The Madman and the Whore
“Then tell me something I wouldn’t already know.”
Joan sat perched on a wooden crate inside the damp barn while Ligny sat on the floor and spread out a map.
He set a few stones he’d picked up nearby onto various points and began to explain.
“First of all, Charles VI is dead.”
“Already knew that. Next.”
“We poisoned him.”
…? He didn’t just die of madness? That’s not the history I know…
Come to think of it, in the history I know, Ligny didn’t have one eye either.
“Give me the details.”
“Well… it all started with Philip. Philip the Bold.”
Whether she survived long enough to return to her original place or remained stuck here, information was what mattered most right now.
And what Joan heard next was more shocking than she could have imagined.
“Philip the Bold was the beginning and the cause of every single incident. It started with the time he fed ergot fungus to Charles VI and drove him mad.”
Her intelligence had risen considerably; that single sentence was enough for the links to snap into place one after another.
“So after Charles VI went insane and became a living corpse on the throne, and while royal authority was weak, the queen had an affair with the king’s younger brother and the result of that was me?”
“In short… yes.”
“And that younger brother already had another woman before he climbed into bed with my birth mother, so there’s a kid on that side too?”
“…Yes. He’s five years older than you, my lady….”
“So I’m the byproduct of the second affair.”
“B-byproduct… please don’t say it like that…”
Ligny bit his lip slightly, looking almost resentful.
Two children by the same father—one grows up to become the hero of France, the other is branded a witch and burned at the stake. Funny.
“If I had known about you sooner, my lady, I would never have come here just to dig up information. You are…”
“What’s this all of a sudden—did you catch feelings overnight? Yesterday you were trying to skewer me with that halberd—”
“…I am sorry.”
Perhaps the memory of the day before had resurfaced; Ligny lowered his head a little, looking dejected.
“I’m kidding. This is already a battlefield. I don’t waste emotion on that kind of thing.”
“My lady….”
“More importantly, let’s think about what comes next. I don’t particularly want to kill the man I slept with last night. Are you going back to Burgundy?”
Still seated on the crate, she slipped her leather shoes onto her feet and idly flexed her ankles while she waited.
Sensing that an answer was expected, Ligny muttered through a long stretch of conflicted thought before his eyes finally hardened with resolve.
“I will follow you.”
“That’s more like it.”
He only added one request: if they happened to run into Burgundian soldiers, she should address him as Count Ligny.
If he was going to be branded a traitor anyway, it was better to at least be treated with a little respect.
She brushed the straw from her clothes and stepped out of the barn. Corpses of soldiers and villagers lay scattered all around them.
“First let’s head for Domrémy, where I used to live. Whether it’s family or villagers, someone has to still be there.”
“I will follow.”
Outside the barn, she took her bearings. From Joan’s memories this place was a small storage shed on the eastern edge of Domrémy, right against the Meuse River.
“Thirty minutes of easy walking and we’re in the village. Tell me the rest of the story on the way.”
“And then John the Fearless also killed your birth father, Louis, Duke of Orléans.”
“…If you people kill everyone, is there anyone left? You’re all something else.”
“And Queen Isabeau gave birth exactly two weeks before Louis of Orléans was murdered.”
Once again the pieces of the puzzle locked together into a single scenario.
Louis, Duke of Orléans, had an affair with his sister-in-law Queen Isabeau and fathered a child.
But when he was assassinated only two weeks after the birth, Isabeau lacked the power to bury the secret and abandoned the infant in the countryside.
From the moment she was born, Joan had already been standing in the middle of a political hell.
“But how did you hear about my wife?”
“Ah… that… there’s something like that. Someone who occasionally passes information along.”
Ligny rubbed his chin, lost in thought. He was probably trying to work the situation from the Burgundian point of view.
“Let’s sum it up. Burgundy poisoned Charles VI into madness and assassinated Louis of Orléans, who is probably my real father. And I was a tool to start the whore scandal around the present French queen, Isabeau—and beyond that, to spread rumors that Charles VII himself might be some random bastard’s son, all to weaken the Armagnacs?”
“…That is correct. And the information on the Armagnac side that I had not known came from your two half-brothers, my lady.”
“Why the hell are those bastards showing up here? And they told you that themselves?!”
“It was one of the conditions in Burgundy’s ransom negotiations. They were told that if they offered any information that might be worth money, certain conveniences would be arranged.”
So Louis of Orléans’s legitimate sons—well, one of them is already dead—so the two legitimate ones cheerfully spilled every detail that there was an illegitimate child they wouldn’t even acknowledge as a bastard, just for a little personal comfort from the enemy.
“When I meet them… I’m going to twist their heads off… pieces of trash…”
“My lady…”
Whatever new taste Ligny had developed, the moment Joan scowled and clenched the leather grip of her warhammer, he gazed at her with a faintly dazed expression.
“Hold on. So that means the current me is an extremely awkward existence for both the Armagnacs and the Burgundians?”
“…Yes. Burgundy was looking for you as a weapon for political propaganda. For the Armagnacs, your continued survival creates all sorts of difficulties. Both sides have reasons to search for you. The only difference is whether they want you alive or dead.”
Ligny stated the facts calmly, yet his mind was seething with countless questions.
The biggest among them was: What was that bright vision I saw the moment I heard her say, ‘I am Joan of Arc of Domrémy’?
Why he had called her a saintess, why he could not remember his wife’s face yet felt desire rising the instant he looked at Joan—those things barely registered. They felt only natural.
On the road from the barn to the village, another band of stragglers appeared in the distance and started walking toward them.
“Heeheehee—hey there, girl, with a body that fine you ought to be soothing some passionate men like u—ghhurk—”
Joan simply hurled the warhammer she was carrying. It struck dead-center in the man’s forehead.
“Ligny.”
“Yes, Master.”
“This is the testing ground where I judge your ability. Crush them.”
“B-but those men are…”
Ligny deliberately turned his face away, reluctant to meet the soldiers’ eyes.
The red cloth mixed into the stragglers’ uniforms was especially conspicuous.
“Hey, you lot.”
“…?”
“You wouldn’t happen to be Burgundian trash, would you?”
Two of the soldiers who had finished assessing the situation drew their swords and charged. They were never going to be a match for her now.
She caught the swinging blade and slammed the man into the ground so hard he became one with the earth.
“Listen, Count Ligny. Am I going to have to start doubting your loyalty again?”
“…Count Ligny? Lord Jean de Luxembourg?”
When a soldier of slightly higher rank toward the rear of the group appeared to recognize him, Ligny seemed to give up; he began whirling the halberd he carried and charged the soldiers.
Whoosh— whoosh— thwack—
In an instant the shoulder armor of the lead soldier split diagonally and blood fountained out.
Without a second’s pause Ligny sprang at the next man, this time sweeping the halberd’s blade upward on a diagonal and shearing the left arm clean off.
“Tr-treason! Jean II de Luxembourg-Ligny has defected to France!”
“Kill him! There are hundreds of secrets that must never cross into French hands!”
Two longbowmen at the rear began preparing their arrows. She could not simply stand by and let her brand-new Slave Number One turn into a pincushion.
“Get down, Count Ligny.”
She sprinted up from behind, used the crouching Ligny as a stepping stone, and launched herself all the way to the corpse of the soldier whose acquaintance with the world had been cut short by her warhammer.
“Mjolni— ah, no, this is just a warhammer.”
She snatched up the weapon and smashed three men around her in a single swing. They had managed to obtain decent iron helms for mere soldiers, but it made no difference.
“Anyone who intends to fight!”
Even if they were only stragglers, she had just charged into the middle of a pack of sturdy soldiers—wearing a common linen dress spattered here and there with blood and a pair of leather shoes.
Nothing especially remarkable about her… no, correction. A rare beauty with blonde hair and a glamorous figure.
Blood from the hammer blow still flecked her face, yet that faintly exhilarated expression somehow held both the face of a delicate girl and that of a seductive adult woman at once.
“Step to the front of the line! I am Joan of Domrémy!”
Every time the long blonde ponytail whipped through the air, the Burgundian platoon leader could only watch his men depart one by one for the Lord’s side.
Ruten later described that day, while he still lived, like this:
“That… was not a person. I say it again—do not get entangled with that monster wearing human shape… Every time she walked slowly toward me swinging that warhammer… my men were breaking… splitting… being crushed… and she… she was smiling….”
“She kept coming closer… my men dying one after another… and she kept walking toward us with that smile. That swaying golden hair, that smooth skin, those enormous breasts. That smile that made it seem every living soul would have no choice but to love her—that smile!! Please stop smiling!! Please!!”
By the time they reached the village entrance, people who had either witnessed the earlier spectacle or heard the rumors were already murmuring among themselves.
“Isn’t she a witch? A witch?”
“No, didn’t you hear what that Burgundian noble just said? He called her a saintess. He said the Lord sent a saintess to protect the kingdom of France.”
“That’s Jeannette. The tax collector’s daughter who lives in the stone house by the crossroads. What saintess?”
“Now that you mention it, it is Jeannette. Something about her atmosphere feels different, though.”
Ah. I don’t know about the original Joan, but the tenant has changed.
Perhaps because of that, or because Ligny was following at her side and her clothes were stained with blood while she carried a warhammer, even the few inhabitants of this tiny village failed to recognize her at first.
Joan’s family, having heard the rumors, came running from a distance.
“Jeannette!! What on earth happened?!”
“Joan, what’s all that blood?”
“Joan. Are you hurt?”
“Where have you been?”
“Father, when exactly were you planning to tell me I’m not your real daughter?”