Adjust Voice Speed - Knob on the right
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... |
PART 13
Make yourselves comfortable - it’s all over with her!
Abjure? What is abjure?

Joan had been adjudged guilty of heresy, sorcery, and all the other terrible crimes set forth in the Twelve Articles, and her life was in Cauchon’s hands at last. He could send her to the stake at once. His work was finished now, you think? He was satisfied? Not at all. What would his Archbishopric be worth if the people should get the idea into their heads that this faction of interested priests, slaving under the English lash, had wrongly condemned and burned Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France? That would be to make her a holy martyr. Then her spirit would rise from her body’s ashes, a thousand-fold reinforced, and sweep the English domination into the sea, and Cauchon along with it. No, the victory was not complete yet. Joan’s guilt must be established by evidence which would satisfy the people. Where was that evidence to be found? There was only one person in the world who could furnish it – Joan of Arc herself. She must condemn herself, and in public – at least she must seem to do it.
But how was this to be managed? Weeks had been spent already in trying to get her to surrender – time wholly wasted; what was to persuade her now? Torture had been threatened, the fire had been threatened; what was left? Illness, deadly fatigue, and the sight of the fire, the presence of the fire! That was left.
Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a girl, after all, and, under illness and exhaustion, subject to a girl’s weaknesses.
Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly said, herself, that under the bitter pains of the rack they would be able to extort a false confession from her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it was remembered.
She had furnished another hint at the same time: that as soon as the pains were gone, she would retract the confession. That hint was also remembered.
She had herself taught them what to do, you see. First, they must wear out her strength, then frighten her with the fire. Second, while the fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper.
But she would demand a reading of the paper. They could not venture to refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that during the reading her courage should return? she would refuse to sign, then. Very well, even that difficulty could be got over. They could read a short paper of no importance, then slip a long and deadly one into its place and trick her into signing that.
Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to abjure, that would free her from the death penalty. They could keep her in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her. That would not answer; for only her death would content the English. alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had escaped from two prisons already.
But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make promises to her; in return, she would promise to leave off the male dress. He would violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would not be able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the stake would be ready.
There were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make them, each in its order, and the game was won. One might almost name the day that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France, and the noblest, would go to her pitiful death.
And the time was favourable – cruelly favourable. Joan’s spirit had as yet suffered no decay, it was as sublime and masterful as ever; but her body’s forces had been steadily wasting away in those last ten days, and a strong mind needs a healthy body for its rightful support.
The world knows, now, that Cauchon’s plan was as I have sketched it to you, but the world did not know it at that time. There are sufficient indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the highest one – the Cardinal of Winchester – were not let into the secret; also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupère, on the French side, knew the scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even Loyseleur and Beaupère knew the whole of it at first. However, if any did, it was these two.
It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace, but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumours of the time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he spent some hours in beseeching her to do ‘the only right and righteous thing’ – submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and be transferred to the Church’s prison, where she would be honourably used and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised something which she interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work which she had been commissioned of Heaven to do. Also there was that other thing: if her failing body could be further weakened by loss of rest and sleep, now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions, threats, and the sight of the stake, and also be purblind to traps and snares which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate.
I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night. Nor for Noël. We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall, with a hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of Joan’s Voices which seemed to promise a rescue by force at the last moment. The immense news had flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc was condemned, and would be sentenced and burned alive on the morrow; and so, crowds were being refused admission by the soldiery; these being people who brought doubtful passes or none at all. We scanned these crowds eagerly, but there was nothing about them to indicate that they were our old war-comrades in disguise, and certainly there were no familiar faces among them. And so, when the gate was closed at last, we turned away grieved, and more disappointed than we cared to admit, either in speech or thought.
The streets were surging tides of excited men. It was difficult to make one’s way. Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to the neighbourhood of the beautiful church of St Ouen, and there all was bustle and work. The square was a wilderness of torches and people; and through a guarded passage dividing the pack, labourers were carrying planks and timbers and disappearing with them through the gate of the churchyard. We asked what was going forward; the answer was –
‘Scaffolds and the stake. Don’t you know that the French witch is to be burnt in the morning?’
Then we went away. We had no heart for that place. At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time with a hope which our wearied bodies and fevered minds magnified into a large probability. We had heard a report that the Abbot of Jumièges with all his monks was coming to witness the burning. Our desire, abetted by our imagination, turned those nine hundred monks into Joan’s old campaigners, and their Abbot into La Hire or the Bastard or D’Alençon; and we watched them file in, unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering while they passed, with our heart in our throats and our eyes swimming with tears of joy and pride and exultation, and we tried to catch glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to give signal to any recognised face that were Joan’s men and ready and eager to kill and be killed in the good cause. How foolish we were; but we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things, believeth all things.
In the morning I was at my official post. It was on a platform raised the height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of St Ouen. On this same platform was a crowd of priests and important citizens, and several lawyers. Abreast it, with a small space between, was another and larger platform, handsomely canopied against sun and rain, and richly carpeted, also it was furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were more sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level. One of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of England, his Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat three bishops, the Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars and lawyers who had sat as Joan’s judges in her late trials.
Twenty steps in front of the platforms was another – a table-topped pyramid of stone, built up in retreating courses, thus forming steps. Out of this rose that grisly thing the stake; about the stake bundles of fagots and firewood were piled. On the ground at the base of the pyramid stood three crimson figures, the executioner and his assistants. At their feet lay what had been a goodly heap of brands, but was now a smokeless nest of ruddy coals; a fagot or two from this was a supplemental supply of wood and fagots compacted into a pile shoulder high and containing as much as six pack-horse loads. Think of that. We seem so delicately made, so destructable, so insubstantial; yet it is easier to reduce a granite statue to ashes than it is to do that with a man’s body.
The sight of stake sent physical pains tingling down the nerves of my body; and yet, turn as I would, my eyes would keep coming back to it, such fascination has the gruesome and the terrible for us.
The space occupied by the platforms and the stake was kept open by a wall of English soldiery, standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures, fine and sightly in their polished steel; while from behind them on every hand stretched far away a level plain of human heads; and there was no window and no housetop within our view, howsoever distant, but was black with patches and masses of people.
But there was no noise, no stir; it was as if the world was dead. The impressiveness of this silence and solemnity was deepened by a leaden twilight, for the sky was hidden by a pall of low-hanging storm-clouds; and above the remote horizon faint winkings of heat-lightning played, and now and then one caught the dull mutterings and complainings of distant thunder.
At last the stillness was broken. From beyond the square rose in indistinct sound, but familiar – curt, crisp phrases of command; next I saw the plain of heads dividing, and the steady swing of a marching host was glimpsed between. My heart leaped for a moment. Was it La Hire and his hellions? No – that was not their gait. No, it was the prisoner and her escort; it was Joan of Arc, under guard, that was coming; my spirits sank as low as they had been before. Weak as she was, they made her walk; they would increase her weakness all they could. The distance was not great – it was but a few hundred yards – but short as it was it was a heavy tax upon one who had been lying chained in one spot for months, and whose feet had lost their powers from inaction. Yes, for a year Joan had know only the cool damps of a dungeon, and now she was dragging herself through this sultry summer heat, this airless and suffocating void. As she entered the gate, drooping with exhaustion, there was that creature Loyseleur at her side with his head bent to her ear. We knew afterwards that he had been with her again this morning in the prison wearying her with his persuasions and enticing her with false promises, and that he was now still at the same work at the gate, imploring her, and assuring her that if she would do this all would be well with her: she would be rid of the dreaded English and find safety in the powerful shelter and protection of the Church. A miserable man, a stony hearted man!
The moment Joan was seated on the platform she closed her eyes and allowed her chin to fall; and so sat with her hands nestling in her lap, indifferent to everything, caring for nothing but rest. And she was so white again; white as alabaster.
How the faces of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how natural it was, for these people realised that at last they were looking upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see; a person whose name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names and all other renowns insignificant by comparison: Joan of Arc, the wonder of the time, and destined to be the wonder of all times! And I could read as by print, in their marvelling countenances, the words that were drifting through their minds: ‘Can it be true; is it believable, that it is this little creature, this girl, this child with the good face, the sweet face, the beautiful face, the dear and bonny face, that has carried fortresses by storm, charged at the head of victorious armies, blown the might of England out of her path with a breath, and fought a long campaign, solitary and alone, against the massed brains and learning of France – and had won if the fight had been fair!’
Evidently Cauchon had grown afraid of Manchon because of his pretty apparent leanings toward Joan, for another recorder was in the chief place here, which left my master and me nothing to do but sit idle and look on.
Well, I supposed that everything had been done which could be thought of to tire Joan’s body and mind, but it was a mistake; one more device had been invented. This was to preach a long sermon to her in that oppressive heat.
When the preacher began, she cast up one distressed and disappointed look, then dropped her head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard, an oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the Twelve Lies. He emptied upon Joan all the calumnies, in detail, that had been bottled up in that mess of venom, and called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were labelled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury as he went on; but his labours were wasted, she seemed lost in dreams, she made no sign, she did not seem to hear. At last he launched the apostrophe:
‘O France, how hast thou been abused! Thou hast always been the home of Christianity; but now, Charles, who calls himself thy King and governor, indorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is, the words and deeds of a worthless and infamous woman!’ Joan raised her head, and her eyes began to burn and flash. The preacher turned toward her: ‘It is to you, Joan, that I speak, and I tell you that your King is schismatic and a heretic!’
Ah, he might abuse her to his heart’s content; she could endure that; but to her dying moment she could never hear in patience a word against that ingrate, that treacherous dog our King, whose proper place was here, at this moment, sword in hand, routing these reptiles and saving the most noble servant that ever King had in this world – and he would have been there if he had not been what I have called him. Joan’s loyal soul was outraged, and she turned upon the preacher and flung out a few words with a spirit which the crowd recognised as being in accordance with the Joan of Arc traditions –
‘By my faith, sir! I make bold to say and swear, on pain of death, that he is the most noble Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of the faith and the Church!’
There was an explosion of applause from the crowd, which angered the preacher, for he had been aching long to hear an expression like this, and now that it was come at last it had fallen to the wrong person: he had done all the work, the other had carried off all the spoil. He stamped his foot and shouted to the sheriff –
‘Make her shut up!’
That made the crowd laugh.
A mob has small respect for a grown man who has to call on a sheriff to protect him from a sick girl.
Joan had damaged the preacher’s cause more with one sentence than he had helped it with a hundred; so he was much put out, and had trouble to get a good start again. But he needn’t have bothered; there was no occasion. It was mainly an English-feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our nature – an irresistible law – to enjoy and applaud a spirited and promptly delivered retort, no matter who makes it. The mob was with the preacher; it had been beguiled for a moment, but only that; it would soon return. It was there to see this girl burnt; so that it got that satisfaction – without too much delay – it would be content.
Presently the preacher formally summoned Joan to submit to the Church. He made the demand with confidence, for he had gotten the idea from Loyseleur and Beaupère that she was worn to the bone, exhausted, and would not be able to put forth any more resistance; and indeed, to look at her it seemed that they must be right. Nevertheless, she made one more effort to hold her ground, and said, wearily –
‘As to that matter, I have answered my judges before. I have told them to report all that I have said and done to our holy Father the Pope – to whom, and to God first, I appeal.’
Again, out of her native wisdom, she had brought those words of tremendous import, but was ignorant of their value. But they could have availed her nothing in any case, now, with the stake there and these thousands of enemies about her. Yet they made every churchman there blench, and the preacher changed the subject with all haste. Well might those criminals blench, for Joan’s appeal of her case to the Pope stripped Cauchon at once of jurisdiction over it, and annulled all that he and his judges had already done in the matter and all that they should do in it thenceforth.
Joan went on presently to reiterate, after some further talk, that she had acted by command of God in her deeds and utterances; then, when an attempt was made to implicate the King, and friends of hers and his, she stopped that. She said –
‘I charge my deeds and words upon no one, neither upon my King nor any other. If there is any fault in them, I am responsible and no other.’
She was asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which had been pronounced evil by her judges. Her answer made confusion and damage again:
The Pope once more! It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents – offers to submit it to the very head of it. What more could anyone require? How was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable answer as that?
The worried judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling conclusion – but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him, anyway, because these present judges had sufficient power and authority to deal with the present case, and were in effect ‘the Church’ to that extent. At another time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not now; they were not comfortable enough, now.
The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning to put on a threatening aspect; it was tired standing, tired of the scorching heat; and the thunder coming nearer, the lightning was flashing brighter. It was necessary to hurry this matter to a close. Erard showed Joan a written form, which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked her to abjure.
‘Abjure? What is abjure?’
She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Massieu. She tried to understand, but she was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could not gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words. In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry –
‘I appeal to the Church universal whether I ought to abjure or no!’
Erard exclaimed –
‘You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be burnt!’
She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the stake and the mass of red coals – redder and angrier than ever, now, under the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he dreams, and does not know where he is.
The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper, there were many voices beseeching and urging her at once, there was great turmoil and shouting and excitement, amongst the populace and everywhere.
‘Sign! sign!’ from the priests; ‘sign – sign and be saved!’ And Loyseleur was urging at her ear, ‘Do as I told you – do not destroy yourself!’
Joan said plaintively to these people –
‘Ah, you do not do well to seduce me.’
The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their hearts melted, and they said –
‘Oh, Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver you up to punishment.’
And now there was another voice – it was from the other platform – pealing solemnly above the din: Cauchon’s – reading the sentence of death!
Joan’s strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her head and said –
‘I submit.’
They gave her no time to reconsider – they knew the peril of that. The moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically, unconsciously – and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some happier world.
Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her mark to it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of that defect; he guided her hand with his own, and wrote her name – Jehanne.
The great scheme was accomplished. She had signed – what? She did not know – but the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphemer of God and His angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked, commissioned of Satan; and this signature of hers bound her to resume the dress of a woman. There were other promises, but that one would answer, without the others; that one could be made to destroy her.
Loyseleur pressed forward and praised her for having done ‘such a good day’s work.’
But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard.
Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dissolved the excommunication and restored her to her beloved Church, with all the dear privileges of worship. Ah, she heard that! You could see it in the deep gratitude that rose in her face and transfigured it with joy.
But how transient was that happiness! For Cauchon without a tremor of pity in his voice, added these crushing words –
‘And that she may repent of her crimes and repeat them no more, she is sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the water of anguish!’
Perpetual imprisonment! She had never dreamed of that – such a thing had never been hinted to her by Loyseleur or by any other. Loyseleur had distinctly said and promised that ‘all would be well with her.’ And the very last words spoken to her by Erard, on that very platform, when he was urging her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promise – that if she would do it she should go free from captivity.
She stood stunned and speechless a moment; then she remembered, with such solacement as the thought could furnish, that by another clear promise – a promise made by Cauchon himself – she would at last be the Church’s captive, and have women about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So she turned to the body of priests and said, with a sad resignation –
‘Now, you men of the Church, take me to your prison, and leave me no longer in the hands of the English;’ and she gathered up her chains and prepared to move.
But alas, now came these shameful words from Cauchon – and with them a mocking laugh:
‘Take her to the prison whence she came!’
Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten, paralysed. It was pitiful to see. She had been beguiled, lied to, betrayed; she saw it all, now.
The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness, and for just one moment she thought of the glorious deliverance promised by her Voices – I read it in the rapture that lit her face; then she saw what it was – her prison escort – and that light faded, never to revive again. And now her head began a piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly this way and that, as is the way when one is suffering unwordable pain, or when one’s heart is broken; then drearily she went from us, with her face in her hands, and sobbing bitterly.
There is no certainty that any one in all Rouen was in the secret of the deep game which Cauchon was playing except the Cardinal of Winchester. Then you can imagine the astonishment and stupefaction of that vast mob gathered there, and those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away, alive and whole – slipping out of their grip at last, after all this tedious waiting, all this tantalising expectancy.
Nobody was able to stir or speak, for a while, so paralysing was the universal astonishment, so unbelievable the fact that the stake was actually standing there unoccupied and its prey gone. Then suddenly everybody broke into a fury of rage; maledictions and charges of treachery began to fly freely; yes, and even stones: a stone came near killing the Cardinal of Winchester – it just missed his head. But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he was excited, and a person who is excited never can throw straight.
The tumult was very great indeed, for a while. In the midst of it a chaplain of the Cardinal even forgot the properties so far as to opprobriously assail the august Bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking his fist in his face and shouting:
‘By God, you are a traitor!’
‘You lie!’ responded the Bishop.
He a traitor! Oh, far from it; he certainly was the last Frenchman that any Briton had a right to bring that charge against.
The Earl of Warwick lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but when it came to the intellectuals – when it came to delicate chicane, and scheming, and trickery – he couldn’t see any further through a millstone than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered comfort into his ear –
‘Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord; we shall soon have her again.’
Perhaps the like tidings found their way all around, for good news travels fast as well as bad. At any rate the ragings presently quieted down, and the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared. And thus we reached the noon of that fearful Thursday.
We two youths were happy; happier than any words can tell – for we were not in the secret any more than the rest. Joan’s life was saved. We knew that, and that was enough. France would hear of this day’s infamous work – and then! Why, then her gallant sons would flock to her standard by thousands and thousands, multitudes upon multitudes, and their wrath would be like the wrath of the ocean when the storm-winds sweep it; and they would hurl themselves against this doomed city and overwhelm it like the resistless tides of that ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again! In six days – seven days – one short week – noble France, grateful France, indignant France, would be thundering at these gates – let us count the hours, let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds! Oh happy day, oh day of ecstasy, how our hearts sang in our bosoms!
For we were young, then; yes, we were very young.
Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed to rest and sleep after she had spent the small remnant of her strength in dragging her tired body back to the dungeon?
No; there was no rest for her, with those sleuth-hounds on her track. Cauchon and some of his people followed her to her lair, straightway; they found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical forces in a state of prostration. They told her she had abjured; that she had made certain promises – among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and if she relapsed, the Church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging, dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon and his people had brought; and would come to herself by-and-by, and have at first but a dim idea as to when and how the change had come about.
Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan had resumed woman’s dress without protest; also she had been formally warned against relapsing. He had witnesses to these facts. How could matters be better?
But suppose she should not relapse?
Why, then she must be forced to do it.
Did Cauchon chose to make their prisoner’s captivity crueller and bitterer than ever, no official notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so; since the guards did begin that policy at once, and no official notice was taken of it. Yes, from that moment Joan’s life in that dungeon was made almost unendurable. Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will not do it.
Friday and Saturday were happy days for Noël and me. Our minds were full of our splendid dream of France aroused – France shaking her mane – France on the march – France at the gates – Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our imagination was on fire; we were delirious with pride and joy. For we were very young, as I have said.
We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon the yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and been taken back into the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was being gently used, now, and her captivity made as pleasant and comfortable for her as the circumstances would allow. So, in high contentment, we planned out our share in the great rescue, and fought our part of the fight over and over again during those two happy days – as happy days as ever I have known.
Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy weather, and thinking. Thinking of the rescue – what else? I had no other thought now. I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happiness of it.
I heard a voice shouting, far down the street, and soon it came nearer, and I caught the words –
‘Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch’s time has come!’
It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice. That was more than sixty years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my memory to day as it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer morning. We are so strangely made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories that break our hearts that abide.
Soon other voices took up that cry – tens, scores, hundreds of voices; all the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And there were other clamours – the clatter of rushing feet, merry congratulations, bursts of coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the boom and crash of distant bands profaning the sacred day with the music of victory and thanksgiving.
About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Manchon and me to go to Joan’s dungeon – a summons from Cauchon. But by that time distrust had already taken possession of the English and their soldiery again, and all Rouen was in an angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty of evidences of this from our own windows – fist-shaking, black looks, tumultuous tides of furious men billowing by along the street.
And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly indeed; that there was a great mob gathered there who considered the relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many half-drunk English soldiers. Moreover, these people had gone beyond words. They had laid hands upon a number of churchmen who were trying to enter the castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them and save their lives.
And so Manchon refused to go. He said he would not go a step without a safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown peacefuller meantime, but worse. The soldiers protected us from bodily damage, but as we passed through the great mob at the castle we were assailed with insults and shameful epithets. I bore it well enough, though, and said to myself, with secret satisfaction, ‘In three or four days, my lads, you will be employing your tongues in a different sort from this – and I shall be there to hear.’
To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them would still be alive after the rescue that was coming? Not more than enough to amuse the executioner a short half-hour, certainly.
It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was sitting there in her chains clothed again in her male attire.
She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character to hold a servant to account for what his master had made him do, and her mind had cleared, now, and she knew that the advantage which had been taken of her the previous morning had its origin, not in the subordinate, but in the master – Cauchon.
Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in the early morning of Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her male attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other dress, but the guards refused to give it back. She protested, and said she was forbidden to wear the male dress. But they continued to refuse. She had to have clothing, for modesty’s sake; moreover, she saw that she could not save her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this; so she put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be. She was weary of the struggle, poor thing.
We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the Vice-Inquisitor, and the others – six or eight – and when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent, forlorn, and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her situation so different, I did not know what to make of it. The shock was very great. I had doubted the relapse, perhaps; possibly I had believed in it, but had not realised it.
Cauchon’s victory was complete. He had had a harassed and irritated and disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone now, and contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple face was full of tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing his robes and stood grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight of this poor ruined creature, who had won so lofty a place for him in the service of the meek and merciful Jesus, Saviour of the World, Lord of the Universe – in case England kept her promise to him, who kept no promises himself.
Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon Joan’s change of clothing, and said –
‘There is something suspicious about this. How could it have come about without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even something worse?’
‘Thousand devils!’ screamed Cauchon, in a fury. ‘Will you shut your mouth?’
‘Armagnac! Traitor!’ shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a rush for Marguerie with their lances levelled. It was with the greatest difficulty that he was saved from being run through the body. He made no more attempts to help the inquiry, poor man. The other judges proceeded with the questionings.
‘Why have you resumed this male habit?’
I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier’s halberd slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash; but I thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her own motion.
‘But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to it.’
I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question; and when it came it was just what I was expecting. She said – quite quietly –
‘I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I would not resume it.’
There – I had been sure, all along, that she did not know what she was doing and saying on the platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to add this –
‘But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me have not been kept – promises that I should be allowed to go to mass, and receive the communion, and that I should be freed from the bondage of these chains – but they are still upon me, as you see.’
‘Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have especially promised to return no more to the dress of a man.’
Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully toward these unfeeling men and said –
‘I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good to you that I do.’
Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honour the compact which he and his had made with her? Fulfil its conditions? What need of that? Conditions had been a good thing to concede, temporarily, and for advantage; but they had served their turn – let something of a fresher sort and of more consequence be considered. The resumption of the male dress was sufficient for all practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to that fatal crime, so Cauchon asked her if her Voices had spoken to her since Thursday – and reminded her of her abjuration.
‘Yes,’ she answered; and then it came out that the Voices had talked with her about the abjuration – told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did it with the untroubled mien of one who was not conscious that she had ever knowingly repudiated it. So I was convinced once more that she had had no notion of what she was doing that Thursday morning on the platform. Finally she said, ‘My Voices told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done was not well.’ Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, ‘But it was the fear of the fire that made me do so.’
That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her Voices and by testimony of her persecutors.
She was sane now, and not exhausted; her courage had come back, and with it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire which had such terrors for her.
That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he wrote in the margin abreast of it –
RESPONSION MORTIFERA.
Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was indeed a fatal answer. Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sickroom when the watchers by the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, ‘All is over.’
Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to clinch this matter and make it final, put this question –
‘Do you still believe that your Voices are St Marguerite and St Catherine?’
‘Yes – and that they come from God.’
‘Yet you denied them on the scaffold?’
Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any intention to deny them; and that if – I noted the if – ‘if she had made some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the fire, and was a violation of the truth.’
There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was she had done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterwards by these people and by her Voices.
And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there was a weary note in them that was pathetic –
‘I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot endure captivity any longer.’
The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it would take it in any form, even that.
Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news. As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted – laughing – think of a man destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at it:
‘Make yourselves comfortable – it’s all over with her!’