Hunh. All girls are like that at her age. Always crazy about something. First it’s dolls. Then it’s religion. Or maybe horses. And then it’s boys.
Her first time
You can hear many things if you open your ears; you can feel many things if you open your skin; if you lie very still among the grasses of the field and wait, you may feel the earth twitch like the hide of a sleeping animal; if you watch the clouds long enough, you can feel the pressure of things unseen, the way an insect pauses, waving its feelers, sensing the shadow of a child’s foot poised above it.
I have been waiting for this since I was born. When it comes I am not afraid.
Oh, in truth I am afraid. But I am ready.
In the plainest language: I see a bright light. I hear a voice.
I fall to my knees. I will do whatever it asks. I will go anywhere, do anything.
And what does the voice say?
Be a good girl.
What?
Be a good girl, Jeanne. Go to church.
The Pitch
I’ve got an idea, Bob.
Okay, Diane, let’s hear it. Not another athlete-triumphing-over-adversity profile, is it?
Better than that. I heard about this girl. Lives way out in the sticks, in some French backwater called Domrémy. Named Jeanne. Joan, you’d say in English. Says she hears voices. Saints and angels talking to her. Messages from God.
Go on.
Now she says they’re telling her to drive the English out of France. They’re telling her to get Charles VII crowned as king.
And?
She’s only seventeen. A little peasant girl from the boondocks talks to God and aims to start a war. Isn’t that enough of a story? She calls herself the Virgin. That’s her shtick. She’s relying on this widely held prophecy that France will be restored by a virgin.
A real virgin? I want that verified. Can you do that?
What? Um, absolutely.
Vow of chastity. I love it. Go out there. Shoot the scenery. Interview her family, friends, everybody. Take a crew. How many people do you need?
As many as you can spare.
Take Burt. Karleen. And the intern, what’s his name?
But Burt’s from craft services! And Karleen? She’s from makeup.
So?
This is supposed to be a documentary.
Sometimes the truth needs a little touching up. You can always make the truth a little truer.
What she sees when she sees
what she sees
The first one to come is Saint Michael, he who speaks with the tongue of angels and once led the armies of Heaven in battle against the Devil. Then others join him, Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine. Always accompanied by bright light. They come only when I am alone. I am twelve years old the first time. They come almost every day. They come when I hear the church bells.
They tell me to be a good girl. For five years they tell me this.
Finally one day they come to me and say: God has a mission for you.
I say: I am ready.
The intern
I’m in an editing suite working on this naked-skateboarding video thing I’m doing for a friend when Diane sticks her head in and I think she’s going to yell at me because I’m not supposed to be in there but instead of yelling she says, hey, do you still have that friend who makes fake IDs and passports and stuff? and I say yeah and she says see if he can put together some press credentials, something that looks really official, something that’ll get us in anywhere, and I mean anywhere, anytime, can he do that? and I say sure and she says thanks babe you’re the best and I say hey wait did you say us? and she says oh, yeah, didn’t I tell you, you’re coming too.
First contact with subject
I see a bright light. I hear a voice. I fall to my knees and await instructions.
Figures come near. One holds the light in its hand. Which saints are these? New ones I’ve never seen before.
A voice says, Good, now get closer, closer, get riiight up in her faaaaace—now cut.
This light is not the usual heavenly light. It scorches my eyes. Then it stops but my eyes are dazzled, I can see only splintered black shapes like shattered crows.
My eyes clear, but the figures are still black. Their clothes are wrong—where are the white robes and crowns? They wear black tight garments and hold in their hands machines, sharp glittery metal machines that look like weapons. I wonder if God has sent them to teach me the ways of war.
Are you Joan? Jeanne? says one. Jeanne d’Arc?
They know my name.
Great to meet you, Joan, says another. It is a woman, in men’s clothes. I’ve never seen such a thing before, though I can see how it could be a good idea in certain circumstances. She says, Before we get started, I wondered if I could get you to sign this little release form…
She holds out a page covered in tiny square letters.
I say, I cannot read or write.
They look at each other. It is some kind of test. I close my eyes and pray to God for guidance. I open my eyes and they are still standing there shifting their feet like cows with full udders.
I can sign with an X, I offer.
That’s fine then, the woman says. Right here, at the bottom.
I do. All four sigh with relief when I finish.
I am beginning to suspect they are not visions, merely strangers from very far away. Then again, they may be saints or angels in disguise.
What do you want me to do? I say.
Well, Joan, the woman says, we want to record your story. We want to follow you on the journey you’re about to take.
Now I understand. They’re my first volunteers, the first seeds of my future army. I look them over. Where are the sturdy French soldiers I imagined leading? These people have the unkempt hair and lurching air of madmen.
We must go to Charles VII and win his approval, I say, so that I may fight on his behalf. And then we will reclaim the city of Orléans from the English.
Of course, of course, the woman says, scraping manure off her shoe. But first would you mind showing us around your hometown?
Burt shoots establishing shots
I can see that Diane’s practically drooling. This girl Joan/Jeanne is the documentary subject she’s been dreaming of for years. Prominent cheekbones and those big light-catching eyes—she’s photogenic as hell.
Is that the only dress you have? Diane asks her.
Yes.
Good, Diane says. I know what she’s thinking—how striking the red looks against the grays of the gulchy countryside.
I didn’t think we should have snuck up on her like we did. But she almost seemed to be expecting us.
Hurry up, Burt! Diane yells. Get a shot of this.
They’re waiting beside the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, a tree out of a storybook, bulbous and twisted, branches the size of ordinary tree trunks drooping to the ground. I hear the cries of children hidden in the leaves.
What is this? Diane breathes.
People call it the Fairy Tree, Jeanne says. I used to come here as a little girl. We all did. Once a year we’d come and eat our bread and sing and dance.
Stand in front of it, Diane says. Right here.
Why?
It’ll make an amazing shot. You, the tree, the setting sun, those kids dancing around singing like maniacs. Come on, Joanie. It’s the magic hour. This light won’t last much longer.
But it’s a children’s game.
Diane says, Go on. Saint Michael said you should.
The girl buys it. She stands in front of the tree. The shot is amazing. The sun has just barely disappeared, and the hillside is bleeding red up into the sky. The tree looks like it’s on fire. The girl is flaming, aglow.
Just act natural, Diane says. Act like we’re invisible.
Karleen the makeup girl, on Jeanne
She has good skin despite all the time she’s spent outdoors. Years of sun and wind, killer combination. Tight pores, a nice fresh com
plexion. I keep telling her she won’t age well unless she starts using a product with SPF, but she doesn’t seem to care. It’s always the ones with perfect skin who don’t bother to take care of it. The locals here talk about a clear and unbesmirched brow indicating moral purity, but I still have to prune her eyebrows now and then.
I overhear people talking about her new “radiance,” her “glow.” They attribute it to her closeness to God or whatever. You know what I attribute it to? Peachy Keen Klean translucent dusting powder judiciously applied, thank you very much.
What J’s mother thinks
My Jeanne? Special? Gifted? Of course I think she’s special. I’ve known it since the day she was born. She was the most beautiful baby in the world. And she’s grown into a beautiful, intelligent girl, modest and devout. She will accomplish anything she sets her mind to. But of course I think this. I’m her mother, after all.
What J’s father thinks
Now that she’s going off to drive out the English and crown Charles VII, who’s going to look after the cows?
Karleen on hair
So we head out, first to her cousin’s place, and then she wants to go to the local lord to get him to escort her to this Charles VII guy, who must be some kind of incredible dreamboat the way she keeps talking about him.
Her cousin gives her some men’s clothes, a tunic and breeches and boots. She says it’s necessary because she will be traveling among men now and must protect herself. But when Diane sees her she freaks out and is all like, Joan, what are you doing, the red dress is so perfect.
I look at the others and I’m like, What’s the big whoop about her virginity, anyway?
It’s the source of her superpowers, says the intern. Like Samson’s hair.
Hey, Karleen, Diane says to me, could you at least pretty her up a bit? If the clothes have to stay, we can at least make her a bit more feminine.
So I sit Jeanne down and work on her face a bit, but she keeps pushing my hands away, saying vanity’s a sin.
When I’m done I step back and we all study her.
It’s not enough. Diane walks away, frowning.
Maybe if I do something with her hair…I’ll just trim it to frame her face…
I start cutting.
It’s not going so well. I cut and cut. Each snip of the scissors is louder than the last. Maybe my mirror’s hanging crooked. Now the left side is uneven, now the right. The scissors make a crunching sound as they chew through the thicket.
I’m a makeup person, for God’s sake, not a hair person. You can’t expect…
I tell Burt to quick run get a bowl from the craft table. We stick it on her head.
There’s no way I can fuck this up, right? Just cut along the edge of the bowl…
I fuck it up.
You try, I tell Burt. Years of peeling grapes and pinching phyllo have put dexterity into his fat fingers. The hair scraps make a black ring around her, like the charred circle left on the ground when you shoot off a bottle rocket.
I didn’t realize before, but now that it’s gone it’s obvious that her hair was her one true beauty. Now her features stick out bare and cold as a statue’s.
Jeanne watches the bits of hair fall, the last vestiges of her vanity gone.
Jeanne, distracted
I need the counsel of my voices. But the voices will only come to me when I am alone, and I am seldom alone anymore. There are always men coming to meet me. And then there is this woman, Diane, who follows me everywhere asking strange unceasing questions. More than anything she wants to meet the voices. To film them.
I still don’t understand film. Anyway, they will never come when she is near.
The intern discovers points and laces
She’s getting fans now, groupies who follow her everywhere, and as she speaks to them in her low husky voice they go quiet in order to hear, then repeat her words like they’re riddles or prayers. Jean de Metz was the first but now she has a whole entourage, like that duke of Alençon. Man, I can’t stand him, with his long curly hair flowing over his beefy shoulders and his big noble chin. You should see the fuss she makes over that horse he gave her, that knock-kneed flea-bitten thing, and besides, he’s married.
I go look for Jeanne and find her by the stream, fastening up her clothes, her hair wet; she’s been washing herself and I’m about five seconds too late. She smiles at me not like a woman smiles at a man but like a general does at the rawest recruit, and it’s all I can do not to salute.
What are those? I say, pointing at the flaps on her clothes.
Points and laces, she says. For my own protection.
The laces are leather thongs threaded through eyelets set in flaps cut into the edges of her clothes; they stitch her tunic to her breeches all the way around the waist. How long would it take to undo them, one by one?
A documentarian must maintain an objective distance, at all costs. I keep telling myself that.
Karleen observes party etiquette
So finally we get to where this Charles VII guy is hanging out, and they take us to this big stone hall crowded with people all dressed in the kind of threads you’d see in a second-rate wardrobe department. You know, gold brocade, embroidery, but dirt on the cuffs and everybody with grimy fingernails. They’re all gawking to get a look at this Jeanne they’ve heard about; some think she’s holy and some say she’s a witch and they’re afraid to meet her eyes, but she marches right in cool as a cucumber. At the far end the people are clustered deferentially around this man with copper hair and rings on his fingers, he’s wearing the fanciest of outfits, and I’m thinking, well, I guess she was right to gush over him, Charles is a pretty good-looking guy.
But Jeanne marches right past him, right over to this little rat-faced man in the corner who’s got food caught in his beard.
My king, she says, and goes down on one knee.
You can hear everybody gasp. The intern groans. There’s this awkward silence. It’s really embarrassing.
I am not your king, the man says, and everybody tries to steer her over to the other guy. She won’t budge.
You are my king, Jeanne insists. God has sent me to you.
It’s getting very tense in here; I’m looking for the exits, thinking, hey, don’t look at me, I’m just the makeup girl, I don’t even know her.
And then the tension breaks up into astonishment and rejoicing, because the little rat-faced man in the corner is Charles VII and the other guy is a decoy. It was all a test, some elaborate party trick.
The intern is glaring at the knights and noblemen gathered admiringly around Jeanne, packed so tight their swords are clanging into each other.
Charles VII looks disappointed. Maybe I’m wrong, but he doesn’t seem very excited about the idea of being king. He seems like he’s perfectly happy hanging out here with his wife and mistresses and would rather not go through all the fuss and bother of ruling the country.
Private conversation: Charles and advisors
Do you trust her, Charles?
She can read my very thoughts. Is she sent by God, or by the Devil? Saint or witch? Is she a virgin, as she claims? I can’t decide.
You’re always so indecisive, Charles.
No I’m not! Am I?
We’ll send her to Poitiers.
Yes, the scholars there will examine her and give us a definitive answer.
The intern’s encounter with Yolande
We’re here in Poitiers waiting around. Jeanne’s shut up in a room being interrogated day after day about her visions, her intentions, is she good, is she evil, blah blah blah. Then one day Diane yells for me and says, What are all those women doing out there?
I go take a peek, and sure enough, a bunch of noblewomen have assembled in the main hall, sailing around in their trailing dresses, buzzing like bees. It’s Yolande and her pals and ladies-in-waiting, Yolande, the mother-in-law of Charles VII, Yolande d’Aragon, the Queen of Four Kingdoms, Yolande with a drop perpetually hanging at the tip of her lo
ng nose and a lady-in-waiting perpetually hopping forward to blot it with a hanky, Yolande with her headdress shaped like an enormous mushroom draped in veils. Yolande scares me almost as much as Diane does.
Jeanne walks in, and they gather around and take her somewhere and Diane hisses at me to grab a camera and follow them and I whisper no, they’ll notice me, clearly it’s some kind of girl thing, why don’t you find Karleen, and Diane says there’s no time, here, put this on. What is it? Jeanne’s red dress. How did you get this? Never mind how; put it on.
I put it on. It smells like her. Two spots at the knees are worn thin from her kneeling.
I follow the women up stone steps, down stone passages, up to a dark room high in a tower bare except for a table, and the women all reach into the folds of their dresses and pull out metal instruments, I don’t know what for, they’re going to knit, maybe, or cook something. Oh, women. Now they are spreading a cloth on the table, now Jeanne is lying down upon it and they are ringing her body with candles, circling her, bending over her with their utensils in their hands, what are they doing? They’re fixing to eat her! Without even cooking her first! These people are barbaric!
Stop, stop it! I shout. They all turn and stare. Jeanne sits up.
They kick me out but I can hear their voices through the door.
When they’re done I go tell Diane, Yup, she’s a virgin all right, she passed the test with flying colors.
Diane grabs my shoulders and screams, But did you get it on film?
Burt says, For God’s sake, Diane, what kind of film are we making?
Jeanne’s minor miracle
Jeanne finally gets the thumbs-up. They’ve decided she’s one of the good guys. Time to suit up and go seize Orléans. Men are streaming in from all over the country, eager to join her.
Jeanne says, Go to Fierbois, to the Church of Saint Catherine there, and bring me the sword buried behind the altar.
No one knows what she’s talking about, but they go to the Church of Saint Catherine at Fierbois and dig behind the altar and lo and behold, they uncover a sword, ancient and covered with rust. At the merest touch, the rust flakes away and the sword shines as if newly forged.
They bring it to her, marveling.
The intern prepares for battle
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