Into The Fire (30 page)

Finding time on her hands, Picaut slips in an earpiece and begins the transcription of Garonne’s audio files. Hours of family chatter are tedious and she skips through, barely listening.

There’s a brief moment of interest when Yasine moves away from the table to talk to a cousin who is also his lieutenant, and they set up what she thinks is the delivery of twenty kilos of cocaine, which might at least pay for the wiretap if she passes it over to Ducat, but there is not a word about the fires.

She takes the headphones off, drinks the last of Patrice’s coffee, goes into the next room, pees silently on to a sponge in the base of a bucket, and settles back for the night.

Downstairs, the hip hop beat is toned down a notch or two to make way for the late evening news. Picaut winces as the sound of her own voice follows the headlines. It could have been worse. The press caught her on the way out of Luc’s burned warehouse, but they were relatively respectful in their questions.

Until now, the fires have been directed solely at women. The men of the press, therefore, were able to ride out on their white chargers to defend their damsels. They may be, to a man, sexist boors, but they are virile in their defence of their women; they see no contradiction in this.

Now, though, a man has been assaulted. And not just any man, but Luc Bressard. The message from Jaish al Islam condemned him for his ‘conciliatory hypocrisy’. The enormity of this is lost on no one: Jaish al Islam, whatever it may be, has now set itself against the Family.

The press is silent in the face of this, lost for words. Outside in the real world, courage and wisdom are added to Luc’s list of attributes, as if he has personally faced down the Islamic jihad, while at the same time calling for calm and reconciliation.

There is nothing Picaut can say that will change any of this, so she says that she has a lead on the fires but nothing definitive and please will anyone who has anything that might prove useful report it immediately to the following address?

Luc’s slot follows hers and is live. All evening, he has been on one channel or another, giving his response to the attempted destruction of his Project, swearing that he will rebuild it bigger, better, further-reaching. With each repetition, the sense of the Family being the lifeblood of Orléans grows. There were those, perhaps a decade ago, who thought they had over-reached themselves in coming here, that they should go back down south to their ancestral lands east of Lyon. Nobody is saying that now.

Listening to Luc is an exercise in media-craft. His voice is carefully modulated for the studio, not the hustings, but the message is the same: he will not be cowed, nor will he succumb to the siren calls of those who would cleanse France of the kaleidoscope of races, creeds and beliefs that help give her the vibrant culture that makes her great. In the past the Huguenots, the Cathars, the Jews were all hounded, many of them slaughtered, but nowadays we despise those who did it. ‘Kill them all. God will know His own.’ We don’t think like that now; we know it’s not civilized …

He’s good. His poll ratings are soaring. His campaign team is visibly buoyant. On the whole, lying on the floor of a seedy, empty apartment with her eyes pressed to a set of binoculars, Picaut is probably as safe as anywhere else in Orléans. She looks forward to a night’s unbroken sleep. She is not given it.

‘
FOR FRANCE! FORWARD!
Go! Go!
Go!
’

A surge of men. A glitter of arms. An obliteration of cannon fire. The Rifflard and its brethren bellow all at once, hurl their tons of shot against Saint-Honoré, the weakest of the Parisian gates. They spew stone across the walls, destroying blockwork, killing the first handful of defenders, because at last, after weeks of waiting – and d’Alençon sent twice to fetch him – the king is come from his fastness at Compiègne to give the Maid permission to assault the biggest, best fortified, most glorious heart of his kingdom.

It is September, four months since the lifting of the siege of Orléans. Tomas has spent the days hearing the confession of an army that is at its smallest since Orléans, less than half the size it was at Troyes. But at five thousand men it is still substantial, and those who remain nurse a hatred of England that curdles more with every passing dawn.

And they still have the gunners. In spite of a flurry of small skirmishes against men sallying out from the city, Jean-Pierre hasn’t lost a single man from his team. This is one of the many signs the French take to prove that God is still with them.

That wall stretches before them now, a mountain of stone the height of four horses stacked one atop the other. A moat wraps around, a great festering wound in the earth the depth of another two horses and half a bowshot across. This the French must cross before they can reach the men of Burgundy and England, Picardy and Germany, Luxembourg and Poland who line the walls against them with their guns and their maces, their swords and shields and hammers and hot, blistering oil.

There is not wood enough in France to fill the whole of this ditch as the Maid did at Troyes, but in the time Tomas has been here, her men have gathered half a forest to bridge the narrowed gap that lies before the gate of Saint-Honoré, where, by strength of arms, by their faith in the Maid and by the grace of God, they intend to pierce the fastness of Paris and give the king his capital to rule.

Brother Tomas is with the Maid now, part of her inner circle. He, La Hire, d’Alençon, d’Aulon, de Coutes, they fight so close to her that you could throw a cloak across them all and have space free at the edges. Young Raoul de Coutes holds her standard; he alone is not used to battle. She sets him behind her, rakes the rest with her glance, and raises her captured sword.

‘For France! Bring the wood.’

Whips crack. Harness strains. Horses and bullocks drag fifty laden carts to the lip of the moat. From behind, the big French guns fire over their heads.

‘Forward!’

Wood goes down, men stamp it solid, arrows hiss and thrum, crossbow quarrels stutter wickedly.

The Maid summons forward the pavisse-men, who bear on their backs great shields that make them like turtles. They are safe, except when they stand up. They are sent beetling on and Brother Tomas follows with the rest, his boots amongst the mailed feet stamping, a wall of men and armour, bringing sword and axe and mace to hammer and cut at the gate.

Soon, at her order, the shield-men bring a great tree trunk to batter against it. The men at arms keep their shields aloft in protection. Tomas is in the group closest to the gate, staff in hand, calling benedictions on the men, sighting the guns, signalling back to Jean-Pierre if he thinks the angles need to change.

The Maid and d’Alençon are to his left. La Hire is wide to his right, a raging bull, smashing the wood with his great war-hammer, but he is too obvious. The English above recognize his colours, and want his blood. Tomas hears a yell in English, and the name within it and turns, shouting, ‘La Hire, watch out!’

The cannon fire renders them all deaf, but La Hire feels the shape of the words enough to make him look up, and see the danger, and spring away.

He is fast in his responses, as a knight must be. Spinning, he drags a crossbow from a man who has just loaded it and shoots one-handed up into the battlements. Three of them, Tomas, the Maid and La Hire, hear a hit, a death, exchange a look, bare their teeth, flex their fingers, send out the cry that will draw the army on.

‘For the Maid! For France!
For France!
’

The day wears through in heat and noise and pain. Tomas listens to the song of the gate, the rising notes of wood under torture. The men can hear it. Their hammers rise effortlessly in their hands. Their armour is as silk; their rage is holy, and fierce.

‘My lady!’ A cry from behind and to his left, twenty yards back from the wall, beyond the edge of the moat. It is young Raoul de Coutes, stricken. From his foot has grown a bolt, and bright blood blooms around it. He is weeping; a child in pain. He takes off his helm, and kneels, and tries to pull out the quarrel that pins him to the floor.

‘Raoul! No!’ The Maid throws herself at him, but her legs are of lead, too slow, too slow, and no one on earth could be fast enough, for she knows what is coming. They all do.

Tomas shouts, ‘Raoul! Get down!’

But the boy is not made for war. He has only played in the meadows, where his brilliant gold hair does not make a target such as the men on the walls have prayed for all day. He doesn’t hear; or, hearing, doesn’t understand the urgency.

The second quarrel takes him between the eyes. He topples, and takes the standard with him. The Maid catches them both, the boy in one hand, standard in the other. It must not fall. It does not; Jean d’Aulon, at her side as always, takes it from her as she cradles de Coutes in her arms.

‘Raoul!’ She howls his name, in fury at the English, at the king, at God who lets boys die. He is so beautiful, and he looks barely dead, just a little affronted by the insolence of it; at any moment he might open his eyes and show his white peg teeth and dimple his cheek and say something a page should never say to a knight, which will make them all laugh.

She should not be standing there: she is too exposed. Tomas is with her, at her side, the closest. ‘My lady! You must step back!’

She cannot hear him. The Rifflard has just fired, and two others. Everyone is deaf. Tomas drops his staff and searches frantically for a shield. There is one just nearby, vert and argent quartered, the colours of Orléans. He runs for it, scoops it up, turns to see her lower the boy down, close his eyes. Still, she should not be there. Not there, not now. Especially not now. ‘My lady,
move
!’

Too late, she sees what he has seen. She jerks left, away from the quarrel that is coming her way—

—spins a full circle—

—it misses her chest—

—and hits her leg.

She falls, her face starkly white, framed by the polish of her helm.

‘My lady?’ Tomas is beside her, shield in hand, giving scant shelter, but it is all he has. D’Alençon, praise be to God, has the sense to grab a pavisse from a dead man and hold it over them, shielding them from other men’s eyes as much as from more bolts and arrows.

Still, he thinks she may be dead, and for a moment his world is adrift, as bad as when he was under the poppy. Not here. Not now. This is
not
his plan.

Sense catches him up. She cannot be dead for a bolt in the leg only. Surely she cannot?

‘My lady? Can you hear me?’

By force of will, she drags her eyes open. He sees the clash of pain and fury in her gaze; she has been hit before, but never incapacitated. She tries to speak, but pain is a river that holds her, might drag her under. He slides his shoulder under her arm. She grinds her teeth. In the sudden hush, he hears them, and because of that, knows the field has stopped fighting, to watch.

She knows it too. ‘Get me up. They have to see me up.’

‘Up, then.’ He helps her. ‘But don’t go outside the shelter of the pavi—’

Too late. The second bolt misses her but strikes her hard-won German blade square on. The sound of breaking steel rends the air.

He feels the shock, spreading outwards. A sword is a sacred thing and everyone knows how she won it in a fight, one on one, with a knight. To see it shattered before the walls of Paris … such things have turned the tides of too many battles to count. It is this, the breaking of her blade, that lets the dam break.

‘The Maid! The Maid is down!’

French voices and English shout it across the field and upon the walls; only the tone is different. In something approaching terror, he waits for the cataclysm of Jargeau, for the French to gather breath and swear vengeance, for the power of five thousand men to join in one single unstoppable force.

And he waits.

And he feels only the ruin of loss. Delay after delay has rotted the core of this army. Its self-belief has gone. Its belief in the Maid is not what it was. The men love her, but if the king, who is God’s anointed, does not want to fight, where is the certainty of God’s help?

The Maid feels it. She is white as fire ash, but she will not leave. ‘Help me to stand.’

La Hire ducks in under the shelter of the pavisse. ‘Girl, we have to get you back to la Chapelle. If you die here …’ He shuffles round, takes hold of her other shoulder, ready to drag her back.

He should know better than that. She knocks away his arm. ‘Better that I die here than in a tent behind the lines. The men must see me up. They must know I’m alive, or all is lost. Tomas, tell him.’

‘She’s right.’ He braces himself, holding her full weight up, armour and all. ‘The ranks will fall back if they think she’s dead.’ And if they fall back now, they may regroup and find their heart and that would never do. ‘La Hire, take her other arm. I’ve got this side. Careful now … make her steady. Give her your sword. She must appear armed. My lady, can you stand without us?’

‘Give me the standard.’ She reaches out, blindly. Tomas grabs the banner from her squire and thrusts it into her left hand, the side where her leg won’t hold her.

Her pain comes in waves now; he can see the flood and blanch across her face. She grips the standard left-handed and raises La Hire’s blade with her right and shouts, ‘Onward for France! Onward!
Onward!
’

The men put up a tattered cheer and rally their efforts. ‘Don’t stay, we’ll take the bastards without you!’

Which is good, because he thinks pain has made her half blind. She can’t see which way is forward and if she blunders any further into bolt range they’ll have her again. They know they can now; she isn’t magic any more. At last it is clear to them that neither God nor the devil is protecting her.

‘We have to get her back across the river.’ He begins to turn her.

She resists, pushes him away. ‘Tomas, stay on the field. You’re needed here. I’ll get back on my own.’