Midnight

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

  He held out a small cross, two pieces of wood that he’d tied together. She hesitated—was it a joke? Some last insult?

  But his blue eyes were filled with tears. He wasn’t much more than a boy. The battle was over between them. Around the stake, there seemed to be a lake of peace.

  She took the cross, kissed it with passion, and put it under her clothes, right next to her skin.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. Jesus alone, in the wilderness. A wandering monk had told them about it, back in Domrémy—how Jesus had faced down three dreadful monsters, the lion of anger, the goat of lust, and the seraph of fear, but had been defeated by the fourth, the white bull of haste.

  She, too, it came to her now. She had been hasty, that day at Compiègne, when she was captured. If she had been patient—but Joan of Arc wasn’t patient. She was brave and strong and bold, and she acted. Others would be patient. Their lives would be long. Hers would be short.

  A short life, but not a bad one, all told. She had been born an obscure shepherd girl. She was dying with a thousand people at her feet. In between, she had commanded kings and dukes. Maybe it always ended this way—for her, for Jesus, for Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret. The executioner started tying her to the stake. More tightly than usual, he knew. For this one would be worse.

  Why? he wondered. There were all the priests who’d wanted her burned, crying, and slipping away, one by one, leaving, they couldn’t watch—why do it, then?

  He took her hands now. “Please.” She was just a girl. “Show all her secrets,” the English had commanded him. What did they expect to see? Her courage? What they’d run from in battle?

  At least she wouldn’t know. “Please.” He had to climb over the wood to tie her hands. She wasn’t screaming yet. Most of them scream. Well, he’d get it over with as soon as he could for her, throw on the extra pitch he’d brought. He glanced around, almost prayerfully, for some sign of saints or angels—nothing. “Forgive me,” he whispered, as he climbed back down and picked up his torch.

  Isambart climbed up on top of the wood next to her, with the big cross. “Make sure I can see it till the end!” she begged him. The wood was high around her legs, scratching her feet, cutting them. The executioner must have lit the fire. She knew it, she could hear it.

  And now feel it—it was bad, worse than she’d thought. Much worse, much, much worse—Massieu was still here, and Isambart, with the cross. “Get down!” she cried to them. “Don’t get burned!”

  For it was rising faster than she’d expected. All that pitch—“Water!” suddenly screamed Girl X.

  “Holy water!” cried Joan of Arc. The fire was burning her feet. The smell came through the crowd.

  “Jesus!” cried Joan of Arc loudly. That’s how she’d do it—she saw it now. It would be all right. Every time Girl X was going to scream, No! or Help me! or I was betrayed! She would cry, “Jesus!”

  She could burn, she saw. She could do it. “Jesus!” Suddenly she wasn’t afraid any longer—of anything, she realized. She could burn, like they could, the great saints—was she one of them? When her saints had said they’d save her, did they mean for this?

  She coughed. “Holy water!” The smoke was rising. A soldier came running toward her—my God, the fire! He was shouting, angry—didn’t he know that it was over?

  What harm did he think he could do her now? He had a pile of sticks—he shouted that he was going to throw them on the fire, make it worse.

  But it wouldn’t be worse. It would be better, faster. He spat at her as he threw his sticks on the fire. She smiled at him.

  He froze. What was the matter? He stood, staring at her. “A dove!” he cried. “A dove flew out of her mouth! It’s flying toward Paris—” He fainted.

  A dove? That was nice. “Help him,” she murmured, though whether anyone could hear her any longer, she didn’t know.

  Someone carried the soldier off. She looked up at the cross that Massieu and Isambart kept in front of her. “Thank you,” she whispered to them. “Saint Margaret! Saint Catherine!”

  Her head felt light now. There was beautiful light all around her. “Water! Holy water!” The sky was as blue as water, as the sea, which she’d never seen. She imagined it blue, like the sky, though someone had told her it was gray.

  Rouen was close enough—a giant wave could come up, right now, a holy wave. Cool, cold. Wet. “Jesus!” She looked at the people, all standing silently, weeping. So they did love her! And so much—she loved them, too. She looked over to Cauchon, but he was fleeing, his head down, weeping, from the platform. Winchester, Bedford, and Warwick, too—all running.

  From her. “The English run from Joan of Arc,” she murmured, smiling now. In the light. Funny, how long they’d worked to burn her, Cauchon, Winchester, Warwick, and now they ran from her.

  Winchester’s secretary came up to the base of the stake, staring strangely. “Go on, throw more wood if you’d like,” she tried to say, but he stood, transfixed.

  “We are lost!” he cried. “We have burned a saint!” He, too, turned and ran.

  “We have burned a saint—”

  Is that how they see me? she wondered. She looked for Massieu—too much smoke now, to see anyone. But there was the sky.

  Deep blue. She remembered once as a child, when she, and all of them, had had to flee from marauding soldiers to the castle at Neufchâteau, and there’d been a storyteller there.

  Who’d told them of a princess, in a castle, who was allowed anything her heart desired, except to look into one room, which became the only thing her heart desired. She looked, and came to a very bad end.

  “Life’s like that,” her mother had said. “She shouldn’t have looked”—but Joan of Arc had looked. She’d looked into all the rooms. The king’s rooms, the priests’ rooms—and yes, look what had happened to her. She was burning.

  But no! she wanted to say. That is, yes, she was burning, but we all die. And Joan of Arc had worn pants and looked men straight in the eye. She hadn’t cast down her eye to anyone, and had looked in all the rooms.

  And she’d come to a very bad end, they might say. But only because they didn’t know. She could still see the sky. The perfect sky!

  They didn’t know that she had been granted transformation, one last time. She looked out at the English—she could hardly see them. Her life as Joan of Arc was over. It shouldn’t have been. Her king should have fought on with her, but he didn’t, he was finished fighting, and her mission there was finished—though not for the English. The English had actually believed in her longer than the French.

  That was funny, too. She wanted to shout to everyone, to the girls, Don’t be afraid! You can cast down your eyes for seventy years, keep out of all forbidden rooms, wear the skirt, and you’ll still die in the end.

  We’re born to die. But she had the people at her feet, calling her name, praying for her. All the kings and queens, good or bad, true or false, all the French, all the English. The horse that carried her to Orléans, Cauchon, Warwick, d’Estivet who’d tormented her. He would die badly. She could see that, drawn in the flames, just as he’d lived. A cruel death.

  But hers? Glorious! she tried to say. There was no more air, but her death was glorious. She could climb it like a ladder straight up to the deep blue sky, climb it like a stairway. She would go straight where they went, those who died gloriously.

  And she’d be where she wanted to be, then—among the bold ones. The fact that she’d been so scared last week just made it better now.

  There couldn’t be more than another breath or two. It had to be nearly over, this death she’d been so dreading. Nearly over.

  So you see? she whispered to Girl X. I could burn.

  “Jesus!” cried Joan of Arc, for the seventh time, and then her head fell forward. She was dead.

  The people of Rouen rioted that afternoon. The English soldiers stayed inside Rouen Castle, knowing to a man that it was over. No one went out, except the executioner. He had to find a pries
t. He was in mortal fear for his soul. He had burned Joan of Arc’s body, as commanded, and her bones, but he hadn’t been able to burn her heart. No matter how much pitch and sulfur he had poured on it—her heart wouldn’t burn.

  He had panicked, and thrown it into the Seine. Now he feared eternal damnation. He, too, was quite sure that he had burned a saint.

  AFTERWORD

  It is said that the men who burned Joan of Arc died very bad deaths. Several got leprosy, a few the plague. D’Estivet was found in a sewer outside Rouen, his head bashed in. Cauchon died of apoplexy, in his barber’s chair. He never did become archbishop of Rouen. The local churchmen wouldn’t have him.

  But her king, Charles VII, lived long—long enough to still be on the throne, in Paris, twenty years later, when an old woman was escorted down the aisle to him, in tears.

  “I am Joan of Arc’s mother,” she said, kneeling before him. “I come for justice.”

  And justice was granted her. Hearings were held, from 1450 to 1456, in Domrémy, Orléans, and Rouen. Everyone who’d ever known Joan of Arc got a chance to come forward and testify. This testimony was recorded, and Joan of Arc’s name was officially cleared.

  It was mostly here, in the so-called Process of Rehabilitation, that I found this story. It comes like the light through the slit in Joan of Arc’s window—not much, but if it’s what you have, enough.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First infinite thanks to Starling Lawrence, who gave me a “yes” after my own “long bad season.” Then to Joan and Louise, who kept me going, and finally and always, to J.P.

  NOTES

  MIDNIGHT AND JANE AUSTEN

  3 at least £200 per year: Equivalent to $13,000 today.

  11 “3 or 4 Families”: Letter to Anna Austen Lefroy, September 9, 1814.

  13 “& my Mother has shewn”: Letter to Cassandra Austen, January 8, 1801.

  13 “I do not think I was v. much”: Honan, Jane Austen, 95.

  15 “The sun was got behind”: Letter to Cassandra Austen, May 5, 1801.

  16 deadly in its social fragmentation: Honan, Jane Austen, 171.

  17 “There was one gentleman”: Letter to Cassandra Austen, January 8, 1799.

  19 “I cannot anyhow continue”: Letter to Cassandra Austen, May 12, 1801.

  26 Harris Bigg-Wither’s unmarried sisters: Wither was added to Harris’s name as terms for an additional inheritance from Wither relatives.

  32 about £460 a year: Equivalent to $30,000 today.

  35 then called Susan, for £10: Equivalent to $650 today.

  39 to her sister a few years before: Sunday evening, April 21, 1805.

  42 received for the four books . . . £684: Equivalent to $45,000 today.

  43 “very like in disposition”: Letter to Cassandra Austen, January 21, 1812.

  43 “praised [Sir Walter Scott’s best-seller]”: Letter from Charles Austen from Palermo, May 6, 1815.

  44 “the pleasures of vanity”: Letter to Fanny Knight, November 1814.

  MARY SHELLEY ON THE BEACH

  Abbreviations: MWS: Mary Shelley; PBS: Percy Bysshe Shelley; CC: Claire Clairmont

  54 “singing or rather howling”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 263.

  55 but she wasn’t unwilling: MWS journal, “I had no fear—rather though I had no active wish—I had a passive satisfaction in death”; Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 265.

  56 “but applaud me”: PBS Letter to John Gisborne, June 18, 1822.

  57 “How long do you mean”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 300.

  58 “I wish I cd break my chains”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 301.

  59 “lived too long near LB”: PBS Letter to MWS; Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 264.

  60 “I awoke one morning”: Quoted in Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 1830.

  66 “Mary wrote it”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 59.

  66 “Yes, and to Fanny”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 40; May 21, 1800.

  70 “unfolded to the delight”: William Godwin letter to PBS, March 3, 1812.

  74 “an arrow from the bow”: Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, unfinished manuscript, quoted in Sunstein, Mary Shelley, 72.

  76 “wrapt in excitement”: William Godwin Jr., Transfusion, quoted in Sunstein, Mary Shelley, 73.

  77 “very early in life”: Maria, quoted in Seymour, Mary Shelley, 85.

  78 auspicious after all: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 83.

  78 “How beautiful and calm”: PBS, “Revolt of Islam.”

  78 “We will have rites”: PBS, “Laon & Cythna.”

  79 offered him £1,000: Equivalent to $75,000 today.

  83 “very soft society”: PBS to CC, June 9, 1821.

  92 “so beautiful”: Holmes, Shelley, 281.

  93 “Pray, is Clary with you?”: Holmes, Shelley, 287.

  98 give birth to a baby: When he visited the child, he was reported to have written to Lady Melbourne that she “is not an Ape.”

  98 “I place my happiness”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 124.

  101 “I have called twice on you”: CC letter to Byron, 27, 43, 44.

  102 “A man is a man”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 136.

  102 “On Saturday”: Sunstein, footnote, Mary Shelley, 428, Murray MS.

  103 “Ten minutes”: CC Letter to Jane Williams, 1827.

  104 allowance of £1,000: Equivalent to $17,000 today.

  107 “I am sorry”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 135.

  110 “Now—don’t scold”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 136.

  110 his school friend Diodati: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 138.

  110 “a beam, now black”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 154.

  112 “No person of respectability”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 139.

  112 A volcanic eruption: Mount Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. It was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

  112 “approach from the opposite”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 137.

  114 “Mary and I will publish”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 144.

  115 “I will die unavenged”: Translation by David Ferry.

  117 dalliance with Claire: “The next question is the brat mine” he wrote to his lawyer. “I have reason to think so. She had not lived with Shelley during the time of our acquaintance and she had a good deal of that same with me.”

  120 “My dreadful fear”: CC letter to Byron, August 28, 1816.

  122 her mother had once written: in her novel Maria.

  122 “I know not whether”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 114.

  124 “I understand from Mamma”: Letter from Fanny Imlay, May 29, 1816.

  125 “where she was found”: The Cambrian, October 11, 1816.

  126 five shillings and a sixpenny piece: Equivalent to $50 today.

  128 “fully overbalances the plainness”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 79.

  130 “according to the vulgar”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 180.

  130 “another incident allows me”: MWS letter, January 13, 1817.

  131 “Three young writers”: December 1, 1816.

  131 “a scholar, a gentleman”: Blackwood’s, No. 26.

  135 “a thin, patrician-looking”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 196.

  137 “Poor little angel”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 192.

  138 officially published: As opposed to its initial, unheralded publication on January 1, 2018.

  138 “The sun shines bright”: MWS, letter to Marianne and Leigh Hunt, from Lyon, March 22, 1818.

  138 “most beautiful oxen”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 204.

  139 “dressed her in trousers”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 200.

  140 “undress and sit on the rocks”: PBS letter to Thomas Love Peacock, quoted in Holmes, Shelley, 427.

  141 “It is true that . . . it shocks”: Holmes, Shelley, 431.

  141 “We rode among chestnut woods”: Holme
s, Shelley, 427.

  142 “oppressed with wretchedness”: MWS letter, August 22, 1822.

  144 “Get up at four o’clock”: Holmes, Shelley, 443.

  145 “persons of a very ordinary sort”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 215.

  146 “Everything on earth has lost”: Seymour, Mary Shelley, 232, 235.

  146 “We have now lived 5 years”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 213.

  146 earnings so far was £29: about $2,850.

  147 “but his appearance was youthful”: Hoobler and Hoobler, The Monsters, 257.

  148 “3 still/Clare”: Sunstein, Mary Shelley, 426, footnote 13.

  150 “a natural child”: Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 230.

  151 “to a life of ignorance”: CC letter to Byron, March 24, 1821.

  151 “Paradise and the Bambino”: Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 253.

  153 “hopelessly lingering”: Holmes, Shelley, 649.

  157 “We drive along this delightful bay”: Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 310.

  160 “There was no boat”: MWS Letter to Maria Gisborne, August 22, 1822.

  160 “the calamity” . . . “over us”: MWS Letter to Maria Gisborne, August 22, 1822.

  161 “her large gray eyes”: Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 270.

  162 Another woman in the shape: Adrienne Rich, “Planetarium.”

  JOAN OF ARC IN CHAINS

  166 “Even if you brought me”: From Joan of Arc’s Trial, May 23, 1431, in Jules Quicherat, Procès de Condemnation, et de Réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc (Paris: Renouard, 1847) [hereafter, Trial].

  166 “Be brave, daughter of God”: Trial, March 13 and 17.

  167 “You tell me”: Trial, March 13 and 17.

  168 “Will they take me out”: Testimony of Massieu in Jules Quicherat, Procès de Condemnation et de Réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc, vol. 2 (Paris: Renouard, 1847) [hereafter “Quicherat”], pp. 17–18.

  169 “I submit”: Testimony of Jean de Mailly, in Quicherat, 3:54–5; Jean Beaupère, in Quicherat, 2:21.

  170 “Look how she mocks us”: Testimony of Manchon in Quicherat, 3:146.

  171 “You insult me!”: Testimony of Jean de Mailly in Quicherat, 3:55; Andre Marguerie, Quicherat, 3:184; Jean Morel, Quicherat, 3:90.