In a Dark Wood Wandering (74 page)

Dunois, his eyes fixed on the torch flames dancing before the procession, answered, “Fourteen years.”

For Charles cTOrléans in Ampthill castle in the duchy of Bedford, the few letters from Dunois which reach him through Jean le Bras-seur and his little dog during the years 1430, 1431 and 1432, are landmarks in a wasteland of aimless time. It is true that his host and warden, the knight John Cornwall, Lord of Fanhope, allows him some freedom; he can walk, ride and hunt in the neighborhood under armed escort. In the castle a series of well-furnished chambers are at his disposal; he has French-speaking servants. Books he possesses in abundance, and if he wishes, he can socialize with nobles from Cornwall's circle of friends. But there are no political discussions; news about the war, about affairs in France, is carefully kept from him. When le Brasseur visits him to submit accounts and documents for his signature, there are always a half dozen men in the room to cut off immediately any but a purely business discussion. Charles does not always succeed in appropriating the letters so artfully concealed under the dog's long hair. More than once he is obliged to return the animal without success because he has not found the opportunity to redeem the message. Under no circumstances does he want his guards to discover this means of securing information; if le Brasseur can no longer visit him, all links between his half-brother and himself are broken forever.

In a flat wooden box which he carries with him always, he keeps the letters: small thin narrow rolls of paper covered closely with writing. At night, by the light of a single candle, carefully screened
within the bedcurtains, he reads and rereads countless times the small pages which are all he has of France. Although he learns a good deal and guesses even more, he still cannot form a clear picture of the real state of affairs. Like a blind man who feels unknown areas with his fingertips, he knows the contours of everything which comes within his reach, but he cannot imagine the whole.

So he reads in a letter which he has received early in 1430 that in the previous May the city of Orléans was relieved in four days; the garrison fought heroically under the command of a girl, Jeanne, who is called everywhere the Maid of Orléans. Dunois has not enough space to explain this remarkable leader, but respectful mention of her recurs constantly in his letters. Despite the opposition of the favorite La Trémoille, Jeanne has led the King across enemy territory into Reims and there had him anointed and crowned. Jeanne at the head of 8,000 men purges the area along the Loire of English troops. Jeanne's fame causes the people of Normandy, Pi-cardy and the Isle of France to declare themselves ready to acknowledge the King. Jeanne wishes to free him, Orléans. At Jargeau, Jeanne takes the Earl of Suffolk prisoner and, after consultation with Dunois, releases him for a ransom of 20,000 gold ecus and the promise that in England he will make every effort to bring about the release of Charles d'Orléans and Jean d'Angoulême.

“Jeanne, Jeanne,” murmurs Charles dubiously; he does not understand how a woman can exercise authority over men like Dunois, Gaucourt, Richmont, Alençon. Do they really believe then that the Maid of Orléans will do what the most experienced commanders have not been able to do? Even the calm, level-headed Dunois now writes with such elation that Charles assumes that everyone in France is intoxicated by hope and new courage. And he cannot deny that according to the information he receives, the King's armies are making good progress.

“The end is in sight,” Dunois writes at the end of his letter. “Within a short time we will advance with Jeanne to Paris. I have high expectations that people in the city who are well-disposed toward us will open the gates to us. Perhaps, dear brother, it will not be long before we see each other again.”

Considerably less sanguine is the intelligence that reaches Charles three months later. The attack on Paris has been beaten off by the English—the King's troops have had to withdraw over the Loire and the army has even been partially disbanded for lack of money.
And Jeanne? For the first time Charles senses uneasiness and doubt behind Dunois' words.

“It would be better if she were to return to Lorraine,” writes the Bastard, “before she is led by her ignorance and presumption to commit grave errors.”

After that, almost a year passes before Charles receives another visit from le Brasseur. He is somewhat prepared for bad news; he has heard from the knight Cornwall that ten-year-old King Henry VI was brought to Paris and ceremonially crowned King of both France and England. Charles thinks it is unlikely that this could have happened if the partisans were still active on the other side of the Loire. He has been informed with great pomposity that a certain Jeanne, nicknamed the Maid of Orléans, an inciter of insurrection, a witch, a rebel against English authority and an apostate from the True Faith, was captured at a battle near Compiegne. The brief letter which Charles finally receives from Dunois in July, 1431, confirms this.

“They have betrayed and sold her. She stayed with us too long. Because the King does not need her any more, he has not lifted a finger to save her. At the court of Bourges, they swear by a new prophet, a shepherd from Geveau who for the present finds it safer to flatter and delude the King than to march into battle for him as Jeanne did. The English handed her over to the University and especially to their friend and protege Pierre Cauchon, the new Archbishop of Beauvais. And, as was to be expected, Jeanne was accused of sorcery. They forced her to confess—I do not know what that means—that she served the Devil. But although she knew perfectly well what was in store for her, she recanted the confession. On the thirtieth day of May, she was burned to death.

“I do not know if she was sent by God. She was brave and devout and she gave us the strength we needed at the critical moment. But she should have seen that her work was finished when she led the King to Reims. She did not want to leave her post, not even when she no longer heard her voices which, she said, told her what to do. She liked to exercise command and to ride at the head of the troops. She liked nothing better than to urge the men on in battle. She didn't want to give up that pleasure. Since the defeat before Paris, I have often called her undertaking foolish and blamed her for her stupidity. But now that I know how she died, I find her no less holy and heroic than the martyrs we read about when we
were children. Because of her death many have regained the faith lost when fortune turned against us. Surely the people of France will remember her steadfastness with loving reverence and persevere in the struggle against England. And surely the King will bitterly regret having abandoned her to her fate. For my part, I know I can never again be completely happy now that I can never again meet Jeanne on her black charger with her gleaming banner raised before her, calling, ‘Come, Bastard, the dawn is breaking—on to battle, to the attack!' ”

Another year crawls slowly by. Some information reaches him in the course of the year, not only through the letters from France; he can infer one thing and another from words dropped by his servants and his English visitors; now and then he overhears a rumor, an echo of events in London and overseas in France and Flanders. Things are not going well for England in those territories which she still holds; riots and uprisings are the order of the day among the population; step by step they are forced from the cities and villages where they had been entrenched. In the government of London the parties of Gloucester and Winchester are quarreling; the evil which King Henry believed he had destroyed has spread over England like a pestilence: feuds between the great lords, dissension at home.

There is little money with which to fight the war, and as a consequence there are not more than four or five thousand English troops under arms in France. Burgundy, officially still England's ally, gives them no support. In England voices are raised, demanding peace. When he hears this, Charles looks forward with almost feverish impatience to news from Dunois. Peace … the word which he has not even dared think for many long years—now the thought of it propels him into a state of constant restlessness. Peace is his only hope for freedom; after seventeen years of imprisonment, he knows this only too well. For him and for his brother of Angoulême everything hinges on peace, and now that peace is a possibility and freedom seems within his grasp, he can barely hold out any longer.

In God's name let the King seize this chance, he thinks. Let them see over there that they have never had a more favorable opportunity; things are going so badly for the English that they are
willing to withdraw in exchange for land and money. God grant that negotiations begin soon.