“Never,” she cried. “To the charge!”
D’Aulon, Jean and Pierre, her brothers, all her own little company, closed around her, resolved to sell their lives dearly in her defence, and D’Aulon and Pierre, seizing hold of her bridle rein, forcibly turned her toward the town, carrying her back in spite of herself.
But now they were assailed from all sides, the little company fighting, struggling, contesting every inch of ground, beating 330 off their adversaries, and advancing little by little toward the boulevard.
“We shall make it, Jeanne,” exulted Pierre D’Arc when they were within a stone’s throw of the walls, but the words died on his lips, for at this moment came a ringing order from the gate:
“Up drawbridge: close gates: down portcullis!”
Instantly the drawbridge flew up, down came the portcullis, the gates were closed and barred. Jeanne the Maid was shut out.
A groan came from Pierre’s lips, but his sister smiled at him bravely; as old D’Aulon shouted:
“Treachery! In God’s name, open for the Maid.”
But the gates were closed, and the drawbridge remained up. There was a second’s interchange of looks between the brothers and sister as the enemy with shouts of triumph closed around them in overwhelming numbers. Only a second, but in that brief time they took a mute farewell of each other. Man after man of the little company was cut down or made prisoner. D’Aulon was seized, then Jean, then Pierre, and Jeanne found herself struggling in the midst of a multitude of Anglo-Burgundians. One seized her wrists, while a Picard archer tore her from the saddle by the long folds of her crimson hucque, and in a moment they were all upon her.
“Yield your faith to me,” cried the Picard archer, who had seized her hucque.