Epitaph for Three Women (38 page)

‘The next session should be held in a smaller chamber,’ said Beaupère. ‘We do not want a repetition of today’s scene. The girl has courage. Let the Court be conducted among ourselves. We do not want all that turmoil outside. It is against her now. It could turn to her.’

Cauchon agreed that this was wise and the next day the Court was set up in a small room and guards were placed outside the door to keep out the mob.

The Inquisitor Jean Le Maître was present, as he had insisted, not to question, but to observe, and among the assessors was the sly Loiseleur who had posed as a cobbler and sought to trap Jeannette.

She saw all these people and was less afraid than she had been when she had had to face the ruffians in her cell. She had heard her voices in the early morning and Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had told her to be of good cheer. God was watching over her and above all she must be bold. She must speak out and say what was in her mind. Refuse to answer if they asked her something which she felt was too sacred to be spoken of. And on other matters, tell the truth.

Beaupère spoke gently. Had she been as simple as some thought her, she would almost have thought he was on her side. He asked a great many questions about her childhood. She had no objections to talking about that. But it was inevitable, of course, that they should arrive at that time when she had heard the voices.

‘What form did the angel take?’ Beaupère asked.

He wanted her to describe some humanised form because it seemed a good way to trap her. She was aware of this. It was as though her voices were warning her.

‘I refuse to answer that question,’ she said.

One of the assessors cried out: ‘What does the prisoner mean – she will not answer! She is here to answer any question that is put to her.’

Beaupère looked at Cauchon. They understood each other. The girl could refuse to talk altogether. What then? They could torture her. There were many things they could do to her. But would that be wise? They wanted her to talk. They wanted her to betray herself through the answers to subtle questions.

Cauchon shouted to the assessor to be silent. ‘Let the Court proceed,’ he added.

Beaupère ignored her refusal and did not press for a description of the angel. Instead he wanted to know how she had picked out the Dauphin when she had been presented to him. He had tried to press someone else on her, had he not? But she had known him at once.

She was guided to him, she said.

‘By what sign?’

‘That I will not speak of.’

The assessors murmured amongst themselves. What sort of a trial was this where the prisoner continually refused to answer certain questions?

They turned to Beaupère, but he was biding his time. He believed he could force her into a position where she would entrap herself. That was what he wanted.

‘So these voices came to you, a humble peasant girl. You were to do this strange thing … leave your cows and sheep and lead the Dauphin to victory.’

‘That was what I was told to do.’

‘And what was to be your reward for all this?’

‘The salvation of my soul.’

Beaupère was exasperated. He had not expected such quick thinking of a peasant girl.

Cauchon was getting exasperated. The girl was making such a good impression. Of course they would find her guilty but it must be done in such a way as to leave no doubt. They did not want her to be a martyr after her death.

At the next assembly he told her that he would have no more nonsense about her refusing to take the recognised oath. But she again refused to take it.

‘I could condemn you for that,’ he said.

‘Take care,’ she warned. ‘I am sent by God. You put yourself in danger by your treatment of me.’

Beaupère smiled at her pleasantly. He pursued his questions concerning the voices – each one cleverly couched to catch her. He came at length to the rites that had been observed during her childhood. They were pagan ceremonies, he hinted, and she had taken part in them. There was a suggestion that during them she had become imbued with the witches’ craft.

At the end of the session she was taken back to her dreary prison there to stretch out on her straw pallet and pray for guidance until she fell asleep exhausted.

A great fear had come to her. She would not be allowed to go on refusing to take the oath. She knew that behind the smiling face of Beaupère there was a wolf waiting to devour her.

During the next days her weariness was apparent. Beaupère was the first to notice. He was cutting the ground around her, teasing her with seemingly innocent questions, standing by waiting for her to fall into his traps.

At last he had finished. He had done her great harm she knew, but she was not sure in what ways. He had been so quiet, had seemed so calm – even compassionate.

Cauchon took up the questions. Weary and without much hope for she knew that everything was going against her, she cried out: ‘I went to war on God’s business. I do not belong here. Send me back to my home.’

‘Are you sure you are in God’s grace?’ asked Cauchon slyly.

‘If I be not,’ she answered firmly, ‘please God to bring me to it. And if I be, please God to keep me in it.’

Cauchon despaired of bringing the trial to a satisfactory end. He consulted with his friends as to whether they should threaten her with torture.

She must stop her appeals direct to God; she must show greater respect for the Church. And yet how could they condemn her for praying to God?

She was surprised when she was allowed to stay in her prison for a day or so. She did wonder what fresh trials were being prepared for her. Then she discovered.

They came to her and releasing her from her chains led her out of prison. She gasped with horror when she saw the instruments in that dark apartment to which they had brought her. This was the torture chamber.

‘Let me bear it, oh God,’ she cried.

Cauchon regarded her steadily. ‘It is our desire to bring you back into the ways of truth,’ he said. ‘You have made wicked inventions and placed your soul in peril. Only confession can save your soul and if you will not save it without, torture may induce you to.’

In the midst of her terror a great calm suddenly descended on Jeannette and the words which came to her lips seemed to have been put there by the saints whom she so dearly loved.

‘If you will you must tear me limb from limb and I can do naught but submit. And if in the extremity of the torture your cruelty imposes on me I admit what you wish me to say, I should afterwards tell the world that it was lies forced from me by your instruments of torture.’

Beaupère laid an arm on that of Cauchon.

He withdrew him to a corner.

‘The girl is too clever,’ he said. ‘What she says is right. None would believe the confessions which are extracted under torture. It will not do in her case. Our task is to prove her guilty. We will not do it with torture. It is the sure way to setting her up as a martyr.’

They took her back to her prison and the idea of torture was abandoned.

But the end of the trial was in sight.

Back in Court she was told that she was disobedient to Christ if she did not obey his prelates of the Church.

How could Holy Church survive if all its members might make private treaties with Heaven? This was her sin. She demeaned Holy Church. If any man or woman would have contact with Heaven it could only be through the Church. In setting herself up as a confidante of God and His saints she was placing herself above Heaven’s representatives on Earth – the prelates of the Church. She had been guilty of pride and witchcraft for they would not believe her voices came from Heaven. She was guilty of bloodshed. But her great sin was in denying the supremacy of the Church and any who did that was guilty of heresy.

She lay on her pallet. Her body burned with fever. She believed she was back in the fields of Domrémy … dancing under L’Arbre des Dames. She was young, only a child, and she had not then heard the voices.

She tossed on her bed.

She was exhausted mentally and bodily. She had scarcely eaten for days – nothing but a little bread soaked in wine. She had tried to answer their eternal questions, being careful to avoid those which she believed might give offence to Heaven.

Sometimes she felt they were sustaining her, those voices. At others she felt they had deserted her. When they spoke ill of the King she defended him fiercely, but in her heart she knew that he had deserted her too.

They came to take her to the Court. She looked at them with unseeing eyes.

‘God help us, she is sick,’ said Cauchon. ‘She is sick unto death.’

They sent doctors to her. She must not die. That would never do. They must have her condemned; that must show her to have been the tool of the Devil.

Cauchon sent the best doctors to her. She was exhausted, was all they could say. She needed rest, food, peace of mind.

The two first she could have. It was hardly likely that the third would be available to her.

After a few days when Cauchon came to see her he was relieved to hear that she was a little better.

‘I rejoice to see you are recovering,’ he said.

‘For what purpose should I recover?’ she asked.

‘I sent doctors to you to comfort and ease you in your illness. Your answers at the trial were very wayward,’ he told her, ‘but I bear in mind that you are an unlettered girl. I can send good men to you to instruct and bring you back into the ways of truth. I must warn you that if you persist in your ways you will place yourself in great peril. We who are your mentors in Holy Church wish to lead you away from this danger.’

Jeannette smiled feebly. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But I shall continue to rely on God. If I die, I trust it will please you to bury me in holy ground.’

‘If you disobey the Church’s laws,’ replied Cauchon, ‘you cannot be granted the Church’s privileges.’

‘Then,’ she said, ‘I must trust in God.’

She was well enough to leave her bed. She felt frail as though much of her strength had been sapped from her. She reflected that it was exactly a year since she had been captured. Oh God, she prayed, have I endured this torture for twelve long months?

She must go once more before her judges.

This was the end. If she admitted that her voices and visions were false, she might be saved.

It was Pierre Maurice, one of her assessors and a canon of Rouen, who urged her to deny her voices.

He was young; and he spoke sympathetically. There were occasions when Jeannette imagined that some of her judges were sorry for her and would help her if they could. Maurice was one of them.

‘Jeannette, my friend,’ he said, ‘do not reject the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not take the path to eternal damnation with the powers of darkness who seek to distract men and women by taking on the shapes of angels and saints and saying they come from Heaven. Repel them. Turn your back on them. Listen to the words of those who would help you and who are the true servants of God.’

She looked into the earnest face of this young man and perhaps because she was so weak, having just risen from a sick bed, a flicker of doubt entered her mind.

Pierre Maurice was aware of this. He leaned towards her.

‘Can you imagine the agony of death at the stake? It is not quick, my friend. You suffer the torments of hell … a foretaste of what will go on eternally if you die with all your sins upon you. Think. You are denied the rights of the Church! Oh think of it, Jeannette.’

She was silent, thinking of it. Where were her voices now? Where was her good friend the King of France? If only there could be some sign.

‘Take her to her cell,’ said Pierre Maurice. He gave her a gentle smile. ‘Think of it, Jeannette,’ he added softly.

She lay on her straw. She was amazed that she could sleep. But her sleep brought her no comfort. She dreamed that the flames had already begun to lick her body.

She awoke crying out in terror.

Only a dream but one which would soon be reality.

It was early next morning when they came for her …

Beaupère with Pierre Maurice came into her cell.

‘We are leaving at once,’ she was told. Maurice laid a hand on her arm. ‘Jeannette,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Recant while there is time. If you do not the Church will hand you over to the secular law.’