Blood Royal (67 page)

The Cardinal gave out that he was unwell. He sat in his rooms, writing. Even up there, he hardly spoke. Owain felt the Cardinal was probably ashamed that he hadn’t quite
had the courage to leave Rouen and avoid the trial. The Cardinal avoided Catherine, though Catherine, in her rooms, talked with admiration of the Cardinal’s principled stance. And both of them avoided Warwick.

Warwick didn’t seek them out. He was busy with the trial. But when Catherine saw him in the chapel at Mass, Warwick had lost the uncertain look he’d had, briefly, when faced with the Cardinal’s arguments. He was full of purpose now: intent, fast-moving, with the secretive look of a man determined to win the day.

‘We’ll break her,’ Warwick said with gleaming eyes, walking out of the chapel by Catherine’s side. ‘Jehanne.’

‘How?’ Catherine asked, shocked by the loudness of her voice.

Warwick only looked smug. ‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ he said. ‘Justice will be done.’

Even in the peace of Harry’s rooms, with him inside his bed curtains making cheerful trumpeting noises as part of his favourite game of hunting elephants, Catherine couldn’t help but become aware of the sudden change to the rhythm of the castle’s morning. Looking out of the window, distracted from her sewing, she saw half a dozen youths in livery rushing from the hall across the courtyard, well before the court session was due to end in time for dinner at midday. They disappeared into distant entrances; then two horses clattered out of their stalls, hastily saddled, with grooms scurrying around them and two hurried young knights still hustling on their quilted jerkins, barking commands for more bags and more water bottles, before cantering off through the gate.

She stared. The churchmen were coming out now; busy as ants on the move down there, talking animatedly, waving their arms. The French clerics looked less glum than usual. The Bishop of Beauvais was looking on, hands on arms inside his sleeves, with a smile on his moon-like face.

There was no movement around the tower, apart from the guards going in and out, changing places, grinning and
scratching at themselves; but then there never was. They took Jehanne in and out through the tunnel under the courtyard; through the cellars. They didn’t want people to see her, Catherine thought. They didn’t want people to pity her.

Behind Catherine, the door creaked open. She turned hastily round, away from it all, hoping, although she knew him to be too cautious to seek her out by daylight, that this might be Owain come to explain what was happening. But even as she turned she glimpsed him down there in the sunlight, in intent conversation with a cleric she didn’t know. Composing her face into a smile to mask a disappointment she knew to be foolish, she got up to greet Dame Butler.

Dame Butler wasn’t smiling. Her grey eyes were clouded. She was breathless and doubtful. She was pleating her skirts in her fingers.

‘The trial … Jehanne … she’s admitted heresy,’ Dame Butler muttered, looking carefully over at the closed bed-curtains behind which they could both hear Harry.

Catherine gasped. What now?

Harry yelled suddenly – an elephant charging. Both women’s heads turned towards the noise. Catherine let her pent-up breath go and her face muscles relax. Harry was happy. She was blessed in her son, at least. She shook her head indulgently at his innocence.

It took a moment for her to see Dame Butler wasn’t so charmed. ‘Nearly nine years old,’ Dame Butler said, though almost absent-mindedly, so Catherine couldn’t tell whether she was really thinking about what was happening outside more than she was about Harry. ‘Still acting like a baby …’ Dame Butler’s forehead was wrinkled. She didn’t seem to notice that she’d trailed off. Then she collected her thoughts and brought her eyes back to Catherine’s. Catherine could see her remembering the thousand things she had to do in the day, before the housekeeper added, in a more ordinary voice: ‘Well, I must get on … I knew you’d want to know.’

She bobbed and slipped away as Harry made another whooshing from his hiding place. Catherine tried to find
comfort in the sound of her son’s pleasure, but this time it eluded her.

Everyone wanted to see what would happen next. Catherine and the Cardinal both attended dinner.

Catherine couldn’t read Warwick’s expression. He sat as tight-faced as ever, not speaking, picking over piles of bird parts with his knife. He hadn’t even smiled when making the announcement of Jehanne’s abjuration.

The Bishop of Beauvais was equally quiet, equally inscrutable. There was a cautious lull in the hall. No one looked at the extra tables at the far end of the room – where the court had been sitting and the clerics were now tucking into their meal.

No one knew how they should react, Catherine saw. On the one hand all the diners clearly felt they should be demonstrating happiness that the enemy had confessed her guilt by admitting she had committed heresy by wearing men’s clothes. On the other hand, the trial was over now. Jehanne was condemned to jail in perpetuity. But there was nothing to celebrate in that. She was the enemy; they needed legal licence to kill her. Yet she was still alive.

It was just as the Cardinal had said. If the aim of trying Jehanne on a heresy charge had been to find an excuse to put her to death, it had been badly thought out. So everyone was watching everyone else; and watching themselves.

Catherine sat quietly, unable to touch the slice of meat in front of her. For the first time she felt she could imagine what the prisoner must be feeling, back in her tower, after giving in. She’d done it herself with Maman long ago, more times than she could remember; and with Duke John – when she should have insisted on staying in France and burying Papa, but hadn’t; and with Warwick – when she’d let him take her son off to beat him, knowing what he intended. Now Jehanne would also know that first swift surge of relief that comes when you run from your fear and think you’ve reached safety; and maybe also the great dirty wave of disappointment and contempt for yourself that follows when you realise that, even
though you’ve lost your integrity, you’re still just as afraid as before.

Poor Jehanne. She was only human after all, Catherine thought. Even she didn’t always have the courage of the saints.

Now they’d make Jehanne stop wearing her men’s fighting clothes and start to dress like a woman. Catherine could imagine that too – imagine the jeering men she’d seen yelling their obscenities at the base of the tower, allowed inside, finally, rushing up to grab the girl and undress her by force and humiliate her into submission to the court’s ruling.

Where would they get female clothes from in this garrison?

She didn’t know she was going to do what she did next. ‘Let me take her some female clothing,’ she heard herself say, leaning across towards the Earl of Warwick. The determined sound of her voice made her heart thump, but she was proud to have spoken. It was about time she did something brave. And she wanted to help Jehanne.

Warwick looked slowly back at her. Was he surprised at her unusual boldness? If so, he didn’t show it. He hardly seemed to notice her request at all. His eyes were veiled, his expression blank. He seemed to be thinking of something else.

‘What for?’ he said. ‘She doesn’t need a queen’s robes.’

But the Bishop, at Warwick’s side, was putting his hand on his master’s sleeve, and muttering in the Earl’s ear and nodding.

‘I’ll find something simple,’ she pleaded. ‘A shift. Let me.’

And she held Warwick’s eye until he nodded yes.

The door clanged shut. The heavy tread behind it receded. Catherine stood just inside, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. There was just one lacy square of sky, high up, crisscrossed with bars.

It stank in here: festering straw; rats; unwashed flesh; excrement. There were small scuttling noises everywhere. Then there was a bigger stirring from the pile of straw she was beginning to make out in the far corner.

Eyes. Watchful, careful eyes: as still as a creature in the forest. Catherine could just make out a figure crouched on its haunches.

‘What do you want?’ Catherine heard: rough country words; a small, tight, high voice. ‘Who are you?’

She remembered terror like that in her father’s voice when he thought he was seeing demons. Or perhaps Jehanne just hadn’t seen her properly as she came in; had thought she was a man. Both must be terrifying thoughts: in Jehanne’s view, man and demon must amount to much the same thing. Catherine’s heart swelled with compassion.

Quickly, she said, so Jehanne would hear her female, unthreatening French voice: ‘I am Catherine.’ At the same time she stepped cautiously forward through the unnamed shuffle of stuff underfoot, into the one dusty shaft of light, so Jehanne could see her.

She didn’t want to go too close in case she frightened the crouching figure in front of her. But she held out her bundle – a worn kirtle and grey gown, found for her by Dame Butler within an hour of dinner – and added, as gently as she knew how: ‘I’ve brought you these.’

Painfully, the girl got up, shedding wisps of stuff; clanking. She couldn’t move forward. She was shackled to the wall, Catherine could see now, by a short heavy chain attached to one wrist. It was fixed low to the wall, clearly designed to keep prisoners bent half over even when standing up. But it didn’t stop Jehanne from standing straight because she was only a little scrap of a thing, as small and skinny as a young boy, with tousled dirty-brown hair standing up wildly all round her tiny, pointy face.

Catherine stared. She’d imagined Jehanne as tall and strapping and golden, but this forlorn wisp with the wounded eyes had no more muscle or dash than Catherine herself; and didn’t come up further than her shoulder.

‘Catherine,’ the rough little voice muttered wonderingly. ‘Catherine …’

And then she was back on the ground with a metallic rush, bowing her head, folding her hands as if in prayer, pouring out a rustling, throaty stream of words.

‘My lady, my lady,’ she muttered urgently. ‘… Showing me the way.’

Catherine didn’t understand. She could see tears on Jehanne’s cheeks. Was it just relief that the newcomer wasn’t going to attack her? Confused, she said: ‘A kirtle … a robe.’ She unrolled them and held them up. ‘For you.’

Jehanne raised her wet cheeks and gazed at Catherine, but not with any of the emotions Catherine had expected. Catherine saw the boy-woman’s face was now incomprehensibly transformed: radiant with humble, unquestioning acceptance.

‘The ring … the sword … God’s will … the time of glory. Now this.’ Jehanne looked at the garments. Took a deep breath. Tightened her mouth. Crossed herself. ‘For the time of defeat you’re bringing me.’

Catherine thought, with failing heart: Oh no – Jehanne’s mad after all; or in a dream still. She’s taken me for Saint Catherine; her saint. She thinks she’s having a vision.

Catherine didn’t know exactly what she’d expected of Jehanne, but it had been something inspiring. Not this. Not someone driven insane by fear. There’d been too much madness in Catherine’s life. She didn’t want to be mistaken for a saint.

‘I’m not Saint Catherine,’ she whispered, trying to keep her voice gentle. ‘I’m not your saint.’ She was bitterly disappointed. It was clear now that, whatever she’d hoped for, she wasn’t going to get it. Just delusions. Just prayers and rats. ‘I’m not a saint,’ she said, louder.

Jehanne took no notice, but carried on crossing herself and mumbling. Catherine closed her eyes for a moment, still holding out the garments, feeling her breath rise and fall inside her, trying to conquer the misery filling her, until, when she opened her eyes and looked down again at the trembling, muttering figure of Jehanne, she found the strength to see her own selfishness for what it was, and let it go, and found nothing left in her heart but a great pity and love for the lost girl kneeling before her.

‘Take them,’ she said softly, stepping forward, raising Jehanne to her feet, putting the clothes in her hands. How frail Jehanne’s arms were – like a child’s – and how heavy the iron lay over that chafed, scabbed wrist.

But Jehanne just let the clothes she’d accepted hang from her hands. She shook her head, over and over, from side to side. ‘The wolves have got me,’ Jehanne said in a monotone, fixing Catherine with those anguished bruises of eyes. ‘The English wolves. They’ve got me after all.’

‘Yes … but you’ll be safe if you wear these,’ Catherine said, softly but firmly. ‘They can’t kill you if you’re wearing women’s clothing. It’s what they promised you. You’ll be safe now.’

Once Jehanne was in women’s clothing, she would no longer be committing heresy. And, if she removed the men’s clothes and put the women’s clothes on while Catherine was here in the cell with her, she’d have no need to fear exposing herself to the gaze of soldiers, or to rape.

Catherine put her hand on the girl’s trembling shoulder and let her arm lie warm on Jehanne’s back. Jehanne was a bag of sharp bones. She was still shaking her head. ‘They’ll devour me,’ she was muttering. ‘Tear me limb from limb.’ But Catherine just made low, soothing noises and stroked those jutting protuberances with gentle, heavy hands until she felt the shaking stop.

‘I’m lost,’ Jehanne whispered. Then she stood so motionless that there was no sound even from the chains; just the disgusting skittering and squeakings all around; the unclean things waiting.

‘You’re not lost,’ Catherine replied, almost as quietly, into the silence, hoping it was true. ‘But you have to submit. Put on the clothes. You’ll be safe if you do.’

Then, since she didn’t seem to have managed to convince Jehanne she wasn’t Saint Catherine, she embraced the saintly role she hadn’t expected to play, and added with all the conviction she could muster: ‘It’s the will of God. Put on the clothes.’

At last there was an answering movement. A chink of metal. The eyes focused on her again, faintly puzzled. Jehanne was taking in what she said, now Catherine was talking more like a saint should. She flexed her hands, dropped the clothes Catherine had brought, and lifted her fingers to her waist.

Catherine hadn’t been aware of what the girl was wearing
until she saw the stiff fingers start fumbling to untie the first cords. Jehanne’s doublet of sturdy leather was attached to the ragged brown hosen on her legs by strong leather laces. Catherine stared. So many laces. Dozens of them – many more than Catherine had ever seen on such a garment – and each one tied into two strong eyelets on the hosen, and another eyelet on the doublet. Jehanne’s fingers knew how to untie them without her looking, but even with those practised fingers going at speed it was a slow business. It seemed hours before there was a fringe of maybe twenty bent strips of leather hanging all around the peasant girl’s middle, allowing her finally to step out of the hosen and then unlace the doublet’s side laces so she could pull it away from around her tethered arm.