I’m not Juliet. I’m not a frightened ingénue begging to be kissed by a handsome young man. I’m tough. I’m smart. But I’m something else, too. I’m a girl who can see she’ll never cross over until she stands her ground and confesses…tells the world the difference between love and hunger.
“Captain,” I emote, but my voice sounds like a chicken underwater. “You’ll choose me if you want to bring peace to the universe.”
Cate steps between us.
“There’s been enough bloodshed, Cate. I’m not here to fight you.” I step toward her and then I feel it—as if Jeanne’s armor has dropped from the sky and landed squarely on my shoulders. “Jeanne d’Arc,” she says. “The gods have chosen Craig and me for all eternity. You will bow before us or you will die.”
“Craig doesn’t love you. I cannot bless your union.” My feet desperately grip at my blood-filled boots, like two hands trying to grasp the edge of a cliff.
The voices of clerics, piped in electronically, blare, “You’re a witch and a heretic.”
“Repent,” Cate shouts. She throws a jab at my face. I feel my nose cave in. I fall backward. Francis is hunched behind the main camera overhead like some angry bear. Desperately, I search for the production assistant’s signal.
You promised me a speech. I’ve got to give my…but my head’s spinning, as if Francis has just pushed a button and the entire igloo is making a revolution…picking up speed…Please, Jeanne. I can’t go down yet.
“I didn’t kill my brother-in-arms.” I raise my fist to the gods. “But what happened to him was my fault.” I stagger backward on one leg. I feel a whoosh and see a blur as Cate’s elbow crashes into my temple. I fall back, see my Nina on my way down, slowly shaking her head…alone in that threadbare apartment, imprisoned by all the skeletons of our past.
I’m from a long line of strong girls. I’m a girl and I’m here to protect girls. But you can’t stay a girl any longer…this speech is about what it takes to become a woman…they’re waiting…all those who stand on that threshold back home are waiting…everyone’s got a line to cross…everyone needs a little help to take that first, agonizing step…
Cate pins me to the ground. I look into her eyes and remember my brother’s face in the mirror after he said only one of us could move on. Cate doesn’t know that kind of love. The only love she knows is the kind that places you on a podium, makes you a trophy to all the boys. Those boys are watching, too. They need to know it’s not about finding a new trophy to put on the shelf.
Cate’s got that same glint she had when she took out the three men in the alley. She’s cocked her fist.
I can barely stand…I’m going down…I can see the scoreboard my name. Jeanne d Arc. I must be blind. Is my name on top?
Cate moves in to deliver the Coup de Grace.
“That’s enough,” Craig shouts.
The glitter of his medals beneath the huge halogens overhead makes me feel that he’s my knight in shining armor. Cate turns to Craig. She raises her hand, and caresses his face. My chest grows warm. It feels as if my bolt of grief is being held in a fire, like all those wrought-iron instruments are glowing a fiery red…
This is what happened to you, Jeanne? Take away all the stupid dialogue and the phony scenery and this is exactly what they did to you…history is what happens over and over again until you get it right.
This time, I’m going to get it right.
I take a deep breath, raise myself up and kiss Craig. It feels as if only a few moments have passed since that kiss we shared in his apartment. The vast promise of a morning on the beach stands before me, and I can see him—that boy who’s taken me all this way—waiting for me on the other side. He’s chained to a wall, locked in a tower where he’ll remain until I confess.
I step back. Cate swings a roundhouse. I duck and she nearly hits Craig. I drive my head into her neck. She stumbles back. A few peasants pull a rickety wagon into view. Chains in back will hold the loser. Craig will hold the winner.
I feel the cameras closing in…
Remember who you’re speaking to, and be quick about it. Your death will be real.
The ancient wheels of the wagon stop. I take a deep breath. The soft glow of the stage that I’d seen in my free-fall expands slowly. The scent in the air changes; it’s now early spring. The smoke of a fire—a fire built to burn a witch—grows before the ice-encased memory.
I see an audience, but not the angry, torch-lit faces of a mob. Claude and Nina are smiling, gently bathed in the soft light. Beside them, my brother’s beautiful, handsome face beams…those bruises on his face give him the rugged look of a leading man….and behind him rows and rows of girls and boys who wrote me, who need to know what I’ve come to share…
“Boys and girls. I am Jeanne d’Arc, a real girl who led an army and changed the world, not some character in a crazy movie, not some fame-hungry girl who wants you to vote for me…I hold the frequencies only a girl can get between heaven and the heart. No boy can teach you how to fall in love. There’s no one boy in the whole universe you’re meant to fall in love with. That kind of love is only made in the movies.” I turn from Craig to the axe buried in the stump of the tree.
“Girls. Having sex won’t make you a woman. It might make you feel good. It might make you feel like the queen bee of your school—but that’s not what being a woman should be about.” I shift my gaze to Brad. One of my eyes is covered in blood, and it appears there are two Brads looking lost and forlorn beside a tree stump. That’s because I’m seeing double.
“Boys. Hear me now. A girl isn’t something to be conquered, like a peak. I was chosen by God because of my flaws.” Cate’s icy, laser stare bears down on me as I try to take a full breath. It doesn’t scare me anymore. “God gave us flaws for a reason. Perfection is only for saints and angels.”
I feel the bolt of grief loosen. “Catherine. You think love is something that’s handed over, or handed down like a title or the right address.”
She takes a quick step, raises her fist. “You have a silver tongue but a devil’s heart,” she emotes. “Did you use those lines on your last victim?” she hisses, and it becomes a long sigh. “I heard he was a beautiful boy. One of the most beautiful boys in the universe…and you killed him.”
“What I did, I did for love. I loved my brother with all my heart. He taught me that I was special. He taught me about a secret to getting noticed. At first I thought this was love. I was wrong. What you feel now, Cate, isn’t love, but hunger.”
I turn to Craig. “And if you really want to save us, you’ll tell the world that real love isn’t about being seen and going all the way…” I feel my eyes slowly roll up into my head…Perhaps death is claiming me; it feels like I’m fighting against the need to sleep…I take another step and can see Craig through only one eye. I blink slowly and focus on Craig’s lips moving gently, those perfectly cut bronze figs slowly pronouncing my verdict.
“You have spoken wisely, Jeanne, but we cannot take you back to our world. You must be returned to your age to face the consequences of your actions.” Craig slowly removes his hand from mine and turns to Cate as the peasants approach. I feel a clattering in my chest as the bolt of grief breaks free, clatters to the frozen earth, and for the first time since my brother’s funeral, I take a deep breath. The peasants bind me in chains and I’m taken away to be burned at the stake. Through the torch-lit faces a single face emerges; toothless, with a crude pageboy haircut, she looks down on me in rags.
J’ai nom La Pucelle.
It’s Jeanne. What can I say to her? I have to ask her the biggest question of all: You knew everything, from the beginning. You gave them all the dialogue, didn’t you?
She nods.
But why didn’t you do anything to save us, to save my brother?
What kind of life would you have lived then? she replies. She unbinds me, steps back. You’d have become just another hopeful, waiting outside in the cold. Stand up, young lady. You’ve got to fi
nish your speech.
She points up to the scoreboard and I see my name on top. Eve’s numbers have been removed. Is she dead? I stagger toward Craig. I can see the giant clock on the soundstage wall has been reset, but it’s a fuzzy blur. Darkness closes in…I deliver my final appeal
“Captain. I don’t know whether I’ve crossed over to your world, or you’ve crossed over to mine—but neither of us comes from this place. Catherine may offer you a title, but I can offer you the secrets to this real stage called life.” Catherine raises her arm to block Craig as he turns and takes a step toward me, but he pushes her away.
“I’ve been playing a phony character all my life,” he says.
“And so have I.”
“What does real life feel like?” he asks.
“The same way real love feels. It’s scary, but nothing makes you feel so alive.”
Craig’s lips tremble as we kiss. He lifts me up by the armpits and raises me to the heavens. I press my lips harder, deeper, in a real grown-up way, and when he lets me down, I collapse onto the bloodstained ice.
Esme closes her metal notebook and looks at Cease as Cease gently twirls a ring on her index finger. Cease wears a bandage over her broken, bruised nose, but her face beams like a young girl on the rise. HISTORY’S SUPERHEROES: A TEENAGE REALITY-DRAMA has taken the largest share of viewers of any show ever to air on WebTV.
Esme nods her head, still troubled. Cease decides she can’t say goodbye without a challenge. “Imagine a boy who saved your life was lying right next to you in pain,” she says. “What would you do to save him? Would you turn away?”
Esme looks uneasy. She fishes through her pockets for her card and slowly pushes it across the table. “I don’t know what I’d do. But if you ever need to talk about it…”
There was a lot of talk after the show became a runaway hit—talk, and finger-pointing, and hand-wringing. Francis sat between his lawyers, as United States Senators grilled him and wrung their hands at Congressional hearings. There was a lot of talk about virtue and vice and the impressionable minds of youth. Adults are good at hand-wringing; it’s a way for them to hide their guilt over harming young people—at least, that’s what I’ve noticed over the centuries. The senators threw up their hands, declared nothing could be done—the scene wasn’t much different from the clerics and bishops who conducted hearings at my rehabilitation, which began twenty years after my execution, in the month of March, in the year of 1452. Andre Marguerie, the last surviving judge at my trial, was censored for not allowing me a lawyer. Francis, on the other hand, wasn’t even charged for any of the deaths he’d witnessed on the set. Reality-drama became an official Hollywood genre; Francis its proud father. Eve Lonnia survived the beating and tried her hand at stage acting, getting cast in a modern interpretation of Antigone, off-Broadway. “Eve Lonnia could not act scared on a New York City subway at three o’clock in the morning,” one critic wrote. Stephanie Coombs officially came in second place, according to the vote count, and was immediately typecast as a cool villain in supporting roles.
Cease de Menich, my protégé, was cleared of all charges, on and off screen. She sought out roles of wounded characters in independent movies, and made a point of sharing stories about her brother’s courage and support in interviews.
Later that year, Cease receives an invitation to join the 64th International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf Astoria by a sponsor who chose to remain anonymous, and knowing it would please aunt Nina, she accepts. Claude designs her dress with a plunging neckline strung with pearls that proudly accents the scapular Cease refuses to remove. It was Claude’s final creation, and he insisted upon escorting his young charge (although Cease is practically holding him up) as they make their way to the marine guard holding a saber who will be her chaperone for the evening. The rich girls turn to admire this strange young actress wearing this strange, withered, leather strap that appears to outshine the diamonds and pearls that adorned their necks.
Cease stands toe to toe with the marine guard as he raises his sword over her head and before she can blink at the pageantry of having finally arrived, I give her an image of my last day on earth. I want her to see my face as the executioner tied me to the stake—I want her to see the look of fierce compassion, a look so devoid of self-pity that it forced the clerics, the British soldiers, the bishops and their fellow interrogators—all the men gathered to watch the burning of a witch—to avert their faces in shame; it was a look that told them I’d become a woman without having to bow to a man. The marine guard blinks, and carefully lowers the sword upon my shoulder. The other debutants whisper amongst themselves. (Who is this stranger? Surely she is of royal blood.)
Reviewers write about Cease’s performances with tender accolades. “She bears her virtues like a cross—and what better way to render real love,” one fan wrote.
I’m glad to finally hear it. It’s hard to get young people to see what real love feels like. Sometimes I wish I could part the clouds and appear, the way the angels appeared to me when I was a girl making garlands on the banks of a river in the Loire Valley. But this just isn’t that kind of story. I’m not that kind of saint. Back in my day…wait, there I go again…trying to sound like a grown-up telling you things were tougher in my day…suffice it to say, I know how hard it is to survive as a young person in the 21st century. I was beaten and chained to a wall. Nuns probed my body to test my virginity. But what’s that compared to having your privates broadcast over the internet for the entire world to see?
The troubles I hear every day…I wish I could get you all to see that the heartache you thought was God’s way of hurting you is there for a reason. I should probably fill in the gaps in the threadbare de Menich family tree; or, at least the long, strange journey of the ring that Cease now twirls on her finger. My oldest brother, Jacques, gave me the ring when my family was invited to the coronation of King Charles VII after I’d liberated Orleans from the British occupiers. I turned it over to a Benedictine monk who heard my last confession, before I was burned at the stake. He returned it to my mother, Isabella, twenty years later during the trial of my rehabilitation.
I was cleared of all my misdeeds as my young protégée has been cleared of hers. I’m not a witch, a heretic, or any of the other horrible things those 15th century nonbelievers said. I did wear men’s clothes because I was a strong girl. In 1920, I became the patron saint of France. Go figure.
I’m still a strong girl. And I’m here to protect girls.
The ring was passed down, generation to generation, and brought hope and good fortune to many who had the courage to wear it. The three crosses on its band were inscribed by the Bishop Francois Fierbois after I was sanctified by the church. Nina and Cease finally got a vacation and headed off to Paris. They took a wild theme-park ride entitled Super Heroes. When watching the electronic game The Mysts of Domremy, Cease will laugh when her on-screen avatar locks her ankles around the waist of a handsome young man and offers him a date. Cease doesn’t go to church, but she and her Nina share a ritual that feels pretty holy. They sit on the couch of their living room in Tudor City each evening as the days grow longer and wait for the sun to reflect off the United Nations building and cast a shadow on the living-room wall. They watch the light that forms a palm-sized disk slowly lower to a photograph of a boy and a girl above a sign scrawled in a child’s hand. The boy is dressed in a wizard’s outfit, the girl holds a wand.
The sign reads: Cease & Desist—coming to a theater near you.
I wish it would read: Please call me…I’m not just here for French girls, but anyone who’s lost in a world that keeps insisting it has all the answers.
How do I call? Why don’t you answer? I hear that a lot from people who plead for my help. My answer hasn’t changed in almost six hundred years. All you have to do is remember. All you have to do is find that quiet place in your heart where a single, nearly-forgotten memory resides. All you have to do is remember what it felt like to be forgiven…and that’s w
here you’ll find me.
Stay in touch.
So many professional editors gave advice on this book that I’ve finally abandoned the romantic notion of the writer as a solitary artist. I’d like to thank the editorial team of Penguin Random House (Dublin) for encouraging me to take the risks I took with C & D. I hope you’ll read my sequel when it’s done. I can’t forget Sarah Cypher for telling how lame early drafts of this novel were and challenging me to find my characters. Thank you, Sarah. Arthur Vidro calls himself a copy editor. And he is; a damn good one. But he also gave strategic advice that improved the pacing of my thriller. Thank you, Arthur. To all my beta-readers on Goodreads, Google +, Critique Circle for telling me not to give up when I faced that great doubt that plagues all debut novelists. I look forward to reading your books when you bring them out. And yes, to my church and all my spiritual advisors, past and present who got me to believe that saints really do reach out to the dispossessed.
Stephendavidhurley.com
Stephen David Hurley is a coach and teacher who blogs about fiction, faith and young people. You can find his blog at—you guessed it—fictionfaithandyoungpeople.com.
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