Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc by David Elliott

Author:David Elliott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Published: 2019-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

FTER dinner, I went to the King, who was at the Castle. When I went to the room where he was I recognized him among many others by the counsel of my Voice, which revealed him to me. I told him I wished to go and make war on the English.

* * *

Joan

Trial of Condemnation

The Castle at Chinon

Only

a child trapped

in the thrall of palace

rooms that wind and sprawl—each

hung with gaudy tapestries whose func-

tion is to warm and please the noble folk

when winter’s squall explodes against the

tower wall and muffles the pathetic call of

courtiers begging on their knees—only a

child could not attend the pleading waul,

the pain, the misery, the pall, that radiate

and rise from these: the blood spills and

the treacheries that fester in these lurid

halls—only a child. Where kings reside,

the sleeping dust on gilded frames knows

not to trust anything a king might say. A

promise that he makes today, though

he proclaims it with robust sincerity, is

worthless. Just and wise men know that

greed and lust, deceit and treason, often

play where kings reside a game in which

the drag and thrust of power that is won

and lost leaves innocence to die, decay. It

is a virtue to betray where kings reside.

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