Harry Turtledove & Simon R. Green - Alternate Generals III
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Alternate Generals III
Table of Contents
A Key to the Illuminated Heretic
The Road to Endless Sleep
Not Fade Away
I Shall Return
Shock and Awe
A Good Bag
The Burning Spear at Twilight
"It Isn't Every Day of the Week . . ."
Measureless to Man
Over the Sea from Skye
First, Catch Your Elephant
East of Appomattox
Murdering Uncle Ho
A Key to the Illuminated Heretic
A. M. Dellamonica
Frontispiece: Joan of Arc stands chained in a horse-drawn wagon, wearing a black gown.
Leaning against a pair of nuns, she seems almost to swoon. Her right arm is portrayed as bones
without flesh. The horses' ornate curls and gleaming teeth lend a ghastly note, and blackened
angels border the image.
The scene is easily recognized: the Maid's debilitation, the nuns, and especially the cloud of larks
above serve to identify it as Joan's journey to the trial that ended her thirteen-year imprisonment for
heresy. It was at this "Exoneration Trial" that she encountered Dulice Aulon, the Jehanniste artist
responsible for the holy pictures on which the codex illuminations are based.
* * *
"We mustn't face the king in battle." Joan had the light, clear voice of a young woman, even after her
years in prison and the hard decade since her release. She'd asked one of the new archers, a girl of
perhaps seventeen, to cut her hair, and a few broken strands of silver hair clung to her neck. The rest lay
at her feet, bright in the glow of dying fire.
"Not fight Charles?" Hermeland was incredulous. He was a badger of a man, with a dramatic,
pointy face and remarkable speed with a sword. "We must turn his army back before it unites with the
force of mercenaries coming up from Rome. If you can't see that—"
"Can't see it? Who ordered us to turn north, days before anyone knew the king had pursued us into
Burgundy?"
"You—" he began, and as her brow came up he corrected, "your Voices."
They were nearly of a height, less than perfect subjects for a drawing. From her seat in the
shadowed corner of the tent, Dulice tried to capture the dirt on Joan's blue tunic and leggings, her
sheathed knife of a body. She was all deadly intent, a knight with a lined face and too many scars. Her
eyes blazed—it was a wonder Hermeland did not flinch from the heat there!
"What I do not see is why Charles is coming at all," she said. "He's an old man. He never led
men-at-arms before."
"Politics," he replied. "So says Marcel Renard."
"He would bring that filthy word into it." She waved off the archer gently, shaking out her shorn
locks as the girl left.
"We can win this battle, Joan," Hermeland said.
"We would win." She dismissed the issue as she took up her sword. "But God did not have me
crown this king only to tear him down."
She had no doubt at all, and it was plain Hermeland was surprised. Misunderstanding Joan as usual,
Dulice thought—he thinks she fears defeat, but it is victory that worries her.
Dulice herself didn't share their belief in the small Jehanniste army—or even, sometimes, in the
Maid's heretical faith. Her uncle had been Joan's squire, years ago, in the fight against England and
Burgundy. He had brought Dulice with him to the Maid's Exoneration Trial, and Joan spotted her in the
crowd. She'd been drawing the scene on a scrap of vellum. Perhaps because Joan couldn't read, the
image had captured her as firmly as the making of it gripped young Dulice.
Joan had adopted the girl on the spot, keeping her close ever since. Her need for a record of her
doings was so strong she never questioned whether her handmaiden's truest love was for God or merely
for pen and page.
"If we stay this course we will meet Charles," Hermeland pressed. "Then we'll fight, ready or not."
"I'm telling you, we must pray for—"
"Joan, an army that does nothing but pray is just a moving monastery!" he thundered.
Her chin came up. "And an army that never prays?"
"Emerges victorious, probably." He strode from the tent, stomping off into the sound of men
breaking camp—low conversations, the snorts of horses and the groans of wagons being loaded.
Birdsong rose above the murmur of preparation. The air was mild and damp; it had rained the night
before.
"No time for Mass this morning," Dulice said, making herself noticed for the first time.
"We'll say a quick one now, just us two." Stretching, Joan raised her sword in an attack pose,
spearing an invisible enemy through the chest. "Will there be churchbells ahead?"
"We might hear Autun. And there's a monastery east of there . . . Saint Benoit? If we keep this
direction, you might hear one or the other ringing Vespers tonight." She was happy to give the
answer—Joan loved bells, for they often brought her Voices to her.
"Of course we will march," Joan said. For just an instant she sagged, and the younger woman saw
the chasm of years between them. "God set us on this path, not me."
Dulice teased out the piece of paper, translated the words into Latin, and wrote them at the bottom
of the page as Joan gathered up the cut hair on the ground and tossed it into the fire. The tent filled with
black, stinking smoke, making them both cough.
Joan smiled apologetically. "It's the only way to keep the soldiers from making talismans of it."
Or selling it to relic makers, Dulice thought, nodding her understanding as she roughed in the lines
of a portrait. There would be time to add the details later.
* * *
"First Communion." The Maid emerges from a shop, wearing men's clothing and carrying
bread and wine. A faintly sinister Saint Catherine hovers behind her, seeming to whisper in her
ear. The passersby surrounding Joan all have their eyes turned in her direction.
The inscription and the spires of Saint Ouen in the background make it apparent that Joan has just
suffered her famous rejection at that church, turned away on her first attempt to celebrate Mass as a free
woman. Now she will perform her own variation of the sacrament. Contemporary accounts differ on the
issue of whether Joan knew, in that moment, that she was about to create a new faith that would shatter
Rome's hold over Europe. * * *
Hermeland raised a crumb of bread and his glass of wine. "This is my body," he intoned in Latin
with the other worshippers. "This is my blood."
Riding all day had blackened his mood. In the months since Pope Calixtus had decided to expunge
the Maid's followers from the soil of France, Joan had kept them moving, choosing small battles and
defending Jehanniste villages against mobs from neighboring Catholic towns. They might have kicked out
the Pope's teeth earlier if they'd moved with more certainty. Now his jaws were closing on them.
" . . . in remembrance that Christ died for me. I feed on him in my heart." His eyes roamed the
congregation, looking for Dulice. She fancied she could make herself invisible, but he found her easily
enough. There—wearing the gray dress and standing in the corner. She was between two of the men,
praying unobtrusively and watching Joan. Her voice did not carry to his ears, but seeing her warmed him.
She was beautiful and passionate both, an irresistable lure to his thoughts.
"The body of Christ, the bread of life." Prayer complete, Hermeland laid the bread on his tongue. It
was no great surprise that the Host still felt like what it was—a lump of bread. There were times when it
was subtly different, exalted somehow; those were the moments that bound him to this faith bone and
sinew. As for today . . . he shrugged inwardly. This was hardly his first failure to transubstantiate mere
bread into the body of Christ. Perhaps tomorrow he would find the peace of mind required for true piety.
Ahead in the field they had blessed as a temporary church, Joan swallowed her Host, face lit with
joy. There was nothing of the warrior about her now. As far as he knew, the miracle had worked for her
every time since she had remade the sacraments for them all.
Today's Latin lesson had been given by a wounded former monk from Bordeaux. Now, at his
urging, Joan strode to the front of the assembly and they repeated the words she spoke at her heresy
trial. It was their movement's signature prayer: "If I am not in God's Grace, may he put me there. If I am,
may he keep me there."
The congregants' voices rang with conviction. They all believed that clergy could block the path to
Heaven. Even so, it strengthened their faith when their Maid led them in prayer. Here in church she was a
holy woman, a mystic—you would never believe that come dawn she would strap on a sword and ride
to war.
As the crowd broke up, she sank to her knees in the turf, face turned toward the churchbells tolling
in the distance. She would be there for hours, and in the morning rise as if she had slept heartily.
I should ask her Voices where to trap the coming army, Hermeland thought sourly, and turned
away.
Young Marcel Renard fell into step beside him. "I've been thinking about our problem," he
declared.
"I wasn't aware that we had one."
Marcel was the younger son of one of the army's sponsors, a merchant-born knight with finer armor
and manners than the few nobles who had been swept up in the Conversion. He was a great friend of the
Maid's scheming brother, Jean, and perhaps the closest thing to a courtier that Hermeland had
encountered in the ranks of his new church.
Marcel's thoughts moved as if they were oil, always seeking the easiest path to what he wanted. It
was a turn of mind Hermeland sometimes admired.
"Of course we have a problem, you old skunk! We cannot fight Charles."
"I see no way to avoid it."
"You look for no way. Come, Hermeland, it'll just toss him into the Pope's lap."
"Your pardon, but he is already there."
"So far all he's done is march. Charles hasn't molested any of the Jehanniste—"
"Listener," Hermeland corrected urgently. They were still close enough that Joan might overhear.
"Listener towns, yes. They've passed through several now without burning them."
"A king can't afford to massacre his subjects at will."
"I think Charles is undecided, my friend. He may not mind having the Pope's hand on France's
shoulder . . . but he doesn't want it around her neck, either."
"Pretty words," Hermeland grunted. "Do they mean anything?"
Marcel pointed at the moonlit figure of their praying leader. "Why did the English want the Church
to condemn her? To prove the king illegitimate, that's why. Why did Charles have her retried?"
"He thought her all but dead." He didn't try to keep resentment out of his voice.
"To prove his rightful claim to the throne!" Marcel's face was aglow with excitement, the certainty of
youth that everything could be fixed, that great fires could be put out—like candles—with breath alone.
"If Charles opposes her now, he makes himself a bastard again."
"What would you have us do—convert him?"
"Give him a way to come to us honorably. Dispense with teaching Latin to farmers and translate the
Bible into French. Let that be the text we preach from. The crown prince will strengthen ties with Rome
when Charles dies. But if the old king has established an independent church . . ."
Hermeland stared at the merchant's son.
"You think it is impractical," Marcel said finally, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
"I think it is obvious and elegant. It could solve, as you say, our problems." He said it with funereal
solemnity.
Marcel scratched his head. "You do not think she will agree?"
"Her Voices tell her to say the Mass in Latin, to teach us to memorize the Bible as it is written."
"She didn't think that part through. This is much easier, and God won't mind . . ."
"There is no chance, my son," Hermeland said. "Not in heaven, not on this earth, and not in hell."
* * *
"Follow God, not me." A young girl kneels before Joan, who tries to raise her to her feet.
Behind the Maid's shoulder a winged infant with a halo hovers, its whole being outlined in silver
light. Larks nest in the grass in the bottom corners.
Most scholars analyze this scene in the context of Joan's characteristic rejection of special status
within her own cult. It should also be noted, however, that the kneeling girl is said to be the sister of a
stillborn infant Joan allegedly revived from death in a village called Lagny. (The child survived just long
enough to be baptized.) Unlike the many conflicting accounts of Joan's miracles during the Jehanniste holy
war, this earlier event was well documented, and Joan spoke of it herself at the heresy trial in 1431.
* * *
There were only six soldiers in the maidens' tent this evening, one merry farmgirl-turned-lancer
having been crushed by a cannonball in their last battle. The new archer tried hard to fill the hole in their
chatter, but she was better suited to the crossbow than conversation. Every time she spoke up, she
merely drew attention to the loss.
Dulice was sitting with them when she heard Joan return, soft footsteps and a rustle of fabric that
should have been imperceptible, was she not as attuned to it as a mother was to the faintest movements
of her babe.
She excused herself, stepping carefully over muddy ground toward the tent she shared with Joan.
Low fires burned across the camp. The smells of wood smoke and cooking pork teased her nostrils,
spiced—when the wind shifted—with a hint of latrine. The breeze made the night cold, even for
springtime. Hunching her shoulders and hugging herself, Dulice quickened her pace.
Joan was sitting on her pallet, cross-legged in a plain shirt and breeches, as unaffected by the chill as
she was by all other bodily complaints. A single candle burned beside her, playing golden light over the
sword resting across her knees. She gave no sign that she knew Dulice was there.
Dulice touched the bottle of ink she kept on a chain at her throat. "I have been thinking about
drawing a picture of you in prison," she said. "Marcel says nobody will prefer a plain picture—"
"They will if his father stops selling the one with the angels."
Dulice licked her lips. "You said you had visions, when you were locked up in the castle of Philipe
Auguste."
"Hush." Joan's face hardened.
"Your story brings people to our faith. Joan, if you had visions . . ."
"When I talk of such things, Dulice, they get bent into tales I don't recognize."
"You can't control what people say," Dulice wheedled. "All you can do is make the truth known."
She was sure she had gone too far, that she would get nothing. But Joan shifted slightly, expelling a
long breath. "Two visions, yes. In the first, I never recanted. Cauchon took me to the stake and they lit
the fire . . . and can you guess? It wouldn't catch. They tried so hard they burned the ropes binding me. I
stepped away from the pyre. The crowd there had come to cheer me off to Hell, but when the ropes fell
away from the stake the people's hearts opened. They spirited me away and I went back to war. I drove
the English out of France . . ."
Dulice reached for her pen, but a look from Joan stopped her. The Maid patted the ground at her
hip and she sat, conscious of the knotted muscles of her heroine's shoulder pressing against her shawl, of
Joan's heat against her cold skin.
"You said there were two?"
"In the second vision, I recanted," Joan said. "My jailers did all the things you heard: took away the
dress I was to wear, so I was naked. Sent that soldier to rape me. Left my men's clothing handy as a
temptation to relapse."
Dulice's teeth clenched. The ordeals had gone on for months before the false priests had put out
their torches and resigned themselves to having the Maid as a prisoner instead of firewood.
"In my dream I bore it for three days. Then I found my courage, put on my clothes, and told them I
was done. They burned me in Rouen, as they'd planned all along." Her voice was matter-of-fact. "I was
brave, I think, at the execution."
"You're always brave."
"I gave in to fear when I recanted, didn't I?" She darted her hand through the candle flame, leaving a
fat smear of soot on her fingers. "But fire burned away that sin. It hurt terribly—"
"You felt it?" Dulice interrupted.
"Like I was there. Oh, don't look like that. All suffering passes, is it not so?" Despite her words
Joan shuddered faintly.
"It's still suffering."
"It was a faster penance than prison. And when I was purified, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret
carried me away. Up."
Dulice's breath hitched. "You saw Heaven?"
"A glimpse. So wonderful I sometimes can't believe I have remained down here so long."
"But how unfair to feel the fire, and not to fully taste the reward!"
"It's a pleasure delayed, that's all." Joan pinched wax drippings off the candle and smeared them on
her fingers. "If I'd burned then, I'd be forgotten now, don't you think?"
"No! You crowned Charles."
"Pah. People could say anything once I was gone. They made me a witch at my trial, when I was
standing right there!" She scowled. "You guard me from those lies now, Dulice. You take what's real and
pin it to the page. If I'm tried again . . ."
"God forbid!"
"It's all caught in pictures, just as it happens. No lies, no foolish rumors . . ."
Joan flipped the sword lightly, fingering its blade. It was a poor substitute for her first, or so she'd
often claimed. That had come from the monastery at St. Catherine de Fierbois, and she'd broken it over
the back of a camp follower. "God waited thirteen years to take me into His heart again, Dulice. He's
sending me toward Charles, and yet I know we must not fight."
"What will you do?"
Tears welled in the Maid's eyes. "I won't break with my Voices, not in the tiniest way. They say to
go forward . . ."
Dulice picked at her toenail, feeling sullen. She might never admit it, but there were times when she
disliked God so much she wanted to cut her own heart out, to feed the pieces to pigs. "I know you hate
praise . . ." She swallowed, forcing herself to continue, "But it took strength to stay in prison all that time."
"It takes no strength to lie where you are chained, dear Dulice."
"You were strong," she said fiercely, staring at the steam of her breath. Then Joan's arms came
around her in a crushing hug, so suddenly she nearly cried out.
"Come on, let's sleep," Joan said. They curled up in the blankets like sisters, and the chill finally
forced itself out of Dulice's bones.
It was waiting for her later, though, when her bedmate's breath finally loosened into sleep and she
could creep out again, driven to capture by candle flame the images of the two dreams.
* * *
"A little brawl at Neufchateau." Knights and men at arms brawl with peasant Jehannistes
near a Franciscan monastery. The Maid is in the foreground, dressed in a partial suit of armor
and brandishing a shortsword. Behind her is the abbot who summoned the knights; Joan is
defending him from her own people. Enraged Jehannistes burn the monastery, framing Joan's
form in flames. In the lower left corner, a newly converted Brother Hermeland battles the Duc
D'Alençon, leader of the Church forces.
D'Alençon was very close to Joan in the days before her trial, and it was believed he would take the
Maid into custody with no difficulty. Instead he found himself at the center of a riot that even the Maid
had difficulty quelling. While she would later speak of this first battle dismissively, the Testament of
Hermeland reports she was heartbroken at the Jehanniste destruction of the monastery and the death of
her friend. * * *
"To arms, to arms!"
Hermeland was half dressed when Joan's voice rang through the camp. Her words were clear and
carrying, and captains took up the call, scrambling to rouse the men. A few early risers had been setting
up for worship, and the ribbons that marked off the place of consecration were knocked down and
trampled as people ran back and forth, shouting and seeking their weapons.
The Maid, already armored and mounted, was galloping away, placing herself between the
confused encampment and whatever danger lay ahead. Puffing, Hermeland rushed to join her.
They had camped near the ruins of a Jehanniste village, a town that had been burnt by a band of the
Pope's mercenaries early the previous winter. To the east, he could see the graves of thirty families. The
makeshift crosses that marked their mounds had been kicked down by vandals or weather.
Ahead, abandoned fields and vineyards were growing wild. A stand of trees blocked any view they
might have had of the road. Reining hard, Joan stared in that direction, though everything seemed calm
enough.
Hermeland was about to ask why they were all in a panic when she pointed her sword. There—a
glint of light on armor.
"An ambush?"
"Not anymore." Her smile was broad, almost predatory. She was all warrior today.
"Is it Charles?"
"No."
He didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved.
"We'll—" Suddenly a small force of knights came charging out of the thicket, crushing his plan
unformed. Driving forward smartly behind a red banner adorned with a golden cross, they came quickly
into bow range. The Listener archers were unprepared, though, and the advance was opposed only by a
thin volley of crossbow bolts.
Joan spurred her horse and a small company of men-at-arms—twenty, maybe twenty-five
fighters—followed her lead. It was all they had mustered, so far, to protect the chaotic camp behind
them.Cursing, Hermeland joined her, while Marcel Renard closed in on Joan's left side. The three of them
became the center of the thin defending wall.
The two sides met in the middle of the overgrown meadow with a crash of weaponry and armor.
Catholic or Jehanniste—it ceased to matter to the dead as they fell. Shrieks filled the air as blades
clashed against shields.
Joan, as always, drew more than her share of enemy attack. With Marcel and Hermeland fighting
fiercely on either side of her, the odds were just barely fair. Cutting at would-be assassins, Hermeland
found his arm muscles aching with familiar soreness. Sweat rolled inside his armor; breath steamed out of
his visor in gusts.
A sudden pocket of quiet fell on the three of them as the fighting moved elsewhere on the line. Joan
drew herself up instantly, scanning the enemy's rear. "There!" She shouted so loudly her voice rasped.
Heads turned to see where she was pointing, a spot about twenty feet away. The faithful, knowing her
keen eye for cannon placements, scrambled away.
Moments later an explosion ruptured the runaway grapevines. Hermeland's horse staggered,
perhaps struck by a clod of dirt from the blast. He dropped his shield, fighting for balance . . . and a
knight with a shortsword came straight at him, weapon high, screaming a prayer.
Marcel shouted a useless warning. Hermeland bellowed too, as if his voice alone could block the
fatal blow.
But a single swipe of the Maid's sword saved him, knocking the attacker onto his back. His helmet
fell loose, showing a young face gored with a mortal wound.
Now she'll start to weep, Hermeland thought, heart skipping at the close call as he gathered
himself at last.
As the battle wore on, soldiers from the camp fell into companies, swelling and strengthening the
line. They showed a discipline they had lacked in their early months together, and though the Churchmen
tried twice to push past them, Joan had the numbers now, and she turned back the charges easily.
Their herald was one of the last to find his place, pushing to the fore nearly an hour into the battle.
He bore up the Listener pennant, a white banner ornamented with an unlit torch and a lark. Cheers broke
out among the army as they saw it, and the enemy faltered.
"Marcel, gather up a company and get behind them," Joan ordered. "Take their supplies."
By now the Listener army was fully deployed, their would-be destroyers routed, but the assurance
of victory did no more than it ever did to quicken the end. The battle played itself out to a bloody
conclusion. When it was finally over the Jehannistes had captured two couleuvrines, along with some
cannonballs and a few hundred pounds of gunpowder. Only fifty or so of the enemy had escaped.
"Too many," Hermeland told Joan as they left the field. "They must have been going to meet up with
His Majesty. Now he'll know to expect us."
"I'm sure he has spies in Burgundy, just like you. He must already have known."
"Better that it be probable than a certainty."
"Cheer up, friend." She squeezed his arm. "If they'd caught us at Mass, we'd be at Judgment now.
One whole army, praying forever." Her eyes sparkled, teasing him.
Hermeland was nodding when he spotted Dulice. She sat exposed on a hill, too near the fighting.
Imagining herself unseen, she drew furiously. His face reddened, and he snapped at Joan. "I suppose this
victory means God wants you to fight the king?"
Joan's face tightened, and the color raised by the battle drained away. "We drove the English out of
France, and now we'll drive out the Church. This is our mission."
Which was no answer, but he reined his temper with difficulty. "And do we march through the
afternoon, or rest?"
"We consecrate the graves in the village," she said, striding away. She left Hermeland to strip the
prisoners of their arms and regret that she wouldn't order them hanged.
* * *
Conversion at Orleans: In 1429 Joan led the troops that relieved the English siege of
Orleans. Now, in 1450, the city's gates stand open to her and her converts. Joan is upright on a
black stallion, brandishing an unlit torch. Behind her, the Listener troops straggle, bleeding and in
apparent despair. The townspeople are rapturous: girls dressed as men beckon Joan, holding up
the pieces of a full set of armor. Larks fill the sky, soaring on the town's high spirits. At the gate,
four priests and the Bishop of Orleans clutch at their throats.
Folklore has it that the Catholic clergymen were struck dumb as they tried to convince the city
fathers to close the gates to the Jehannistes. The Testament of Hermeland states unequivocally that they
were merely shouted down and turned out of the town. Historians do agree that the Listener movement
would have died out without the support of Orleans at this critical juncture—their army was ill equipped
and half starved. * * *
The bourgeoisie of Orleans were mad for Dulice's illustrations of Joan. So wrote Marcel's papa,
anyway, in his monthly lament about the restrictions their dear Maid was putting on the process of
producing the paintings in quantity: the insistence on Latin for the inscriptions, the hard condition that the
illustrators refrain from adding to Dulice's simple scenes, and the insulting requirement that he send each
completed illustration back to be checked for inaccuracies.
Meanwhile Papa's competitors translated the Roman texts back to proper French and threw in as
many angels and ghouls as they chose . . .
"Yes, Papa, yes, Papa." Marcel grinned, murmuring the words as if he was home receiving the
sermon personally. "Is it my fault the Maid is mad to keep her every stroke of fortune from being counted
a miracle?"
A dozen copyists Papa had in his shop, filling vellum and imported paper with portraits of the Maid
and her deeds. Their paintings might not be as lurid as their paymaster would wish, but they were bringing
in plenty of gold. From Dulice's dirty and bloodstained originals, they made gloriously colored pictures,
bordered with silver flowers and bright stars.
Their images of the Maid were never old or plain enough to please a Joan who had come forth from
prison shorn of her pride and legendary boastfulness. That was a pity, in Marcel's opinion—it had given
her a much-needed flair.
If only she had lost her stubbornness instead!
He winked at the wagon driver who'd brought in the supplies. It was Jean d'Arc, who was slipping
back into his sister's penumbra after an exile stemming from a scheme so old neither of them remembered
its details. Grinning furtively, Jean hefted a long, heavy satchel from underneath the sacks of grain.
"The sword?" Marcel whispered, though the cool iron inside the fabric made the answer obvious.
"Sword and flag," Jean murmured, pulling his hat low over his eyes. "Nobody's seen them."
"Dear Papa. He turns paper to gold and gold to food." Jean nodded, looking at the other wagons
and the hard-driven horses that had caught them up to the army. "And this time . . ."
"Yes, this time?"
Caught in his reverie, Marcel was unpleasantly surprised to find Dulice at his side. "Ahh, the
alchemist herself."
"Alchemy is witchcraft," she said.
He bore her displeasure happily, since it gave Jean time to slouch away. "Shall I call you our little
Latin tutor, then? The one who somehow never teaches our Maid any Latin? Most unfair, since we have
to mouth it psalm by onerous psalm."
"She learns when she may," Dulice said.
"She prefers to study war. Who will she drive from France next, do you think, if we win?"
"What do you study, Marcel, besides nonsense?"
"Only the provisioning of our company." He pointed at the supplies. "The finished pictures are in that
wagon. If they portray the true doings of our Maid, perhaps you would write to my father so he can
spread our message?"
"What's this?" She poked his bundle, discerning, no doubt, the shape of the weapon within.
Marcel did not blush. "Gifts from home."
Dulice had only been in a convent two years, but she had the penetrating gaze of a mother superior.
It had quite marred her—despite the round body, cornflower eyes, and golden hair, she could never be a
woman with whom a sane man would lie comfortably.
"Private gifts," he amended, but by now the damnable woman's fuss had summoned Joan.
How did they manage it, this art of seeing the unseen?
"What is it?" the Maid asked peremptorily. "The French Bible Hermeland mentioned?"
"No such thing," Marcel said stoutly. There had been no time yet for anyone to translate, let alone
copy, such a book. "Food for the army and paintings for you and Dulice to examine." Pretending he'd
forgotten she was as unlettered as a farm animal, he showed her a scrap of vellum—Jean's inventory of
Papa's wagons.
She batted it away, and the mule was hard in her features. "You must—"
A shriek from the east interrupted her. A girl ran toward them, one of the scouts, coming from a
distant Roman edifice called the Temple of Janus. Legs pumping in her breeches, her pale face was a blot
of white amid the landscape of green and brown. Hoofbeats beat behind her, a knight galloping in hard
pursuit.
Marcel felt, rather than saw, Joan's movement. He flung himself blindly at the nearest horse, just
reaching its bridle as she mounted.
"No!" Between them, they startled the animal into a kick. Joan lost her saddle and came off, landing
half atop him. His arm jerked painfully before he thought to release the reins. As he hit the ground, the
animal's back hooves whistled past their heads. The pair rolled away fast in opposite directions, gaining
their feet in the same instant.
"You aren't even armed," he protested.
Joan crossed the space between them, slapping Marcel hard enough to knock him down again, then
calming the horse with a single murmured word.
Rubbing his jaw, he saw Dulice was oblivious to both the animal and the fleeing girl headed toward
them. Transfixed by Joan, the artist was memorizing the scene. No market for this, he wanted to tell
her. Papa couldn't sell two copies of a picture of the Maid striking a follower.
"Oh, now it's too late!" Joan cried.
The knight had indeed caught up with the fleeing scout. Instead of cutting her down he snatched her
by the arm, heaving her up across the horse and then galloping away.
"Captured, not killed," Marcel said, tasting blood as he probed loosened teeth with his tongue.
"You'll get another chance to save her."
She ignored him, pacing like a caged dog and eyeing the bend in the road where the knight had
vanished. "That knight—do you know who he is?"
"Who?"
"He's the son of Georges de la Trémoïlle." Her voice was harsh as she spoke the name of the man
who had probably prevented her ransom, years before. "Just when I think I've outlived all my old
enemies . . . There's always someone new, isn't there?"
"It's your gentle nature," Marcel muttered, earning himself a glare.
"Joan!" Hermeland bustled to her side, glancing quizzically down at Marcel. "Autun has announced
they are with us. The whole town's converted, and the king's army demands they return their churches
and souls to the priests of Rome. Charles has stopped vacillating—he'll burn anyone who resists."
Joan scowled, scraping mud off the heels of her hands.
"We must go to Autun," Hermeland suggested. "Their walls are strong, but . . ."
"The king has cannon enough to break them," Joan agreed. "We will assess the town's defences and
leave them some help if need be. The army will place itself between Autun and danger."
"We'll meet Charles soon, then." Hermeland spoke mildly, the old anarchist, as if he wasn't lusting
after a little king's blood.
She nodded, not hiding her pained expression, and waved him off toward one of the more reliable
captains. Then she extended a hand to Marcel, yanking him to his feet.
"I'll see your gifts from home now."
He didn't argue, but reached for the bundle and unwrapped it carefully. Perhaps he might just slide
out the sword—
Reaching past him, Joan grabbed the wrappings and yanked them upward. Then she gasped.
White boucassin fringed with silk unfolded in her mud-smeared hand—a pennant. It showed a field
strewn with lilies, and two angels on either side of the world. The words Jhesus Maria blazed across it.
"My standard . . ."
She pulled it to her face in a doubled fistful, and Marcel thought she would smell it. But she kissed it
instead, tears streaming down her lined face as they so often did.
"I haven't seen it since my capture at Compiègne." She stretched it out for a look. It was perfect:
faded, soiled and then washed, its fabric worn.
Marcel waited, face a blank.
Then Joan's face stilled and her tears dried up. He felt a pain like gas in his belly as her head turned,
piercing him with the look an owl might use to freeze a field mouse. "Where did you get this?"
Pretend ignorance and blame Papa? No, those eyes dragged forth the truth even from him. "Hamish
Powers lives yet. He remembers the original well."
"You made a copy," she said, dropping the banner like the corpse of a dog. She rubbed at her
mouth, dirtying her lips, and then she dumped the satchel from Orleans with one violent heave. The
sword dropped out. It was a replica of the holy blade she had broken over a whore's back all those
years before. "Marcel, what are you up to?"
He swallowed. "I thought . . . if Charles saw you with your pennant restored, your broken sword
whole . . ."
"You would stage a miracle." Marcel could see she was on the verge of throwing him away, and all
Papa's resources with him. "Have you no faith at all?"
"I confess my mistake," he said, forcing himself to look down. "I want to help . . ."
"By doing wrong?"
"I'm sorry." Each humble word was singed by the rage rising in his throat. If she would just allow
them to read the Bible in French! "I want to bring the king to our side, that's all."
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时间：2024-12-19
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