Midnight

by Midnight- Three Women at the Hour of Reckoning (retail) (epub)

  She jumped. Massieu turned—Holy God!

  Just a man, Joan of Arc took a breath and told herself. It was all right. She knew him now. He was just a man, under a very black hood. A man with a name, and a birth, and a death, too, like the rest.

  He had brought a sort of shift for her to wear—a shroud, Massieu realized, his tears falling faster than hers now. He helped her put it over her head.

  Massieu wished he’d followed his earlier instinct to flee. This was worse than he’d feared. They took her out from her cell. He looked back as she was leaving. The chains were there, lying on the floor, open now. They looked almost beautiful like that. As if she’d flown away.

  She followed his gaze, and asked, half joking, if he thought her chains would notice that she had gone. Did things? Things that had figured large in one’s life?

  She suddenly remembered a caged bird in Domrémy, a little songbird, a lark, if she remembered correctly. Just a bird in a cage—what did it care for anyone? But when the old man who’d cared for it had died, the little lark stopped singing. “Saddened,” her father had told her. Even though people still fed it just the same.

  What is life? There was the street, and the cart. She would go in it now—which was at least action. Better than imagining it, terrified.

  Massieu got in with her—she didn’t expect that, but was greatly relieved, not to be alone. It was another gift, and maybe even a sign. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  Ladvenu climbed in as well—good, too. He’d heard her last confession. She was glad to stay close to that, especially now, with all these English soldiers surrounding them. Lots of them, shouting—just men, after all, who should do what she’d told them at Orléans. Go back to England, while they still could.

  For there was no chance now that they’d ever win in France, and she knew it this morning, and they must have known it, too. In their hearts, known that every Englishman who died in France after Joan of Arc died in vain.

  There was the river, the Seine, its blue waters coming from Paris. Paris had almost been hers, but she’d lost control by then. Her own generals had carried her off against her will when she was only slightly wounded, and then it had been over.

  She had been at her most desperate after that. In that confusion, at the court that winter. It had seemed so big to her then, high treason, that her king’s men wouldn’t move, wouldn’t fight with her or let her fight, but now it seemed a small thing, almost personal. It wasn’t granted her to march into Paris, true, but as she looked at the Seine now, here in Rouen, on her way to the stake, she saw clearly that Paris would be hers anyway. Sooner or later—the English could burn her a thousand times, and Paris, she knew now, would be hers in the end.

  XX.

  They arrived at the Old Market Square, and there was the stake, high on a platform—why so high? It was so big, and there was so much wood, and something smelled bad. Sulfur? Pitch? Boiling?

  Please God, no! Girl X started to whimper.

  Don’t look, whispered Joan of Arc, turning away. Just take each moment, each moment. No good looking ahead. Like the cart. It had been terrifying at first, and now she’d done it, gone in the cart.

  It wasn’t the cart that terrified you, it was the stake, said Girl X.

  Yes, maybe, but what of it now? She looked across at them, the men of the church, the usual ones. All those priests and bishops and captains, on another platform. They were all in black, but looked small, suddenly.

  Like rats, said Girl X.

  Small, said Joan of Arc.

  But a rat’s bite can kill you.

  But they’re still just rats.

  . . .

  One of them got up and started to preach. From the Bible, Corinthians. The one right before her favorite one.

  God’s word.

  In the mouth of a rat, said Girl X.

  Still God’s word.

  “ ‘For as the body is one and hath many members . . . God hath tempered the body together . . . that there be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care, one for another.’ ”

  Yes, that’s true, thought Joan of Arc, remembering Orléans, and Troyes, and Reims, when all of France seemed to be one body, caring for one another, tempered together, moving as one to put a crown on its head, the head of France. She had been close to the head then—it came to her that she’d been the heart. The heart of France! She could live long, she thought, and never do better.

  “And when one member suffer, all the members suffer . . . or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.” They had rejoiced that summer, all of France, it seemed to her. She remembered looking out at her army one day, after Troyes, on the way to Reims Cathedral, and seeing women and children trotting along with them, and thinking, Yes, this is fitting. No longer a military campaign, but a pilgrimage, for the love of God, full of people.

  Now Cauchon began: “Joan, we declare you a relapsed heretic today . . .”

  For she had truly done it for them. She had put their needs first. That’s why she marched first to Reims, when she could have taken Paris. The generals said she’d made a mistake, but the truth was that the people needed a king more than they needed Paris.

  “ . . . we cast you off . . .”

  Like a boat down the river. Like the deep blue sky. She’d been nearly overwhelmed with joy then, that summer, she was nearly overwhelmed with sorrow now, and what was either, to the immensity of the deep blue sky? She’d been born nineteen years ago in Domrémy, and could have been kicked by a cow or fallen into a well and died right then. Instead, she’d lived to die here today. And yet another throw of the dice, and she might have lived too long, in some obscure village. Lived to be lonely and forgotten.

  “Johanne, vade in pace,” went the formula Cauchon was reading. Go thou in peace.

  Massieu turned to him, her words—“

  Bishop, I die through you!”—still ringing in his ears. Had Cauchon even heard her? She’d said it to him, straight out, this morning.

  “I die through you”—did Cauchon know the truth about the dress? That the guards had taken it, and forced her back into the fatal pants? He must have known, someone must have put them up to it. It was a clever ruse, and the guards weren’t clever—or freethinking, or independent. If they had been, they wouldn’t have been in there all those months, the lowest of the low, wouldn’t have been given the job of kicking around a girl in chains.

  No, it was someone clever, someone higher up who’d lost patience, Warwick, or maybe Winchester, and Cauchon would have been told. So he’d known as well that when she stood there in front of his tribunal and declared that she’d taken the pants “freely,” she was lying.

  So, was he impressed? Massieu wondered. Did he appreciate her progress? She’d come to him a simple country girl, but she’d gotten an education at his hands. And was still heroic.

  More heroic—it was a choice now. Her eyes were open.

  “Bishop, I die through you!” Cauchon had to know, too, that she had taken measure of the extent of his corruption. How could he live?

  Unless, thought Massieu, looking quickly around, he does something now. It wasn’t too late—she was still among them, standing there breathing, alive. Surrounded by English soldiers, true, with their lances and swords—But look at the people, Cauchon! Look at the French here, many more than the English, thousands more.

  If you say, No! now, Cauchon, if you shout out, No!, scream it, they will rise. All of them. Massieu could feel it. They were disposed.

  But they needed a leader. Someone they recognized—Cauchon could do it, if he did it right now. He could set her free, and turn himself, with just one word—No!—from a wretch to a hero. And he might die here this morning, but he would die holy, redeemed, and people would remember him forever, his name would live. “Saint Pierre,” they might call him.

  But Cauchon merely cleared his throat. “The Church can no longer protect you,” he intoned. He looked up into her eyes then, and quic
kly away. Massieu knew that Cauchon’s life hadn’t been without merit. He had been young once, was known to love art, and had even spent one summer among some mystics in Paris, a few decades back. Since then, though, he’d clearly made his way, with much success.

  And within the overall narrative of that success, he must have understood this affair as a footnote. Politics, a detail, the price of the archbishop’s palace in Rouen. When Winchester had asked him to oversee the trial, which was to say, the burning, of Joan of Arc, Cauchon could have slipped out of it. Pled illness, clerical business, a sore foot—but he must have thought it would be a small thing. Quickly done and soon behind him.

  But would it ever be behind him? “Bishop, I die through you.” How easily could even a rising prince of the church walk away from that?

  And there was the rest of it, every word she’d said to him during the trial. The other day, Massieu had seen the bishop looking over his shoulder, twice, three times, and hitting his ear, as if he were hearing something. “You tell me to beware—beware yourself!” And now, worse, “Bishop, I die through you.”

  And then there’d been the trick question, the trap Cauchon had laid for her. When he’d gotten one of his men to ask her, cruelly, almost sinfully, “Joan, are you in a state of grace?” There was, of course, no safe answer to that question. If she’d said yes, she would have been guilty of the sin of presumption; if she’d said no, then she was, by her own admission, outside of grace and certainly not, as she claimed, sent by God.

  But almost miraculously—yes, miraculously, Massieu would say now—she’d found the answer. “If I am in grace,” she’d replied, “I pray that God keep me there. If I’m not, I pray that God lead me to it.”

  The men in the room had gone speechless at that, and Cauchon had quickly adjourned the trial. And another time, worse, actually, when they’d asked her if she knew the Lord’s Prayer and the Ave Maria, and she’d turned to Cauchon and said, “Let my lord the bishop hear me in confession, and I’ll gladly say them to him. . . .”

  “Gentle bishop,” she’d called him then, before she knew, when she still took him for an honest man of God.

  Cauchon looked up then, right at Massieu. With a look in his eyes that Massieu had never seen, pleading almost. What do you want from me?

  Just one no! Massieu shot back at him, silently pleading himself now. And Cauchon could have, right then. Shouted, “No!” and lived as a hero, or maybe died there, but heroically. Having thrown it all off, all the hypocrisy, the double-dealing, just come clean and gone down fighting beside Joan of Arc.

  Say no, Massieu was still praying, and we’ll follow you, and you will live forever and the little children will revere your name—when Cauchon intoned, “We turn you over to secular justice, and hope it will be gentle,” and took his seat.

  XXI.

  That was the signal for the executioner to pull up his hood. Joan of Arc fell to her knees. She was surprised to hear herself calling out, “Forgive me,” to Cauchon, “as I forgive you.”

  No! cried Girl X.

  He’s just a rat, Joan of Arc told her. She cast her eye over the rest of the judges. All rats.

  “Forgive any wrong that I did. I meant no harm. And I forgive you all. And you, Rouen”—the people. There were hundreds of them, thousands. At her feet. She looked around.

  And saw the stake, higher than she’d remembered.

  “Ah, Rouen, Rouen!” broke out Girl X. “I fear you will suffer for my death!”

  Silence! Joan of Arc commanded her. To the townspeople, she called, “I forgive you all! Pray for me!”

  “We will!” they shouted. Tears began to roll down French faces, sobs to break from French breasts.

  “Dear God, and dear Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, Saint Michael, help me today! Be here with me now! Don’t forsake me!”

  She turned to Massieu. “Is there a cross?” she asked him. “A big one, that I can see till the end?”

  Isambart came up. “I’ll see if they’ll give me one, from the cathedral.”

  “Beg them!” Massieu said. “Take it by force if you have to!”

  Massieu was worried that the executioner would take her before Isambart came back with the cross, but the man seemed to be waiting for something, too. Joan of Arc was kneeling, praying, forgiving.

  “Holy Jesus, who died on the cross! And Holy Mother—”

  The English soldiers were muttering, stamping. They’d been told eight o’clock this morning: “Without delay.”

  “Hey, you priests!” one of them shouted. “Do you want us to have dinner here today?”

  They tightened their hold on their pikes and their swords. They were greatly outnumbered by the weeping French crowd.

  Isambart came back with a cross six feet high—perfect, big enough for her to see across the heads, should the priests be pushed back. Massieu took it up to her—she threw her arms around it, hugged it, kissed it. Wouldn’t let go.

  “Come on, priests!” the English soldiers were shouting. “Get on with it!” they cried to the executioner.

  But he was waiting for the bailiff to pronounce the secular sentence to burn her. The Church had formally cast her off; now the state, to which it fell to burn the Church’s prisoners, had to formally sentence her. Only then could he burn her legally.

  The executioner was a formalist. It was how he justified his work. He relied on procedure to turn what he did from torture and murder to law. He had taken this profession, following his father, who hadn’t much liked it, either. His father used to cry out in the night. He’d died young, from drink.

  This executioner didn’t drink, and he understood, better than his father, that the law was complicated. There was a need for his work. Someone had to do it. He accepted his role, that it had fallen to him to flay his fellows, break their backs, even burn them, for the law.

  But since he enjoyed none of these activities, he relied on certain consolations. The legal formulas, for example, soothed his soul and quieted his heart, always pounding right before, always beating to him, Run! Don’t do it! But the ancient words of condemnation, sounding biblical, and intoned always so solemnly, so dispassionately before what were surely the least dispassionate of events, gave him a profound reassurance, every time, that what he was about to commit was necessary, and even for the good.

  For the law, which he revered and served. Just like Joan of Arc, it occurred to him. With her march to Reims to have her king crowned legally. Turned from man to king.

  Now he, the executioner, was waiting.

  “Hey, priests!” The soldiers were shouting louder now.

  The executioner turned back to the bailiff. He didn’t like any of it today. First of all, the stake was too high. How was he supposed to reach her, to smother her, put her out of her misery before the flames reached her, as was customary? The way he always did it, always—didn’t the English know this?

  Or worse, did they actually want the girl to burn alive? Why else would they have built it like this? It wasn’t right. He’d never had to burn anyone alive before.

  And then there was the strange order he’d received in writing from the English—to pull the clothes off her body as she burned, so that everyone could see her naked. One of the priests had read it to him: “Her woman’s body, and all the secrets it contains,” it said.

  He didn’t like it. Everyone knew she was a virgin—it was unseemly. And what did they think they’d see? He’d nearly cheered the other day, when she recanted. And in the torture room, too, he’d gone to church afterward and thanked God that he hadn’t had to torture her, though he would have. It was his job.

  She’d smiled at him then, that day. Said her saints were going to save her. Well, he wished they would. Right now. He truly wished it, more than anyone here, probably, except maybe her.

  “Hey, you priests!” Two English soldiers mounted the scaffold and pulled her to her feet. That was clearly out of order.

  She was praying, clinging to the cross. The executio
ner turned back to the bailiff. What about the sentence? The words that would turn her from a flesh-and-blood girl to the condemned? As good as dead?

  One of the English lords said something, and the bailiff then shrugged and muttered to the executioner, “Just do your job.”

  The English soldiers pulled her off the scaffold, pushed her toward him. He turned, shocked, to Cauchon. “There was no sentence!”

  But Cauchon just waved his hand. “Take her away, take her away!”

  The executioner went, unconsoled, up to Joan of Arc. Good that he’d poured so much pitch on the wood. It had been hard work, but it would make it go faster.

  He took her hand. “Forgive me,” he said. He always asked forgiveness, and they always gave it, no one ever blamed him. Well, sometimes in the torture chamber, where there was still passion, but there was never passion here. “Forgive me.”

  Yes, of course, she forgave him, she forgave them all. He led her to the stake. Girl X started crying again. Sobbing aloud—well, let her, decided Joan of Arc. They were all crying now. She looked back—even Winchester. Even Cauchon.

  Holy God, it was high! He led her up to it. No! No! No! No! Girl X was going to start screaming.

  But Joan of Arc didn’t want to die screaming.

  “The cross!” She turned to Massieu, who was right there, weeping as well. “Keep it where I can see it!”

  “Yes,” whispered Massieu.

  “Don’t leave me!”

  “Never!” he cried.

  XXII.

  Joan of Arc stood, looking up at the stake. Don’t start screaming, she begged Girl X, please don’t scream. I want to do it without screaming.

  The executioner stood her up against it. It was hard, rough. Hurt her back—that didn’t matter anymore, she realized, even if it cut her.

  He put a fool’s cap on her head, with writing on it. Bad words, she knew—“Heretic, schismatic, apostate,” something like that. That was all right. She couldn’t read it. Hardly anyone there could. Anyway, it was meaningless now, just more lies. Someone touched her arm. She turned—an English soldier.