, by God. As far as final shots go, to kill the Maiden of Orléans and to save Richard, that gaggle of children, and a beautiful maiden all with a single arrow.” He slapped his knee and laughed until he winced and held his neck.
“I suppose that is true,” Rob said, attempting to smile.
“It was the finest shot in all the world,” I said. “And I take back every jest and gibe I ever spoke against that bow, for you were right to carry it as you did. With that arrow, you ended the last of William’s servants. The last in Christendom, at least.”
“Yes,” Rob agreed. “A hand is no price at all to pay for such a victory.”
“A fine thing to say,” Stephen said.
It was too soon for Rob to mean the words that he spoke, but he would, in time.
We were wanted men, in Nantes, for the assault I had committed on the Bishop, and for my assault of prisoners and bribery of the gaolers and all the other mischief we had caused. The lords of Brittany wished to put the entire matter quietly to bed and so we had to be careful. At the final stretch, we sent Ameline driving the wagon into Nantes with the children in the back. They were yet terrified beyond words and whether their spirits and their wits ever recovered from their abduction, I did not know. At least they had their lives.
“I am sorry,” I said to Ameline. “They did this to you because of me.”
She had healed me with her blood and did not believe I was evil, yet she could not stand to lay eyes on me.
“I know,” she replied. “Because they believed you cared for me.”
“They were right about that, at least. But still, I wish that I had not put you in such danger.”
She nodded, absently. “I must see to burying my father. And Paillart.”
“I am sorry.”
Her eyes roamed the landscape before fixing on mine again. “I will never be able to speak of this. To anyone. Not without them thinking me mad.”
“The truth is that it is over,” I said.
“Is it?” she asked, her eyes looking through me.
The wagon rumbled on toward Nantes and I sat in the saddle with my men watching her and the children go.
***
Astonishing as it may seem, a number of the accomplices avoided justice. After my abduction of him from that tower, Roger de Briqueville had provided the evidence necessary to produce the arrest warrant for Gilles. He was certainly guilty of being present at a number of murders and as far as I am concerned that was enough for him to be hanged. But Roger was a knight from a good family and had a rich and noble father. Ultimately, the man was freed and entered the service of Pregent de Coetivy, an Admiral who proceeded to request a pardon for his new servant. The letters of pardon pass Roger off as an unwitting and unknowing participant in the crimes and who, upon discovering them, immediately left the company and service of his lord. Those letters paint the knight as a good and decent man but there is no doubt this Admiral Pregent de Coetivy wanted Roger to provide some vile, base service suited to his depraved mind. So, he got away with murder, and more than one, but he was not the first mortal to do so and was not the last.
Francisco Prelati, the vile cleric, alchemist, sorcerer, and mountebank, managed to avoid the noose but was condemned by the court to life in prison. Practised charlatan and rogue that he was, with his gift of the gab and sleight of hand, he somehow managed to escape from gaol. From there, he found his way into the service of another enormously wealthy nobleman, Rene de Anjou, who he convinced he could make richer by the alchemical creation of gold. The gullible Rene even made Prelati into the captain of La-Roche-sur-Yon, to where flocked other former servants of the Baron de Rais, including the pathetic priest Dominus Eustache Blanchet.
The damned prideful idiot that he was, Prelati could not contain his delusions of power and he had a minor lord named Geoffroy Le Ferron arrested as he passed through La-Roche. Le Ferron was the brother of the priest that Gilles de Rais had abducted years before and Prelati meant to exact some sort of revenge for all that had befallen him and his old master since that abduction. But Prelati had bitten off more than he could chew, and the affair brought to light his escape and his new crime resulted in Prelati being hanged. Finally, justice had been done.
Dominus Blanchet had been protected by the Church and received a sentence of banishment from Brittany, which was appallingly lenient. Especially as he left for a short time but then returned until Prelati was killed and his last allies were gone. For all I know, the weasel monk and priest lived a long life.
And then there was Perrine Martin, La Meffraye, the Terror of Tiffauges and Machecoul, who had personally taken away so many boys over the years with her tricks and honeyed words and heartlessness. She had claimed to be acting only as commanded by her lord. She said also that if she had not done as they asked, Joan the Maiden would have murdered all of Perrine’s family. But still, there had to be some punishment for someone who could knowingly supply innocent boys for slaughter.
But they let her go.
If she had been a man, she would have been hung and burned also but convinced that an old woman could never have a will of her own in such crimes, they simply opened the door to her prison and set her free. Ever a cunning one, she immediately disappeared, along with her family.
There was an entire network of servants and associates who had been involved to a greater or lesser extent. Men like the porter at Tiffauges, Miton, and all the other porters who certainly had known about what was going on. Servants who scrubbed away the blood and washed clothes or burned mounds of linen. Others who heard the screams of the tortured and the dying.
If I had been able to remain in Brittany, I am not sure I would have been able to resist executing the worst of them. Prelati certainly deserved death, as did Briqueville.
But I had business in the East.
The war between England and France limped on a few more years, with treaty and truce bringing the conflict to an end. Altogether it had been a hundred and sixteen years and I had been there since the start and for almost all of it, on and off.
In the end, what had it all been for?
Henry VI was the weakest king England had ever known. He gave away all we had won for his kingdom in return for peace. It was the most pathetic capitulation imaginable but then he was a weak and useless man, so what else could one expect? If only his mighty father had not died so young. His weakness of character and the madness that came to take his mind led to his loss of the throne to Edward IV. From what I hear, he was a good man, an excellent knight, but another lacklustre king. He ruled until 1483 but the nobility of England warred over control of the crown for decades in a conflict that became known as the Wars of the Roses.
I did not take part in those wars, though I wish I had been able to knock some sense into the damned lot of them. In time, I would return to England when a new dynasty ruled. That of the Tudors.
After so long looking inward, England would emerge onto the world stage once more and I would be there with them as we reached out to counter the rampaging Spanish and began to settle in the New World. Most of the Tudors were a miserable bunch but Elizabeth was quite something else entirely.
As far as the world was concerned, La Pucelle died a heretic. But the French knew she had been wronged. A posthumous retrial for Joan was opened after the war ended. The Pope authorised the proceeding, known as the nullification trial, and its purpose was to investigate whether the original trial of condemnation and its verdict had been handled justly and according to canon law. Investigations started with an inquest by Guillaume Bouillé, a theologian and former rector of the Sorbonne. A good man, so Stephen said.
They found a huge number of strange and contradictory accounts with regards to her supposed upbringing, but they brushed all that aside lest it affect the outcome of the new trial. It was to be fair and legal in all ways, so they said, which meant that they intended to find her innocent an
d clear her name.
Before even reaching a new verdict, the Church declared that a religious play in her honour at Orléans would allow attendees to gain an indulgence by making a pilgrimage to the event. Which tells you all you need to know about the fairness of the process.
In 1456, they declared Joan innocent, of course, and also that she died a martyr. What is more, they formally accused the now-dead bishop who had conducted the first trial with heresy for having convicted an innocent woman in pursuit of secular, political outcomes at the behest of a foreign kingdom. Of course, they were not wrong about that, at least.
Over time, her legend grew until she became something like a talisman for the French people, and for the lords of the Church in that nation. At some point, they began calling her Joan of Arc, as they believed that was her father’s name. In truth, he was likely just some poor fool who had been paid to say the girl was his and had become trapped in the lie.
During the Wars of the Reformation, Joan became a symbol of the Catholic League, who were an order dedicated to eradicating the Huguenots and Calvinists from France. In the 19th century, the bishop of Orléans led the efforts which culminated in Joan of Arc's beatification in 1909. This meant that Joan had not only officially entered Heaven but could now intercede on behalf of those who prayed in her name.
What she really did, along with Gilles, was rile up the French so much that they threw us out of France. The commoners had for a century been subjugated in misery while we rampaged through their land but then Joan had come and through her madness, on behalf of William, had bestirred the passions of those same people to such an extent that neither Gilles nor Joan could control them. No one knew the truth about her and so they made her into whatever they needed her to be, whether they wanted her to be a heroine or villainess. Who was the real Joan? Whatever she was in life, in death she became a symbol of something great. There was a real Joan and there is the myth of Joan. It is the myth that has the power and always did.