Виктория Холт - Epitaph for Three Women

‘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.’

‘And I shall be tried again … and not by the Church.’

‘You will be condemned. None would go against the judgement of Holy Church.’

She said bitterly: ‘Holy Church must not shed blood. So it passes those it wishes to destroy over to the secular arm and it would go ill with any judge there who went against the wishes of the Church.’

She was surprised at herself. She had been brought up to revere the Church. She put her hand to her brow. She felt weak and ill.

She climbed into the cart they had brought to take her the short distance to the cemetery of the Abbey of St Ouen. There platforms had been set up and on one of these were seated several cardinals and officials of the Church. Among the Cardinals was the Bishop of Winchester, watching the proceedings with the utmost interest for they were of great importance to his nephew the Duke of Bedford, and indeed to the whole English cause in France.

A sermon was preached by William Erard Canon of Rouen who afterwards admitted that he had no heart for it.

Jeannette listened and it was as though her dream was still with her and already she could feel the heat of fire scorching her limbs.

She was afraid.

‘The French had never been a truly Christian nation,’ the preacher was saying. Oh, he was determined to please his English masters. And Charles who claimed to rule over that nation must be a heretic himself to trust to this woman who now stood before …

Jeannette could not bear to hear the King spoken of in such a way. She rose and cried in loud ringing tones: ‘You outrage our King who is the noblest of Christians … None bears greater love to the Church than he …’

The preacher went on to list the crimes the Maid had committed.

‘Make your submission,’ he thundered. ‘Repent while you have time.’

Jeannette was still intent on defending the King.

‘If there has been any fault it is mine alone,’ she cried.

Pierre Maurice listening thought: She is weakening. She says ‘if there has been any fault.’ She would not have said that a week ago. Poor girl. Poor brave child.

They would excommunicate her, brand her as a heretic and hand her over to the secular law to carry out the sentence of death by burning.

Erard had turned to her. For the last time he was asking her to sign the submission, to confess to that of which she was accused.

She is wavering, thought Maurice. Poor girl, they have deserted her, all of them. She is worn out with suffering.

She said very quietly that she wished her case to be put before the Pope.

‘The Pope is far away,’ said Erard, ‘and your judges are delegated by him. The time has come. I shall now read the sentence of excommunication.’

Jeannette lifted her hand in protest.

Cauchon watching closely signed to Erard and a paper was set before Jeannette.

She was going to put her cross on it.

Under great pressure, after a year of intense suffering, sick in body, ignored by the King whom she had helped, deserted by her voices for whom she had lived and worked for the last six years, she could endure no more.

She nodded her head.

‘I would rather sign than be burned,’ she said.

* * *

What had she done? She had denied her voices. She had betrayed Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret and the Archangel Michael. Worst of all she had denied God.

‘They left me alone to my enemies,’ she murmured.

She tossed on her pallet. In the dimness she thought she saw a light. She thought she heard the voices.

They admonished her gently, but they understood. She had suffered as few had been called on to suffer. They were with her. She would have nothing to fear. Eternal joy was very close now.

Suddenly it was all clear to her. Her voices had promised nothing but salvation. There was no way out for her but through death.

She felt happier now.

* * *

The streets were filling fast. It was the day so many people had been waiting for. The people were to have their spectacle after all.

She wore a long grey robe and on her head was a paper mitre on which were written the words Heretic, Relapse, Apostate, Idolatress. It was the end.

Pierre Maurice came to see her in the cell. She was touched by the sadness in his eyes.

‘Where shall I be this night?’ she asked.

‘Have you no hope in Our Lord?’ he answered.

‘Yes,’ she said and there was ecstasy in her voice. ‘God willing I shall be with the saints in Paradise.’

They took her out to the tumbril which was waiting for her. There were one hundred and twenty soldiers to guard her on her short journey to the market place. All the little streets which converged on it were choked with people all eager to get a glimpse of the Maid’s last moments.

Cauchon delivered his final announcement.

‘In the name of God we reject you, abandon you, praying only that the secular power may moderate its sentence.’

It was ironical. There were some in the crowd who marvelled at the hypocrisy of a Church which could bring one of its members to this square with the sole purpose of submitting her to the flames and at the same time piously cast off the responsibility, knowing full well that no member of the secular arm would dare go against its wishes.

Now they were waiting. There was the pedestal, the ladder which she was to mount; there were the faggots which would be lighted.

They took her to the scaffold and forced her to mount the ladder. A chain was fastened about her waist to hold her firmly to the stake and almost immediately the smoke began to rise.

‘So I die,’ she thought. ‘No cross to hold, no comfort to help me on my way.’

‘Will you not give me a cross?’ she cried in anguish and one of the English archers who had come to witness the spectacle was moved to sudden pity which he found inexplicable. He leaped forward and snatched a branch from the wood at her feet. He formed it into a cross and gave it to her.

She seized it gratefully and held it before her eyes.

One of the monks came up with a cross he had taken from the altar of a nearby church. He held it before her eyes.

The flames were thick now. The crowd was shouting so loudly that they could not hear the moaning mingled with the prayers of the victim.

Then suddenly there was a cry of ‘Jesus’.

For a few moments there was a deep silence in the square.

Then an English soldier spoke and his words were clearly heard by those around.

‘God help us,’ he said, ‘we have burned a saint.’

THE young King was excited. For the first time in his life he was going to leave England.

The Cardinal had come to him with much solemnity and had explained to him that he was going to his land of France and would there be crowned as King.

But I have already been crowned once, thought Henry. He remembered well the weary ceremony and the weight of the crown they made him wear and all those people coming up one after another and kneeling to him. There were times when he heartily wished they had made someone else King.

But to go to France! That might be exciting.

He looked at the Cardinal, an old, old man he seemed and very serious. He had heard his uncle Gloucester refer to him as ‘that old rogue’. That puzzled him. It was hard to think of the Cardinal as anything but one of those good men for whom the gates of Heaven would open wide when he made his journey there, which, thought Henry, judging by his age must be imminent.

In the meantime he was on Earth and appeared now and then to make sure that the King did his duty.

Henry missed his mother and Alice and Joan. Life had been very different when he was with them. But apparently people like himself who were born with the burden of kingship already on them could not be brought up by women. They had to have people like the Earl of Warwick and the Cardinal of Winchester around them – and occasionally his uncles, stern Bedford and jolly Gloucester, both of whom, in spite of their different natures, alarmed him more than a little.

‘There will be a service at St Paul’s Cathedral,’ the Cardinal was saying, ‘and you must remember that God will be watching you – and so will the people.’

It was rather frightening to be so spied on; but if God loved him as much as the people obviously did, he thought he might be as welcome in Heaven as the Cardinal would be. ‘You will understand,’ went on the Cardinal, ‘that a great deal of preparation has gone into this visit so it remains with you, my lord, to make sure that no one is disappointed in you.’

Henry replied brightly: ‘The people shout a lot and cheer me and say “Long live the little King”.’

‘That is because you are a boy. But at the same time they expect a great deal from you. The higher the position the better you must be. You must never forget that you are King of this realm.’