Epitaph for Three Women (23 page)

Jeannette thought a great deal about the saints and her godmother took her to the church and showed her the images of St Catherine and St Margaret, and she longed to be like them.

As she lay on her pallet at night she thought of them; she dreamed of them and it was as though they spoke to her in her dreams.

There was one significant factor about their lives, and that was their insistence on their virginity. Jeannette knew that many girls and boys were interested in each other; she had seen Mengette Joyart flirting with a young soldier who came from one of the nearby villages. She was constantly bringing the name of Collot Turlant into the conversation.

Jeannette shuddered. She wanted none of that. She wanted to live as Catherine and Margaret had. She vowed as she lay in her pallet that she would remain a virgin for then she might be chosen as Margaret and Catherine were.

There were more stories of the saints. The days and evenings passed too quickly, and in due course Jacquemin arrived to take her back to Domrémy.

Regretfully she rode slowly back. One day, she promised herself, I shall be among them.

The conviction had come to her. It was the first step in the direction she would go.

There was great excitement in Domrémy. Horsemen galloped to and fro on the roads but sometimes stopped to rest at the village.

Jeannette was ten years old, able to understand something of the terrible torment through which her country was passing.

She knew that the most wicked of all the Godons, the King of England, had made terms with the poor mad King of France and his wife the Bavarian Isabeau whom many people said was at the root of their troubles. Consequently the King’s daughter Katherine had become the wife of the wicked King, and that King was calling himself the King of France.

There was consternation everywhere. The skirmishes between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians were as nothing compared with this. This was disaster. This would change the entire face of the countryside.

‘How could the King do this?’ demanded Jeannette of her brothers. ‘How could the King take the Dauphin’s inheritance and give it to this Godon?’

‘Because he was forced to do it, of course,’ said knowledgeable Jacquemin. ‘You cannot think he would have done so otherwise.’

‘But why … why …?’

‘Because the Godons have more men and money … because we have a Queen who is a Jezebel and a King who is mad … and Frenchmen who fight against each other.’

Her brother Jean looked ashamed. Domrémy was for Armagnac and Greux for Burgundy and Jean had had many a scuffle with the boys of Greux on account of that loyalty. He did not know what it was about – except that Armagnacs were for Orléans and Greux for Burgundy and when they confronted each other they fought.

‘All Frenchmen should stand together,’ said Jeannette. ‘They would then have a better chance of driving the Godons away.’

‘What does a girl know about it?’ asked little Pierrelot.

‘I know that the Godons will be driven away,’ said Jeannette, ‘and that France will belong to the French once more.’

Jean grimaced at Jacquemin. Jeannette was in one of her moods again, he implied.

The troubles did not decrease because of the treaty the King of France had made with the King of England. There were still French towns who would not submit to the conqueror and fighting went on which made the Godons angry. They had won; they had beaten the French to their knees; they wanted an end to the war and when the mad King died their King Henry was to be crowned the King of France. They showed small mercy on the rebels.

The Duke of Burgundy was a traitor – even the Burgundians of Greux were finding it hard to make excuses for him – and because he hated the Armagnacs whom the King favoured he had become the ally of the Godons.

It was all very disturbing. Everyone knew that the Godons were the enemy but otherwise they could not be sure who was fighting whom.

There were frightening stories of what happened when the soldiers passed through villages. They took all the food; sometimes they set fire to the houses; they took the women and raped them, regarding them as the spoils of war no less than the food they could lay their hands on.

The people of Domrémy gathered about the house of Jacques d’Arc. He was a man not only of deep piety but of farsightedness. Just before the treaty which had given France to the Godons he had conceived an idea which some of them had thought a little foolhardy at the time and which they now saw was a stroke of brilliance.

When the Lord of Bourlémont had died without an heir he had left the small castle which stood on an island in the River Meuse to his niece Jeanne de Joinville. Mademoiselle de Joinville had married Henri d’Ogivillier who held a post in the King’s service and she had gone to live in Nancy, so the castle was uninhabited and she had decided to let it on lease, for an annual rent, to the highest bidder.

It would never have occurred to the people of Domrémy that they could rent the castle until Jacques pointed this out to them. The castle was an ideal place for defence, being built on the end of the island and bounded on three sides by the river. The fields of the island were included in the deal and these could be put to very profitable use. Cattle could be kept there; in fact a colony of people living there could be entirely self-supporting.

Jacques had talked to the villagers very earnestly. They must between them acquire the castle if at all possible. There were sporadic outbreaks of war, and they would continue for a long time since it was hardly likely that the French would submit to the intolerable English yoke. They knew what happened when a rough soldiery of either side passed through villages. People lost their possessions; they were left with nothing and no prospect before them but to roam the countryside as beggars. And the women, what of the women?

‘Will you not do everything within your power to protect your wives and daughters?’ he demanded.

It was this which made them more determined and when the women added their voices to those of the men it was decided that they must do everything they could to secure the use of the castle as a means of defence for the people of Domrémy.

Jacques and a few of his neighbours did the bidding and rather to the surprise of everyone secured the use of the Château de l’Ile for nine years. The fact was that few had wanted it, for not many were as far-sighted as Jacques d’Arc. They must pay fourteen livres a year plus six bushels of wheat and if this payment was kept up the whole of the island was theirs except of course the Chapel of Our Lady which had stood there for centuries and which was open to any.

The renting of the castle had been a success. The land was fertile and they made the most of it. Jacquemin, who by this time had married a girl in the village, went over there to live and Jeannette often rowed over to look after the cattle or to weed and hoe the fields.

But it had not been acquired, Jacques pointed out, merely to provide extra grazing land and a home for some of those who married and being members of large families found their houses overcrowded. No, the object of renting the castle had been for defence. Jacques had set about turning the castle into a fortress; in front of the castle – the only part which was not bounded by the river – he had moats dug and these were kept filled by the river; four other young men with their small families joined Jacquemin and it was the duty of these five families to keep the island ready in case it should be needed. The villagers crossed frequently and Jeannette loved the peace of the place and sought opportunities to go there to work in the fields.

There came a day when a traveller on the road stopped in Domrémy for the night and seated round the fire in the house of Jacques d’Arc he told the family and as many of the villagers who could crowd into the house that the King was dead and that some months before the wicked Godon King had died also.

‘Then,’ said Zabillet, ‘who is now the King of France?’

Jeannette said fiercely: ‘It is the Dauphin. He should be crowned King.’

There was silence and all looked at Jeannette because it was not fitting for young people to talk as their elders might, and in the company of strangers it was behaving with a forwardness which was frowned on in all well conducted households.

Jacques was about to deliver a reproof when Zabillet laid a hand on his arm. Zabillet loved this daughter dearly; she had had a strong feeling from the day of her birth that she was different from the others.

‘Jeannette is deeply moved,’ she now whispered to her husband. ‘Let her speak as she wishes.’

And for some reason he could not explain, the reproof died on Jacques’ lips.

Then Jeannette went on: ‘He will be crowned. He
shall
be crowned.’

The traveller said: ‘Nay, little maid, ’twill not be our Dauphin who is crowned. It is a little baby who lives in England. He is now the King of England and calls himself the King of France.’

‘Wicked men call him so,’ said Zabillet. ‘He is too young to be blamed for that.’

Jeannette’s outburst had been passed over and the traveller went on to tell them that the little boy, the son of their own Princess, would be brought to France to be crowned when he was a little older.

‘By that time,’ said Jacques, ‘perhaps God will have come to our aid.’

‘Yes,’ said Jeannette, ‘He will come. I know it in my heart.’

‘Bring some wine for our guest, Jeannette,’ said her mother. ‘He will be thirsty.’

As Jeannette went away to do her mother’s bidding there was certain exultation in her heart.

Times were growing worse. There were only brief periods of relief. A traveller coming one day told them that the Duke of Bedford, who had become Regent on the death of King Henry and whose ally the Duke of Burgundy had been, was now not on such good terms with Burgundy. It seemed that Bedford had a brother called the Duke of Gloucester who had deeply offended Burgundy.

‘Let us pray that this will bring the Duke’s loyalty back where it belongs,’ said Jacques. ‘But for this warring within our country we should not now be in this bitter position. If this quarrel brings Frenchmen together then it is God’s work.’

But God’s work, if it were, brought little relief. The next news was that the Duke of Bedford had married the sister of the Duke of Burgundy and this had strengthened the weakening alliance between them.

‘How can a noble French lady marry a Godon?’ asked Pierrelot. ‘They are not as we are. They have tails like monkeys.’

‘That is nonsense,’ Jeannette told him. ‘They have no tails. They are men and women as the French are. Their wickedness is in their souls which they have sold to the devil.’

‘And have all the French sold their souls to God?’ Pierrelot wanted to know.

‘Let us pray they will do so,’ said Jeannette.

Jeannette was growing more pious every day. They all noticed it. ‘It will pass,’ said Zabillet gravely. ‘But only in a measure I trust. My Jeannette is a good girl. Sometimes I think she is different from the rest of us.’

The struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians was as strong as ever. The Armagnacs had never forgiven the Burgundians for murdering Louis of Orléans and now the Burgundians were not going to forgive the Armagnacs for retaliating by murdering John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Duke Philip was determined to avenge his father. In the meantime so did he hate the Armagnacs that he was supporting the English against the very crown of France.

There was even conflict between the villages. Domrémy was staunchly for Armagnac and that meant the crown; but the village of Maxey on the other side of the river was staunchly Burgundian. When the boys of these villages met it would not be long before they were fighting each other. Jeannette often saw her brother come home bruised and bleeding and when she asked how he had come to be so would be told: ‘Oh, it was fighting against Burgundy.’