Into The Fire by Manda Scott Read Free Book Online

a leather sack and thrown in the river forthwith.
    The army wants her, but the army’s view is not the one that counts. The campaign to free France of the English, therefore, stalled temporarily, while the French, yet again, squabbled amongst themselves.
    As far as Tomas is concerned, any delay is good. He spent this time in the taverns and back rooms of a celebratory Orléans, seeking out all the possible variations of the warrior-Maid’s story. There are not many; it has a remarkable uniformity, which is in itself suspicious, but he has listened to the telling and the retelling, and he has found that Glasdale was right: there is the legend, and there is the truth, and in the gap between these two lie the seeds of her destruction.
    Thus does he find himself part of the Maid’s waiting army, roving to and fro along the banks of the Loire, identifying the good men, and undermining their strengths, finding the weaklings and bolstering a false bravado.
    He also speaks with the women who cluster round the camp. The ever-pious Maid has driven out the whores, but these are mothers, sisters, wives. They cook and bind wounds, sing psalms and wash linens, spin and weave and sew.
    And they talk. Tomas has become known for his ready ear and so they talk to him: Jeannette, Marie, Violette of the sad, red eyes, who is friends with Claudine, whose brother, Matthieu, it seems, met a violent death on the night the Maid first met the king at Chinon.
    ‘Claudine says Matthieu greeted the Maid on the bridge as she was walking into the chateau. He was not respectful as he should have been.’
    Violette stands near a fire, beyond the tent lines, stirring a boiling pot of small clothes with a stick. Tomas takes over and stirs for her. He feels like a hound that has caught a ten-day-old scent. Claudine is the one, he can feel it in his marrow: his key to destroying the Maid. ‘Did she know what her brother said that gave offence?’
    ‘That the Maid should come and meet him later and he’d see she wasn’t a maid by morning. Can you imagine it?’ Violette is young and skinny, with straggling black hair and eye teeth that grow out like the tushes on a small boar. ‘He was dead by the morning. Claudine found him floating face down in the river. Marie-Paul said he’d been struck by God, but Claudine said he had a big mashed place on the back of his head. Somebody hit him and pushed him into the river to drown.’
    ‘You think the Maid did it?’
    ‘No!’ Violette recoils, covers her face with chapped pink hands, peers at him between her fingers. ‘Why would she do that?’
    Because he knew who she really was and had threatened to tell the king?
    Tomas shakes his head, gently says, ‘You’re right, of course. A footpad, a thief, an unfortunate accident. But if we could find Claudine, it may be that the Maid would want to help her. With Matthieu gone, she must be …’ Prostituting herself? Sewing winding sheets? Stirring laundry in a barely boiling pot? Whatever girls do who are unmarried and destitute in the Loire valley.
    He waits, but Violette doesn’t help him out, only stares into the rolling water. ‘She’s gone and I don’t know where. I haven’t seen her since the army gathered.’
    Claudine may be dead, but Tomas’s instinct tells him not. With practised care, he finds out what she looks like: straw-blond hair, a fine nose, freckles, a scar on her left hand from a spill of hot oil in her youth. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. He gives Violette back her stirring-stick.
    He may not have been as delicate as he thought, because she gives him a sideways glance. ‘Jean-Pierre might know more. They were … friendly …’
    Friendly? In an army where the Maid has banned the whores? I’m sure they were. ‘How might I find Jean-Pierre?’
    ‘He’s the gunner. The one the Maid says is blessed by God.’
    Oh, yes. Today is a good day. Newly cheered, he heads back to the army, to the men preparing for battle,