Good and evil are always so close to one another. Of all creatures, Lucifer was the most like God.’

‘You’re a good theologian for a soldier. Your companions maintain that you’ve no more brains than a two-year-old bull.’

‘True. I have never had more than one idea in my head. I am neither a scholar nor a philosopher. I can hardly read and write. But since you came to Chinon, on 25 February, this year, that one thought that my poor head is capable of containing is called Jeanne.’

Jeanne looked at him suspiciously.

‘Don’t try to court me, young bull. Jeanne is not one of those girls to be pulled down into a ditch by a soldier!’

Gilles got up and came and knelt before her.

‘Fear nothing, Jeanne, I love you for what you are. The Maid of Orléans. The boy-girl who saved France and anointed the King. The gentle companion in arms who charged the enemy with me boot to boot at Patay. Heavens, how we laid into them, the goddams, eh!’

Jeanne couldn’t help smiling when she remembered.

‘But I love you above all for the purity that is inside you and that nothing can tarnish.’

Looking down, he saw her wound.

‘Will you accept the only kiss that I ask of you?’ He bent down and laid his lips for a long time on Jeanne’s wound.

He then stood up and licked his lips.

‘I have communicated with your blood. I am bound to you forever. Henceforth I shall follow you wherever you go. Whether to heaven or to hell!’ Jeanne bestirred herself and stood up.

‘Before going to heaven or to hell, I want to go to Paris!’

As if to answer her, an officer burst into the tent. ‘By order of the King, I have to inform you that the retreat has been sounded. The King’s retinue has left the heights of Montmartre for Saint-Denis. Tomorrow it will fall back to the banks of the Loire.’ Jeanne could not believe what she had heard.

‘At first light, we can attempt an assault downstream of the Ile Saint-Denis by the pontoon bridge. Montmorency has spies in the fortress. We shall offer the King of France his capital on a plate!’

But these were dreams. The officer had to admit to Jeanne that in two hours the pontoon bridge would not be there. It was being dismantled on the King’s orders.

Jeanne was dumbstruck. Yet, for six months, she had known her sovereign, with his shilly-shallying, his retreats from undertakings, his minor betrayals, which as they accumulated looked like betrayal pure and simple.

‘My God,’ she sighed, ‘why is Charles so obstinately determined to get back to his little bedroom!’

Gilles had hardly heard the disastrous news. What mattered to him was neither Paris, nor the glory of the King of France.

‘I shall follow you everywhere,’ he repeated, ‘to heaven and to hell!’


Autumn passed and it was winter. Jeanne, who knew that she had only a year before her ― hardly more ― was cooling her heels in that dreamy, frivolous court. Alençon had been taken from her and sent to Normandy. Gilles had mysteriously disappeared. Jeanne followed the court, from one castle to another, to Bourges, Sully, Montfaucon-en-Berry. To satisfy in part her thirst for action, she laid siege to Saint-Pierre-le-Moutiers ― successfully ― then to La Charité-sur-Loire ― unsuccessfully. The King tried to coax her out of her ill temper. He dowered her, ennobled her, exempted the inhabitants of Greux and Domrémy from taxes. Then the dramatic events at Compiègne occurred.

She went to that city on 23 May 1430 with between three to four hundred men in order to confront the Duke of Burgundy, who was preparing to attack it. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, she was told that a large-scale skirmish was taking place in front of the city.