Sparrow

by Michael Morpurgo

  They returned two weeks later to find Domrémy in ruins. The church had been burnt to the ground – only the altar was left standing. A few houses had survived the destruction, including Joan’s, but that was little enough consolation. Every barn had been either ransacked or burnt. They could rebuild, as they had before; but with their granaries empty, the winter ahead would be long, and hard to endure for both man and beast. Many would not live to see the spring, and they knew it. That first evening back home the family sat around their fire scarcely speaking. Joan’s mother stared blankly into the flames. “How long?” she said. “How long must we endure this? Why does God not protect us? Do we not pray for it? Do we not beg? What would He have us do?”

  “Fight, Mother,” said Joan. “He would have us fight, and we shall. Believe me, Mother, we shall. It will not be long now, Mother.” Her family looked at her and every one of them knew then that she was speaking the truth.

  No one mocked Joan, not any more. When the villagers saw her going off through Oaky Wood towards the chapel of Notre Dame, her white sparrow flying above her head, they knew she was about her work and left her be. There were a few who did not believe her claim, who still ostracised her, who still thought it too fantastical, too impossible. But even those wanted to believe her.

  On Christmas morning she was walking with Hauviette to Mass in the ruins of the church. “I shall not be here next Christmas, Hauviette,” she said, taking her hand.

  “I know,” replied Hauviette. “I shall think of you every day, until you come back.” But Joan knew she would never be coming back, that this was the last time she would walk with Hauviette, her last Christmas at home.

  By the time Uncle Durand came for her in the snows of New Year’s Day, the family realised these would be their last days all together; but no one had said as much. As for Belami, he buried himself deep in a hole in the thatch up near the chimney, kept himself warm, and waited for the day of Joan’s departure.

  Uncle Durand stayed only two nights – he wanted to get home to Aunt Joan. There was deep snow the morning they left, and the world was silent about them. It was early. No one in the house was up. She told Uncle Durand she wanted no goodbyes. They would just go. She knew now, though it was still unspoken, that she left with her father’s blessing, and her mother’s too, and that was all that mattered to her. She wanted no tears, no clinging embraces. Leaving would be hard enough without that.

  Belami fed hungrily from the pile of breadcrumbs in her cupped hands. “You’ll need it, Belami,” she whispered. “We’ve ten miles ahead of us till we reach Uncle’s house. It’ll be a cold journey. So eat up.” Belami did not have to be told. He devoured every last crumb before they set off.

  Joan tried not to look back at the house. The tears were welling in her eyes, but she knew she must keep them from flowing, just in case she met someone. She did not look back, but she did meet someone. One of her friends, Mengette, was out collecting wood from the log pile outside her house. “Where are you off to, Joan?” she cried.

  “God bless,” was all Joan could reply, and she rode on.

  She passed Hauviette’s house on the edge of the village, her head down. The last thing she wanted to have to do was to say goodbye to Hauviette, for she knew even then she would never see her childhood friend again. Yet she so longed to see her just once more. She glanced up quickly at Hauviette’s window, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t sure if she was glad of that or sad.

  She crossed herself as she passed by the ruined church. Then they were beyond the village at last and on their way, Belami flying on ahead and darting from tree to tree as they entered the forest – it was the only way to keep warm.

  “Are you sure about this, Joan?” Uncle Durand said. It was the first time he had spoken. “Are you sure you want to go?”

  “I do not want to go, Uncle,” she replied, “but I must. My voices tell me so all the time, and I must obey them. That first time we went to see Robert de Beaudricourt, we were just knocking on his door. This time, with Orléans besieged, he will listen to me, and he will send me to the Dauphin – my voices have promised me. Within a year, Uncle, you will see Orléans liberated, the siege lifted; and you can come to see the Dauphin crowned at Reims. It will happen, Uncle, because I shall make it happen, because my Lord in Heaven wishes me to make it happen. But first, I think, we shall have a baby to care for, won’t we? Aunt Joan will be waiting for us. Come on, Uncle, I’ll race you!”

  And she thundered away through the snow, leaving Uncle Durand looking after her, and shaking his head. “If anyone can do it, Joan can,” he said. The sparrow had flown back and was hovering over his head. He looked up at him. “Isn’t that right, Belami?” And Uncle Durand spurred his horse on through the snow, muttering as he went. “What the devil am I doing talking to a sparrow! Sparrows can’t understand. They can’t talk. They can’t even sing, not very well anyway.”

  Up to that moment, Belami had always liked Uncle Durand – he had been the first to trust Joan and to help her. But now he wasn’t so sure that he liked him that much after all.

  It was just as well they left when they did, for a raging blizzard closed in behind them and cut off the road for days. Just as well, for Aunt Joan too, that they reached her that evening, otherwise she could have found herself marooned in her house and with no help at all. She was already in labour when they arrived, and young Joan was at her side all the way through her pain. She knew what to do – it wasn’t the first time she had turned her hand to midwifery.

  All through that long night she had no thought of the English, nor of the Dauphin, nor of Orléans. Belami looked on from the flickering shadows, grateful for the shelter from the storm outside. The child came bawling into life at last just before dawn, a girl child with dark hair like Joan’s. They all huddled together in the warmth of the bed, the precious baby between them. When all the exhilaration, all the marvelling was over, and only fatigue was left, Joan’s thoughts turned inevitably to the future, to her mission. Lying beside them, she said: “I may not be here to see it; but I tell you, well before this child is my age there will be no English Godoms left in France. As soon as the snows clear, Uncle, we must go to Vaucouleurs. This time Robert de Beaudricourt will listen. You see if he won’t. I shall make him.”

  Yet it was not as straightforward as Joan had hoped or imagined. It took many days before the snows melted and they could set out for Vaucouleurs. Even when they finally got there, Robert de Beaudricourt refused to see her. But she would not be put off. Soon everyone in the castle, in the town, knew of the peasant girl in the red skirt from Domrémy. They knew what she had come for, too, and why she waited all day and every day in the castle courtyard. For Joan, and for Uncle Durand, and for Belami too, it was a long cold vigil. Belami was frozen, even out of the wind in the nooks of the castle walls. But numb as he was, he knew he had to keep his wits about him. There were hungry, keen-eyed sparrowhawks all around, and Belami was just what they were looking for – a well-fed sparrow, with his mind on other things.

  It wasn’t until their third visit to the castle that at last someone came out to see them, but it was not Robert de Beaudricourt. It was his friend Bertrand de Poulengy, who had met Joan the year before, and had never forgotten her.

  “It’s no use your waiting, Joan,” he told her. “He won’t see you. He thinks you’re out of your tiny mind. His words, not mine.”

  “And what do you think, Bertrand?” Joan asked.

  He looked down at her, and it was a while before he replied. “As a matter of fact I don’t agree with him. Don’t ask me why, but I believe you. Besides, as I see it, we’ve nothing to lose by believing you, except France. And we’re fast losing that as it is.”

  “Then talk to Robert, tell him.”

  “I have, Joan. I’ve done little else since I first met you. But he’s captain here, and he just won’t listen.”

  “And I won’t go away.”

  “I know it,” Bertrand replied. “I can thin
k of only one possible way out of this. I have a friend, a good friend, a soldier like me, who would stop at nothing to drive the Godoms away – his name is Jean de Metz. If you could first persuade Jean, then Robert would listen to him – I know he would. I have already told him all about you; but he’s a down-to-earth sort, sceptical, to say the least. He thinks I’ve lost my head over you.”

  Joan laughed at that. “So when can I meet this Jean de Metz?”

  “Not here. Not now. Robert would be bound to find out and he hates conspiracies. Let me bring him to you, Joan, in town, somewhere quiet where we can talk.”

  So it was arranged, and a week later in Vaucouleurs at the house of Henri and Catherine Le Royer, good and trusted friends of Uncle Durand, Joan met Jean de Metz for the first time. She was sitting there spinning with Catherine when he came into the room, a towering bear of a man. He waved everyone at once from the room so that he was left alone with Joan – but they were not quite alone. Unseen, and unmoving in the shadows, Belami sat perched high on top of the cupboard, watching, listening.

  “So you’re this Joan, are you? You’re Bertrand’s little friend?” Joan ignored him, and went on with her spinning, not at all daunted. “Do you know who I am, girl?” he roared.

  Joan looked him full in the face and spoke very softly. “You are Jean de Metz, and you have a very loud voice, but not loud enough, it seems, to frighten the Godoms out of France. If you want the Godoms out of France, as I do, as God does, then you must do what I say. When you leave this room you must take me to that stubborn dolt, Robert de Beaudricourt, and you must persuade him to send me to the Dauphin. I tell you, Jean, before mid-Lent I have to be on my way to the Dauphin at Chinon. There is no one in the world, Jean, neither King, nor Duke, nor any other, who can regain the kingdom of France for the Dauphin. There is no help for this kingdom but me. I should much prefer to stay home where I belong and spin beside my mother in Domrémy. But I must go and do what must be done, since God wishes it. Whether you help me or not, I shall do it. I shall walk to Chinon, and on my own, if I have to.”

  Jean de Metz could hardly believe his ears. The brashness of the girl, the insolence! Yet he admired her spirit.

  “I wonder,” he said. “Do you fight as well as you talk, as well as you spin?”

  “I could learn,” Joan replied. “But I shall need a good tutor.”

  “When? When must you start for Chinon?”

  “Now rather than tomorrow. And tomorrow rather than the day after.”

  Jean de Metz sat down in front of her, and took her hands in his. “Can you really beat the English Godoms?”

  “Yes, Jean,” said Joan. “With God’s help and yours, I will go to Orléans and lift the siege.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that. But I shall need a little help. Will you help me, Jean?”

  “Leave your spinning, Joan, and follow me,” said Jean de Metz, and with that he turned on his heel and strode from the room. Joan went after him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “First to Robert de Beaudricourt,” he said. “Then to the Dauphin at Chinon, and then to Orléans. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? And I have a feeling, Joan, that sooner or later you always get what you want. Is that right?”

  Joan linked her arm in his as he walked. “Sooner or later,” she laughed. “And sooner is always better than later.”

  Bertrand went with them, Uncle Durand and Henri Le Royer too. But only Joan was allowed with Jean to go inside to see Robert. Belami, like the others, found himself shut out in the courtyard. He perched on the wellhead and fluffed out his feathers against the cold.

  “You know what’s going on in there, Henri?” said Uncle Durand. “She’s winning her first battle. I understand now how it’s done. It’s simple really. She just thinks she’s going to win and doesn’t ever give in. She never gives in. That’s the whole secret. You know something else, Henri, I think this may be the most important thing either of us will ever do as long as we live.”

  And even as they sat there they could hear Joan’s clarion voice ringing out from inside the Great Hall. “Have priests examine me if you like. Have the Pope himself question me. I should not mind. All I ask is that you send a letter to the Dauphin. Tell him I’m coming. Do it now, Robert, or it will be too late, too late for you, for the Dauphin and for France. In God’s name, Robert, stop your shilly-shallying!”

  As the argument raged inside – more a monologue than an argument – all of it quite audible, a crowd gathered in the courtyard to listen. “Will you look at them all!” said Uncle Durand. “It seems as if the whole world and his wife want to know what’s going on in there, and how important it is too.”

  “You hear what they’re calling her?” said Henri Le Royer. “‘The Maid’. Already they are speaking of her as the saviour of France. For goodness’ sake, she’s just seventeen, and a farm girl.”

  “She’s a lot more than that,” said Uncle Durand. “That’s the whole point, Henri. I know it. They know it. And soon all of France will know it.”

  At that moment the doors of the Great Hall opened and Joan came bounding down the steps two at a time. She flung herself into her uncle’s arms. “He’s going to do it, Uncle! Robert is sending a letter to the Dauphin. As soon as he replies, I shall be going to the Dauphin at Chinon.” Then she whispered in his ear: “It will all be as my voices said it would be, just as they promised me. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you?”

  As they rode away out of the castle through the clamouring crowds, a bewildered Robert de Beaudricourt stood on the steps watching her go, Jean and Bertrand on either side of him. “Why?” he said. “Why on earth did I agree to do it? I didn’t mean to. When they get this letter in Chinon, I’ll be a laughing stock, a laughing stock. What is it about that girl?”

  “There is God in her, Robert,” said Jean de Metz. “That’s why I did what I did, why you did what you did, and why the Dauphin will do just as she tells him to.” He clapped Robert on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Robert. She’ll make your name in history. Yours too, Bertrand, and mine. God help the poor English Godoms, when she gets amongst them.”

  “God won’t help the English,” laughed Bertrand. “I think you’ll find Joan will make quite sure of that!”

  But still Joan did not leave at once for Chinon, as she had hoped. Robert de Beaudricourt was having second thoughts. He sent a succession of learned priests to question her and examine her, to be quite sure she was who she claimed she was. All of them came suspecting her to be a witch, and left overwhelmed and convinced by her piety, by her sincerity. As word of the miraculous Maid got about she found herself invited into the houses of the great and the good – many of them, until now, known sympathisers of the English cause. Much encouraged, Joan always went and was always disappointed. These people, she soon discovered, were not in the slightest bit interested in joining her to drive out the English as she had hoped, but wanted instead only to have their ailments healed by her, by her ‘miraculous’ powers. After weeks of this nonsense and still no reply from the Dauphin, Joan had had enough. She stormed into the great hall of the castle and sought out Robert de Beaudricourt, her eyes on fire with anger.

  “You told me I could go! You told me! Do you want me to sit here while France collapses all around us? This very morning at my prayers, my voices told me news of the Dauphin’s army, how they have been driven from the field at Rouvray. I told you that he should not let his soldiers take the field, not until I was with him. Did you not tell him? Does he want to lose all of France to the English? Does he want to lost his kingdom?”

  “I have heard nothing of any battle at Rouvray, nor anywhere else,” said Robert de Beaudricourt. “If there had been a battle, do you not think I should have heard of it?”

  It was two days later when the news came that the Dauphin’s army had indeed been routed, and at Rouvray just as Joan had said. At long last his doubts were over. Robert de Beaudricourt believe
d her. Even he could see that there was no other way she could possibly have known of the battle. It had to have been some kind of divine revelation. She did not need to wait any longer. She could go to the Dauphin, he said, but even now he would not part with a penny piece to help her on her way. In the end it was the people of Vaucouleurs who raised the sixteen francs needed to buy Joan the horse she would need for the journey.

  Dozens wanted to go with her. But dozens would be conspicuous. In the end there were just seven of them: Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy, their servants, Richard the Archer, a deaf-mute fabled for his strength and his uncanny accuracy with a bow and arrow, and Joan herself. Enough to afford some protection, they hoped, but not too many to attract attention. Their road would take them through the heartland of occupied Burgundian territory. Even if they did manage to avoid the marauding Burgundians, the forests were thick with robbers and malcontents. It would be a journey fraught with danger.

  Joan could not have cared less about this. She just wanted to be on her way. “They worry so much, Belami,” she told him one night. He always perched close to her at night, close enough so she could reach out and touch him. These days, it was the only time Joan could be alone with him. With Joan so lauded and fêted wherever she went, they could scarcely ever be alone as they used to be, and they both missed the quiet intimacy of each other’s company. “We’ll get through somehow,” she went on. “I know we will. My voices say we will. They want me to dress as a man. They tell me that as I am a soldier now, I must look like one. But I so like my red skirt. I know it’s wilful, but I’ve always loved it, and I’m keeping it, whatever my voices say. I’ve obeyed them in everything else, haven’t I?”