When I woke, it was to the news that the English holding Beaugency had surrendered in the night, and were even then departing. But while our camp slowly stirred to life, cheered by the English surrender, scouts rode breathlessly up from La Hire, saying that a large body of English was riding in haste toward us.
The camp’s quiet motion turned to frenzy, for everyone feared that the arriving English would join with those who were leaving, and then attack. “In the name of God,” Jeanne shouted, “we must fight them! Even if they were hanging from the clouds we would beat them, for God has sent them to us that we may punish them. Today the gentle dauphin will have the greatest victory he has ever had. And my counsel has told me that the English will all be ours.”
We were quickly formed by the captains into three groups. La Hire led the vanguard, with Poton de Xaintrailles. Then came the largest group, where Louis was, and Pierre, and Jean. And finally came the rearguard, in which I was, with Nicolas and Jeanne herself, who was angry to be last, but still confident of victory.
My stuffy head eased some as I moved, and more when I mounted Anglais and rode with the others over the flat land. Soon we were in woods so thick we could not see what or who might be beside us, and more than one of us, I am sure, was uneasy lest the English take us by surprise.
Suddenly there was a distant cry, and then another, and the sound of horses whinnying. Moments later we were urged forward at a gallop, and the woods echoed with the sound. Word came back to us as we thundered on that some of the English had seen a stag and, unable to contain themselves at the thought of fresh food, had shouted, thus giving away their position to our scouts.
Jeanne spurred her horse ahead out of the woods, and Nicolas and I followed more slowly. Soon I heard sounds of fighting, and when we emerged between two hedges, one higher than the other, and I saw what was ahead, I wanted to retreat into the woods once more. But I could not move, even to urge Anglais to turn. Instead I stared in horror at the scene before me, which looked as if it were out of hell itself.
The field was a mass of moving men, of swords and lances glittering as they rose and fell and rose and fell again—but many soldiers already lay bleeding and moaning on the ground under horses’ hooves and armored feet. Human screams mingled with those of innocent horses, making me think again of Orléans and Yarrow, and there were few suits of armor or mail that were not stained with blood. I saw a man with no face, he had been so brutally trampled, and another who stared in surprised agony at his nearly severed hand till a sword thrust in his chest put an end to him. The screams rose over such a yelling and a cursing and a shouting, and such a pounding of hooves and raining of arrows and whirling of maces, that even now it makes me tremble to recall it.
Anglais pawed the ground and snorted. Nicolas, beside me, seized Anglais’s reins and pulled his head down, holding it steady. Then he crossed himself and muttered, “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, it is a slaughter—but not of us, my child, not of us French.” He moved his horse closer and squeezed my shoulder with his strong surgeon’s hand, but it did not comfort me. I did not see how he could tell who was French and who English among the men who writhed upon the ground.
For a moment I saw Louis on his horse, whirling an ax above his head, his face so distorted with hate I almost did not know him. And I saw a man who had fallen to the ground look up at him as if pleading for his life. But Louis’s ax fell, and split that man’s unhelmeted head in two.
I gasped. I think I cried, “No—no!” aloud, and I think Nicolas looked at me, in surprise or sympathy; I know not which. All I knew then was that Louis, my dearest friend and love, had killed a fallen man who was no danger to him and who had begged for mercy. Was this what becoming a soldier had done to him? Which was the true Louis? The gentle man who wanted to be a scholar-knight, who had cared for me when I was ill, and who supported my wish to learn and heal? Or the cruel warrior who knew no mercy?
I could stay no longer. Horrified, and blinded by tears, I slid from Anglais and ran back into the forest. Soon I tripped, and then sank down upon some moss under a tree, with the sounds of the battle still in my ears, and I wept till I had no tears left.
I do not know how long I stayed there. I know I slowly became aware of silence, and of darkness and then moonlight, and of my own stiffness, and my shivering. I could not breathe through my nose, and my eyes were sore from weeping; my cheeks were caked with salt, and stinging with it.
I pulled myself to my feet and looked around, glad there was no one near me, for I did not see how I could face any of my companions. I had run away, which no soldier should ever do, and no healer either. I had abandoned my horse—though Nicolas, I thought, must have him—and abandoned Nicolas and wounded men as well. Worse, I had lost faith in Louis, in Jeanne, and in our quest. For I was sure now that if this was the way to crown our king, even if it was the only way, it was wrong.
I saw again in my mind the scene I had fled, and moaned aloud, knowing I should return to it to give aid to those who had fallen, even though I had no stomach for it. But that, at least, was peaceful work, separate from the fighting that created the need for it.
And so I returned, finding my way by the direction in which the trampled brush was lying. Soon the forest thinned, and I was in the field between the two hedges, where the ground was dark and spongy with blood and strewn with bodies.
I walked among them, numbly; they were, I quickly saw, all English. Had Nicolas and the living soldiers finished removing our French dead and wounded, then, or were there none? I knew not—but those around me, all, were English, and all were dead.
And why had no one come to bury them?
This was the first time I had looked into an English face. I knew not what I had expected, but their faces were like our men’s faces, some round, some long, some old, some pitifully young, some bearded and some plain, with all colors of hair and many shades of complexion. Some were mangled beyond recognition—those whom maces had struck, and those who had been trampled by horses and men—and they lay thickly, so thickly.
As I walked aimlessly among them, sometimes stumbling over an outstretched arm or a discarded sword—but most of those were gone, taken as plunder, I assumed, by our French, and many bodies were naked or nearly so, robbed of their garments—as I walked there, I saw a slight motion at the bottom of a heap of men lying every which way, and heard a soft moan. I ran there and tugged at bodies till I was covered with blood and had unearthed a boy no older than myself, with his side laid open—but he breathed. Congealed blood lay on the wound, through which I could see bone and entrails. The boy’s eyes fluttered, and he smiled weakly, saying something in his language. He grasped my hand and, holding it, before I could think how to tend his wound, he died.
I stayed there, holding his head against my breast, till I felt a hand on my shoulder, softly, and I looked up to see Louis. His hose and doublet were in tatters and his mail shirt split; his face was covered with filth and blood. But it is his eyes in that moment that I still cannot forget, for they were hollow—empty except for despair.
“I cannot find him,” he said brokenly. “I cannot find him.”
I had thought that when I saw Louis again, if indeed I did see him, I would run from him, but now I had no strength to run. And this, though broken, was again the Louis I knew, not the beast I had seen on the battlefield, wielding the ax.
“Who,” I asked, “can you not find?”
“Him,” he said, sinking to his knees beside me and the boy whose body I still held. “He whom I clove in twain, whose head I broke beyond all healing, whose pleas I ignored. I have killed other men, Gabrielle, but none who pleaded with me for life. His eyes—his eyes …” He turned away from me and his body heaved, as if he were vomiting, but nothing came up; he was empty, as if he had already vomited many times.
I laid the English boy down as softly as I could. Then I went to Louis and put my arms around him. We stayed thus all night, alone on the spent battlefield among the English dead, until dawn.
