The Maid Read online

  Two guards run very quickly over the bridge through the fall dusk. Over the stone bridge they go, across the lawn to the edge of the moat. "Get a ladder," says one.

  "She can't be alive," says the other man, peering down.

  "I said get a ladder."

  Down at the bottom of the moat, the first guard crouched over the motionless figure, cracked mud branching out like a web around her. He touched Jehanne's throat, his face white as flour. "She's got a pulse," he said. He lifted the unconscious girl and carried her into the castle in the gathering twilight. Wondering as he walked about the creature in his arms—the little brown-skinned peasant who seemed to exist outside the rules of this world. "Tough little thing," he said as he laid her in a bed near the Demoiselle's chambers. "Wish I was that tough," said the other.

  For three days she neither ate nor drank, simply lay still, watching the awestruck circus around her. The women with their great hats and bright, astonished eyes, offering her broth, water, the doctor shaking his head, muttering, the guards defending themselves for letting her up on the roof alone. "You said it was all right," said one.

  "You should have been with her," snapped the Demoiselle.

  "How could we know? Who'd be crazy enough to jump seventy feet?"

  8

  The Duke of Alençon sat pale and drawn in the King's study, watching the rain sluice downhill through the streets of Chinon toward the flooded river. "At this rate they're going to have to sail us out of here," said Charles, with a smile.

  Alençon did not smile back. His eyes were red and bloody. He looked as if he had not slept in years. "They're going to sell her to Cauchon," he said. "Do you know that? He offered ten thousand gold crowns."

  "Christ, that's a bloody fortune."

  "You can't let this happen, Charles. You have to pay them. You have to get her back."

  "I don't have money like that to throw around. You know it as well as I do."

  "I know that you could raise it before dinnertime if you wanted to."

  "Not for her. She has no friends in this court any longer."

  "You'd stand by and let the English kill her, then? After all she's done for you?"

  "She's become impossible," said Charles. "She stands in the way of France's freedom."

  "She is France's freedom."

  "Not anymore."

  Alençon looked at him. He was gripping the arm of his chair so tightly that his knuckles had turned gray. "I beg you, Charles, as your oldest friend. Don't let them kill her. She is the life and soul of this country. You know she was sent by God as well as I do."

  The King sighed. "It's been a long time since she's done anything God-like in my book."

  "Don't blame our losses on her."

  "Why not?"

  "Because you gave her no money and no support—you sent her off to battle with a handful of men and no supplies. There's no way she could have won fighting like that. No one could."

  Charles made a face. Looked out at the long gray curtains of rain. "You act as if I haven't done anything for her. As if I didn't ennoble her and her entire family, as if I haven't relieved her entire village from paying taxes for the rest of their lives."

  "You owe her your life, Charles. You would not be king without her."

  "And I've repaid her handsomely for it."

  The Duke came and stood before him, his eyes very bright, his face shaking. "So help me God, if you abandon her—"

  The King looking at him very sharply now. "If I abandon her what, Alençon?"

  "You will burn in Hell, Charles."

  9

  Not a single bone in Jehanne's body was broken. Not a muscle sprained. By the end of the week she was well enough to be moved, and so one freezing morning in late November, the chief negotiator for the English-controlled University of Paris, Bishop Pierre Cauchon, arrived at Beaurevoir Castle with an escort of six large soldiers. They bound Jehanne tightly with ropes and tied her to the back of a horse. Then they rode up through the cold north country toward the English-held city of Rouen.

  The Demoiselle watched Jehanne's departure from a window high in her castle. The Demoiselle crossing herself, her face unreadable, as she watched them take the girl away.

  10

  In Arras Jehanne saw a painting of herself. It was the first she'd ever seen. They'd stopped for the night at one of the grand Burgundian castles along the way. So many stops like that, so the Bishop could show off his prize. After dinner, the Bishop and his hosts came and took her out of her cell. "Something downstairs you should see," the Bishop said, smiling at Jehanne with his thick brown lips as his men dragged her forward through the stinking straw. At first she was happy because she thought the room they were taking her to would have a fire where she could warm her hands, for her cell was very cold, the December wind whistling through the stones. Like sleeping on a mountaintop.

  But she never noticed if there was a fire in the room, for she had caught sight of her portrait as soon as she entered. A tall, glowing oil portrait that had been painted by a Scotsman who'd seen her in Orléans. She was dressed in her shining white armor and kneeling on one knee before King Charles. Her dark hair was shiny and cropped short, and her eyes were radiant, as the crowds of richly dressed nobles all around her in court gazed on in awe.

  Had she been alone, she would have looked for a while. Marveled at it, leaped at the chance to remember the strong, beautiful person she had been just a year earlier. The days when the saints sang in her heart. But she was not alone; there was a crowd of Burgundians around her, watching the filthy captive in chains to see what her reaction would be. "Not so high and mighty now, are you?" one blond woman said, her lips pressed into the left side of her face.

  "Why would you think we'd want that inbred fool for a king?" another said. "We're all much better off with the English."

  Jehanne did not look anymore at the picture. She knew if she looked, she would cry. She kept her eyes on the floor.

  11

  At last, on Christmas Eve, they arrived in Rouen. There was snow on the ground and the rooftops by then, snowflakes falling lightly and steadily in the dark air, and Jehanne was shivering as they led her, still tied to the horse, through the great city. She saw people holding candles and singing in front of the cathedral in the town square, their faces glowing like golden plates in the candlelight. But they stopped singing and came running when they saw the Bishop and his men with their torches, walking the famous prisoner toward the tower of Rouen. "The Witch," they cried. "Look, the Witch of France!" And some of them hissed and shouted and threw snowballs at her, and a few fell to their knees, weeping, saying, "God bless you, child." But many more shouted "Witch," their faces black and twisted up with hatred.

  That's the thing I don't understand, she thinks to herself now, alone in the cell. The hatred. A thick, bottomless thing. Enormous. Not like the hatred men had for their enemies or for greedy kings, but the hatred they had for child-rapists, child-killers. Ferocious, shrieking, pleasurable hatred. A thing that lit them up inside, spread its fire in their bellies. Their eyes shining as if they longed to see Jehanne flayed in public and then torn limb from limb, dragged through the streets, eaten by dogs. They really think I'm a witch, she thought, as she rode past those hating faces on her way to the tower at Rouen. They cannot believe God would side against them, so they think I'm sent by Satan.

  And the churchmen, how they loathed her! But it was different with the churchmen. They had not hated her at the beginning of her trial. At the beginning, they had been curious, calm, composed. The Bishop had taken two months to prepare his case, and toward the end of February, they brought her to stand in the middle of the royal chapel at Rouen Castle with her wrists and ankles chained tightly, surrounded by the churchmen. Dozens of well-fed churchmen in their red robes and black robes, some with thick white hoods around their necks, others in small felt hats, all of them leaning forward slightly, as if they were nearsighted, to get a better look at the Maid.

  She
had no defender, no lawyer or counsel to advise her. No one to explain to her how it all worked. There was only the Bishop and his examiners from the University of Paris—canon lawyers, doctors of theology, the Vice Inquisitor of Rouen—men of books and laws and theories, men who knew nothing of the holiness of the forest or the inner sunlight that rinses all through you, men the girl had never met before, come from all over England and Burgundy to see and hear about the famous Maid, to sit in judgment of her, and decide whether she was sent by God or the Devil. Whether she should live or die.

  On January 3, 1431, the Duke of Bedford issued a letter in the name of King Henry VI, announcing the news of the trial.

  It is well known how for some time a woman calling herself Jehanne the Maid, putting off the dress and habit of the female sex (which is contrary to divine law, abominable to God, condemned and prohibited by every law), has dressed and armed herself in the state and habit of man, has wrought and occasioned cruel murders, and it is said, to seduce and deceive simple people, has given them to understand that she was sent from God and that she had knowledge of His divine secrets, with many other dangerous dogmatizations most prejudicious and scandalous to our holy faith ... And because she has been reputed, charged, and defamed by many people on the subject of superstitions, false dogmas, and other crimes of divine treason.

  The room where they tried her was shaped like a diamond, with the Bishop seated at one end, above everyone else, in a high chair in his big tear-shaped hat. In the beginning, they allowed the public in to watch. A sea of wide-eyed onlookers packed against one wall, desperate to catch a glimpse of the witch. And the hatred she saw in their eyes terrified Jehanne, made her want to run from the room, but she steadied herself. She wanted to make them understand how it had been for her. To make them feel it as she had. She planned to tell them about the day in her father's garden with the voice and the perfect joy and the cucumber plants, about Saint Michael pouring his light into her in the bois chenu, and about Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret smiling down on her like tender planets. She wanted to explain how she'd known it was Saint Michael from his voice—how his voice had melted her bones as if they were candles, how his voice had plucked a chord in the deepest canyon of her being. She wanted to say, "I know I am sent by God the way you know your own child's cry in a great crowd of people. The way you know when someone you love has died, before anyone's told you. The way you know every hidden chamber in your own heart. That is how I know." But she did not get a chance to say any of this because the Bishop had asked her first of all to make an oath that day that she could not make. And that had made the churchmen very angry.

  They wanted Jehanne to swear on the Gospels that she would truthfully answer every question they asked. "I do not know what you will ask me," she answered. "The revelations that have come to me from God, I have never told to anyone except Charles, my King. God has forbidden me to discuss them with anyone else."

  How the men stared at her when she said this. Stared as if their eyes would jump out of their heads. And she had felt them begin to hate her then. She could see it in their eyes. How dare she? Who does she think she is? "I'm sorry, my lords," she said finally, "but even if you threaten to cut off my head, I will not tell you about my visions."

  The prosecutor, Jean d'Estivet, blinked, drew his head backward like a turtle and stared at her for several moments with his small black eyes. When at last he spoke, his lip was curled. "For now, we'll start with something else, but I warn you, Maid, we will return to these visions of yours."

  12

  They would not allow her to attend Mass. They would not allow her to receive confession. "Please," she said. "I have never gone more than two days in my life without confessing." To which Cauchon replied, "Perhaps you should think about that the next time you refuse to cooperate with us."

  Every day the churchmen asked her to swear their impossible oath, and every day Jehanne refused. She could feel their hatred growing for her each time she refused, coming at her like a hot wind. And she felt it too as she answered their questions, all the questions she'd already answered in Poitiers. Why do you call yourself the Maid? Why do you wear men's clothes, though the Bible forbids it? Did your voices tell you as a child to hate the Burgundians? Did they tell you to kill the Burgundians? Can you hear your voices right now?

  Day after day Jehanne answered. I call myself the Maid because I am a virgin. You may have me examined if you wish. I wear men's clothes because they were appropriate for my mission and because my council approved them. If I were in a wood right now, I would certainly hear the voices coming to me. But it was clear to her that it was not really the battles she'd fought against the English and the Burgundians, or the boy's clothes, or even her voices that bothered Cauchon and his men. It was the fact that she would not submit to them. The fact that she insisted on keeping some things secret, inside herself, between her and God. That she would not kneel down at their feet and declare them more mighty than God. That she believed she was not subject to their laws. "Do you say that you are in God's grace?" Master Beaupère asked one afternoon.

  The room fell silent. Jehanne looked at him. "If I am not, may God put me there; if I am, may God keep me there. I would be the most miserable person in the world if I knew that I was not in God's grace."

  By the end of the first month of the trial, the churchmen had begun to shout so loudly at Jehanne, to hammer her so hard from all sides with their questions, and to threaten her so violently that some in the audience had begun to pity the girl. Some cried out that she was being unfairly treated. Others complained that the clerks were writing down answers that were different from what Jehanne herself had said. And soon the courtroom was such a storm of fury and pity and confusion that the Bishop banned the public from the rest of the trial and moved the proceedings to Jehanne's cell.

  Now their questions became more pointed. Everything began to circle back to the same place. Estivet asked: If the Church Militant tells you that your revelations are illusions or diabolical things, will you defer to the Church?

  Jehanne answered, by turns weeping and defiant: I will defer to God, Whose Commandment I always do. In case the Church should prescribe the contrary, I should not refer to anyone in the world, but to God alone, Whose Commandment I always follow.

  Estivet asked: Do you not then believe you are subject to the Church of God, which is on earth, that is to say to our Lord the Pope, to the Cardinals, the Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church?

  Jehanne answered: Yes, I believe myself to be subject to them, but God must be served first.

  Estivet asked: Have you then command from your voices not to submit yourself to the Church Militant, which is on earth, not to its decision?

  Jehanne answered: I answer nothing from my own head, what I answer is by command of my voices, they do not order me to disobey the Church, but God must be served first.

  Oh, the arrogance! The monstrous pride! It was more than they could bear—this mad peasant holding her head high as a queen and saying that she knew more about God's will than they did, that she had received divine revelations from Him, and that such revelations, such mad delusions! should take precedence over the holy laws of the Church!

  The Devil must have sent her, they decided. That she was in the thrall of the supernatural was clear to all. But only the Devil could be behind such wickedness, such devious undermining of the Church. If the girl were truly sent by God, would she not have come to the Church as soon as she received her first "revelation" at age twelve and asked for guidance? Shouldn't she have laid her visions out before her priest and asked him to decide if they were sent by the Almighty, instead of deciding for herself? Shouldn't she have shown more humility? More deference to her elders? Should she have openly defied the Bible and dressed herself up as a man?

  "It is time for sterner methods," said Cauchon.

  13

  They took her down to the dungeon. Twelve men of God walking single file down the steep and wind
ing tower staircase in their long red robes and their stiff hats, twelve white hands sliding down the smooth stone balustrade as they went, a tangible electricity among them as they moved closer to the thing that they most wished to do, and that which they also most feared to do. A thrill and a horror braided into one.

  Inside the room they showed the girl their instruments one at a time. The stretching rack. The pincers. The cat-o'-nine-tails. The brazier of red coals. The spiked Catherine Wheel. "I'd rather not use these," said Cauchon, shaking his head, his face like a troll's in the torchlight, long black lines on either side of his mouth, as if they've been carved with a knife. "But I'm beginning to think it may be necessary."

  Jehanne smiling, radiant, defiant, Saint Margaret singing an answer in her ear: "You can tear me limb from limb," she said, "and drive the soul from my body, but I won't say anything different from what I've already said."

  Somehow this stopped them. The men went into a corner of the room and conferred quietly for several minutes. They took her back upstairs, decided that there was no point in torturing her, no point in trying to force her to repent through pain. "Take her back to her cell," Cauchon spat. He looked Jehanne in the eye. "You will not win this," he said. "I see the Devil inside you and I am going to get Him out."

  14

  So the trial dragged on. The shouting questions dragged on. Jehanne's voices came in and out—at times they grew loud, ferocious, shouted at her, told her that she was a sinner, a murderer. Other times they soothed her. Take no care for your torment, my love, Catherine said. Then you will come into Paradise. Jehanne grew thin and tired. Her memories jumbled together, became so confused that she was no longer certain of anything. Her voices grew harder to hear.