Sparrow

by Michael Morpurgo

  “Cow girl!” they cried. “Whore! Witch! Go back to your pigs. We’ll burn you to a crisp. Roast whore!”

  Joan was not so much angry with them, as hurt, hurt to the quick that they had spoken to her as they did. “I have done all I can and they will not listen,” she said to the Duc d’Alençon and La Hire, as they walked together sadly up through the town, the crowds thronging about her everywhere. “Very well, La Hire,” she said. “Send to Blois for reinforcements. Make your new plans. They want war. They shall have war.”

  But even then, as they waited for the reinforcements to arrive, Joan did not give up her attempts at peaceful persuasion. The English lobbed cannon balls into the city, and still she tried. Every day for three days she went to the walls of the Tourelles and asked the English in the name of God to go. They refused even to send back her herald, but kept him prisoner. On the fourth morning the lookouts saw in the distance the flags and lances of the army from Blois. Joan took five hundred men and led them out under the noses of the English to escort the army in. Belami flew out over the fort over the heads of the Englishmen who could only look on awestruck as the soldiers from Blois streamed in through the city gates, drums beating, pennants flying. There was no more jeering amongst them, and only a silence, the silence of fear. Belami flew back to Joan. “Maybe, Belami,” she said, “maybe once they see all this, once they see how many we are, how strong, how high our spirits are, maybe now they will leave.”

  But they did not. On the contrary, news soon came that Sir John Fastolf was on his way with hundreds of English. On hearing that, Joan was furious. “Well then, on their own heads be it. Let them come.”

  Joan was exhausted. She went upstairs to lie down in her room for an hour or two. Sleep came only slowly. There was such a hubbub in the streets below. The city streets were crammed with soldiers, and her house was always besieged by adoring well-wishers. There was little peace. She did drift away into sleep, but only for a few short moments.

  She woke with a jolt and sat up. “They are fighting, Belami. I know they are. There’s blood being spilt, French blood. Someone has ordered an attack. And they have not woken me. Don’t they know they cannot do it without me?” She armed herself quickly. She was already mounted in the street, when she discovered she had left her standard behind in her room. She sent Louis back up for it, and he handed it down to her out of the window. Then, with her brothers, the Duc d’Alençon and Richard the Archer with her, she clattered through the city, sparks flying from the horses’ hooves. She knew exactly where the battle was, where she would be needed.

  It was just as well she arrived at the Bastille St Loup when she did. Repulsed twice, already the French were gathering once again to attack the fort, but they had lost heart. They could see the English high and impregnable on their ramparts, their cannons firing, their arrows raining down on the French. So heavy was the fire that the French could only huddle under their shields. Then they saw Joan riding forward through their ranks, her standard fluttering above her head. It was the spur they needed. With a mighty cheer of “Jhesus Maria” they rushed the walls, threw their ladders up against them, and then were everywhere upon the English with such a sudden and unexpected ferocity that within an hour of her coming the fort was overwhelmed.

  It did not matter that there were ten other forts around the city still in English hands. What mattered was that after months and months of siege the first of them had been taken. Joan ordered that all prisoners should be spared, the wounded of both sides cared for, and that there should be no looting.

  That night in Orléans the bells rang out for a great victory. Joy was everywhere, everywhere that is except in Joan’s room. She lay on her bed and wept, wept for the dead, English and French alike, and went to confession. She had not killed. She had not even drawn her sword for fear she might, but she knew well enough she had caused over a hundred English to be killed.

  Much against the wishes of La Hire and the marshals, Joan forbade all fighting the next day for it was a holy day, Ascension Day. She went to Mass and then sent her last message to the English. She commanded Richard the Archer to fire it into the English camp. Belami followed him to the city walls, and then the arrow to where it fell. So he was there when it was brought to Talbot, the English commander.

  “It is from the cow girl,” he said, and then read it out loud. “Listen to this. ‘You, men of England, you Godoms, who have no right to be here in this Kingdom of France, the King of Heaven commands you through me, Joan, to abandon your forts and go back where you belong. If you fail to retreat, I will do with all of you what I did to the English in the Bastille du Loup. I am writing to you for the last time.’ And she signs herself ‘Jhesus Maria, Joan the Maid’.” He screwed the letter up, hurled it to the ground and stamped it into the mud. “Who does she think she is?” he cried. “And who does she think we are to run away? I’ll see her burn first!”

  Later that evening Joan had her answer. A figure appeared on the ramparts of the Tourelles for the whole city to see. It was unmistakably an effigy of Joan, and there was a notice hung around her neck: ‘The Whore of Domrémy!’ And then, to whooping cheers from the fort, they set fire to it, and pushed it out over the ramparts.

  As Joan watched, the tears welled into her eyes. “Yesterday,” she said, “we took one of their forts. Tomorrow we shall take two more, the Bastille de St Jean de Blanc and the Bastille des Augustins. We shall cross the river and come round behind them.” She knew this was not the strategy the marshals had in mind, but she overruled them. “I may know nothing of military matters,” she said, “but remember, I have the hand of God to guide me.”

  Such statements had made her few friends among the marshals and dukes. But she had firm allies and admirers now – the faithful Duc d’Alençon of course, and La Hire and the Bastard of Orléans himself. “Hasn’t she always been proved right so far?” La Hire argued. “Isn’t she winning for us? Isn’t she winning for France?” Her critics had no answer to that.

  Next morning they attacked across the river, just as Joan had commanded, the soldiers crossing over a hastily built pontoon bridge, in effect a bridge of small boats, and then marching unopposed along the far side of the river towards the Bastille of St Jean de Blanc. The English garrison saw them coming. They saw how many there were, and how strong too. They quickly abandoned the fort and fell back behind the much stronger walls of the Bastille des Augustins which they knew they could defend more easily. It was some time before Joan, La Hire and the Duc d’Alençon could bring their horses across the river, for the horses were too heavy for the pontoon and had to be ferried over by boat. By the time she arrived, the French army was milling about in wild celebrations at having captured a deserted fort. Joan could see at once that there was little enough to celebrate. And she was right.

  Suddenly the English were pouring out of the Bastille des Augustins and charging through the fields towards them. Joan, La Hire and d’Alençon did not hesitate. With a cry of “Jhesus Maria” on their lips, they couched their lances and rode straight at the English. The rabble of the French army was suddenly no longer a rabble. They were regrouping. Then they were charging en masse, coming on at the English crying “Jhesus Maria!” A few brave English stayed to fight, and the battle that followed was swift and bloody; but the rest had taken to their heels and fled to the safety of the Tourelles, the great fortress on the bridge. Joan was content to let them go. “We want no more slaughter,” she said. “Besides, two forts is enough for one day. We have done well. We shall leave the Tourelles for tomorrow. It will still be there.”

  Joan had been hurt: her horse had stumbled and fallen on her. As the Duc d’Alençon gave her a ride on his shoulders back to the pontoon bridge, Louis going ahead of her with her standard, the whole army cheered till their throats were raw with it. Above her flew a single white sparrow who cheered in his own way, soaring high over the river, then over the city where the great bells pealed thunderously and where every citizen crowded every street
and every window for a glimpse of their beloved Joan, their Maid of Orléans, their saviour and already their saint.

  Belami was there waiting for her in her room when she came in. She threw herself down on the bed and cried, unable to banish from her head the terrible sights she had witnessed during the battle. Everyone was clamouring to see her, but she told Louis she would see only her dear brothers and the Duc d’Alençon. They all tried to comfort her, but she was quite inconsolable. When they left her that night, she asked Louis to rub her foot for her. “This pain you can relieve,” she said. “It is a little thing. Tomorrow, Louis, I shall have an arrow here below my shoulder, but that again will be little enough to bear. Tomorrow by this time, there will be hundreds of French and English dead in the Tourelles. If only the Godoms would just go, Louis, then none of it would have to happen. But what must happen, will happen – my voices have told me so – although I do not understand why. I will never understand why.”

  All Orléans knew what Joan and her marshals knew, that once the Tourelles was taken, Orléans would be safe at last. But the Tourelles was not like the other forts. It was quite impregnable. On the south side it was protected by a deep ditch, and on the city side by a great gap in the bridge from the city, a gap far too wide for a man to leap.

  Lying in bed that night Joan stroked Belami and spoke her thoughts. “It will have to be a frontal assault across the ditch, Belami, there is no other way,” she said. “But those walls are so high and they will be waiting for us. I cannot see how it can be done. I cannot. I cannot.”

  She could not sleep, and after a while she did not even try. She prayed constantly and aloud, asking St Catherine, asking St Margaret, asking the Archangel Michael how it was to be done, but none of them would speak to her. “Why have they deserted me, Belami?” she cried. “In my hour of greatest need, why have they deserted me? I need to know what to do. Until now our victories have been easy, but not tomorrow. If we try to cross that ditch, we shall be beaten back, I know it. The bloodshed will be terrible. Yet we can do nothing else. So many will die, Belami, so many. I cannot bear it.” That night Joan of Arc cried herself to sleep.

  But when she woke the next morning, she woke fresh and ready for battle. “Come, Belami,” she said, as she left her room. “Let’s get it done.” Downstairs Louis had prepared her a breakfast of a fine sea trout. “In God’s name, no, Louis,” she laughed. “Maybe I’ll have it when we return this evening. I’ll share it with a Godom for supper, if any live to eat it, as God knows I hope they will.”

  The battle for the Tourelles was every bit as brutal as Joan had feared. Time and again the French charged across the ditch to the walls, threw up their ladders and hurled themselves at the English. But each time the English were ready for them, with their arrows, their long lances, their battleaxes and their maces. The very few French who did manage to gain a foothold on the ramparts were butchered at once, their throats cut and their bodies hurled back down into the ditch below. And all the while there was the dreadful roar of the cannon, and the stifling smoke and the screaming and the terrible stench of blood. Yet still they came at the walls, and they came because Joan was always with them rallying them, leading them, her red cloak flying about her, her standard held high, so that all could see it.

  The arrow that struck Joan pierced her armour above her left breast, just as her voices had told her it would. The force of it spun her round and sent her tumbling into the ditch. A great cheer went up from the English. Louis was there first, then her brothers and Jean and Bertrand, all of whom had never been far from her side throughout the battle. They carried her from the field. Word soon spread that the Maid was down. The soldiers looked about them for the flash of her scarlet cloak, for the white and blue and gold of her standard. But they could not see Joan, nor any sign of her. They fell back, disheartened; and from the walls above the English cheered wildly, revelling in their triumph.

  Hidden from their sight in a nearby wood, Joan lay deathly white on the grass. “Back to the walls,” she cried and she grasped Louis by the hand. “Take my standard, Louis. Be me for a while. I won’t be long.”

  Once Louis had gone she took the arrow and jerked it out. As the blood flowed out on to the grass, the Duc d’Alençon and her brothers did what they could to staunch it. They poured on olive oil. They rubbed it with lard. She hadn’t the strength to sit up, but she would not stay lying down. “I must see what is happening,” she said. “I must know.” And her brothers helped her to a tree where she could lean and watch. She wept openly now at what she saw. The ditch was full of French dead, but still the ladders were going up against the walls, still they tried. She could see her fluttering standard through the smoke, and Louis waving the soldiers on towards the walls. But she could see too that the soldiers were tired, that it was hopeless to go on as they were. “Call them back, La Hire,” she said. “They need food. They need water, they need rest, and I need to pray. When I have finished praying, I promise you I shall find a way to take the Tourelles.”

  Stronger now, she mounted her horse again and rode away into a vineyard to be on her own. Here she dismounted and knelt and prayed. Belami, perched on a nearby vine, could see her swaying on her knees, and clutching on to a vine to steady herself. She was a long time praying, but at last she crossed herself and pulled herself up on to her feet. “My voices have spoken to me at last, Belami,” she whispered. “We wait out of sight until evening, until the English think we have given up and gone home. Then we attack, and we attack on both sides. The English think the gap on the bridge side cannot be crossed. Until now, we have thought the same. Well, it can. With God’s help, it can.”

  Joan rode back and summoned La Hire and the marshals, and told them of her plan. “Have the men march away wearily so the English can see them. Once out of sight, have them hide almost until darkness. Have them pray too. And then, when they attack, have them fall on the English like ravenous wolves.”

  Later that evening, with the French army lying hidden in the vineyard and woods, Belami flew over the ditch of death into the Tourelles. The walls were almost devoid of defences now. The English were down in the courtyard celebrating their great victory, and the killing – as they thought – of the Maid. The ale and the wine flowed fast and freely. Through the darkening shadows the French rose up and crept towards the walls, not a whisper, not a sound. Suddenly the English heard the war cry go up: “Jhesus Maria! Jhesus Maria!” They rushed to the battlements to see the French storming up their ladders, to see Joan already on the ramparts, her standard waving about her. The French poured over the walls into the Tourelles driving the English before them. The English fought fiercely, but the French were all around them now. The gap between the bridge and the fort had been spanned, great planks of wood thrown across the divide until there was enough of a bridge to enable the French to break in behind them. The English looked about frantically, but there was no way out. In desperation, they tried to escape over the drawbridge, but it was already in flames, the French having sent a fireboat underneath to set fire to it. Those caught in the flames, and that included Glasdale, the English commander of the Tourelles, died a dreadful death. The slaughter everywhere was terrible. Joan could not bear to look upon it, nor hear it. She turned her face to the wall and cried up against it, her hands over her ears.

  It was dark by the time Joan led her exhausted, exultant soldiers back across the bridge into Orléans, leaving the Tourelles behind her in flames.

  Belami sat now on the pommel of Joan’s saddle, to be as close to her as he could, in her hour of triumph. She rode through the torchlit city streets, the rapturous crowds all about her, some cheering, some chanting the Te Deum as she passed them by. They pressed so hard upon her, everyone longing to see her, longing to touch her. But Joan longed only for the silence of her room. Once there, once her wound was dressed, she said a fond goodnight to her brothers and her friends, and to Louis, telling them all she needed to be quiet, to be alone. She sat over her supper; not the
sea trout – she had that sent to an English prisoner as her gift to him – but her usual supper of bread and wine. She fed Belami some crumbs which, as usual, he accepted eagerly and gratefully. “It has been a long day, Belami. The longest of my life. Still, we did it, didn’t we? With God’s help, we did it.”

  Joan was shaken awake early the next morning, and found Louis bending over her.

  “The English!” he said. “The Godoms!”

  “Do they not know when they are beaten?” cried Joan, wincing with pain as she pulled on her chain armour.

  Belami flew on ahead of her as she rode through the city streets. Beyond the walls he could see now the two armies drawn up facing each other behind their stakes. The French marshals spurred on by the victory at the Tourelles were about to unleash their army when Joan rode up and berated them soundly. “What do you think you’re about? Do you not know it is Sunday, God’s holy day? We shall defend ourselves only if they attack us; but we will not attack on a Sunday. Do you hear me? Give the Godoms the chance to retire with honour, and I tell you they will go. Maybe they will go all the way back to England.” The marshals knew better than to argue with Joan in this mood, so that when she ordered an altar to be made and Mass to be said all the way along the line, none of them dared to object. The French army knelt, their backs to the enemy; and when they had finished their prayers they stood up and turned once again to face the English, only to see the entire army drifting away.

  “Joan,” said La Hire, his hand on his sword, “let’s be after them. For God’s sake, we will not have another chance like this.”

  “No,” Joan replied. “It is for God’s sake that we let them go. You will get them another time.”