Liberty

  We watched as he was swallowed up by the crowd of students.

  ‘I need to pee,’ I announced to Agnes. I drank my lemonade fast and went in search of a bathroom while Agnes looked for a spot near the stage so we could watch all the attention seekers who were about to have their three minutes of fame.

  As I made my way back from the bathroom, I saw Luke at the rear of the room with an overhead projector. A man was playing the flute and doing some kind of Pan dance on the stage. He looked completely ridiculous. Luke saw me and motioned for me to come over.

  ‘Isn’t this cool?’ he whispered and pointed down to what he was doing.

  On the overhead projector screen, Luke had a tray of what looked like a mixture of oil and water and he was squirting in coloured paints or some kind of dye and was swirling them around to create patterns of colour that were being projected through the light onto the far wall and ceiling of the small stage. It was quite fascinating and made the flute player look surreal.

  ‘That’s really clever,’ I said and he looked quite pleased with himself.

  I looked around and saw that Agnes was talking to Barton again and noticed that Jeff, the ratbag, had also joined them. He and Agnes were standing shoulder to shoulder, very close. I smiled and waved. A young girl took to the stage with a guitar, sat on a stool and began singing a folk song. Badly. I couldn’t tell what was more out of tune – her guitar or her voice. Agnes started signalling to me, pointing to the stage. I was shaking my head vehemently. There was no way I was going to get up at the Foco Club in front of so many strangers. It was one thing to play to my home town as that was mostly like an extended family, but I got frightfully nervous in front of unfamiliar people and even got stage fright when I had to deliver presentations at uni. It was so alien and overwhelming compared to small-town living and country schooling.

  ‘No way!’ I mouthed at her and did a hand motion across my neck.

  There were three more acts, all fairly dismal. Luke ran out of paint and the whole venue seemed to run out of steam and wound down to an anti-climactic groan. Everyone was beginning to look bedraggled and tired. I was exhausted and felt a bit spacey.

  ‘You want a ride home?’ Luke asked. ‘There’s just some boring movie now and nearly everyone falls asleep. And we are going home to the same place after all. I’ll be packing up and leaving in half an hour. My car’s a bit of a bomb but it goes. You’ll just have to hold your breath because it smells a bit mouldy.’

  Agnes joined us, looking hot and bothered.

  ‘Barton’s going to be running a movie soon,’ she said. ‘It’s French and has subtitles and it’s all about the French Revolution.’

  ‘Yeah, I might pass on that. Far too exciting for me. Hey Ag, how are you getting home?’ I asked her.

  ‘Taxi,’ she said. ‘You’re on my way so you can get dropped off first. Why?’

  ‘Luke here has offered me a lift home and I’m tired and don’t really want to watch the movie and as we’re going to the same destination, you know, the boarding house …’

  ‘That’s fine, makes total sense.’ She grinned at me and threw me a sneaky wink, pulling me close and whispering, ‘Go get him, tiger!’

  Luke was right. His car was a bomb and it did smell bad.

  In the front foyer of the boarding house there was a pile of mail on the hall stand. I felt my belly swarm with butterflies of excitement as I saw that there was a parcel from home, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, scrawled with my father’s terrible handwriting. A parcel felt so much better than a letter. I picked it up and held it to my chest before sifting through the stack of envelopes in case there was one from Laura. I hadn’t heard from her for weeks, which was highly unusual because her first two letters had told me how much she missed me and how Bandaroo Flats was boring without me. I had written back arguing that Bandaroo Flats was boring with or without me.

  ‘Here’s one for you, Luke,’ I said. ‘Assuming that your surname is Sheehan. And there aren’t many girls called Luke living here.’

  ‘That’s me,’ he said seriously, taking the envelope from my hand. ‘But I don’t know who’d be sending me …’

  He froze, before ripping open the envelope in a frenzy. ‘Shit, shit,’ he stammered.

  ‘What is it?’ I said, concern rising.

  He read it and shut his eyes. It was not good news. I waited for a moment, not sure if I should say something. The moment drew out long and tight like elastic.

  ‘Luke?’ I asked gently. ‘Are you okay?’

  I felt really uncomfortable, certain he had received some very bad news. He opened his big brown eyes and looked right at me as if he’d seen a ghost.

  ‘It’s my draft notice,’ he said softly. ‘My birthday got called up. I’m twenty next month.’

  The battle began at dawn. I woke with a jolt as an almighty ripping, roaring sound almost shook me out of my bed. It was like being kicked from sleep by one of those hideous nightmares that sees you tripping off the edge of a cliff. I had spent the long night tossing and trying to force myself under the veil of sleep. I must have only drifted off into a nervous light slumber before the sun began to creep up, perhaps only minutes before I was rudely roused.

  Papa shouted frantically from the other side of the room as he struggled to sit up, still wading through the delirium of sleep.

  ‘What the devil?’

  ‘The siege is beginning, Papa,’ I cried, jumping out of bed and grabbing my boots, knowing that I should have been up before the sun.

  Tears were rolling down my father’s deeply lined cheeks.

  ‘This is the end,’ he moaned. ‘Why did we not just surrender?’

  ‘The people of Beauvais want to resist,’ I said nervously as I tied my hatchets at my hips, pulled on my outer skirts and secured them about my waist, slipped into my stockings and boots, put a tunic over everything and planted my cap upon my head while hurriedly tucking stray dark wisps of hair into it. ‘The women will be running arms and torches up to the wall all day, so I will be busy, Papa.’

  Still rushing, tripping over my own feet, I went to the larder and took a mug and swiped it through the cold turnip soup, breaking through the tight scum on the surface. There was no time to heat it and it tasted like cold mucous but I needed my strength.

  ‘Blurghhh,’ I shook my head like a horse. ‘You have to come along now, Papa, because we are putting the old and infirm and the children into the Cathedral and surrounding houses. And our house is too close to the walls of the city and the gates. The cannons may damage us first.’

  ‘I can’t move,’ he grumbled. ‘How do you propose to get me to the Cathedral? My legs don’t work. I have no strength. If I am to die, then let me do it in my own bed.’

  ‘No, Papa,’ I said, going to the door, unlatching it and opening it wide. ‘Carts are coming down the streets and lanes to collect folk.’ I could hear the cries and clatter of the wooden wheels on the stones, getting closer.

  ‘We must dress you. I will pull on your boots and give you a blanket. You have to help me, Papa,’ I said firmly. ‘You have to walk to the door. Hurry. We need to move. I’m going to go and help.’

  ‘Stay safe, Jeanne, and defend yourself if necessary. And if you get a chance to flee, do so. I wish for you a life of love. It was what I promised your mother and I failed. I want that for you.’

  I smiled and went to him and kissed the top of his head.

  ‘I love you, Papa,’ I said softly. ‘I will stay safe and so will you. Now let me pull on your boots and help you to the door.’

  ‘I should have saved your mother,’ he sobbed as I tied up his laces.

  I took a deep breath, and whether I spoke the truth or not, I did not know, but I wanted to make the old man feel a little better, yes, wanted to assuage his guilt just a bit. If it was a lie, then it was well intentioned.

 
‘There was nothing anyone could have done for Mother,’ I said, shutting my eyes, trying not to think of her final terror and her bravery. ‘There were too many men and had you stayed with her you would surely have been cut down as well.’

  ‘But I left you, Jeanne,’ he shook his head. ‘I left you both. And you were a helpless babe. They were right. I was a coward then. And look at me now. I wish I could fight beside you but …’

  I sighed, looking down at my broken father. How could any of us know how we might react in a dangerous situation? Some might imagine they would rise bravely to a threat and yet they run, and others might believe they would run when in fact they manage to find an inner courage they never knew dwelled within them.

  ‘I will go and do my part to redeem the Laisné name,’ I said, although my hands were shaking and my breath was short as I struggled with the terror of what the day might bring.

  ‘Your mother hid you well and fought hard,’ he said, still crying. ‘I only pray during the dark days ahead that you have more of her strength and less of my weakness.’

  ‘I will strive to be the best of both of you,’ I said to him. ‘You have always been a good father to me. Your moments of fear so many years ago do not reflect on the father I know. You are gentle and kind and you’ve taught me to sing and to smile and use my axes to protect myself. You are a good man. I can see why my mother loved you.’

  I realised then that, in nature, my father and Colin were alike. Kind and gentle.

  I helped him to the door and onto a cart as it clattered along the narrow alley, taking its precious cargo to safety.

  ‘I love you, Jeanne,’ he called as he was taken away toward the Cathedral.

  ‘I will see you soon, Papa.’ I waved back. ‘I love you too.’

  As I rushed through streets filled with panicked townsfolk, toward the town square to be assigned a post, I could smell smoke in the air and the roar of unfamiliar noise. I passed carts overloaded with old people and children, jammed in like livestock, rattling through the streets and laneways. The children wailed and the elderly looked like stunned corpses. The hordes of the weaker members of Beauvais were housed within the cool stone walls of the Cathedral as well as makeshift tents set up in the cemetery grounds. It was chaos.

  Looking up at the battlements, I could see our archers firing blazing arrows at the enemy below and outside the city walls. There were not nearly enough armed men to hold back an army. We had hundreds, Charles the Bold’s army had thousands.

  I joined a long line of women, where I was grateful to find Aimee, my cousin. She was one year older than me but much smaller and fairer. She was the closest thing to a friend that I had other than Colin. As children we had gotten up to much mischief and preferred to rumble about the streets with the boys rather than weaving with the local girls. And yet she’d softened and become more sensible since her babe had been born.

  ‘Aimee,’ I said, grabbing her elbow. ‘Are you afraid? Are your mother and baby Matilda safely in the Cathedral?’

  ‘I’m terrified,’ she whispered. ‘Pierre is with the men defending the gates because that is where the enemy will attack first, they think. The messengers from up in the Cathedral spires have said that there are two large battering rams on trolleys. If they breach the moat and get in it will all be over. For all of us.’

  I nodded thoughtfully. The gates were our Achilles heel. The walls were as deep as a tall, grown man; their innards fortified with huge blocks of rock and iron bars. Our external barriers were as strong as a mountain. Despite the gates being triple-deep wood held fast with enormous logs and iron fittings, they would not be able to withstand a constant battering.

  From the marketplace to the south of the Cathedral I could see pens of crushed cows loudly lowing, grunting pigs and towers of chicken cages. Hundreds of families had spent most of the previous day evacuating all the produce and livestock they could carry with them from the surrounding suburbs and farms in the district, from all the way down to the river. A well-defended siege could last for months. It was critical to have enough food to feed those inside the city walls or the Burgundians could happily sit out the siege, whistling and twiddling their thumbs, while we all starved to death or, worse still, came to the point of surrender. If nothing else, Beauvais looked well supplied. There were hills of corn and teetering baskets of fruits and vegetables.

  ‘You women, step up here,’ a retired, one-eyed soldier called and motioned for us to approach his table. He had a quill and parchment and had clearly been given orders and strategies as to how to divide and assign us to defence stations.

  ‘The next five of you,’ he barked. ‘You and you.’ And then he pointed to the three middle-aged women shuffling up behind us. ‘Go to Geoffrey Britten’s shop on Butcher’s Road. Tanner Andre is in the slaughter paddock out the back skinning carcasses. You will be given carts of hides, both old and fresh. You must wet them thoroughly from the town drainage gullies and take them to drape on every wooden roof that you can. Anything made of flammable material such as wood or thatch must be well draped with drenched skins. You will cover the merchant quarter.’

  It sounded like one of the less savoury tasks to be given to the women, but it surely couldn’t have been worse than boiling huge vats of oil on the furnaces, transporting them and hoisting them up to the high battlements by pulley. That would be a chore more fraught with danger. The city was already hot and fetid.

  Aimee and I, along with the other women, hurried down the street toward the detestable slaughterhouse. The stench of spoiling flesh gave us our directions. Around us people were running, rushing to help protect the town.

  ‘Was it a cannon? That noise this morning?’ I panted out the question to my cousin.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, trying to keep up with me, her skirts bunched up higher than her boots as she ran. ‘From all accounts, it missed its mark and hit the moat with a great almighty splash that sent a spray of sewage and slime halfway up the outer walls around it. Made a mess, that’s all.’

  I stopped and pulled up straight, my jaw set tight, as Lieutenant Jean Lagoy came marching on a collision course directly toward me, leading a small group of archers behind him. He called them to a halt with a raised hand, coming to me, glaring.

  ‘You may find safe refuge in the Captain’s manor house, Jeanne,’ he said firmly. ‘All the ladies are there and you’ll have a guard stationed outside. The house is central so it will be too far for cannons or catapulting torches to reach. You will be safe.’

  ‘But if it’s so safe, why use up any soldiers to guard it?’ I asked. ‘Every man is needed up on the battlements, or to launch cannon fire of their own from the square, or to work to reinforce the gates, or man the gatehouses and I—’

  ‘I am not asking you, Jeanne,’ Lagoy snapped harshly. ‘I am telling you. You will obey me or suffer the consequences.’

  I gave a shudder not knowing what sort of threat that might be.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’ I nodded my head and gave a small but defiant curtsey.

  ‘You other wenches, away with you to your stations,’ he said, dismissing the other women. ‘I have no time to escort you there, Jeanne. The enemy has chosen, as their first bombardment, to attempt to scale the walls and take us by force that way. I must have every man on the battlements to repel their attempts. Go now, speed you away and keep safe!’

  I stood back, watching the foreign archers march in their heavy boots in a rhythm like a drum beat behind the Lieutenant, their heavy crossbows under their strong arms, arrow-heads glinting in the glare of the early morning sun.

  As soon as Lagoy and his band of men turned the corner and were out of view, I spun around, picked up my skirts and ran to catch up with Aimee and the other women. I might have been betrothed to the bully Lagoy, but I was not yet married to him and I still held out the sinful and evil hope that he might fall during the siege, thereby relieving me of
my marital commitment. And until I was truly chained to him in matrimony, I was a girl who wanted to work alongside my fellow women of Beauvais and use every sinew and tendon in my body to protect my home, the place where I had been born and lived my whole life.

  ‘You cannot disobey Lagoy,’ Aimee hissed at me. ‘You’ll be flogged. But I don’t understand why he would send you to the Captain’s house. To serve the fine ladies tea and croissants while Beauvais is being sacked?’

  ‘We are betrothed,’ I said quietly, trying to breathe through my mouth to avoid being made giddy by the worsening stench coming up from over the roof of the meat vendor’s house.

  ‘Sacré bleu! You lucky girl!’ she gasped loudly, her bluebell eyes widening. ‘But how? I don’t understand. How could you pay a dowry? You and Uncle Matthew are …’

  ‘Paupers?’ I smiled. ‘Yes, but we weren’t always and our mothers, yours and mine … they were well born but married down for love. Fools or romantics, I don’t know. Lagoy gained permission from the Captain and a bride-price was paid. My father had no choice but to agree.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘I now understand why you were so upset and why Colin followed you into the woods …’

  Aimee said no more but we both knew that it was common enough for a well-bred man to take a fancy to a pretty pauper or peasant girl and arrange to compensate the family for her hand in marriage. Sometimes being fair of face and fit and young were curses rather than blessings. If I had been scrawny and narrow hipped I might have been free to marry Colin.

  The hefty butcher pointed us out through the back doors without a word as he took all his knives and packed them into a crate. Outside, a huge wooden frame had warm, bloodied hides stretched out thinly.

  ‘You putain get over here,’ the tanner called rudely.

  He worked without a shirt, his leathery skin matching those he worked with. I was pleased to see that many of the hides he was preparing were old and not too fresh. He seemed to have barrels and barrels of off-cuts and leftovers and was laying them flat, in layers, into wheelbarrows.