Joan of Arc (12 page)

The court got down to the day’s theme. Beaupère was soon questioning her about ‘the voice’. How did she react to it, what did it tell her, what had it said when she woke up? A look of defiance flashed across her face as she told Cauchon to be careful what he did, as she was sent by God and he put himself in great danger. Had the voice forbidden her to reply to all that she was asked? ‘I will not answer that, I shall not tell you everything I have been told about the king.’ She was sure, as she was sure of the Christian faith, that the voice came from God. Would it obey her? Only if God willed it. Had she seen a light when the voice came? Yes, the light comes with the voice, but she would not say if she saw anything else with the voice; and she had not promised to answer everything she was asked. She quoted the proverb, ‘Men are sometimes hanged for telling the truth.’

What must have annoyed the men facing her became clear when she was asked if she was in God’s grace. This was a trick question to see if she was presumptuous, but Joan answered with great astuteness: if she were not in God’s grace she would pray that God would put her there; if she was, may she be kept there; and if she were not, the voice would not come to her. She also irritated them because her voice sided with the king of France against the Burgundians. A line of questioning they could have developed, but did not, was that if the Church is universal, why should God prefer one group of people to another? The reason perhaps that this argument was not deployed is that her judges too had taken a political stance, so that a criticism of her support of ‘France for the French’ could be turned equally against their belief in France for the Anglo-Burgundians.

The court made its first clumsy attempts to prove she was a witch. She was vague about life in the fields and could not remember when she had helped with the animals. She had little to say on the so-called fairies’ tree or the fountain nearby. Sometimes she had made garlands for Our Lady of Domremy there, but she had never seen fairies there or anywhere else, nor did she trust the story that from the local wood would come a maid who would work miracles. She was not even superstitious. What made her singular was her insistence on wearing male attire.

During the fourth session, on Tuesday 27 February, the court tried to go more deeply into the question of the voices. She came round to the subject of St Catherine and St Margaret, of the crowns on their heads, of how she had been asked all this before at Poitiers – not a happy reference, as the theologians there had supported her king – and how they were easy to distinguish from one another. She had known them for seven years, but she would not tell them more, she had said it all before at Poitiers, and some revelations were for the King of France alone, not for them. She could not say if the saints were the same age, if they spoke at the same time, which appeared first, but she had been comforted by St Michael – yes, he had come first. Was it a long time since she had first heard him? She was speaking not of his voice but of the comfort he brought her, since she was about thirteen; and he had first come with many angels. She came to France only at God’s command. She had seen St Michael with her own eyes, but what he looked like she was not allowed to say, nor was she going to tell them what he had first said, though she had once told the king everything. She wished her questioner had a copy of the record made at Poitiers, she was not sure what she could reveal to him now, but she would not have come to France without permission. And she wore male costume only because commanded to do so.

At the moment when the topic changed, the records stop citing her own words. Her voices, the lawyers noted, had told her about the sword unearthed at Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois. She carried it continually from the time she had got it till she left St-Denis, after the assault on Paris. But she had not regarded it as a talisman, it had not been specially blessed, nor did it bring her better fortune and she did not know where it was. Besides she preferred her standard to her sword; and the painting on it was put there by God’s command.

The dialogue turned naturally to her military exploits. How many troops had she been given? Ten to twelve thousand, she thought. She was certain she would relieve Orléans, it had been revealed to her and she had told the king that she would. She had been wounded but she was comforted by St Margaret and the wound healed within a fortnight; she knew she would be wounded. She was questioned over her behaviour at Jargeau – at this point the questioning was broken off until later in the week.

On 1 March, at the start of the fifth session, Joan put her hands on the holy gospels and said: ‘Of what I know concerning the trial I will willingly tell the truth, and will tell altogether as much as if I were before the pope of Rome.’ Which pope, they asked? ‘Are there two?’ she countered. The Count of Armagnac had asked her which of the three sovereign pontiffs to obey, and she had said she would give him an answer when she was in Paris, or anywhere where she was at rest. She thought she should obey the pope in Rome.

Did she put the names of Jesus and Mary with a cross in her letters? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The court quoted from her correspondence with the count and also with Bedford and the King (Henry). She said, where one letter said ‘Surrender to the Maid’ it should say, ‘Surrender to the King’. She, not any lord, had dictated the letters, she said, and within seven years the English would lose a greater stake than they had done at Orléans, for they would lose everything in France. (As so often before, she was over-optimistic: the English did indeed lose Paris, but little else for fifteen years.) She wished it would all happen by St John’s day, in other words by midsummer. Perhaps, by Martinmas (in November), ‘it might be that the English would be overthrown’.

Over and over again she was questioned about her voices, how often they talked with her, what they looked like, what language they spoke (why would St Margaret speak English, if she is not on the English side?). The questions moved to her rings; were they in some way magical? Next, she would not tell them what promises the voices had made, except that the king would regain his kingdom and they would take her to Paradise. She would not say if they would release her from prison, nor what was for the ears of the King of France only. She had nothing to say about a mandrake – they were back to the subject of superstition – and robustly rebuked them for thinking St Michael was naked. Not much on sexual fantasies, then, not even much to savour when they moved the discussion from saintly crowns to the king’s crown at the coronation. Throughout this session a record of her words was preserved.

In the sixth session, on Saturday 3 March, she was pressed to speak about the bodies of her saints. She would not be drawn, she would not incriminate herself; she knew she would be delivered, but not how or when. Why had people at Poitiers not pressed her on the matter of her dress? They had only asked when she changed, to which the answer was at Vaucouleurs. Had her voices ordered it, had the queen asked her about it, had the Demoiselle of Luxembourg and the Lady of Beaurevoir offered her a woman’s dress, or the cloth to make one, and told her to wear it – she had replied God had given her permission, it was not yet time. She said she should obey God in this matter. She would not say who had told her to wear men’s clothes.

She was questioned about the pennons on her standard. Had holy water been thrown on them? Had any of her companions-at-arms written on their pennons the names Jhesus Maria? Had she worn something round at the back of her helmet before Jargeau? Had she known brother Richard? How had he greeted her? Had she seen pictures of herself in circulation? Yes, at Arras. The court was pressing her to admit to some superstitious practice or to show pleasure in being considered a saint. Did her own party think she was sent from God? Had they kissed her hands and feet? Had she been a godmother? Had women touched her hand and her rings? Who had caught butterflies in her standard? Had she received the sacraments in men’s clothes? Why had she taken the Bishop of Senlis’s horse? How old was the child she restored to life in Lagny? Had she seen Catherine de La Rochelle, a woman who had turned out to be a fraud? – they were trying to show that she was a fraud too.

At Beaurevoir, during her four-month stay, she had jumped, though her voices had forbidden her to do so. She would rather commend her soul to God than fall into the hands of the English. Had she not blasphemed the name of God? Never: it was not her custom to swear. At Soissons she had never said she would have the commander drawn and quartered.

The first part of the public sessions finished in the first ten days of March. They had been too animated, with too many people talking at once, so the judges and assessors decided to continue the preliminaries without any interruption and make it easier for the theologians to study Joan’s answers. To modern observers, a trial in secret session smacks of a denial of human rights, but in the fifteenth century there was nothing strange in the procedure, partly because an inquisitorial trial was then the most open available; and, besides, nobody talked about human rights.

Jean de La Fontaine was charged to make legal inquiries; and when the hearings resumed in prison on 10 March, he was Joan’s interrogator. After asking her about her capture and the voice’s reaction to it, he moved on to ask about her banner, her shield and her coat of arms, her horses, her wealth. What she had was her king’s own money, given so that she could fight. What was the sign she gave the king? It is with the king’s treasure, and she would not say what it was. An angel had borne it to her king and after she left more than 300 had seen it.

On Monday 12 March the Dominican Brother Jean Lemaître, the Inquisitor’s vicar, was summoned, together with another Dominican, Brother Ysambard de La Pierre; the Inquisitor himself, Jean Graverent, had excused himself. In prison on the same day, Joan was brought before Jean de La Fontaine, who went straight back to the angel that brought the sign to her king. ‘He told the king to set me to work straightaway to free the country.’ By this time it must have been dawning on her that there was an intellectual barrier between her and her judges: she was sure she had experienced a series of private revelations, while they were sure she had not. This explains the literalistic line of the questions: had she received letters from St Michael? ‘Give me a week and I shall give you an answer,’ she replied. She did not help her cause by her lapses into hyperbole, claiming this time that in three years with the help of her saints she would bring the Duke of Orléans back to France.

By Tuesday 13 March Jean d’Estivet had been made Prosecutor and Jean Massieu ordered to carry out Cauchon’s citations and summonses. Lemaître and Cauchon continued with their examination. Joan refused to be drawn to speak about the sign of the crown, as this would mean perjuring herself, but she did say that Charles would have the whole kingdom. Had she spoken to St Catherine? Yes, and she was told to answer boldly. The crown she had seen at Chinon and at Reims meant that Charles would rule all France. It had been borne by an angel, which she thought the Archbishop of Reims, the lords d’Alençon, de La Trémoïlle and Charles de Bourbon had seen, while many churchmen and others had seen the crown but not the angel. The judges pressed her further on the crown and the angel; the clergy, she said, knew about it by their learning. Was this a crack at the clergy ranged before her? She was fearless, but also incapable of irony.

On Wednesday 14 March, the Inquisitor’s vicar appointed a notary, Nicolas Taquel, a priest of the diocese of Rouen. Joan’s recent behaviour was scrutinised. Why had she jumped from the tower at Beaurevoir? She had heard that the people of Compiègne, all of them, were to be put to fire and to the sword, and she would rather die than live after such a destruction of good people. That was one reason why she jumped: the other was that she knew she had been sold to the English, and she would have died rather than fall into the hands of her enemies the English. Had the leap been made at the counsel of her voices? St Catherine told her almost every day not to jump, and God would help her, and the people of Compiègne too. As she leaped she commended herself to God. She hoped that by the leap she would escape from being given to the English. She added touchingly that because of the noise of the prison and the tumult made by her guards she did not always understand her voice, yet every day it came to her. She asked for freedom for France and herself.

She also asked for the salvation of her soul. She was still bright enough to ask for a copy of the questions and of her replies, so that she might give it to the people at Paris if she went there. Her judges must watch out; she would be helped. This led them to touch on her apparent presumption: was she sure she would be saved?

That same Wednesday afternoon in the prison the inquisitors came back to the same subject. She was sure she would be saved if she kept her word to God and guarded her virginity. She was not aware of any mortal sin, but was keen to go to confession as much as possible. They pressed her further: had she committed a mortal sin by taking a man at ransom and then putting him to death, by attacking Paris on a feast day, by wearing men’s clothes, by taking a horse belonging to the Bishop of Senlis? On the last point she was scornful: the horse was no good for fighting.

On the following day, still in prison, Joan was ‘charitably exhorted, admonished, and required’ to defer to any decision by ‘Our Holy Mother the Church’, if she had done anything contrary to our faith. The court explained the distinction between the Church Triumphant, the Church in heaven, and the Church Militant, the Church on earth, and she was told to submit to the Church’s decision whatever it was. She temporised: ‘I will not give you any further answer for the present.’ This was to be the crux of her debate with her judges. They expected her to accept whatever they decided. She could not see how what God told her in one way, by her voices, could conflict with what she learnt in another way, by the Church’s teaching.

They asked her about her attempt to escape from the castle of Beaulieu; she would try to escape from anywhere. She admitted that so far her voices had not given her permission to escape from prison, but, if the door was open, that would mean God allowed her to do so. ‘
Aide toy, Dieu te aidera
.’