IX

When Colet de Vienne next sees Joan, he smiles. A sheepish smile. And he looks a little afraid, as if Joan might pick him up and throw him across the room like a pile of sackcloth. “Just through here,” he says quickly, bouncing across the antechamber.

She is led to a scene straight out of her uncle’s princess stories. A woman dressed in kingfisher-blue silks sits in a chair like a throne, a dark-colored garment in her lap. As if enacted for the moment, her hand is poised with a single needle, the thread dangling. Encircling her, resembling a merchant’s display of finery, four ladies-in-waiting attired in rich greens and sumptuous yellows, sleeves trailing, headpieces glittering with pearls and studded with garnets large as ox eyes, sit on cushions. Two sift through an iron chest, laying out jewels on a platter. One bends over a headdress as large as a swan; another sews.

For a moment, Joan is breathless. The knights may have breastplates of steel and shirts of chain mail, but these women cover their hearts with ruby-studded brooches and star-shaped diamond pins. The knights have their helmets, but these women are horned. From their heads jut hennins like towers, and from each tower streams a flag of victory, a translucent, shimmering veil so fine one’s hand might pass through it like air.

Faced with such a gathering, Joan feels shy. She is still wearing the same outfit as when she left Vaucouleurs. Only now she notices an unsightly smudge on her gray tunic. It may be a grass stain, or the remnants of hound or horse excrement. And as le Maçon said, she smells. After she bows, she takes a step back; she doesn’t know what to do with her hands or her feet, which now feel unseemly and large. And she hopes the women won’t start screaming, that they won’t mistake her for a lumbering ogre.

The women seem to know what she is thinking. They look at her with a subtle raise of their plucked brows and smile discreetly.

But then: a flash of color. A sudden sweep of a kingfisher sleeve like an outstretched wing, and the ladies-in-waiting rise in silence from their cushions and shuffle out.

“Well!” Yolande of Aragon says, dropping the garment to the floor and rising. Le Maçon has told her, The woman you will meet is a lady of many titles. The Dauphin’s mother-in-law. Queen of Four Kingdoms: Aragon, Sicily, Jerusalem, and Cyprus. She is also Duchess of Anjou and Countess of Provence, though at one time she was regent of that fine place.

A single finger, a dark red stone jutting from it like a swollen knuckle, curls at her. “Let me have a closer look at you,” she says.

Joan steps forward. If the Dauphin had any reservations about catching a disease or lice from her, his mother-in-law has none. Soft hands reach out and pat Joan across her shoulders. “What shoulders!” Yolande cries. She raises her face to beam at Joan. It is a beautiful face: the eyes a shining green, the mouth coy and small like a child’s, and the forehead smooth as a dome of marble. “What a jawline!” she adds a moment later.

“Raise your hand for me,” Yolande says, and Joan obeys. She places her own palm against Joan’s, as if they might begin a dance. A moment is spent studying the difference in size and hardness, in calluses and scars, of which, naturally, the older woman has none. Joan holds her breath. Then Yolande says, “These are such fine hands.”

Joan feels herself blush.

“Ah, you are still a young girl to blush so deeply.” A deep-throated chortle follows. “You are, of course, the talk of the court. I hear that the training grounds are crowded with onlookers every day, and the pages no longer obey their masters because by dawn they must reserve their place to stand by the barriers to watch you. How many arrows can you shoot in a minute? Has anyone timed you?”

She is ready with the answer: “Twelve, Your Highness.” Sometimes a few more, she doesn’t add. And I never miss.

“Twelve,” Yolande repeats, clasping her own hands in delight. “It is…wonderful. Poor girl, she is blushing again. If my compliments make you blush, I wonder how you will feel when you meet the Duke of Alençon. My maids of honor swoon whenever he comes into the room, and I have to give them a little kick to make them sit up again. He is also a good man, brave and faithful. You have met His Majesty?”

She nods.

“And what do you think of him?”

She hesitates, bows deeply.

Yolande laughs. Another happy chortle. “That bad, is it?”

“I…”

But her host raises a hand to stop her. “You cannot fool me, child, so do not try. Though you must understand, His Majesty is as dear to me as if he were my son and I, not Isabeau, had given him life. You do not know him. He is a person difficult to fathom even after a lifetime’s acquaintance.”

Yolande moves away, bending to pick up the dropped garment. She tosses it carelessly across the chair. “Isabeau never cared for him. She treated all her children like chess pieces, each to be played at a different time and discarded if they were useless. She only ever loved herself. A shameful woman. To her, being a mother is not so different from being a queen. When one sits at a great height, it is easy to enjoy many favors. One can live one’s whole life never knowing what it means to give, to sacrifice. And she still does not know.

“From an early age,” Yolande continues, “I took an interest in Charles. I saw how he was neglected. No one cared for him; no one minded if he was in a room or if he was missing. I once asked him, when he was a boy only so high—he was very small as a child: How long has it been since your mother took you in her arms and kissed you? Since she called you her special darling and said she wanted to gobble you up like a dish of stewed apples with spoonfuls of white sugar? We were on a barge traveling to the south of the kingdom. It was the first time he saw such green and beautiful country. He said, without taking his eyes off the land, which he did not know at the time would one day be his, ‘It has been three months since my mother held me.’ And my heart, it broke for him. I folded my arms over his thin body. I told him, From this moment on, Charles, you have two mothers: your natural mother and me, Yolande. You have my children to be as close or closer to you than your own siblings. And after that day, he always called me his ‘good mother’ and became like another brother to my second son, René. They would read poetry together and draw. I took what he made, what he wrote, and I made a point of showing his work to all the drawing masters and the famous poets who would visit the court. The attention frightened him at first. This was to be expected. But later he learned to laugh. And he learned to be at ease with his true friends. Who knew then he would become King of France? Two of his elder brothers were not infants when they died; they were already men. But illness took them, God rest their souls, and then it was my own sweet son who became Dauphin.”

Yolande sighs. She needs no prompting. She says, meeting Joan’s gaze, “How do you think a mother feels when she sees her child suffering? My heart breaks every day. For we are all waiting, from me, his good mother, to the lowest servant of the castle. We are waiting to see what king he will become, and I harbor no illusions. My Charles may be a great king, like his grandfather, or merely a good king, though let us hope he will not be like his father, who was mad, or a horrible king, like England’s Richard, not the first, but the second, to whom, believe it or not, I was once almost engaged. But in order to become any of those things, he must first take up the mantle passed down to him. He must act to show his people and the world what king he will be.”

Joan watches Yolande glide back to her in a vision of blue. How do the dyers manage to capture such a color, Joan wants to know. When she looks down, she stares at her own rough boots, scuffed, one buckle already broken. She feels her hands squeezed. “I can tell what you are thinking,” Yolande says. “You see all of this, you see me, and you think, Ah, what can a woman know of the court, of kings, beyond her wifely duties and childbearing? You have, if I am not mistaken, spent more time in the company of men growing up. So, you see me in this fine room with my sewing and my ladies-in-waiting, and you think I asked you here only to marvel at your size and your strength, and to tell you how much I love His Majesty. You think, because I am a woman, I am capable of appealing only to your heart, to your feelings. See? I am right! You are blushing again, Joan!

“But I would inform you, if le Maçon has not told you already, that I married not at thirteen or fourteen, which is the custom for a woman of my standing. At nineteen, I wed my Louis. He was a man I did not think I could love, though I did love him. After seventeen happy years of marriage, he left me a widow, and this will be my twelfth year without him at my side. But my mother-in-law, Marie of Blois, taught me everything I needed to know. When Louis was fighting wars in Naples for his kingship, I ran Anjou, and I ran Provence. I collected the rents, rebuked lords when they bickered like children, and saved my income. I had my eye on all the figures from ships and trade in the region, and I knew the names of all my household, along with what came in and what went out, down to the basket of the last greengrocer. Would you believe that when the castle in Angers was under attack from the English, I traveled there in my capacity as Duchess? I raised an army of six thousand men, and I am pleased to tell you the English failed to take what was mine. And now…my work is still far from done.”

She sweeps her arm over the scene behind her, the cushions where her women had sat with their needles and thread.

“You think my ladies were sewing, that they were simply admiring my jewelry?” She picks up a silver plate next to one of the pillows. Rolling across it: a smattering of seed pearls, a large winking emerald. “Well, you would be wrong. We are making an inventory of what I possess and taking apart anything of value.” With her foot, she nudges the headdress, now only half-shining; the other half is bare. “I have pawned my stones before, for my husband’s sake, and I will do so again for my children. At the very least, the Dauphin’s butcher must be paid, don’t you think?”

Joan is silent. The cushions, the room itself have taken on a different aspect. The headpiece resembles an emptied coffer. Has it really come to this?

Yolande goes on: “And I have given Charles money from my own treasury for his war because I want to see him crowned king, not with a crown snatched from a cupboard, not in any royal chapel, but in the cathedral at Reims, like all the French kings who came before him. I want to see my daughter Marie, his wife, made queen. So now we arrive at this point, this moment on which the fates of so many depend…”

She moves to a desk, on top of which lies a sheaf of papers. She gathers the pile and returns to stand before Joan.

“You will learn that I make my decisions swiftly.” She takes a page and passes it to Joan.

“I give you supplies: grain and livestock and salted fish to feed the people of the city of Orléans…”

She takes another page.

“I give you weapons: barrels of arrows, bow strings, battering rams, crossbows, war hammers…”

The final page.

“And I give you an army…”

“What?” Joan nearly drops the pages.

“You are an instrument of God,” Yolande says, laying a hand on Joan’s cheek. She has to lean forward to reach. “The moment I heard of you from the Duke of Lorraine, I sent my messenger to seek you out. I know now I was right to do so. I believe that God shows Himself not only in holy words, prayers, and sermons, but in…genius. I have been told that after the pages watch you fight, they are silent as if they have just been read a lesson. And when a servant of mine asked a boy no more than seven or eight years old why he was so quiet, the boy said he did not know such things were possible, and he was sorry you had spent so much time polishing armor and working in the stables. He had felt ashamed.”

Yolande’s hand falls away; the crush of rose petals recedes.

“I am no one,” Joan says. She offers the pages back to Yolande. “No one will listen to me. You forget I am nobody.”

Her host considers. “Yes…yes, you are no one, and no one will listen to a peasant, it is true. A poor, unlearned woman who has run away from home with no family to protect her. What is she? Nothing! But everyone will listen to an instrument of God.”

Joan looks down at the pages. For all she knows, these could be love letters.

She thinks back, back to Domrémy. She thinks, My biggest wish used to be that I would grow large enough to pummel my father. In church, I closed my eyes not to pray but to rest. It was the only place my father held his temper, so I slept during sermons. When I think of my mother, I feel only disdain…impatience. She wore her piety like a new dress, and she was vain about her devotion to God. But piety didn’t save her eldest daughter, and God must have missed my mother’s prayers. Just think, a whole lifetime’s work: wasted.

To her, it doesn’t make sense. Holiness is for the people in the priest’s book of saints. It is for the women who rub ashes into their wounds, for monks who pray until their voices grow hoarse, for nuns who fast and grow so weak from hunger, they see angels. It is for people who suffer and suffer quietly.

She had always thought, My gifts come from myself. They were beaten into me. That is all. For if it was God who gave me this strength and these gifts, then it is the same God who is also helping the English to win and the Burgundians to gain more and more towns. It is the same God who let Catherine die.

And she would rather put the blame on men, not on spirits of air. So, call her simple, but she believes this war has nothing to do with God. It’s about money. It’s about land. These men who came to France, whether kings or common soldiers, they chose to become thieves and murderers. They are the work of their own hand. And I—I am no different. I, too, am the work of my own hand.

And yet…the fact that she is here, standing before a queen. How did this happen? How is this possible?

Yolande says, “I do not profess to be a holy woman, but I have had a vision of what you will become. I picture…” She raises her arms. “A banner of white painted with gold fleurs-de-lis. Possibly angels. Saint Michael or the image of our Lord. Perhaps both. We shall see if there is enough room. I picture a famous sword. And a suit of white armor, polished to a shine. You will become a holy warrior.”

There is a pause where Joan makes a face. She nearly shakes her head, except this wouldn’t be appropriate before her host. It feels excessive, she wants to say. A waste of money.

“I have a sword already,” she says instead. “And the Duke of Lorraine gave me a horse.”

“Ah, I thought you would be quicker than this!” Her host makes a sound: a small grunt of impatience. “You are still a woman, as I am a woman. Do you think the captains of France will rally behind a peasant, a mere girl? Your abilities, your talents and gifts, are not enough. You have no status, no titles. You are not even the daughter of a free man.

“Consider what people will think when they hear this: A woman on a battlefield. A woman fighting in an army. A woman sent to free a city from siege. It is laughable, no? And there are many at court laughing already. At you, at me, at poor le Maçon, despite all the arguments he has made in your favor. They laugh, too, at the Dauphin for even meeting with you. But I will tell you something I have learned in my forty-eight years. Either a woman must be raised high, higher than the heads of men, or she will be crushed beneath their feet. So, we must raise you high. We must raise you to the height of the heavens themselves. We must dress you in the very mantle of God. Do you understand, Joan? Or must I summon le Maçon to explain?”

If you don’t know what to say, just bow, so Joan bows.

“There is only one small thing left,” Yolande says, smiling. She is satisfied. “Now you must convince His Majesty, my fine son, to give you permission to go and raise the siege at Orléans. I will take care of the rest.”

Oh, is that all? Joan thinks.

Turning from her, Yolande removes the garment she had been sewing from her chair. She shakes it out. It is a man’s doublet worked in dark purple velvet.

“Try it,” Yolande says. “Go on.”

Joan slides her arms into the satin-lined sleeves. The fabric is so smooth, it seems to ripple across her arms. Yolande brushes down the front. She helps Joan fasten the buttons, as a mother would for a child, and takes a step back for a better look.

“It is a little tight,” she says, frowning, the first crease of that perfect forehead. “Alas, Louis, my eldest, does not have such shoulders. So much the worse for him. This was his, but we shall have the size adjusted. I will send the doublet to you as soon as it is finished. I thought you would be in want of new clothes, and see again, I was right. Look at that filthy tunic! Oh!” Yolande waves her hand in front of her nose.

Then, looking up, she smiles. “I am sorry to say it. We could put you in the finest gown in Christendom, and it wouldn’t do anything for you. But this…this suits you. So, you see, one must wear the clothes for which one is built. And soon you must put on the mantle of God.”

At the door, the messenger pops in his head. He is here to escort her out.

“This may be the only time we meet,” Yolande says, her voice soft. “Unless you save Orléans and return the victor, it is unlikely we shall ever see each other again. And so, I hope that God will bless your endeavors. I hope the thousand saints and angels of this most Christian kingdom will stand behind you and watch and guide you in all things. I will pray for you in my capacity as a queen, as a noblewoman of the kingdom of France, but also as a former wife, a mother who loves her children, a humble servant of the Holy Virgin. A woman.”

As Joan goes out, the four ladies-in-waiting shuffle back to their places. They settle on their cushions and resume their work.

Behind her, Joan hears the rattle of pearls being loosed and counted. She hears the clunk of stones that will pay for the cost of war.