David Wood, Edward G. Talbot
Justice
From the Authors
Mark Twain said, “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story” and who are we to argue. As usual, we’ve included many details, both contemporary and historical, that we hope will add to your enjoyment of the story, but we’ve also changed or created a few things for the sake of the story. Thanks for coming along on another adventure with Maddock and Bones. We hope you enjoy it!
David and Edward
PROLOGUE
Jehanne la Pucelle felt the heat of the flames licking her feet. She stood bound to a pole on a wooden platform resting atop four feet of stacked logs. Beneath and around the logs lay a small amount of straw, just enough to kindle the slower burning wood. The Inquisitors claimed that this precaution contained the blaze inside the circling crowd. The real reason was to avoid having the fumes from a larger blaze render the victim unconscious well before death. Heretics deserved prolonged punishment. It was justice.
Jehanne knew she would suffer, but it would be short compared to the eternal reward that awaited her. She only wished it would end soon. As if in response to this thought, a voice spoke to her.
“Child, it does not please God for you to welcome death.”
Jehanne’s eyes opened at the welcome sound. St. Catherine had spoken to her nearly every day since Jehanne reached the age of twelve, a constant presence who had driven her to lead the armies of the French King Charles VII. St. Margaret appeared nearly as often. Many did not believe that Jehanne truly heard the words of the saints, but the voices had correctly predicted the outcome of numerous battles, including the conflict resulting in her own capture a year earlier.
“Forgive me.”
She heard no reply. Her mind drifted, focusing on the one thing which had increasingly dominated her thoughts in the previous months. Jehanne was protecting a secret; one revealed by St. Michael himself shortly after she began hearing the voices.
On his instructions, she had journeyed for nearly three days. Barely a teenager, she had never previously traveled more than five miles outside her village. Finally, cold and hungry, she stumbled into the ruins of an old stave church. After banishing a group of rats by waving her torch, she collapsed onto a patch of earth in a corner which still retained enough of its ceiling to provide protection from the elements.
The next morning, St. Michael directed her to a hidden staircase of stone which descended to a room, empty save for a single wooden box, the contents of which had shaken her to the core. Could it possibly be what she thought it was?
That worry was not enough for her to disregard the command of St. Michael, so she returned home with her discoveries, brushing aside questions from her father about where she had been. As time passed with no further reference to the box by the voice of the saint, the mystery only served to strengthen her faith in an all-knowing God. She made sure her secret was well hidden, and she waited.
When she was forced to leave home to escape her father’s order to marry a local boy, she waited. When she convinced Robert de Baudricourt and then the King himself that God had charged her with leading the armies of France, she waited. After a glorious victory at Orleans, she waited. After ignoble defeat at Compiegne, she waited.
A lick of flame crackled next to her cheek, and her attention returned to her current predicament. She considered struggling against her restraints, but to what end? The Inquisitors were not in the habit of overlooking a detail such as securing their victim against escape. It seemed to Jehanne that she had spent almost the entire previous year bound to a stake or a wall.
Whenever she remembered her capture, the smell of death threatened to overwhelm her. The battle had left many men face down in the mud, and she had been thrown from her horse just before her army had retreated to the safety of the city. She had landed with her face buried in a putrid corpse. Jerking upright, she had heard a voice speaking the name the English Bishop had taken to calling her.
Joan.
She hated the name, but that was soon the least of her worries. She had waited in vain for the King to rescue her. Eventually St. Catherine had told her that she should not expect salvation from that quarter. Desperate to escape, she had managed to get to a window sixty feet above a dry moat and throw herself out. She sustained too many injuries to crawl further.
Finally St. Michael had spoken again last month, telling her that a trusted ally would appear to her within a week’s time, and she should reveal her secret. Jehanne’s faith had never wavered as much as it had in that moment. She had spent five months shackled to the wall of her cell, freed only to attend the sham of a trial that had so concerned the Inquisitors. More than once a guard had displayed an unhealthy interest in her, but pursuing that avenue further required unlocking her leg irons. The two scoundrels who had tried it lasted less than a minute each before Jehanne incapacitated them.
The idea that an ally would now appear seemed laughable. Only a true miracle from God could conjure up help in this purgatory on earth.
A week later, the miracle occurred.
Jehanne’s evening meal failed to appear. She didn’t miss the cold broth laced with an anemic dose of rotting vegetables, but her captors had been diligent about meals until now. In addition, she couldn’t fail to notice the absence of the loud steps which usually accompanied a guard making hourly rounds. She did not know the reason for these deviations in routine, but she allowed her senses an extra level of focus on the sounds outside her door and single tiny casement.
The reason presented itself sometime near the apex of the darkness when her cell door slowly opened. So noiseless was the intruder that she almost missed it, but her eyes picked up a change in the shadow thrown by the half moon.
“Who is there?”
She made sure her challenge carried both volume and authority. A hooded figure made its way toward her, finger raised into the folds of the cowl. Jehanne gasped as two gnarled hands lowered the hood.
“My child.”
Jehanne’s tears did not prevent her from responding to a man she recognized as her fondest ally. “Your Eminence. I am your servant.”
A smile encompassed the entire face of Jacques Gelu, the Archbishop of Embrun. “You are wrong, young maid. I am yours.”
“How did you get in?”
Gelu sighed. “Direct as always, I see. I shall endeavor to do the same. For many months, I have sought the King’s ear regarding your fate. When I finally gained a real audience with him, I pointed out the disgrace of having the commander of great French victories languishing in an English gaol. Sadly, he would not be swayed.”
Gelu reached out his hand and caressed Jehanne’s face with a touch as gentle as an angel’s wing. “He fears you, child.” Wisps of gray hair trembled as Gelu shook his head. “You must allow an old man his secrets. It is enough to say that the hand of our almighty Father was involved.”
Jehanne’s gaze settled on his eyes, detecting nothing but affection. “As Your Eminence wishes. Why then have you come?”
“He will not say it aloud, but your power threatens him.”
Jehanne rotated her palms upward inside her shackles. “My power? Tell me what power do you see now? All that I have comes from the Lord.”
“It pains me to say it, but I think that is the point.” Gelu’s voice faded to a mere whisper. “There is even talk that the closing of the gate at Compiegne before you could get inside was done on his orders.”
Jehanne felt her insides become steel, the way they did as she rode into battle. The tears which had accompanied her first sight of Gelu evaporated. Men had told her of the strength they saw when they observed her fair skin and dark hair mounted on a warhorse and riding toward bloodshed. They have no idea of the strength that is possible with faith.