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“Both with all our love,” the woman said, and Joan realised that she spoke for both herself and Christ, who hung in such agony on his cross that he found speech difficult.
“Your purpose shall be France,” said the woman, and as she spoke she raised her right hand and made with it a sweeping gesture.
A dark vista opened up before Joan’s eyes. It was France, but a France devastated and murdered. Fields lay burning, houses and castles lay toppled, clouds of smoke and ash billowed over the countryside.
Out of this horrid cloud rode a man on a dark horse: a man Joan had never seen before, but one she instinctively knew was the Demon-King. A handsome face under silver-gilt hair, pale grey eyes, a warrior’s body and a warrior’s bearing.
He rode his stallion over the broken bodies of French men and women and children, and they screamed and wailed and bled as he progressed.
Not once did he look down and pity them. Instead, his face was swollen with glory and victory.
His stallion strode forth, and more bones cracked, and more children died.
“I know him,” said Joan.
“Aye,” said the woman. Her hands were now to her face, and she wept as if her heart broke.
Turning her eyes back to the woman, Joan wondered if she wept for France, or for the Demon-King.
“If Charles does not rise against him,” the woman continued, gaining some control over her weeping, “then this is France’s destiny.”
“Charles is a lost cause,” said Joan. “I have given him my all. I have begged and pleaded and threatened. I have spoken prophecies and wrought him miracles, but still he sits here in Rheims and weeps and wrings his hands. France needs a king to lead it, and what it has is a pile of useless excrement. I cannot change him.”
“Yes, you can change him,” said Christ, groaning with the effort of speaking. “See.”
The vista changed so that France became a land of sun-drenched meadows and laughing children. In this new France the Demon-King still stood, but his sword hung useless at his side, his shoulders had slumped, his form was thin and tremulous, and his feet had sunk to their ankles in a pool of bubbling black mud. Dread suffused the Demon-King’s face, and his mouth hung slack with dismay. He stared towards a horizon where appeared a great and mighty king on a snowy war stallion. It was Charles, but a Charles Joan did not think existed.
Behind him rode a shining army—an army of a united and strong France.
The Demon-King whimpered, trembled violently, then sank into the bubbling pool of black mud until he had completely vanished.
“How can this be so?” Joan said.
“All you have to do,” said the woman, now leaning forward and taking one of Joan’s hands in hers, “is to tend your sheep.”
Joan frowned. “I do not understand.”
The woman smiled, and kissed Joan very softly on the mouth. She began to speak, and she spoke without interruption for many minutes.
At first Joan’s face twisted with horror, then it relaxed, and assumed a radiance born both of wonder and of hope.
“I can do this?”
“You are the Saviour of France,” said Christ, and he smiled with such tenderness and love through the haze of his own torment that Joan’s heart overflowed with the strength of her love and joy. “The path ahead of you shall be tiresome and often painful. You will doubt. But I—”
“And I,” put in the woman.
“—will always be there. We will not forget you. When you are at your darkest, then we will be there for you.”
Much later Catherine came to Joan’s chamber, thinking to talk more of Marie’s child, and to use its birth to ensure Joan’s total alienation from the angels.
What she found astounded her.
Joan knelt before her window which she had opened to admit the dawn light. About her lay strewn the fragments of what Catherine recognised as Joan’s sword and angelic banner.
“Joan?” Catherine said. “Are you well?”
Joan lowered her hands which she’d had clasped before her. She rose and turned to face Catherine.
For an instant, Catherine thought that the girl had tripped entirely into the murky waters of insanity, impelled by the truth she’d been forced to witness last night. But then she realised that Joan’s face was infused not with madness, nor even with her previous obsessive devotion, but with a peace so profound that Catherine’s eyes widened in wonder.
“What has happened?” she said.
Joan smiled secretively, although not in a sly manner. “I have found myself,” she said.
Catherine indicated a small stool. “May I sit?”
“Oh, yes. Forgive me. I should have asked you myself.”
Then Joan, who sat on the edge of her narrow bed, tilted her head and regarded Catherine with a modicum of curiosity. “You have not come to gloat, have you?”
Catherine shook her head, wondering what it was that had caused this great change in the girl over only a few short hours. When Joan had run from Marie’s birthing chamber, Catherine thought her close to breaking.
“I had wondered,” Catherine said carefully, “if you might need someone to talk to.”
“That was kind of you,” said Joan, knowing that was not quite the reason Catherine had come to her.
Catherine hesitated, not sure what to say next. This was not the Joan she had expected to find.
Joan spoke again, filling the uncomfortable silence. “How is Marie, and her daughter?”
“They are well,” Catherine said.
“For the moment,” said Joan, “but how will Marie venture forth into the world, an unmarried woman with a bastard child? I worry for her, and feel guilt, knowing how I deserted her when she needed me most.”
“I have arranged for her a place as housekeeper in a small convent in Amiens. The sisters will be pleased to receive her, and both Marie and her daughter will be nurtured.”
Joan’s mouth twitched. “If only they knew what they nurture,” she said, and then the amusement died from her face. “Tell me of the angels, Catherine, and of the misery they have visited on you, and on mankind.”
And so Catherine took a deep breath and, as Hal Bolingbroke and Margaret had once talked to Thomas Neville, told Joan all she knew.
When she had finished Joan looked sorrowful, but still composed. “We have all been grossly misused and abused,” she said.
Catherine nodded, satisfied. “What will you do now?”
Joan smiled, beatifically, as if at an inner vision, and Catherine wondered if she’d slipped back into her previous blind and obsessive piety.
But the expression passed, and Joan spoke calmly and reasonably. “I had thought to return to my parents’ home,” she said. “I thought to devote myself to the tending of my father’s sheep.”
“That’s a wonderful—”
“But I have changed my mind,” Joan said, grinning slightly at the expression on Catherine’s face. “Oh, do not worry, Catherine. I have no doubt that I shall end my days watching over my father’s sheep in some blessed meadow, but there is still one small task left for me to do here first.”
“And that is?”
“To fit Charles for his rightful place, as King of France.”
“You cannot still mean to accomplish that! Charles is a hopeless imbecile who—”
“He will not always be so,” Joan said. “He merely needs an infusion of strength. I am that strength.”
“Then we are still at odds.”
Joan took Catherine’s hand. “Yes. We are. Indeed, our positions have hardly changed. You fight to replace Charles with… well, with whomever. And I fight to give him France. What has changed is that I now understand you, and in understanding you, I have come to a realisation.”
“And that is… ?”
“I think that one day we will be friends. Even, I dare to venture, that we will fight for the same end.”
Catherine opened her mouth to speak, but Joan continued quickly. “Am I not a prophetess? Then hear me out. In the end, I think we will both do what is right for France, and I think that we will both take the path that love demands of us, not those paths that previous blind allegiances have shown us.”
Catherine chewed her lip, then nodded. “Should we still spat in public, Joan? Should I pull your hair every time you pass?”
“Oh, indeed! Otherwise your mother will think the world has come to an end!”
They both laughed, then Catherine rose, aiding Joan to rise at the same time. She kissed Joan’s cheek.
“Be well, Joan.”
“Aye,” Joan said. “I think I will be, now.”
PART ONE (#ulink_a25b83cc-ad0a-537d-b095-cb8f7b62cee4)
(#ulink_a25b83cc-ad0a-537d-b095-cb8f7b62cee4)WINDSOR (#ulink_a25b83cc-ad0a-537d-b095-cb8f7b62cee4)
In the meane time… certain malicious and
cruel persons enuiyng and malignyng in their
heartes… blased abrode and noised dayly
amongest the vulgare people that kyng
Richard… was yet liuyng and desired aide of
the common people to repossesse his realme
and roiall dignitie. And to the furtheraunce of
this fantastical inuencion partely moued with
indignacion, partely incensed with furious
malencolie, set vpon postes and caste aboute
the stretes railyng rimes, malicious meters and
tauntyng verses against king Henry… He
being netteled with these uncurteous ye
unuertuous prickes & thornes, serched out the
authors…
Edward Hall, Chronicle, 1548
I Tuesday 30th April 1381 (#ulink_844948e2-f646-5231-bfb2-b3776e38ed53)
Lord Thomas Neville walked slowly through the gardens of Windsor Castle, heading for the entrance to the King’s Cloister. He narrowed his eyes slightly against the mid-morning brightness of the sun, enjoying its welcome warmth even though its glare made his eyes ache.
Windsor Castle had long been favoured by the English kings, but since his coronation seven months ago Bolingbroke had made it his main residence. He’d not wanted to reside in Westminster, which he thought cold and uncomfortable; the Savoy was still in ruins; Lambeth Palace was unavailable now that the new Archbishop of Canterbury had moved in; and the only other truly regal palace in London was the Tower, which needed another few months’ worth of renovations before it could be suitable to use as Bolingbroke’s royal residence. So Bolingbroke had moved his court to Windsor, a solid day’s ride west from London.
Neville raised his face slightly, staring towards the silvery stone walls of the castle, looking for the tall, graceful, second level windows of the Great Chamber. Ah… there they were, so afire with the glare of the sun that no outsider would be able to peer through and intrude upon the privacy of the chamber’s occupants. Neville had no doubt that by this time of the day Bolingbroke would be settled with his advisers and secretaries and counsellors.
And here Neville was in the gardens.
“My Lord Neville! Morning’s greetings to you!”
Neville jumped, silently cursing the sudden thudding of his heart. He squinted against the sun, then relaxed, nodding to the man striding down the garden path towards him.
“My Lord Mayor,” he said, extending a hand. “My congratulations on your recent election.”
Dick Whittington took Neville’s hand in a firm grasp, then indicated a nearby bench. “If you’re in no hurry, my lord?”
Neville sat with Whittington on the bench, wondering what the Lord Mayor could want to say to him.
“I am pleased to have this chance to speak with you, my lord, that I might ask after your lovely wife and children.”
“Margaret? Why, she is well, as are Rosalind and Bohun,” Neville responded, surprised at the enquiry. Whittington hardly knew Margaret…
“I have just come from the Great Chamber,” Whittington said, after a slight hesitation, “and an audience with our king—you know of his edicts regarding education, and clocks?”
Neville nodded. Over the past months Hal had instructed that science and the new humanities were to receive a greater weight in schools at the expense of religion, while clock hours were to replace church hours of prayer in people’s daily lives.
It was all, Neville knew, part of Hal’s not-so-subtle turning of his subjects' hearts and minds away from the religious to the secular.
“Aye, well,” Whittington continued, “I needed to consult with his grace over some of the details of the new school curricula, and the appropriate fees the clockmaker’s guild can charge for the installation of clocks in all London’s gates and major steeples.”
