Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor

Author:Helen Castor [Castor, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 15th Century, France, History, Faith & Religion, Catholicism, Military & Fighting, Nonfiction, Executions, England/Great Britain
ISBN: 9780571284641
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

10

Fear of the fire

Joan was ill. She had been a prisoner for ten months. For the last two she had been under interrogation, first in the intimidating public theatre of Bishop Cauchon’s court, and then in the claustrophobic intimacy of her own cell. She had held her own with the boldness that was her watchword, but the pressure had been relentless, and her initial refusal to speak of her revelations – her voices and her sign – had proved impossible to sustain. The Armagnac theologians she had faced at Poitiers had been well disposed to her mission; they had satisfied themselves of the blamelessness of her life, and then they had put her to the test at Orléans. But Burgundian clerics would never be convinced by a sign that took the form of an Armagnac victory. As a result, she had been driven to tell them more than she wanted, to talk of angels, saints and the gift of a golden crown. And still they did not believe her.

She had last seen the bishop on 31 March, when he visited her cell with seven other theologians in an attempt to convince her to submit to the judgement of God’s Church on earth. She had said what she always did: she submitted to the Church, so long as it did not require her to reject the commands that came to her from God Himself. That she would not do for anything. And so they had departed, closing the door of her prison behind them. For more than two weeks, she had been left to contemplate the shackles in which she was bound. And now she was not just bone-weary, but sick.

She was certain, of course, that God’s help would come, but sometimes the waiting was hard. ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ she had told her judges, and she knew the proverb to be true. She had tried to escape from her first prison at Beaulieu, squeezing between the planks in the floor of her cell, until she was caught by a porter, and she had been so filled with anguish during her second incarceration at Beaurevoir – so intent on freedom, and so desperate not to become a prisoner of the English – that she had risked death by jumping from the tower. But it had been God’s will that she should live as a captive a while longer, so she had asked His forgiveness, and found comfort in the counsel of her voice – the voice, she had said, of St Catherine, the young and holy virgin who had resisted the interrogation of pagan scholars with eloquence and courage, and who, in statues and stained glass, always carried the sword of her own martyrdom. Joan had found her own holy sword at the altar in St Catherine’s church at Fierbois, but here in Rouen she had no weapons. Here, she was alone in an English fortress, guarded by men who ogled and touched, and jeered in a language she did not understand.

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