Into The Fire by Manda Scott Page A

he remembers her fondly. ‘She knew what a man liked. Cheerful, she was. Always grateful.’
    Tomas rolls his eyes. ‘The French king took wards?’ It doesn’t sound likely. What king takes in other men’s children if he doesn’t have to? Most of them have enough of their own, by the time you take in the broods of legal offspring and the byblows.
    ‘Her father died on the field of Agincourt. Her mother …’ He frowns. ‘I forget what happened to her mother, but anyway, she was dead. Claudine and her brother had nobody. And so the king took them in. He was called Best Beloved as well as the Mad. Charles le Bien Aimé. Maybe he just liked children.’
    This is not a path Tomas wishes to explore. He begins to pack away the remnants of the morning’s meal: oat bannocks, crisped black at the edges, and a duck egg, brought from Jargeau, that might not have been entirely fresh. His guts gripe mildly in its aftermath. ‘So, why did she end up servicing the men? Did she not have a place in the king’s household?’
    ‘Not for long. She was thrown out after the old king died. Her and Matthieu – that’s her brother—’
    ‘The one who was murdered.’
    ‘The one who spoke ill to the Maid and was struck down by God. Don’t roll your eyes at me, Tomas Rustbeard, even the priests name it a miracle. Anyway, Claudine and Matthieu were turned out on the street with no money, though the king had left them silver in his will. As she tells it, Matthieu spent the last five years growing more bitter. He swore he’d find a way to get the money they were owed.’
    Ah.
    So we have a child who was once a ward of the king; a boy who might have become confused about his station. A youth, coming to adulthood, consumed by the need for vengeance, and an escape from penury. And then one evening he encounters the Maid as she enters Chinon. He says something – we know not what – and in the morning, he is found floating face down in the river with a hole in the back of his skull.
    Why did you die, Matthieu? Did you recognize her, this girl who pretends to come from Lorraine? Was she a ward too, another whose father had died at Agincourt, as yours did?
    Did you threaten to undo her?
    And if Matthieu recognized the Maid on a footbridge in the dark of a February evening, then his sister should be able to do so in the full daylight of high summer.
    It’s a good morning, bright and sharp and clear, and the world is full of possibility. What Tomas Rustbeard needs now is to get to Bedford, the late king’s brother and now, by God’s grace, regent of France and England, and tell him what he knows.
    His problem: Bedford is in Paris, which is to the north. The Maid is heading north and her army with her, which is all to the good, but five thousand Englishmen stand somewhere between here and there, bent on murder. The scouts have been out all night, searching. Tomas has counted three back in since he awoke. The fourth, who went north, is returning now.
    He finishes packing his kit, not looking at where the man slides off his sweating horse and kneels for the Maid.
    ‘Hello …’ Ogilvy looks back across his right shoulder. ‘Is that a scout?’
    ‘Is it? You might be right, at that.’ Grimacing, Tomas pushes himself to his feet. ‘Get your boots on, Ogilvy. Ten to one says we’re going north to meet the English.’
    ‘I don’t have new boots. Not like some of us.’
    ‘That’s because you didn’t earn them.’
    ‘Earn them? For half a heartbeat spent kneeling in the dirt!’ And they descend to squabbling, because Tomas Rustbeard has new boots and a new mount and today, of all glorious days, is feeling decidedly happy with both.
    The horse is a gift from the Maid; a bay gelding with exceptional paces taken from the stables of Jargeau and given to him for his services in helping her to dismount. She did notice him.
    The boots are an essential component of his unfolding strategy. He ordered them himself from Ricard’s younger