The Crippled Angel Read online

  Rough English hands grabbed at her simple clothing, and Joan cried out involuntarily. They tore from her body her tunic, and her breeches, and the plain undergarments she wore beneath.

  Their hands rubbed against her breasts and belly, pinching, hurting, and she heard a snort of derisive laughter.

  “No,” she whispered, her face twisting in humiliation beneath the still-covering hood. “No!”

  “You’re too ugly for us, girl,” said one coarse voice, and then the hood was lifted from her head.

  Joan blinked, her eyes unaccustomed for many hours to any light at all. She crouched, trying with a touching inefficiency to hide her breasts and pubis, then looked up, squinting a little as a man held a torch above her head.

  It was Hal Bolingbroke. Joan recognised him instantly from the vision Christ had vouchsafed her.

  “Well met, Joan of Arc, Maid of France,” Bolingbroke said. “You seem strange to me, for I had imagined a maiden of great strength and bravery. Instead, I find this crouching, trembling peasant.”

  He stepped back, turning the torch towards a wall. The chamber was quite roomy, and the torch barely lit what covered the wall.

  But Joan saw clearly enough.

  “I found this,” Bolingbroke said conversationally, “in the great guildhall of this fair city. Apparently the guild’s seamstresses and embroiderers had worked at it ceaselessly for a year. It has only just been completed. I brought it here.” His voice hardened. “I thought it might cheer you.”

  Joan could hardly bear to look upon the huge tapestry. It was most beautifully wrought, and most perfectly designed (although unintentionally on the part of its makers) to serve Bolingbroke’s need to humiliate Joan.

  It took as its subject Joan of Arc herself, depicting her at the height of her fame as she led the French forces against the English at the siege of Orleans. She was clad in gleaming white armour, riding her roan stallion. One arm was held on high, carrying a great banner depicting the heraldic devices of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. Her visor was open, and her face shone with heaven’s glory, her eyes fervent, trusting, believing.

  “Where your armour now, Joan?” Bolingbroke asked as Joan finally tore her eyes away from the tapestry. ”Where your glory? Where,” his voice hardened into vindictiveness, “your angelic companions?”

  His arm lowered, thrusting the torch almost into Joan’s face. “Look at you, dirty, ugly, teary girl. How could I have thought that you were ever a worthy opponent of mine? Ah! Put her away, for I cannot bear to think that I wasted a night of my life, let alone thirty pieces of silver, on this sorry wench.”

  The two men-at-arms grabbed Joan by her upper arms, dragging her towards the centre of the chamber. She cried out, lifting her legs against her abdomen and attempting to hide her breasts with her hands.

  They gave her no chance. Even as she dragged her legs upwards, the men lifted her high, throwing her through the opening of an iron cage suspended from the ceiling of the chamber.

  Joan landed with a jolt and cried out in distress, for the floor of the cage was made of nothing more than crisscrossed roughened iron bars, and her skin scraped and tore as she slid across to the far wall of the cage, slamming her right shoulder and arm against it.

  The cage door slammed, and she heard the sound of a lock being turned.

  The two men-at-arms left and, after a very long pause, so did Bolingbroke.

  The door banged shut behind him, leaving Joan suspended in her iron cage in the dark of her gaol.

  After a few minutes of staring blankly into the silent darkness, her arms wrapped about her breasts in a vain attempt to negate the horror of her earlier humiliation, Joan began to cry, crushed by the hatred of Bolingbroke.

  IV

  Tuesday 20th August 1381

  —i—

  The door swung open suddenly, violently, crashing into the wall and springing halfway back into the room.

  Joan jerked out of a half slumber, crying out. She began to shake, as much from fear as from the cold that had almost frozen her.

  A guard stepped in, holding out a torch. He grunted at the sight of Joan, huddled in the furthest corner of her cage, dirty and shivering.

  Then he stepped back, and bowed.

  Two men came in, awkwardly, carrying something between them.

  Something that cried out as they stepped down into the chamber. Something they carried with the most infinite of gentleness.

  A third man followed these two. He carried, not some as-yet-undetermined bundle, but a simple wooden chair with several blankets and a pillow on its seat.

  Behind him came yet one more person. A woman, but she was hidden by the shadows and the shapes of the men moving in front of her, and Joan did not see her clearly.

  Joan returned her attention to the two men who carried the bundle. The third man had placed the chair directly before Joan’s cage, arranging upon it the pillow and blankets, and now the two men lowered their charge toward the chair.

  As they had carried it, so now they lowered it with such infinite gentleness, respect and love that Joan lost some of her terror. If this bundle was so loved and respected, then how could it mean harm?

  The bundle—a woman, Joan could see that now—moaned as the men deposited her into the chair. She clutched at the right-hand arm of the chair with her hand; her left arm was bound up tightly in a sling. The two men hurried away, searching for more torches to place into wall sconces, while the other woman now came forward, and murmured soothing words to the woman in the chair, and wrapped her about in the blankets.

  When the torches—five in all, their light now exposing Joan’s shame for all to see—had been set into their sconces, the woman in the chair spoke.

  “Leave us alone now with the Maid,” she said, her voice firm and clear. “She can do us no harm.”

  The guard who had been standing all this time by the open door looked uncertain.

  The woman in the chair, even though she did not turn her head to see him, sensed this uncertainty. “Go now,” she said. “I will come to no harm.”

  The guard grunted yet again, shuffled about for a moment, then turned and left the chamber, closing the door behind him.

  Joan, still huddled in the far corner of the cage, her arms wrapped about her nakedness, stared at her two visitors.

  The woman in the chair was many things.

  She was a queen, for although she wore no crown or jewels proclaiming her status, the essential majesty of her soul shone through her beautiful hazel eyes.

  She was a woman dying, for Joan could clearly see her skeletal frame underneath her simple robe of white wool, overlaid at the shoulders by a sky-blue shawl. Her forthcoming death was also apparent in the colour and texture of her skin, for it was grey and papery, and in the thinness and dryness of her hair, which had fallen from her scalp in great patches.

  And she was a woman somehow indefinably magical. This ‘magical’ Joan could not clearly determine; it was merely something about, or, rather, within the woman. An unknown secret, perhaps. Something unknown, but…but something very, very blessed indeed.

  She strongly reminded Joan of someone, but Joan could not quite place who. That she had seen this woman before Joan had no doubt…it was just that she could not place the when or the where.

  But that did not matter. All that mattered was that this magical, otherworldly woman was here now.

  Joan’s eyes filled with tears of joy that she should be so graced with the presence of this woman.

  The other woman, standing beside the chair of the dying queen, was incomparably beautiful. Joan did not think she had ever seen any woman so beauteous. She had dark, bronzed hair, shot through with ripples of gold. Her face was wonderfully moulded, her eyes the deepest black, her figure that of the most intimately desirable woman.

  But this woman’s beauty was tempered with sadness. This woman grieved. For what, Joan was not sure. Certainly for this dying queen, but her grief went deeper and further than tha
t.

  “Margaret,” said the queen in a soft, gentle voice, “take my shawl and give it to this poor girl. I cannot believe that Hal would treat her so.”

  “No,” said Joan, her voice cracking after almost twentyfour hours locked in this cold, damp prison. “No, madam, I beg you. Keep it about yourself, for it is so cold in here.”

  “I soon shall not feel the cold,” said the queen. “Margaret, do as I ask.”

  The woman, Margaret, lifted the shawl away from the queen and carried it the two paces to the cage.

  “Joan,” she said, “wrap yourself in this. Please. It will give Mary pleasure that you do so.”

  Now that she was close, Joan realised that Margaret was a demon. Joan reached out a hand, took the shawl, and hastily wrapped it about her shoulders and over her breasts.

  “I thank you,” she said to Margaret, but including Mary in her words. Then, exclusively to Margaret, she said, “Who is your father?”

  “My father is the Archangel Michael,” she said.

  Joan nodded. “Then I pity you.” No wonder this woman was so sad, for she had been conceived in grief and born in yet more.

  “I escort,” Margaret said, turning back to the queen in her chair, “the Queen Mary, wife to Hal Bolingbroke.”

  “I am sorry,” Mary said softly, “that for the moment I can do little else for you than to give you the shawl, and one of these blankets.” She handed the item to Margaret, who passed it through to Joan. “When my husband departs this city, as I expect him to do within the next day or so, then I will be able to do more for you.”

  “What you have done is grace enough,” Joan said quietly.

  “My husband,” Mary’s voice hardened a little with that statement, “has feared you for a very long time. Joan of Arc, Maid of France, forgive him his fear.”

  “How can he not love and honour you?” said Joan, for she could see that Mary was, as a wife, a neglected and unloved companion.

  “He thinks to love Catherine of France,” said Margaret. “Do you know her?”

  “Aye, of course I do,” said Joan. “And Bolingbroke loves her? Then he will indeed have been distressed to have heard Regnault de Chartres’ news…that she and Philip of Navarre have been wed these past four or five days.”

  Mary smiled, very slightly, very sadly. “Then no wonder it is that he has been thumping about this castle so thunderously. He will indeed have been grieved at the news.”

  “What did she hope to accomplish with that?” Margaret said, more to herself than anyone else.

  “An end to the fighting, perhaps,” Mary said. “Or maybe she hoped that Hal might return home if he thought she were now unattainable.”

  Her mouth twisted. “But there’s nothing standing between Hal and Catherine—so far as Hal is concerned—that two quick deaths could not accomplish. As far as Philip is concerned, Hal prepares for it even now. He has gathered about him his army, and will soon march out to meet with Philip. I have heard rumours—and no doubt Hal has heard the certainty—that Philip is preparing to lead an army forth from Paris to repel the English once and for all.”

  “And this sickness that I have heard so much about?” said Joan. “Does Bolingbroke have an army to lead out?”

  “Aye,” replied Margaret, this time. “But much reduced. The sickness passed within days of our transferral here to Rouen. He leads no more than six and a half thousand men.”

  “But they have Hal at their head,” said Mary softly, her eyes unfocused and far away, “and Hal is worth ten thousand men at the least.”

  “Madam,” said Joan, ”what do you here? Here in France, and here in this dungeon with me. You are ill, and should be at home, surrounded with those who love you.”

  “My home is wherever I am surrounded with those who love me.” Mary held up her right hand for Margaret to hold. “And I am here in this dungeon with you, Joan, to let you know that you are also loved. Do not despair.”

  Joan lowered her head, blinking away her tears. This Mary was truly good in a way that Joan had never seen before.

  Eventually, she raised her eyes again and spoke in a quiet voice. “Is Thomas Neville with you? May I speak with him?”

  Both Mary’s and Margaret’s faces fell. “We have not seen Tom in many days,” said Margaret, her voice breaking. “We do not know where he is.”

  “We fear,” said Mary. “Greatly.”

  V

  Tuesday 20th August 1381

  —ii—

  Catherine knew she was making a spectacle of herself, knew that men were looking away in embarrassment, knew that her mother Isabeau de Bavière was standing, arms folded, looking on in amusement, but Catherine did not care.

  All she knew was that Philip was going to his probable death.

  “Don’t go!” Catherine cried once more, one hand clinging to the stirrup leather of Philip’s saddle, the other grasping the strap holding his knee plate in place.

  “Catherine—” he said.

  “He will kill you!” Catherine said. “Hal is…is…”

  Philip risked a glance about the courtyard. Several score knights and men-at-arms, fully weaponed and armed, sat their horses, waiting Philip’s word and movement. In the streets outside another thousand waited.

  And another twenty thousand awaited in the fields north of Paris.

  Philip was going to war.

  “Bolingbroke’s army is decimated,” Philip said, his voice low and caring. He reached down and took Catherine’s chin in his hand, tilting her face towards his. Her almost-hysteria did not embarrass him; rather, knowing Catherine’s normal steely reserve and control, it touched him deeply. She cared enough to weep over his going, and Philip could not have asked for a better farewell gift.

  “He is deep into what, for him, is enemy territory,” Philip continued, his fingers caressing her chin. “France is rousing against him—soon Bolingbroke will commit the gross error of murdering Joan…if he hasn’t already. That will be enough. That will lose him France, if not also his life. Catrine, darling, if I strike now I will win. Believe it.”

  But Catherine didn’t believe it. For her the past few days had been a mixture of profound joy—she knew taking that final step into wedlock with Philip had been the right thing to do—and profound despair. From somewhere or someone, she knew not where or whom (Joan? Margaret? Neville?), black anguish had been washing over her in great breaking waves of misery.

  Something, somewhere, was very, very wrong.

  And Philip was riding into this maelstrom of uncertainty and despair.

  And against Hal. Who had ever withstood Hal?

  “He has much more than the six thousand men at his back,” she whispered.

  “What?” Philip frowned. “What do you know? Has he found more men?”

  “No, no…oh, Philip, do not trust Hal—”

  “Trust Bolingbroke? Never!” Philip laughed, then bent even further down and planted a kiss on her mouth. “Do not worry over me, Catrine. I have weathered greater storms than Bolingbroke.”

  “There is no greater storm than Bolingbroke,” Catherine said. She reached up with both her hands and briefly, tenderly, held his face between them. “I love you, Philip. I have given you everything that I am.”

  “I will be back, Catrine. I will.”

  Her hands dropped, and her mouth twisted. She could hear heaven itself laughing at that remark.

  Then, impulsively, knowing she shouldn’t do this, knowing that she tempted fate beyond all hope of redemption, she pulled Philip’s face close to her own again.

  “Philip, beloved,” she whispered hastily into his ear, “know that on our wedding night I conceived your son.”

  Stunned, Philip jerked his head out of her hands, staring at her.

  “You can’t know—”

  “I know,” she said, staring at him, her clear blue eyes now calm and sure. “Believe me.”

  “Catrine…”

  “Go now,” she said, her voice breaking. “Go to your wa
r.” Philip stared at her a moment longer, his face full both of love and of question, then, abruptly, he raised his hand, and gave the signal.

  Commands rang out through the courtyard and down the street outside. Philip held Catherine’s eyes a moment longer, then he wheeled his horse’s head about and kicked it into a canter.

  Catherine watched until he’d disappeared beyond the courtyard gates then she turned to go back inside.

  “Very touching,” said her mother, Isabeau, who’d come up behind her.

  Catherine stared at her with eyes hard with grief. “Isn’t it time you retired to one of your many castles full of willing stable lads, mother?”

  “Not when there’s still power about for the grabbing.”

  “Very soon, mother, there will be nothing about at all. It is all soon to come tumbling down. Everything. Everything. Soon there will be nothing left at all.”

  Catherine walked towards the apartments she shared with Philip (had shared, never would again…), but stopped, confused by the unusual scurrying of servants and valets about the wing of the palace containing the royal apartments.

  “What is happening?” she asked a valet, whose arm she’d had to grab to make him stop and talk to her.

  “The king is leaving,” the man said, his thin, pale face gleaming with the sweat of either fear or effort.

  Sweet Jesu! What was Charles up to now? “Leaving? Where?”

  The valet’s eyes blinked in confusion. “Where to, madam? Or where is the king?”

  “Both, you idiot. Answer me!”

  “The king is in his apartments,” the valet stuttered, trying, but failing, to tug his arm out of Catherine’s grip. “And he is fleeing…um…travelling south. I know not his destination.”

  Catherine muttered something very unflattering, then let the valet go. She turned on her heel, and walked quickly down the corridor that led to Charles’ apartments.