The Last Days of Jeanne d'Arc

by Ali Alizadeh

  go forth, my sister

  be brave

  defeat the unjust, end their horror

  But what about all my men who shall die? I’m so angry, Sister, that the king won’t let me join the vanguard. If brave Frenchmen are to die because of me, then I wish to die with them.

  your days

  will end

  only when

  you’ve beaten the English

  when

  you’ve taken your noble king

  to the cathedral of Reims

  when you’ve given him, Jeanne

  his crown

  when you’ve performed God’s desire

  and when at long last,

  Jeanne

  you have met her

  the woman

  with eyes of azure, with hair

  burning

  with the flush of flames

  Flames, Sister? I’m frightened about how this will end, about who I am. What if I’m not only fighting for peace and liberty? What if God hates my desires? What if love is a terrible sin?

  She confesses to her priest, refuses breakfast. She’s resigned to Captain La Hire leading the charge of fifteen hundred armoured knights. Begrudgingly. In return, La Hire has promised the Maid to restrain from swearing in her presence, and to quell his passion for gambling, drinking, whoring and killing prisoners. A young apprehensive knight, before leaving with the vanguard, asks the Holy Maid for her blessing. He knows he will most probably be dead in a few hours. Jeanne, donning her chain-mail tunic to prepare to take her position in the rearguard, avoids his eyes.

  Today France will win her greatest victory. The English won’t be able to hide from us. We’ll catch them, even if they grow wings and fly and hang from the clouds.

  Trumpets blast, hundreds of horsemen commence the deadly chase. The Battle of Patay has begun. French scouts have no difficulty picking the trail of the English through the forest. Behind them, knights in shimmering suits of metal, colourful pennons and banners, emblazoned with golden crosses, doves, crowns, fleurs-delys, chevaliers upon their best horses.

  Midday

  Have they lost the trail of the English? Captain La Hire motions for the cavalry to halt. Where are the damn dogs? Nothing but a level field of grass and low shrubs. He swears, sends forth a small party of scouts for reconnaissance. They scour the area and find nothing but a lone stag. No time for hunting, but the animal has been alarmed. It jumps over a hedge, and one of the scouts reaches for the crossbow hanging from his saddle. Why waste good food. He’s preparing to insert a bolt. But the horned prey has suddenly disappeared. Where the fuck did it go?! His comrades, equally flummoxed. And then they hear an outburst of human sounds. A cacophony of joyful voices. Spoken English. Huzzah! Look, Sir John, God has sent us a tasty gift! French sentries are shocked, quickly dismount, crawl on their chests towards the source of the noise. They see – concealed behind a cluster of clumsily assembled thickets – a natural dip in the land. A hollow, absolutely imperceptible from a distance. And at the bottom of the ravine: countless men in red tunics, sharpening branches of trees. They are preparing the longbow formation. They have not strung their bows yet. Many are not wearing helmets. Their cannons are not positioned for combat. The English are still setting up their fatal trap.

  French scouts hurry back to their horses, gallop back to the vanguard. They’ve found the enemy, much, much closer than anticipated. Captain La Hire’s eyes almost bulge, he nods. His knights couch their lances, unsheathe their swords, tighten their grips on the handles of spiked clubs and battleaxes, and spur their horses. With fury. With their very good spurs. They will not wait for the main body or for the rearguard. The Maid has led them to this battle, and they must attack without her. Before the enemy, the enemy that has invaded and brutalised their land for more than one hundred years, before the English have built their ghastly harrow formation of longbows. The earth does rattle. The horizon is indeed swarming with a mass of galloping steel-coated fighters, their horses understand the madness and urgency of their riders. Their hooves decimate whatever lies on the plain and the shrieks of the French bugles leave no doubt in the minds of the startled Englishmen about the source of the sudden tremor in the earth beneath their feet.

  Ruined Englishmen. They have no time to assemble their lethal longbow formation. No time to implement their superior military technology. The Witch of France has destined them to annihilation. They fumble with weapons, try to climb out of the hollow, many are already on their knees, praying. May God have mercy upon their flimsy souls. And the flood of French horsemen slams into the bodies of the English. And speeding, accelerated blades meet human flesh. Heads, limbs fly, fountains of red, such harrowing cries of misery, of death. Hunks of flesh float in puddles of blood. English soldiers are crushed under the French horses’ hooves. Future military historians generally agree: the Battle of Patay is less of a classic pitched battle than a bloodbath. Within a few hours, the English army in France has been eliminated. Talbot, the English Achilles, with no time to put on his spurs before mounting his horse, captured. Fastolf has escaped to Paris, by himself, will soon be expelled from the chivalric Order of the Garter, publicly disgraced for England’s worst defeat in the Hundred Years’ War. As for the ordinary English soldiers, commoners of low birth shipped out to the countries of others to die and fester in mass graves for the splendour of Mother England: most are lifeless, fodder for wolves and vultures on the field, some have been lucky to be captured. The remnants of England’s once mighty army in France scatter in the countryside, die of wounds or starvation, some make it back to Paris and Normandy. The French have only lost between five and twenty men today – the English, over two thousand.

  5

  I know I told you about that day.

  Despite all that she has seen in her previous combats, Jeanne the Maid, the champion of France, is not prepared for what lies before her eyes. The field of the Battle of Patay. Tens and hundreds and thousands of English corpses strewn amid grass and barley as far as the eye can see. And she does not wish to be weak, to show remorse for the deaths of her deadly enemies. These violators, who have terrorised the peasants and bombarded the cities for almost a hundred years. But why do the captains never listen to her? They take so few prisoners. Now that they are winning the war and the English are being expelled from the most Christian kingdom, must the French behave like the bloodthirsty aggressors?

  I remember telling you about what happened, Piéronne.

  The Maid has handed her standard to her squire and has dismounted her horse. She lifts back the visor of her helmet and hopes that her eyes are not reddened with tears. She steps over a dead Englishman whose stomach has been spilled. She diverts her eyes from his moist innards. I wanted to end the war. I did not want to cause massacres. And she sees a person run towards her, a young man in the red surcoat of the English. He is disarmed and in great fear for his life. He is frail. He throws himself on the ground near Jeanne when she tells him to stop and surrender. You said it was my female voice that made him surrender to me. His believing that a woman would be more merciful than men.

  But when she stands over him and he sees her face, the breathless youth recognises the Maid. He uttered a word in his tongue similar to our sorceress. Yet another Englishman deceived by the English regent’s lies, made to see the Holy Maid as a witch. I wanted him to know that he was safe now, as my prisoner of war.

  Not a sorceress. A commander.

  He recoils, utterly horrified by her. Jeanne extends a hand but he withdraws. He rises to his feet and begins to run again. And then she feels the ground quiver as she sees one of her captains, the loutish La Hire, charge towards them on a galloping horse. The silver glow of his armour is tinged with red. He shouts joyfully, his sword drawn and directed at the fleeing Englishman.

  Dog! Where to, you fucking dog?

  The Maid orders La Hire to halt as loudly as she can but her command is ignored. He rides past his target with furious speed. Jeanne sees the gl
int of his sword flash over the Englishman’s head. A burst of blood. La Hire laughs and rides away. Jeanne sees that the collapsed victim is wriggling and moaning. She makes haste towards him. She kneels and sees that his head has been cut open and a dark red matter of membrane and foam oozes over his face. I breathed deeply and held his hands. His eyes are roving and his mouth is moving soundlessly.

  Confess, man. Your sins.

  But he dies, in a state of dread and darkness. He has had no chance to relieve his soul of the burden of an evil life. She strokes his hands until they are motionless, and makes no more attempt to hide her tears. And I cried again when I related this to you, and you stroked my hands, you relieved me of my own burden. But this was before we met. On this day she only has her confessor Brother Pasquerel, who listens to her and watches her weep behind a tree and gives her his blessings. She offers prayers for the souls of her own dead, and the souls of so many dead enemies.

  Irrespective of the tendentious interpretations of future experts, it should be known that Jeanne the Maid is not religious in the same manner as monks or nuns or other medieval mystics. Yes, she believes in salvation, and although theologians and lawyers will accuse her of heresy and disobedience during her Trial of Condemnation, she believes that her Voices speak to her to save her. Is she naïve? Does she understand God? Can one not believe in Heaven and yet doubt the clergy? The twisted bishops and priests who will be conniving to send her to the fire will enlighten her that there are two churches, Church Triumphant and Church Militant. But why can’t there be one, she will wonder. And I wonder why it was a sin for us to be in love, Piéronne.

  And she has barely dried her eyes amid the bodies of the butchered English when she receives a herald who informs her that King Charles VII of France – soon to assume the fitting sobriquet, the Victorious – wishes to see her and the other French captains immediately. They ride to the place of Gien where the king has been stationed. She is still shaken but rides calmly across the long stone bridge over the Loire and walks up the steps of the town’s castle ahead of the others. She takes off her helmet upon entering the audience hall and marches towards the king. He is standing by an empty fireplace, staring at the blackened wall within the hearth. He turns, smiles and motions for the Maid to approach him.

  Our dear Jeanne. No, do not kneel. What extraordinary news. The main body of the English adversary has been decimated. France’s greatest victory in a century.

  Jeanne does not speak.

  We should take part in a combat ourselves sometime, to witness your miraculous effect on our men.

  He then stops smiling and lowers his voice so that the other knights, standing apart from them around a table decked with carafes of wine and trays of meat, cannot hear their discourse.

  But I do wish, Jeanne, that God had also revealed the whereabouts of a great secret treasure or suchlike to you. You have no idea how much feeding and arming our men and paying the mercenaries is costing me. I am so exercised by being indebted to my wife’s officious mother. Say, did you take many noble prisoners that could be ransomed for a high price?

  Jeanne shakes her head.

  Your captains, gentle crown prince, do not take many prisoners.

  He grimaces.

  Damn rogues. But why do you insist on calling me crown prince, Jeanne? You must refer to me as the king, you understand.

  Your Majesty is not a king in the eyes of ordinary people until he has been consecrated in the Cathedral of Reims.

  Indeed. And we are working towards that end but, as you know, the road to Reims is long, and the towns on the way are loyal to the Duke of Burgundy and the English. How am I to feed and pay an entire army without the townspeople’s support?

  I take no account of your finances, noble crown prince. We shall make our way to Reims and God will see to our success. The people will assist us.

  One of the captains – it was Duke d’Alençon, if Jeanne remembers it well – has eavesdropped on their conversation and he proposes that they next attack Normandy. Jeanne believes that all he and the other men want is more violence. She says that d’Alençon and others can do as they please, but she shall lead the king – and she did refer to him as that – to Reims so that he may be crowned as true ruler, so that the English are forced to abandon their claim to France and end the war. Constable Richemont laughs.

  Indeed, virtuous Maid? And then you will go back to your idyllic village to herd goats, far from the unpleasant business of war? We noble knights shan’t rest for as long there’s a living English soul on French soil.

  I’m not a killer, dear constable.

  So why are you here? Don’t you miss your adorable goats?

  The king and Duke d’Alençon are clearly displeased with this remark but they do not defend her. Jeanne is enraged. I thought d’Alençon was my comrade. She refuses to lodge in the castle with men of noble birth who have so little respect for her, a common woman. She and her entourage set up tents in the fields outside of the town and she spends the night thinking, despite herself, about the constable’s question. Why has she come all this way into France, to be exposed to so much danger and terror, so far away from her native village? Is it only the apocryphal prophecy about the warrior maiden of Lorraine? I wanted to end England’s cruelty, and bring happiness to our land. And there was my other yearning. My desires, Piéronne. Your eyes, my love, and the texture of your cheeks. The unbelievable softness of your skin.

  She twice awakens Brother Pasquerel, who is sleeping with the other men in the tent next to hers, and pleads that he hear her confess what she cannot tell him openly. She tells him about the wrath that possessed her heart when she argued with the noblemen. She then bemoans her vanity for purchasing a fine cloak of dyed wool with soft cotton lining from a tailor in the town. The confessor yawns.

  A little luxury does not amount to the vice of pride.

  Brother, the mantle was fashioned for men. Does the Bible not forbid us women from wearing men’s attire?

  Well, correct me if I’m mistaken, mademoiselle, but is it not the case that you appear as a man due to the demands of your profession – that if you were garbed in a feminine manner your men could have lustful thoughts for you?

  She nods, and the monk asks to be allowed to return to bed. Jeanne tightens the cords of her leggings after returning to her tent. It is no doubt far more practical for her not to look the part of a young woman among boorish male fighters. And she knows that her heart yearns for something other than commanding men and life as a soldier. I had not met you yet, Piéronne. But she yearns to be soothed by a loving other. And I felt ashamed and cried but convinced myself not to pester the brother again. She forces herself to fall asleep and accept, once again, that the likes of she may never be loved in this world.

  6

  But I was getting closer to you.

  Jeanne receives the king’s herald not long after the matin bells. He has decided that they will leave the English in their remaining territories and strongholds, and that the king and the royal army will march on to Reims, as the Maid has requested. I thanked Saint Catherine.

  men’s arrogance

  the pride of the rich

  cannot impede your task

  Jeanne

  be joyous

  the king

  heeds your vision

  Am I so happy, Sister, simply because the king has rebuffed the others and listened to me instead? Am I as petty as that?

  daughter of God

  be ecstatic

  be ready to celebrate

  the trail

  to the holy mystery

  of her company

  love

  ends the great misery

  A few days later the royal army is outside the walls of the city of Auxerre. The citizens are aligned with the treasonous Duke of Burgundy, and do not allow the French entry. King Charles the Victorious is apprehensive, as he and his men – and one woman – have used up almost their entire food supply and they need to purchase more
with the little he has left from Queen Yolande’s most recent loan. La Hire, Richemont and most other captains believe the city must be stormed and the traitor scum crushed into submission. Jeanne disagrees. She urges the king to send emissaries into the city, to plead with the mayor to acknowledge the true heir and assist the French with their quest. D’Alençon says that they would not have to squander their precious money on victuals if they took the city by force. The king listens, looks into Jeanne’s eyes and scratches his chin. He speaks with some reticence.

  The Maid has our consent. And she shall dictate a letter for the citizens, and in that letter she will notify them of her being a messenger of God. Mention that Heaven and Jesus and so on are on our side. This is to be done immediately.

  The Maid smiles and nods and two days later the city sends forth a party which bows before the king, presents him with the keys to Auxerre and swears allegiance to France. The Maid’s squire is among those who venture into the city and return with carts of vegetables, bread and salted fish. Replenished for the time being, they continue on their historic expedition to Reims. The following day they reach the city of Troyes. The Maid looks over the city’s fortifications and its wide moat. I had intuited a presence. The king rides up and joins her. He signals to his cohort to keep their distance so that he may speak to his captain in confidence.

  D’Alençon had a point, Jeanne. I’m utterly broke and we’re again running out of food.

  Fear not, crown prince. This city shall also welcome you.

  Did your Voices tell you that?

  Yes.

  Be that as it may, you and your Voices need to know that, according to one of my spies, Troyes has a standing garrison of six hundred soldiers, all loyal to my wicked cousin of Burgundy. It was here, Jeanne, it was here that…

  He pauses and narrows his small eyes. He looks away from Jeanne and brushes a fly from his face.

  Your Majesty?

  It was in this city that Queen Isabeau disinherited me from the throne. Where she declared me a bastard. I’m certain you know about the Treaty of Troyes.