Jeannette listened wide-eyed to how Catherine was secretly baptised and there in a vision saw Christ who put the nuptial ring on her finger.

‘Now Maxentius, the Emperor of the Romans, sent out a command that all the people must offer sacrifices to the idols they worshipped. Catherine was now a Christian; she could not partake in the offering of such sacrifices, nor could she stand by silently and see this done, and when the Emperor and all his retinue came to Alexandria to witness the sacrifices and were gathered in the great square, Catherine went before him and called him a fool because he sacrificed to false idols. He was proud of the fine buildings he set up, she told him. He loved them to idolatry, but he should love the trees and the earth, the stars and the sky. That was God’s work and superior to that of man.’

Listening avidly, Jeannette was there in the great square at Alexandria. She glowed with the ardour which was Catherine’s. In those moments in the candlelit room she was Catherine.

Thiesselin went on to read of how Catherine was arrested and because her beauty had impressed Maxentius he said that his wise men should parley with her and confound her in argument and when they proved her folly to her she should be given the opportunity to recant.

‘Now,’ read Thiesselin, ‘God spoke through Catherine so that she confounded those so-called wise men, and so impressed were they that they declared Catherine to be the one who spoke the truth.’

It was vivid; it was real.

Thiesselin paused and said: ‘That is enough for this night. Tomorrow I will read more of the story of Catherine.’

Jeannette lay on her truckle bed as though in a trance. It had been a wonderful experience. She could scarcely get through the day and when that hour came when the candles were lighted and Thiesselin sat at the table and continued with the story of Catherine she was trembling with excitement.

She listened to how the infuriated Emperor caused the wise men to be burned to death, but although the fires raged round them they emerged unscathed.

‘It was a miracle,’ breathed Jeannette.

‘It was God proclaiming the Truth,’ said her godmother.

‘And what did the Emperor do then?’ Jeannette wanted to know.

It seemed that he had been struck by Catherine’s beauty and offered her a place in his palace, second only to that of his Empress. There should be a statue to her set up in the town and she should be worshipped as a goddess. But first she must make a sacrifice to the idols the Emperor worshipped. Catherine’s response was that she was the bride of Christ. Then the Emperor ordered that she be cast into a dungeon after being scourged by rods and there she should be left to starve. He then departed on his conquests. But an angel came to the Empress and she believed him when he told her that Catherine was a saint.

The Emperor returned and when he heard that Catherine was not dead but seemed unscathed by her ordeal he ordered that wheels with sharp spikes be made, the intention being that Catherine’s body should be broken on these, but just as they were about to be set in motion they broke asunder and the pieces were scattered, killing several who had come to gloat on the sufferings of Catherine. The Empress, seeing what had happened, came to the Emperor to protest and to say that she had had a vision and as a result had become a Christian. In his rage the Emperor ordered her head to be cut off.

The Emperor then offered Catherine a choice. She could be his Empress or her head should be cut off.

‘So her head was cut off and it was not blood that flowed from her body but milk. And from Heaven there was heard sounds of celestial music when Catherine ascended to join her bridegroom.’

Thiesselin shut the book and there was deep silence in the room.

Jeannette’s godmother blew out one of the candles. ‘Jeannette, are you asleep?’ she asked.

Jeannette opened wide eyes to stare at her. ‘Asleep! Dear godmother, I was there … I knew what was in her mind. And the milk which flowed from her body was purity. It is the pure who see God.’

The Vittels looked at her in amazement. She seemed transformed.

‘Go to your bed,’ said Jeannette de Vittel kindly.

Jeannette rose. ‘Shall there be more reading tomorrow?’ she asked.

Thiesselin laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘My dear child,’ he said, ‘I will read more stories of the saints. Saint Catherine was not the only one to die for God and the faith.’

And that visit to her godmother was an important landmark in the life of little Jeannette. She waited through the days patiently doing the tasks set her and while she was at her spinning wheel she dreamed of what the saints had done for God and she thought that they were the truly great ones. Not great soldiers like the mighty Dukes of Burgundy and Orléans, not like the King himself … But the holy saints who cared not what happened to them and lived only to die in the service of God.

She would always adore Saint Catherine, and when she heard the story of the blessed Margaret these two became as friends to her.

Eagerly she listened to how Margaret, daughter of Theodosius a priest of the Gentiles, was baptised in secret and how Olibrius the Governor of the city saw her and admired her beauty. He ordered that she be brought into his house and when she refused to become his concubine he had her hung from a wooden horse and beaten with iron rods while her flesh was torn with iron pincers. Her blood came from her body like the freshest water. She suffered other tortures at the hands of Olibrius but she endured them all and refused to give in. Finally she was beheaded and those watching said that as she died a pure white dove flew up to Heaven.

Jeannette thought a great deal about the saints and her godmother took her to the church and showed her the images of St Catherine and St Margaret, and she longed to be like them.

As she lay on her pallet at night she thought of them; she dreamed of them and it was as though they spoke to her in her dreams.

There was one significant factor about their lives, and that was their insistence on their virginity. Jeannette knew that many girls and boys were interested in each other; she had seen Mengette Joyart flirting with a young soldier who came from one of the nearby villages. She was constantly bringing the name of Collot Turlant into the conversation.

Jeannette shuddered. She wanted none of that. She wanted to live as Catherine and Margaret had. She vowed as she lay in her pallet that she would remain a virgin for then she might be chosen as Margaret and Catherine were.

There were more stories of the saints. The days and evenings passed too quickly, and in due course Jacquemin arrived to take her back to Domrémy.

Regretfully she rode slowly back. One day, she promised herself, I shall be among them.

The conviction had come to her. It was the first step in the direction she would go.


* * *

There was great excitement in Domrémy. Horsemen galloped to and fro on the roads but sometimes stopped to rest at the village.

Jeannette was ten years old, able to understand something of the terrible torment through which her country was passing.

She knew that the most wicked of all the Godons, the King of England, had made terms with the poor mad King of France and his wife the Bavarian Isabeau whom many people said was at the root of their troubles. Consequently the King’s daughter Katherine had become the wife of the wicked King, and that King was calling himself the King of France.

There was consternation everywhere. The skirmishes between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians were as nothing compared with this. This was disaster. This would change the entire face of the countryside.

‘How could the King do this?’ demanded Jeannette of her brothers. ‘How could the King take the Dauphin’s inheritance and give it to this Godon?’

‘Because he was forced to do it, of course,’ said knowledgeable Jacquemin. ‘You cannot think he would have done so otherwise.’

‘But why … why …?’

‘Because the Godons have more men and money … because we have a Queen who is a Jezebel and a King who is mad … and Frenchmen who fight against each other.’

Her brother Jean looked ashamed. Domrémy was for Armagnac and Greux for Burgundy and Jean had had many a scuffle with the boys of Greux on account of that loyalty. He did not know what it was about – except that Armagnacs were for Orléans and Greux for Burgundy and when they confronted each other they fought.

‘All Frenchmen should stand together,’ said Jeannette. ‘They would then have a better chance of driving the Godons away.’

‘What does a girl know about it?’ asked little Pierrelot.

‘I know that the Godons will be driven away,’ said Jeannette, ‘and that France will belong to the French once more.’

Jean grimaced at Jacquemin. Jeannette was in one of her moods again, he implied.

The troubles did not decrease because of the treaty the King of France had made with the King of England. There were still French towns who would not submit to the conqueror and fighting went on which made the Godons angry. They had won; they had beaten the French to their knees; they wanted an end to the war and when the mad King died their King Henry was to be crowned the King of France. They showed small mercy on the rebels.

The Duke of Burgundy was a traitor – even the Burgundians of Greux were finding it hard to make excuses for him – and because he hated the Armagnacs whom the King favoured he had become the ally of the Godons.

It was all very disturbing. Everyone knew that the Godons were the enemy but otherwise they could not be sure who was fighting whom.

There were frightening stories of what happened when the soldiers passed through villages. They took all the food; sometimes they set fire to the houses; they took the women and raped them, regarding them as the spoils of war no less than the food they could lay their hands on.

The people of Domrémy gathered about the house of Jacques d’Arc. He was a man not only of deep piety but of farsightedness. Just before the treaty which had given France to the Godons he had conceived an idea which some of them had thought a little foolhardy at the time and which they now saw was a stroke of brilliance.

When the Lord of Bourlémont had died without an heir he had left the small castle which stood on an island in the River Meuse to his niece Jeanne de Joinville. Mademoiselle de Joinville had married Henri d’Ogivillier who held a post in the King’s service and she had gone to live in Nancy, so the castle was uninhabited and she had decided to let it on lease, for an annual rent, to the highest bidder.

It would never have occurred to the people of Domrémy that they could rent the castle until Jacques pointed this out to them. The castle was an ideal place for defence, being built on the end of the island and bounded on three sides by the river. The fields of the island were included in the deal and these could be put to very profitable use. Cattle could be kept there; in fact a colony of people living there could be entirely self-supporting.

Jacques had talked to the villagers very earnestly. They must between them acquire the castle if at all possible. There were sporadic outbreaks of war, and they would continue for a long time since it was hardly likely that the French would submit to the intolerable English yoke. They knew what happened when a rough soldiery of either side passed through villages. People lost their possessions; they were left with nothing and no prospect before them but to roam the countryside as beggars. And the women, what of the women?

‘Will you not do everything within your power to protect your wives and daughters?’ he demanded.

It was this which made them more determined and when the women added their voices to those of the men it was decided that they must do everything they could to secure the use of the castle as a means of defence for the people of Domrémy.

Jacques and a few of his neighbours did the bidding and rather to the surprise of everyone secured the use of the Château de l’Ile for nine years. The fact was that few had wanted it, for not many were as far-sighted as Jacques d’Arc. They must pay fourteen livres a year plus six bushels of wheat and if this payment was kept up the whole of the island was theirs except of course the Chapel of Our Lady which had stood there for centuries and which was open to any.