Her mother blamed it on the war. "It kills him to see all his hard work destroyed," she said, squeezing one hand very tightly with the other, as if to keep it from flying away. Or later she'd say, "It's because of Catherine. He was never like this when Catherine was here." Her mother, pious and loving, but a coward too, hiding in her prayers, her dreams of Jesus.
4
It made me very tall, my secret. It made me very tall, and it made everyone around me very small. Like dollhouse people. Little dollhouse people with little muddy problems. Cattle, pigs, taxes, harvests. My problems were huge, vast as the universe. God. War. The King. France. And I knew I was worthy of them. I knew when the time was right, God would pour His courage into me, and I'd stride across the country like a giant, stepping over forests and villages, rivers and mountains, leaving my enormous footprints behind me. Footprints the world would remember forever.
5
They'd been at war with the English for as long as anyone could remember. So long that most of northern France had gone over to the English side. No longer just the Goddons to worry about. Now the Burgundians too. "Bloody traitors," her father called them. "Spineless pigs."
Sixty or seventy years, her father said. For sixty or seventy years the Goddons and Burgundians had been ravaging the countryside, stealing their land, slaying them in their beds as they slept, destroying their crops, feasting on their shanks. They all knew about the slaughter at Agincourt, the terrible siege at Rouen. "Poor souls eating their dogs, babies sucking at the blue breasts of their dead mothers." But it wasn't until Jehanne was ten or eleven that the war came close to her—that she began to understand what it meant.
One hot September night she awoke to the smell of smoke. Red light was pulsing on the walls. She sat up in bed and looked out the window and saw the wheat fields burning. A sea of fire. The air black and rolling, thick with smoke. Their harvest destroyed. Her mother sank to the bed, moaning, "Oh my God." Her father shouted at her mother to take the children up and hide in the hayloft. Then there came a great thundering of hooves past the house. Loud, ugly laughter with it. Her father ran out the door naked with an ax, screaming. But the men just laughed at him. Twenty or thirty of them on horseback, les écorcheurs. Not even soldiers that time. No flags or banners, no embroidered tunics. Just Goddon mercenaries in old rusted mail, bandits riding down out of the hills, tearing apart the villages and setting them on fire, taking whatever they wanted because who would stop them? "You going to take us, old man? Eh? You and your shriveled little prick?" Laughing as they loaded all of her father's sheep into a wagon and rode off into the night.
6
For a time her father and the other men had tried to protect the village. They got together whatever money they had and went to Lord Bourlément, begged him to rent them the old ruined chateau on the island in the river. A big roofless place with a crumbling turret, home now only to foxes and some robins that had nested up in the old murder holes, the walls streaked white and pale green with long stalactites of shit. But they were still good, the main walls, still high and thick and strong. Their plan was to hide the entire village inside during the next raid. "Now let them try to steal our livestock," Jehanne's father said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
He and the other men began taking turns up on the rooftops at the edge of the village, standing watch through the night, pacing and slapping their cheeks to stay awake. But in the end it did no good. They couldn't get the animals out of their pens and across the river to the island fast enough. When the bandits came through again, they trotted right up to the villagers who were sliding around on the muddy riverbanks, trying to push the frightened calves into the dark water. Knives drawn, laughing, their faces like carved wooden masks in the torchlight. "Thank you so much for your help."
After they left, her father tore their house apart. Hurled everything across the room, chairs, tables, bowls, pots, candlesticks, pitchers, plates. Tore the door clear off the hinges. Jehanne had never seen him so angry. Her mother stood in the corner, cowering and sobbing. "Please, Jacques, in the name of God." Sobbing until he punched her too.
7
Jehanne began to spend more time in the forest. It had become a wild place by then. "The forests came back with the English," her mother said. In their terror, people abandoned their farms, their villages, ran to hide from the Goddons and live in the woods. They ate roots, grass, sometimes their own children, it was said. They slept in caves, curled up in the roots of old trees. And the woods themselves grew monstrous, spread out over the fields and old roads and abandoned villages, reclaiming the country. Trees growing up inside of burned-out churches and houses, creeper vines curling out of the chimneys, leaves twisting up into the sky like smoke.
People said the woods were dangerous, full of starving animals, wolves and bears, wild boar, but that didn't scare Jehanne. She'd seen a wolf once in the road right outside her house after a raid. She came out in the morning and saw her cousin Hemet lying very still in a ditch. The wolf was lying beside him, calmly chewing on the shiny pink ropes of his intestines. Jehanne stared, mesmerized by the splendid color, thinking, We have those inside of us? Then her mother ran at the wolf with a shovel, screaming, "Get away, get away from him!" The wolf just looked at her, flat yellow eyes like the Devil's. Then it went back to eating. No, the woods were better. She liked it there in the shadows, hidden, silent. Safe.
Often she prayed there, in an old fallen-down shrine to the Virgin Mary she'd found deep in the trees. She'd kneel in front of the wooden statue and press her cheek against the hem of the Virgin's robe, kiss her little wooden feet. Help us, she would say. Please help us.
She said real prayers too sometimes. Prayers her mother had taught her. "Whenever you are afraid, pray to God and He will help you," she said. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name ... Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven ...
It amazed her, that prayer. It was like a secret room inside of her that she could run to whenever she wanted. A place where she could feel safe any time, any hour of the day. All she had to do was close her eyes and say the words, and there it was, safety, the enormous hand of God on her chest, soothing her heart.
Soon she began to pray everywhere. In church, at home, in the fields. Three times each day the church bells rang out, and each time she thought, Yes, now. Now. She went down on her knees and lifted her face to the sky. She entered the secret room.
8
After the day in the garden, there were three of them who came to her. Three saints, standing in the air above her, shining. The first one stern, enormous, kinglike. His hands like antlers. His voice lighting up her bones as if they were candles. He was their leader. She knew as soon as he spoke. The deep lion's voice thundering through her, clasping her between her legs, making her want to drop to her knees, to bow her head, call him Sire.
He never had to say his name. She knew who he was immediately. Knew he was Michael, the Archangel. He who is like God. His face filled up the sky. Oh Lord, she said, shaking, feeling as if she would break apart with joy. Jehanne, he said. Just one word and it was clear. She'd do anything for him.
He'd be the one to deliver the bad news.
Then came the two virgins. Glowing like dandelions. Motherly, consoling. Saint Catherine with the sad spoon face, the hands like carved ivory. Wise, beautiful Catherine who had broken the spiked torture wheel. Her voice a flute of cool water, so clear it made Jehanne feel as if she understood everything in the world, could count every stone in the bottom of the river. And Saint Margaret. Plump, brazen Margaret with the faint brown mustache and wildfires blazing in her eyes. Margaret who had fought her way out of the belly of Satan's dragon with her sword. Don't be afraid, cabbage, said Margaret. We'll be with you all the way.
What do you mean, all the way?
Nothing, love, said Catherine, embracing her. Lay down your worries and rest now, darling. Rest your head in my arms.
9
The
y made fun of her in the village. The other children. They mocked her for giving alms to the begging friars, for taking her choyne bread out to Volo in his cage. They said she was pious, a righteous little prig. Once they'd tried to destroy her. She'd been playing in the field by the Fairies' Tree with some other girls from the village. Hauviette, Mengette, Valerie. They were making poppy garlands to hang up for the May festival. It had started out a sunny morning, but suddenly a cloud slid over the sun. A large purple cloud, heavy with rain. Everything grew darker, cooler, like evening. The grass looked angry and sharp. Jehanne's heart crawled backward in her chest. She walked a little ways off into the field, to where she thought they couldn't see her anymore, and went down on her knees. She began to pray.
When she opened her eyes, they were all standing around her, staring down at her. Big faces, leering. Valerie with a wicked look in her eyes. "Look at little Saintie Pie," she said, coming closer. "Think you're awfully high and mighty don't you, Saintie Pie?" Jehanne stood up. Her hands had begun to sweat. Valerie took another step closer. She was taller than Jehanne, perhaps a year or two older. A big, sturdy girl with a coarse, pale face, large breasts, and small black eyes. Odd little marks like sparrow tracks on her cheeks. Her clothes were always tattered. Everyone knew her father was a drunk. Everyone knew she'd go into the hayloft with any boy who asked. "What's the matter, Saintie Pie, you scared?" Valerie and the other girls crowded in, with ugly fixed looks on their faces.
She wanted to run then. Or collapse, fall on her knees and beg. "Please, no, don't hurt me." But as she looked up at the older girl, that pale blunt face, she thought, Who is she? Why should she scare me? A wild fighting spirit rose up inside her. "Better than you," she said. "Dirty slut." The other girls stared at each other with their mouths open. Everyone except Valerie. She stepped forward and slapped Jehanne's cheek very hard. "Little bitch," she said as Jehanne stumbled backward. "How dare you speak to me like that?"
The world became a red, rippling place then. Everything happening very slowly, as if she were underwater, and somehow also very fast. Jehanne walked over and punched the older girl in the stomach. "I do what I want," she said. The older girl sat down on the ground, her mouth hanging open, round as an O. The other girls burst out laughing. "Jesus!" Valerie cried at last. Then she scrambled to her feet and ran away.
10
Later Jehanne walked down the dirt road toward the church. She was sorry for what she'd done. Her heart felt heavy, like something chained to the bottom of a well. "Forgive me, Father, I have sinned," she said as she sat beside Père Guillaume in a dim corner of the church. It was always slightly terrifying in the beginning, sitting beside the old priest with his sharp, bony knees and his sour, musty smell. His dark hands braided with blue veins. "Tell me your sins, Jehanne," he said. She stared down at the rough wooden bench, traced the grain in the wood with her finger. She thought of what she'd done, the unexpected doughlike softness of Valerie's stomach, Valerie's stunned face as she sat down on the ground. She whispered to the priest. "I got so angry," she said, her ears hot with shame, tears prickling her eyes. But with every word she spoke, she grew lighter, cleaner, the rage pouring out of her, the light pouring in. "God forgives you, my child," he said at last. "You are forgiven."
And the feeling then! Forgiven. It washed over her like the ocean. Wave upon wave. Eventually the priest coughed, shuffled his boots against the rough stone floor, and said, "All right, dear, you can go now."
But she didn't want to leave the church yet, didn't want to leave the feeling. She walked out into the pale, still nave and stood for a while in the great stone silence, feeling it on her skin, the coolness, the peace. She looked up at her saints in the stained-glass windows, Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, Saint Clare ... those tall, sad, lovely women illuminated by the sun. She thought of their enormous love for God, their heroic lives, their miracles. How they'd found a way to be bigger, better, to do good, fight evil, escape the mud, the smallness of life. She thought they were the luckiest people in the world.
11
She never considered telling the priest about her voices. She knew he would hate her for it. Would not be able to help hating her for it. He was a gentle man, Père Guillaume, a decent man even, but fearful too. Scared, trembling beneath his holy robes. You could see it in his face. The thin purple lips, the dry, papery white hands, the cold, silent judgments ... She knew if she told him, he would see to it that she suffered. He would not inflict the suffering himself, that was not his way, but he would tell someone who would be sure to inflict it. "I'm concerned about Jehannette ..." he'd say, and then it would be all over. They'd beat her until she broke and begged for forgiveness, swore it was all a lie, a fantasy. Madness. Beat her until she promised to behave, be silent. Repent.
The only person she wanted to tell was Durand. Her cousin's husband who lived in Burey-le-Petit. Durand of the tall black boots and the deep windy laugh. The one Jehanne called Uncle. Every year at Christmastime they visited him at the big cracked house in Burey. He kept a little pet fawn that slept in a basket by the hearth and would come right up to you and press its face against your thighs like a dog. Eat oats right out of your hand. Durand's wife, Marie, was sour—a cold, frowning woman who shouted and slapped your hand if you went for a second slice of meat at supper—but Durand was different. Durand, Jehanne thought, was so kind it was as if he had two hearts pounding in his chest. When she was a child, he was always pulling her up onto his lap and telling her stories about the saints. Of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who ate only boiled beech leaves. And Saint Anthony who was tortured by demons in the Outer Mountain near Pispir. Saint Anthony who said, "I fear the demon no more than I fear a fly, and with the sign of the cross I can at once put him to flight."
Durand loved God as she did: hot and fierce. He had traveled all over France on pilgrimages to visit the holy places. He'd seen the Black Madonna at Le Puy and the golden statue of Saint Foy in Conques. Stood in line all day to see the chin bone of the Virgin or a lock of Saint Peter's hair. The little girl in Rodez who bore the stigmata—the wounds of Christ. "They say she was seized one day by a vision of the crucifixion," he told Jehanne during one of her visits, "and afterward, holes opened up in her wrists and feet and blood poured out, as if nails had been driven straight through them. The day I saw her, the poor child was sitting there in the church with blood all over her, weeping and wailing one minute, laughing hysterically the next, the whole time with this fixed look in her eyes, as if there were people in the room that only she could see." He looked at Jehanne, his eyes shining. "It was real. I know it. God was there, inside her."
How she'd wanted to tell him then! To pull him in close and say, "I know. He visits me too." But she did not dare. Even with Durand, she did not dare. It was too precious, too fragile a thing to put out into the world yet. It needed to be protected, like the rosebush her mother covered with hay in the early spring. It needed time to grow safely, silently, in the dark.
12
From Durand and her mother she knew about the saints. Everything else she knew of the world came from Claude, the peddler. Her father's friend. Once every few weeks he came over the hill, his big wagon lurching behind him, piled high with wonders and junk—old pots and kettles, glass jars, dice, kitchen knives, mirrors, spices, oils, candles. Once he had shown her a coconut all the way from Majorca. "Got it off a sailor in Le Havre," he said. A brown hairy thing, ugly as a monkey. He hacked it open with his big rust-spotted knife and gave Jehanne a piece of the crisp white flesh inside. A delicious taste. Creamy and sweet, slightly nutty. She remembers how neatly it had broken apart in her hands. "That's what the islands taste like."
Her father loved Claude. After he finished making his rounds in the village, he'd come spend the night at their house. A small, grizzled man, smelling of cloves, with big, sparkling, rich blue eyes that reminded Jehanne of the sky in fall. After dinner, when she was supposed to be asleep, Claude and her father would drag their chairs up close to the h
earth and drink late into the night, their profiles gleaming like coin heads in the firelight. Jehanne crept up into the hayloft and hid there in the straw, listening.
The King's madness was Claude's favorite topic. "Not just spells anymore; Old Charlie's completely loo-loo now," he said. He told how Charles had gone out into the forest hunting with his four best knights and murdered all but one of them. Why? "Who knows?" said Claude. It was said that a noise had startled him—a twig snapped or a little animal moved in the bushes—and suddenly he went berserk. Jehanne saw it in her mind's eye, the King's wild red face, the King screaming that they were all out to get him. "To murder me and steal my crown!" Then he drew his sword and hacked away at his men until they lay like broken china dolls on the forest floor. All the birch trees around them spackled in blood. All three heads hacked clean off, their frozen eyes staring at the sky.
"Jesus," her father said.
"They say he's still wild from it," said the peddler. "Won't let anyone near him. Tells people he's made of glass. If anyone touches him, he'll shatter like an icicle."
Sometimes Claude spoke of the Queen too. Isabeau. The Whore Queen, he called her. She'd caught fire with her own brand of madness and was running wild through the kingdom like an animal in heat. "Opens her legs to anyone who so much as blinks at her. The King's best friends, his family, anyone she can get her hands on." Claude knew. His sister worked in the palace kitchens. She'd watched Isabeau's gentlewoman mix up a face cream of crocodile glands, wolf's blood, and boar brains to keep the Queen's skin looking young. Watched Isabeau's maids lug buckets of ass's milk upstairs for the royal bath. "She puts belladonna in her eyes at night and smiles at the poor fools in the candlelight, lets her hand brush their cocks under the table." Isabeau's current favorite, Claude said, was the King's brother, Louis. She'd been seen with her fat white legs locked around his waist one night in a dim stone staircase, pulling his hair, grunting like a sow.
The Maid: A Novel of Joan of Arc Page 2