Borrowed Time (17 page)

Instead of answering, Joan had a distracted air, as if listening to something else that Kate couldn’t hear. After a few moments, Joan’s focus sharpened again and she looked at Kate. “My voices tell me I must stay. My mission is not yet done. God wishes more of me. That is why I was saved.”

“No. Wait.” This wasn’t right. Grateful Joan, smart Joan, clever Joan who had talked rings around her learned inquisitors at her trial, who had been abandoned by supposed friends and allies, who had been beaten down to the point where even her will had been about to bend, was supposed to see the sense of coming with Kate. “I know you credit your voices with telling you things, but women used to do that a lot, because society wouldn’t accept that women could have ideas on their own. So women claimed they’d been told things by voices or spirits. You don’t have to pretend with me. I know you’re smart. I mean, you’re barely twenty years old now, and look what you’ve done!”

Joan seemed bemused, though. “You know much of me, it seems, and yet much of what you know does not seem to be me.”

“I’ve studied you for years and admired you all my life!”

“All of your life?” Joan laughed in a halting way, as if she had grown unused to any lightheartedness in her captivity. “You seem my own age.”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“Then you can only have heard of me for a few years! And I must tell you that what you have heard is not my truth. My voices are true, and have guided me honestly when I listened to them. They tell me of God’s commands for me.”

Kate bit back her first reply. Clearly, Joan wasn’t the religious hysteric she had often been painted as, but just as clearly she wasn’t going to admit to someone she had just met something so personal as what Kate knew had to be the truth about her voices. “I didn’t mean to question you. But, really, God didn’t save you, I did. I came here for you.”

Joan reined in and Kate stopped her horse as well, the two gazing at each other across the small distance between them. Her face lit with some inner fire, Joan reached across to grasp Kate’s hand. “Yes, you came. Do you not see the hand of God in this? You were His instrument in my rescue, and that is how I know you will continue to help me. You are a true companion. There is no falseness in you. My voices told me this, as did my heart. I cannot come with you. But
you
can come with
me
.”

Kate stared at Joan, at Joan’s shining eyes, at Joan’s face glowing with conviction, and felt her own will yielding like a weak dam trying to hold back an ocean of faith. “All - all right.”

“Then onwards!” Joan kicked her mount into motion again and Kate followed, slowly realizing as they rode that Joan was now leading, not her.

#

They couldn’t have gone more than an hour longer, following a wandering path along small trails and through low areas, before Joan began swaying in the saddle. “Your pardon, but do you have anything to eat? I have not been fed for two days, nor been allowed sleep in that time.”

“Two days?” No wonder Joan had been on the verge of collapse. The inquisitors had softened her up in every way possible. Kate dug into another small bag containing a variety of just-in-case-they-were-needed food bars. Joan eyed the food bars dubiously, but after a tentative taste began wolfing them down.

“Have we anything to drink?”

Kate started to say no, but then began checking the contents of the bags hanging from the saddles of the horses. One contained a leather flask which seemed to have about a liter of liquid in it. “How about this?”

Joan took the flask gratefully, putting it to her mouth and drinking deeply before lowering it with a contented sigh and passing it back to Kate. Taking a cautious swallow, Kate found that the flask was filled with sharp red wine. Finishing the last food bar, Joan extended her hand for the flask again and drained it.

Not long after that, Joan fell asleep in the saddle, Kate riding as close as she could to help prop up her companion when necessary even though Kate’s own discomfort from riding was growing with every jolt of the horse beneath her. She had ridden enough to know horses, but never for really long periods and rarely in armor. Despite the aches assailing her, Kate wanted to keep going even when the sun set, but the exhausted horses made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. Joan roused long enough to lead them off the path they were on into a stand of trees which shielded them from view, their worn out horses quietly cropping grass. Kate sat, her arms around her knees, watching Joan and trying to think.

Joan sighed happily before falling asleep again. “I shall sleep free tonight for the first time in many, many days. I can never thank you enough, Lady Kate.”

Lady Kate? Apparently Joan had decided that Kate deserved a social promotion. The glow of happiness that brought (
Joan thinks I deserve to be called Lady Kate!
) soon dissolved, though. Kate really hadn’t planned for a long time in Medieval France. She was supposed to rescue Joan, then Joan would quickly and gladly agree to be spirited back to modern times, and some sort of vague happily-ever-after would follow. But Joan wasn’t going along with Kate’s perfectly sensible plan, even if that plan wasn’t very detailed.
She’s amazing, though. No wonder Joan impressed, or scared, everybody who met her. But she’s not exactly what I expected
. Kate fell asleep herself while trying to marshal new arguments to convince Joan to come with her.

#

The next day brought a marvelous variety of dull and sharp pains from sleeping outdoors in armor, as well as gnawing hunger since there wasn’t anything left to eat. Joan seemed to be blossoming under the open sky, toughened by her peasant upbringing and well accustomed to privation from her long imprisonment, but Kate felt like death warmed over. The horses, surly from too little to eat and too short a night’s rest, didn’t help matters. Nor did having to wait while Joan knelt by herself for an extended period of prayer.

Eventually they got on the road, but soon Joan insisted on veering into a small village in search of food. “Have you any coin?” Joan asked Kate, cradling bread and wine which a peasant had brought from a tavern.

Kate reluctantly hauled out the single just-in-case real silver coin she had brought along. The image of Franklin D. Roosevelt on one side of the dime was already worn down quite a bit, so there didn’t seem much chance that anyone would be able to recognize the coin by the time actual United States currency came into existence in another three or four centuries. But Kate paused as she started to hand the money over, staring at the coin.
I’m worried about a single anachronistic dime? Yesterday, I blew my way out of Rouen with Joan of Arc, who won’t be burned at the stake there on schedule, and I’m worried about a dime messing with history? What will freeing Joan do to history if she refuses to come home with me and keeps rampaging around France? What the hell have I done?

But it wasn’t like she could turn Joan back over to the English. The English would probably burn both of them to death on matching stakes, which wasn’t the kind of altered history Kate was interested in being a part of. Without a map, Kate knew only that they needed to go south to find safety, but the winding roads they were following didn’t seem to care about cardinal directions. After an hour’s ride they reached one crossroads that looked like every other crossroads they had passed. Trying to make out the words on the battered wooden sign to one side of the path, Kate wondered how anyone in this time found their way anywhere. “My kingdom for a GPS.”

“You have a kingdom?” Joan asked.

“No, it’s a saying.” Kate thought it best not to explain that it was from an English playwright, especially since Shakespeare had referred to Joan as a “foul fiend.”

“What is a Gee Pee Ess?”

“It’s kind of like a map.”

Joan nodded, then pointed assuredly down one of the intersecting roads. “We have no need of maps. My voices told me this morning that we should come to this place, and to take this way when we did.”

“Your voices?” Somehow that didn’t sound to Kate like a good substitute for a GPS. When had Joan talked to her voices? “We need to go south to get to safety, and that’s kind of west, I think.”

Shaking her head, Joan pointed down the other roads. “The English have many parties out trying to find us. They have every man available on the search. If we go down any of those other ways, our chances of being found are much higher.”

“What’s so special about that road?”

Joan smiled. “It is the right road.”

“Joan –“

“We must go that way. We dare not linger here to debate. Come!”

Kate found herself riding to catch up with Joan’s horse as they headed down the road Joan had chosen.

As the morning and their ride wore on, any remaining glow of adventure faded as the pain grew in Kate’s chafing thighs and sore butt and her mind worried about what a free Joan would do to change history. The rising summer sun beat upon her armor until Kate wondered just how long it took to broil a human being alive. Just after noon they rode through a village whose inhabitants stared at them both. They had almost made it out the other side when an old man stepped into the road and gestured for them to halt.

Irritated, Kate started to ride past, but Joan reined to a halt and gave the man a respectful nod. “Good day, friend farmer.”

The man came close to Joan, studying her face, then smiled to reveal a mouth with few remaining teeth. Kate had been gradually getting used to the unwashed fragrances of human bodies, including Joan’s, but this man was particularly ripe. From the smell, he seemed to raise pigs. “The Maid. You are the Maid.”

Joan smiled back as if to an old acquaintance. “I am, friend farmer.”

“You still fight for France?”

“I will fight for France to my last breath, friend farmer.”

The old man smiled again, and gestured them to wait, then hobbled quickly to a house nearby.

Kate glanced around nervously. “Joan, we need to keep moving.”

“No. Let us wait.”

Setting her jaw with growing anger at Joan’s assumption of command, Kate started to argue again, then stopped as the old man reappeared along with two younger men carrying heavy burdens. “You will need these,” the old farmer announced, unwrapping the bundles. In one, an assortment of pieces of armor rested, in the other, a sword and scabbard. “Years ago, a drunken Burgundian knight stayed here the evening, attempted to dishonor one of my daughters, and never left. He rests in one of those fields. Now you can make use of his armor and weapon.”

Most of the armor didn’t fit, but Joan was able to fasten on the breastplate, then belt on the sword. “My thanks.”

“Will you touch my sons, Maid, that they may have long lives and find good wives?”

Joan gave a weary sigh, but then smiled and lightly touched each of the younger men on their shoulders. “I have no special powers, but I ask that God grant you long lives and good wives.”

The old farmer grasped Joan’s hand for a moment and kissed one of her rings. “May God bless you, Maid.”

“And may He bless you,” Joan replied, before finally heading onward.

“I thought we were in a hurry,” Kate grumbled some time later, after stewing since leaving the village.

“But now I have a sword and some armor. The poor people have few who listen to them, who care for them. I do what I can,” Joan replied.

It was bad enough that Joan kept telling her what to do, but Joan also had been right to stop for the old man. That just made it more aggravating.
It would be nice if you listened to
me
even once, you bossy little -
Kate caught herself. This was Joan. She knew what Joan had done, and she knew how Joan had done things. Why had she ever expected Joan, of all people, to be compliant? And any student of the Middle Ages knew that Joan was absolutely right that few with any power cared about common folk. Remorse replaced anger. “I’m sorry. I’m really rotten sometimes.”

Joan turned a reassuring smile on Kate. “You are not a bad person, Lady Kate. You came to save me.”

Kate stared at Joan as a realization filled her, as clearly as if one of Joan’s voices had been speaking a truth which Kate did not want to hear but couldn’t avoid.
I didn’t come to save her. I didn’t really know her. I came to save her for me, for what I wanted her to be. It was all about me, never really about Joan. Not this Joan, not the real Joan
.

“Kate? Are you well?” Joan, who had just endured many months of torment, was watching Kate with real concern.

“I’m fine. I haven’t gone through anything compared to you.”

Joan shook her head. “I am not an easy person, Kate,” she confided in a low voice. “I was raised a peasant, without the fine manners of the court. My mission from God and my devotion to France consume me. I can be impolite and abrupt, and sometimes prideful. I know this, I sorrow for this, and I pray you will grant me forgiveness for my failings.”

Kate, consumed with guilt, reached out a hand to touch hers. “Joan, you’re a wonderful person. Really.”

“Really? But I am a witch, a sorceress and a heretic, did you not know? The English and the University of Paris have said so.” Joan grinned in a sudden mood swing. “In the name of God, it sometimes felt when I was a prisoner as if only God was on my side!”

Kate laughed. “I’ve run into my share of university professors who think they’re God, and the English aren’t the best people around these days. But if not for the English we wouldn’t have had the Beatles, so I guess they get better.”

“The beetles?” Joan’s mood shifted again, to curiosity and puzzlement. “Beetles are from England?”

“I mean the singing ones.”

“Singing beetles?” Joan laughed this time. “What do they sing? Do the fairies lead them in song? The common folk of your land must have the same fancies as those here.” Her laughter faded. “Such things are innocent, I think, yet the learned churchmen tried to use the simple old beliefs as proof I was a witch. My faith in God sustained me, but I hope He will forgive that I wondered sometimes during my ordeals at His purpose.” She crossed herself.