The Crippled Angel

by Sara Douglass

  “If not,” whispered one of the lesser clerics to the man seated beside him, “it would be the only male in Creation that de Bavière hasn’t copulated with.”

  Isabeau heard the remark, as she was meant to, and she flushed with humiliation.

  “Do you deny it, madam?” Joan said, and the pity in her face and voice pushed Isabeau into so deep a rage, and so great a hatred, that she did not even stop to consider how grievously she imperilled her soul with her next words.

  “My lords,” she said, her voice a hiss, “Marie was not the only wanton I came upon engaged in promiscuity within the spaces of La Roche-Guyon. I did spy Joan herself one afternoon, her mouth attached to the guard’s privy member, pleasuring him in the only manner she could.”

  There was a collective gasp of horror among the gathered clerics.

  “When the guard threatened to tell my son,” Isabeau continued, “revealing to him that he trusted naught but a common harlot, Joan murdered him through her sorcerous arts, as she also similarly crippled two of his companions, true men both.”

  Joan shook her head very slightly, and looked away.

  “Sorcerous arts, madam?” asked the Bishop of Beauvais.

  Isabeau glanced at Joan, then looked back at the clerics. “She conjured up a golden hand, with which she murdered and maimed. I did not see this, but many did, and I doubt not their words.

  “On a later occasion I spied her sorcery with my own eyes,” Isabeau continued. She had regained control of her voice and features, and her face was composed, her shoulders straight, and her gaze level as she regarded Joan with a carefully constructed contempt.

  “Yes, madam?” said the Abbé de Fécamp encouragingly, leaning forward.

  “When my beloved son Charles was leading his army towards his magnificent victory at Orleans,” Isabeau said, “we passed by the town of Montlhéry. Joan directed us to a small shrine dedicated to Saint Catherine, and there she performed sorcery before both myself, my son and my daughter. Using witchcraft, Joan transformed a rusting sword into a shining weapon of steel. Joan lifted this rusting piece from the ground, where it had lain for generations, and murmured over it, whereupon it transformed itself into new, polished steel.”

  “She performed sorcery before Saint Catherine’s shrine?” the Abbé said.

  Isabeau nodded, her face sad. “Aye, my lord, she did.”

  The clerics muttered among themselves for a few minutes, then the Abbé addressed Joan. “What have you to say for yourself, given the Lady de Bavière’s evidence against you?”

  “Naught but this, Abbé,” Joan said, and turned so she faced Isabeau directly. “Do you remember, my lady, what happened to the guard at la Roche-Guyon who spoke lies against me? He died, although at the archangel’s hand rather than mine. What fate awaits you, do you think, for your fabrications here this day?”

  Isabeau’s eyes widened, although whether in pretended or real shock was difficult to determine. “She threatens me,” she cried, stepping back, one hand theatrically to her throat.

  “I will never harm you,” Joan said quietly.

  “My lords,” Isabeau said.

  “We have heard enough, I think,” said the Abbé. He looked to Isabeau. “Madam, we do thank you for your aid here this day. I can understand that your testimony must necessarily have been difficult.”

  “I swear that even standing in the presence of such foulness soils my soul,” Isabeau murmured.

  “If your soul has been soiled,” Joan said, “then it has been through no work of mine. You have dragged yourself into the mud of meanness, madam. I have had no hand in it.”

  Isabeau reddened, angry that she had not managed to dent Joan’s composure. She went to speak further, but Lemaistre waved her into silence.

  “There is yet one more case of sorcery to be answered, Joan,” he said. “Your tumble from the tower of Beaurevoir. How can any mortal man or woman fall that far and walk away unhurt? Did you fly your way down, like a witch?”

  “Christ saved me,” said Joan. “I did not save myself.”

  Lemaistre gave her a long look, then leaned over to confer with the Bishop of Beauvais. The bishop nodded, and Lemaistre turned his eyes back to Joan.

  “We would like to hear why you chose to discard your womanly apparel and ride garbed in armour,” he said. “Can you explain to us these ungodly actions?”

  And so the questions and the accusations continued through the day and into the evening, Isabeau interjecting at every opportunity with her own pretended witnessing of Joan’s witchcraft, until Joan was drooping with weariness and her accusators’ voices harsh with judgement.

  In the end, furious that they had not broken her, Jean Lemaistre pronounced their panel’s judgement.

  “This woman commonly known as Joan of Arc, Maid of France, is denounced and declared a sorceress, diviner, pseudo-prophetess, invoker of evil spirits, conspiratrix, superstitious. Implicated in and given to the practice of magic, wrongheaded as to our Catholic faith, and in several other articles of our faith sceptical and astray, sacrilegious, idolatrous, apostate, accursed and mischievous, blasphemous towards God and His Archangels, scandalous, seditious, disturber of peace, inciter of war, cruelly avid of human blood, inciting to bloodshed, having completely and shamelessly abandoned the decencies proper to her sex, and having immodestly adopted the dress and status of a man-at-arms…” His voice droned on, accusing her of so many heretical and sorcerous activities that few miscreants could have fitted them into six full lifetimes. “It is our unanimous opinion,” Lemaistre eventually finished, “that you are a relapsed heretic, a witch and a sorceress, and that you are to be abandoned to the justice of the English king, Henry Bolingbroke, with the request,” his lips curled maliciously, “that you shall be treated as mercifully as possible.”

  To one side Isabeau de Bavière’s face relaxed into triumph. Finally! Merciful be damned. Joan was going to burn.

  Joan gave a single nod, as if Lemaistre’s verdict was nothing but what she had expected, but, as she turned to go, she gave a soft cry and collapsed to the floor.

  For several minutes they stared at her, thinking this only a subterfuge on her part. But when she did not rise, the churchmen instructed a guard to walk over and inspect her.

  He did so, first poking at her with his boot, then leaning down to roll her over a little distance.

  “She is consumed with fever,” he said.

  They put Joan on a pallet in a small, windowless chamber off the main hall of the castle. Margaret, having heard of Joan’s collapse, came hurrying and was allowed to tend her. Bolingbroke, having also been informed of Joan’s collapse, sent for the physician Culpeper, then visited Joan himself.

  The chamber was crowded, the lack of window, the closed door and the sputtering torches contributing to its airlessness.

  “Well?” said Bolingbroke, as Culpeper finally stood back from the pallet.

  Joan lay with her eyes closed, her face flushed and sweaty, her hands neatly folded across her breasts.

  “She’s exhausted and malnourished,” Culpeper said. “She has been kept on her feet for twelve hours after spending many weeks imprisoned in poor conditions. Anyone might faint under such circumstances.”

  “So she will live?”

  “Why do you want me to live?” Joan rasped from the bed. Her eyes had opened, and now stared directly at Bolingbroke.

  By her side, Margaret laid a soft hand on Joan’s arm.

  Bolingbroke ignored Joan. “Take good care of her,” he said to Culpeper. “She must not die a natural death. The Church court has handed her to my care and for my judgement.” He choked a little on his last words, then coughed, short and harsh.

  “Sire?” said Culpeper. “What ails you?”

  “Nothing ails me,” Bolingbroke snapped. “I—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes staring, then he gagged, then retched.

  Black mud, perhaps several handfuls’ worth, spewed forth from his mouth. He coughed, coughed again, then
managed to control his retching.

  Bolingbroke slowly straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of one trembling hand. “Witch,” he whispered, staring at Joan.

  “This is not of my doing,” she said. “I am finished. Weak. Powerless. France eats you of its own accord.”

  Margaret, for her part, stared at Bolingbroke with horrified eyes. “Hal? What is happening?”

  “I have been ensorcelled,” he yelled, then cleared his throat and spat a globule of mud into a corner of the chamber.

  Margaret blinked at him, remembering the words that Mary had spoken in her final hours: France shall have you, and everything you hold dear.

  “Get her well,” Bolingbroke said to Margaret. “For once she is in the pink of health I would have her burned.”

  Then he turned on his heel and left the chamber. “I am well enough now to burn mightily well,” Joan said to the closed door. “Burn me soon, I beg you.”

  “Why do you yearn for death so much?” Margaret whispered when Culpeper had left.

  “Because I will succeed in death where I have failed in life.” Joan closed her eyes briefly. “I pray it will be soon. France will eat Bolingbroke, and it needs my death to do so.”

  Then she rolled her head towards Margaret. “I have no one on this earth to live for. You have a husband and children. Do not mourn me, for so long as Thomas chooses a-right, then I shall be happy in death.”

  Margaret’s eyes filled with tears, and she took Joan’s hand. “In the end,” she eventually said, “all of our fates rest with Tom, and his choice.”

  Joan tried to smile. “He will choose rightly, for he is a man who loves.”

  “But who is he to choose?” Her head bent, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “We were so foolish to think we could best the angels. We have all been but puppets in their hands. Fate had us in its grasp from the moment we drew breath.”

  “Margaret has entirely missed her calling as a prophetess of doom,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Both Joan and Margaret turned their heads, surprised, for they had not heard the door open.

  Neville stood just inside the door, and now he closed it, nodding thanks for his entry to the guard stationed outside.

  Joan sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bench on which lay her pallet.

  Neville walked over and sat beside Joan. He smiled at both the women, but his eyes were too strained and tired to carry it off well. He let it fade, and reached out and took Margaret’s hand.

  “There is always choice left,” he said, “even if it seems that all alternatives have been destroyed. I have to believe that.”

  Joan nodded, happy that Neville still believed.

  “But you cannot choose me,” Margaret said softly.

  He looked her straight in the eye. “No, Margaret, I cannot choose you.”

  She turned away from him, her hands brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I wish my children were here with me,” she said. “I wish I could hold them one last time. I wish—”

  “Margaret…” Neville raised his hand to Margaret, then dropped it. He did not know what to say or do. James had told him there was a third option, a third choice, but what was it? Neville had spent every waking moment and much of his nightmarish sleeping time seeking the answer.

  And yet there was no answer. There was no conveniently handy prostitute to whom Neville could unhesitatingly hand his soul…beg the woman to take his soul.

  He was trapped by that damned curse, trapped by the Roman prostitute’s prophecy. Trapped by her hatred of him.

  Trapped by his own hatred of all women that he nurtured for so long. Trapped by his uncaring soul.

  “I have spent my life as a foolish man,” he whispered.

  “You have spent your life as any angel would,” said Margaret, still not looking at him, and to that Neville could only laugh briefly, humourlessly.

  “Then I swear before both of you,” he said, “that I will not choose as an angel would.”

  Joan opened her mouth to speak, but just then the door opened, and there stood William Hawkins, captain of Bolingbroke’s castle guard.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, his face flushing with the horror of the news he bore, “I am here to inform you that His Grace the King has just signed your execution order.”

  “When?” Joan said.

  “Tomorrow noon,” replied Hawkins. He hesitated, then left the chamber.

  “Tomorrow,” whispered Margaret. “We have less than a day.”

  “Trust in Christ,” Joan said, staring at Neville. “If he said there was a third path, then he will make it plain to you.”

  “Would that I had your faith, Joan,” Neville said. Then he stood, and kissed Margaret’s forehead. “I will see you in the morning,” he said. “There is something I must do tonight.”

  He went straight to Bolingbroke, and was granted direct admittance.

  “Why do you push this?” said Neville, striding up to Bolingbroke. “Do you not realise that the stake you build for Joan could just as easily hold all of mankind? You have forced the decision, damn you. All will be lost or won tomorrow…how can you stand there so confident?”

  And even as he spoke the words, Neville remembered. He had not talked with Bolingbroke in weeks…and he had never told him what the angels had shown him.

  The decision was already made. He would not give his soul to Margaret. He could not possibly give it to some unknown whore.

  He must hand it to the angels.

  But would telling Bolingbroke make any difference?

  A slight movement out of the corner of his eye caught Neville’s attention.

  Catherine. Sitting in a shadowy corner. She shook her head very slightly, her face a mask of sadness. It is of no use.

  “I have waited enough time,” Bolingbroke said. If Neville was agitated, and Catherine dispirited, then Bolingbroke was a study in calm confidence. He turned away from Neville, and walked about his chamber a little, as if inspecting its rich appointments.

  He stopped, and looked back to Neville. “It is time the decision was made, Tom. Time for the angels to be rejected, time for us to take command.”

  “Time for you to take command,” Neville whispered, appalled. “Time for hatred to reign supreme. Look at Catherine, Hal. Does she look the loving and loved wife? Think of Mary, dying broken and unloved, eaten by your contempt of her. You have ever lectured me about the power of love, the damn need for love…but you are a man so consumed by hatred and ambition that you have become every inch your father’s son!”

  Bolingbroke’s face darkened in fury. “How dare you—”

  “How, why, should I choose in your favour, Hal? Why? Would I not condemn mankind to an even greater hell than that of the angels’?”

  And suddenly, catastrophically, Neville slid into an even incomparably more vile damnation than that he’d been experiencing. He had thought he wanted to choose in the demons’ favour, choose for mankind, choose Margaret, but now he realised that choosing Margaret would condemn mankind to an even greater disaster at Hal’s hands than the one they would experience enslaved to the angels.

  Choosing for the demons would not be choosing for mankind at all. They’d merely be passed from one enslavement to another.

  Neville’s face was a mask of horror, his eyes wide and, staring, he took a step backwards. Then another. Then one more.

  He dimly realised that Bolingbroke was raging at him, that Catherine had stood up from her chair, a hand held to her horrified face, but none of this mattered.

  None of this mattered, because he now realised he was triply trapped into choosing for the angels. He could never choose Margaret: firstly, because of that single hesitancy in his love for her, and, secondly, because she was no whore. And finally he could never choose Margaret because she represented the demons’ path, and that path would condemn mankind to Hal’s ambition.

  There was laughter ringing about them, ringing through the chamber, and it was the laughte
r of the angels.

  Neville turned and fled.

  III

  Tuesday 10th September 1381

  The crowd started to gather in the square just outside the castle from dawn. News of the Maid’s trial by the Church and the subsequent death sentence by the English king sat uneasily with them. Joan was the Maid of France—surely not a witch, surely not a sorceress—but their obedience to the Church, and their fear of what the Church might do to them should they make a fuss, kept their uneasiness to a sullen low murmur and the passing of uneasy looks between neighbours and friends.

  Saints had been martyred before, it was almost the expected outcome for any saintly enterprise, and perhaps they should count themselves fortunate to be here to witness the passage of the Maid into the arms of God and His angels, where she surely belonged.

  Carpenters and labourers had worked through the night to erect the scaffolding about the stake and to collect enough wood to ensure the Maid burned properly. The stake itself stood on a platform that had wood heaped beneath it and about it: a small space had been left clear so that Joan’s gaolers could tie her securely to the stake.

  A wooden board had been fastened to the top of the stake. On it were written words in red paint: Jeanne who calls herself Maid of France, liar, pernicious deceiver of the people, sorceress, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, boastful, idolatrous, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic.

  The labourers had erected two stands a close but safe distance from the stake. In one would the English king, his entourage and the civilian notables of Rouen watch the proceedings, in the other the members of the Church who had gathered for the spectacle. Many of the clerics were already arriving, resplendent in newly laundered and brushed clerical robes of purple, crimson and black wool and silk, some of them wearing furs against the cool morning.

  They fully expected to be able to discard them in the later warmth of the day.