The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘It doesn’t mean you will be hanged,’ I say quickly to Joan. ‘So don’t think that. It’s just a playing card, it can’t mean anything like that.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ the other girl demands though Joan is silent, as if it is not her card, not her fortune that I am refusing to tell.

  ‘His gallows is two growing trees,’ I say. I am playing for time under Joan’s serious brown gaze. ‘This means spring and renewal and life – not death. And there are two trees; the man is balanced between them. He is the very centre of resurrection.’

  Joan nods.

  ‘They are bowed down to him, he is happy. And look: he is not hanged by his neck to kill him, but tied by his foot,’ I say. ‘If he wanted, he could stretch up and untie himself. He could set himself free, if he wanted.’

  ‘But he doesn’t set himself free,’ the girl observes. ‘He is like a tumbler, an acrobat. What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that he is willingly there, willingly waiting, allowing himself to be held by his foot, hanging in the air.’

  ‘To be a living sacrifice?’ Joan says slowly, in the words of the Mass.

  ‘He is not crucified,’ I point out quickly. It is as if every word I say leads us to another form of death. ‘This doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘These are just playing cards, and we are just playing a game with them. It is a pretty card, the Hanged Man. He looks happy. He looks happy to be upside down in springtime. Shall I teach you a game with counters that we play in Champagne?’/p>

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I hold out my hand for her card and she looks at it for a moment before she hands it back to me.

  ‘Honestly, it means nothing,’ I say again to her.

  She smiles at me, her clear honest smile. ‘I know well enough what it means,’ she says.

  ‘Shall we play?’ I start to shuffle the cards and one turns over in my hand.

  ‘Now that’s a good card,’ Joan remarks. ‘La Roue de Fortune.’

  I hold it out to show it to her. ‘It is the Wheel of Fortune that can throw you up very high, or bring you down very low. Its message is to be indifferent to victory and defeat, as they both come on the turn of the wheel.’

  ‘In my country the farmers make a sign for fortune’s wheel,’ Joan remarks. ‘They draw a circle in the air with their forefinger when something very good or something very bad happens. Someone inherits money, or someone loses a prize cow, they do this.’ She points her finger in the air and draws a circle. ‘And they say something.’

  ‘A spell?’

  ‘Not really a spell.’ She smiles mischievously.

  ‘What then?’

  She giggles. ‘They say “merde”.’

  I am so shocked that I rock back with laughter.

  ‘What? What?’ the younger maid demands.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I say. Joan is still giggling. ‘Joan’s countrymen say rightly that everything comes to dust, and all that a man can do about it is to learn indifference.’

  Joan’s future hangs in the balance; she is swinging like the Hanged Man. All of my family, my father, Pierre the Count of St Pol, my uncle, Louis of Luxembourg, and my favourite uncle, John of Luxembourg, are allied with the English. My father writes from our home at the chateau at St Pol to his brother John, and commands him, as the head of our family, to hand over Joan to the English. But my great-aunt the Demoiselle insists we keep her safe; and my uncle John hesitates.

  The English demand his prisoner and, since the English command nearly all of France and their ally the Duke of Bur gundy commands most of the rest, what they say usually happens. Their common soldiers went down on their knees on the battlefield to give thanks, and wept with joy when the Maid was captured. There is no doubt in their mind that without her the French army, their enemy, will collapse into the frightened rabble that they were before she came to them.

  The Duke of Bedford, the English regent who rules the English lands in France, almost all of the north of the country, sends daily letters to my uncle invoking his loyalty to English rule, their long friendship, and promising money. I like to watch for the English messengers who come dressed in the fine livery of the royal duke, on beautiful horses. Everyone says that the duke is a great man and well loved, the greatest man in France, an ill man to cross; but so far, my uncle obeys his aunt, the Demoiselle, and does not hand over our prisoner.

  M uncle expects the French court to make a bid for her – they owe their very existence to her after all – but they are oddly silent, even after he writes to them and says that he has the Maid, and that she is ready to return to the court of her king and serve again in his army. With her leading them they could ride out against the English and win. Surely they will send a fortune to get her back?

  ‘They don’t want her,’ my great-aunt advises him. They are at their private dining table, the great dinner for the whole household has taken place in the hall and the two of them have sat before my uncle’s men, tasted the dishes and sent them round the room as a gift to their special favourites. Now they are comfortable, seated at a little table before the fire in my great-aunt’s private rooms, her personal servants in attendance. I am to stand during the serving of dinner with another lady in waiting. It is my job to watch the servants, summon them forwards as required, clasp my hands modestly before me, and hear nothing. Of course, I listen all the time.

  ‘Joan made a man out of the boy Prince Charles, he was nothing until she came to him with her vision, then she made that man into a king. She taught him to claim his inheritance. She made an army out of his camp-followers, and made that army victorious. If they had followed her advice as she followed her voices, they would have driven the English out of these lands and back to their foggy islands, and we would be rid of them forever.’

  My uncle smiles. ‘Oh, my lady aunt! This is a war that has gone on for nearly a century. Do you really think it will end because some girl from who knows where hears voices? She could never drive the English away. They would never have gone; they will never go. These are their lands by right, by true right of inheritance, and by conquest too. All they have to do is to have the courage and the strength to hold them, and John Duke of Bedford will see to that.’ He glances at his wineglass and I snap my fingers to the groom of the servery to pour him some more red wine. I step forwards to hold the glass as the man pours, and then I put it carefully on the table. They are using fine glassware; my uncle is wealthy and my great-aunt never has anything but the very best. ‘The English king may be little more than a child, but it makes no difference to the safety of his kingdom, for his uncle Bedford is loyal to him here, and his uncle the Duke of Gloucester is loyal to him in England. Bedford has the courage and the allies to hold the English lands here, and I think they will drive the Dauphin further and further south. They will drive him into the sea. The Maid had her season, and it was a remarkable one; but in the end, the English will win the war and hold the lands that are theirs by right, and all of our lords who are sworn against them now will bow the knee and serve them.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ my great-aunt says staunchly. ‘The English are terrified of her. They say she is unbeatable.’

  ‘Not any more,’ my uncle observes. ‘For behold! She is a prisoner, and the cell doors don’t burst open. They know she is mortal now. They saw her with an arrow in her thigh outside the walls of Paris and her own army marched off and left her. The French themselves taught the English that she could be brought down and abandoned.’

  ‘But you won’t give her to the English,’ my great-aunt states. ‘It would be to dishonour us forever, in the eyes of God and the world.’

  My uncle leans forwards to speak confidentially. ‘You take it so seriously? idth="1em"eally think she is more than a mountebank? You really think she is something more than a peasant girl spouting nonsense? You know I could find half a dozen such as her?’

  ‘You could find half a dozen who say they are like her,’ she says. ‘But not one like he