Sparrow

by Michael Morpurgo

  High above her, Belami sat on a rafter and watched and listened to it all. It had taken a while to find a hole in the chapel roof, but he was sure he would find one. He’d never yet known a roof without one. Weakened by her long captivity, Joan had only strength enough to speak softly, but like everyone else he heard every word she said.

  Through it all, Cauchon fixed his eyes on her, like a stoat before a kill. He would lean forward and do his utmost to mesmerise her, to cower her; but Joan outfaced him, she outfaced all of them. She stood accused of sorcery, of blasphemy, of witchcraft. Hour after hour they interrogated her, day after day, week after week; first in the Chapel Royal but later they came to her cell in the castle. Through it all, often sick with cold and fatigue, Joan answered them the only way she knew – with the truth as she saw it, as she remembered it. She hid from them only what her voices had said she should.

  Her judges tried to confuse her, to bewilder her, lulling her with smiles and seemingly simple, straightforward questions. But every question, no matter how simple, hid an accusation, and Joan knew it. Exhausted as she was, she countered them each time, bore all their bullying, all their threats, even finding the strength to laugh at them sometimes, and chide them. They hoped to wear her into submission, to beat her down, so that she would confess either that she had invented her voices, or that they came from the devil himself and therefore she must be a witch. But she would not be intimidated. Even when they took her to the torture chamber so that she could see for herself how terrible the instruments were, she would not confess. She told them they could do their worst, she was not afraid. She had spoken the truth and would not be deflected from it, not by torture, nor by the fire.

  From his perch on the chapel rafters and from the window of her cell, Belami witnessed every moment of it.

  Unlike Joan, he heard how, once she had been led away, her judges seethed with frustration and fury at their failure yet again to browbeat her into submission. He saw how Pierre Cauchon bent them all to his will, how before each interrogation he would conspire with them to devise some new way to unsettle her and break her at last.

  The questions came fast, one upon the other, from different judges, about her childhood, her voices, her men’s clothes, her miracles, leaving her little time to think or to consider her answers carefully, each judge seeking to trick her into some weakness, some inconsistency that might betray her.

  “What age were you when you left your father’s house?”

  “I cannot remember.”

  “What age were you when your voices came for the first time?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “What teaching do your voices give you?”

  “They taught me how to behave.”

  “Who advised you to take male dress?”

  “My voices.”

  “When you found King Charles at Chinon, how did you recognise him?”

  “By the advice of my voices.”

  “When did you last eat?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “When did you last hear your voices?”

  “Yesterday and today.”

  “What were you doing when you last heard your voices?”

  “I was asleep. The voices woke me.”

  “Did they touch you?”

  “No.”

  “Is the voice of an angel or does it come from God?”

  “It comes from God.”

  “Do you believe you are in the grace of God?”

  “If I am not, may God put me there. If I am, may He keep me there. If I am not in His grace, then I would be the most miserable person in the world.”

  “Did you play in the fields with the other children when you were young?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did you play at fights, English against French, with the other children?”

  “No, so far as I can remember, but I saw my friends fighting with the children of Maxey. I saw them coming home wounded and bleeding.”

  “When you were young, did you have a great desire to defeat the Burgundians?”

  “I had a great desire that the king should have his kingdom.”

  “Do you want a woman’s dress?”

  “I am content with what I have, since it is God’s will I wear it.”

  “Does it seem to you lawful to wear a man’s dress?”

  “Everything done at Our Lord’s command must be well done, must be lawful.”

  “The sword found at Fierbois, how did you know it was behind the altar?”

  “My voices. They said it would be in the ground, all rusted, with five crosses upon it.”

  “Which do you prefer, your sword or your standard?”

  “I am forty times fonder of my standard than I am of the sword.”

  “Who persuaded you to have ‘Jhesus Maria’ embroidered on your standard?”

  “I have told you often enough. I have done nothing except by God’s command.”

  “At Orléans, did you know beforehand that you would be wounded?”

  “Yes, I did. And I tell you, before seven years are past, the English will have lost more than Orléans. They will lose all they hold in France.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Through St Catherine and St Margaret.”

  “Do they always appear to you in the same form?”

  “Always, their heads richly crowned.”

  “What part of the saints do you see?”

  “The face.”

  “Do they have hair?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do they speak?”

  “Sweet and low in tone. And they speak in French.”

  “Do they not speak in English?”

  “Why should they? They are not on the English side, are they?”

  “What about St Michael? What clothes does he have?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Is he naked?”

  “Do you think Our Lord has not the wherewithal to clothe him?”

  “Do your voices say you will escape?”

  “They tell me I shall be delivered. But I know neither the day nor the hour. God’s will be done.”

  “Where did you first put on a man’s dress?”

  “Vaucouleurs.”

  “Do those on your side firmly believe you are sent by God?”

  “I don’t know if they believe it. But if they do not believe it, still I am sent from God.”

  “Did your voices tell you you would be taken prisoner?”

  “Yes, almost every day they told me. I asked only that I should die speedily without suffering a long imprisonment.”

  “Did you have the world and two angels embroidered on your standard?”

  “Yes.”

  “What significance is there in that?”

  “St Catherine and St Margaret said it should be made in this fashion, that I should bear it boldly and to have painted upon it the King of Heaven.”

  “Did you do well in leaving home without the permission of your mother and father, seeing that you should honour your mother and father?”

  “I was in everything most obedient to them, save in this departure.”

  “Did you not commit a sin in leaving your mother and father like that?”

  “Since God commanded it, I had to obey. If I’d had a hundred fathers and mothers, if I’d been a king’s daughter, I would still have gone.”

  “Did you do wrong in wearing a man’s dress?”

  “No.”

  “Did you leap from the tower at Beaurevoir on the advice of your voices?”

  “Almost every day St Catherine told me not to leap, that God would help me and the people of Compiègne.”

  “When you leapt did you expect to kill yourself?”

  “No, I entrusted myself to God and hoped that by means of this leap I could escape and avoid being handed over to the English.”

  “Have you asked God’s permission go escape from prison?”

  “I have often asked for it, but so f
ar have not had it. But if I saw an open door I would go, for this would be Our Lord’s permission.”

  In those very words the questions came at her and in those very words she answered them. Time and again she begged to be able to say Mass. They refused her. She asked to be released from her chains. They refused her. She asked not to be left with the soldiers. They refused her.

  Even inside her cell she was never alone. There were always three English soldiers in there with her and two outside on guard. But in the dead of night when they were all asleep, Belami would fly in and perch on her shoulder. She could not even move her hand to stroke him now for fear of rattling her chains and waking the guards. But she could turn her head to see him. In the intimate privacy of the dark she would weep her silent tears, and share with Belami her most dread doubts and fearful terrors. As the trial came at last towards its end and the hour of the inevitable verdict came closer, she was ever more haunted by the horror of the death she would soon have to endure.

  “I fear the heat of the flames, Belami,” she whispered, “but I fear my fear more. My voices tell me that I must endure all, that I must not weaken. But all I have to do is confess that my voices were false, throw myself on the mercy of the Church and obey them in everything, and I could still save myself. And I so want to save myself. I so want to live. I am young. But I must not weaken now, Belami, I must not. When I die in the flames it will be quickly over, won’t it? And afterwards I will be in Paradise forever, won’t I? Won’t I? Stay by me tomorrow when they judge me, Belami. Stay by me.”

  It was many weeks now since Joan had seen the light of day. It was a beautiful May morning as they led her, still manacled, to the walled cemetery behind the abbey. The brightness of the sun dazzled and hurt her eyes.

  “A fine day for a burning!” cried someone from the crowd.

  “Burn the witch,” they cried. “Burn her! Burn her! To the stake with her! To the stake!”

  Swallows and swifts swooped and screamed over the rooftops and reminded her of home, of Domrémy, and summers when she was little. A tide of sadness threatened to overwhelm her utterly. And then white amongst the swallows and hovering like a lark, she saw Belami. “Dear Belami,” she breathed. “Dear faithful Belami.”

  The cemetery was crowded with all manner of people, soldiers, merchants, priests, nuns, restless now with expectancy as she mounted her stand; Master Erard, one of the court’s many lawyers – she had had no lawyer to defend her all through the trial – was at her elbow. On another stand opposite were ranged her accusers. She counted five bishops, Cauchon amongst them, priors, abbots, and behind them the English lords, Warwick and Stafford, watching over it all.

  A hush fell as Master Erard began his speech. It was a long speech and Joan was faint from the heat of the sun and had to clutch the rail to stop herself from falling. That was when she first saw below her the executioner’s cart, waiting. She saw the upturned faces of the crowd, watching her, hating her, longing to see her burn. Master Erard ranted on at her, berating her for all her wickedness, listing all her crimes and iniquities, all the charges against her. When he had finished, everyone waited for her answer.

  She spoke out firmly so that all could hear her. “I have already told you that everything I have done, I have done at God’s command.”

  At this Cauchon rose from his seat and began at once to pronounce the sentence on her.

  “Then we declare you excommunicate and heretical and pronounce you shall be abandoned to secular justice, as a limb of Satan severed from the Church…” As Joan listened, still reeling in her stand, she saw the executioner’s horse tossing his head impatiently. She saw the cruel smile on the executioner’s face. She could bear it no more.

  “I submit,” she cried, “I confess it all. My voices were false to me. All I did, I did against the laws of God and Holy Mother Church. I submit myself to the Church, to the mercy of you, my judges. I do not believe my voices, nor in my apparitions. I made them up. I pretended it all. I confess it. I will do whatever you desire, whatever the Church desires. Only not the fire. Please, not the fire.”

  For a moment the crowd were stunned to silence, aghast at what they had just heard. They had come to see Joan burnt as a witch, not to witness her recantation, not to see her escape at the last moment. During the fearful pandemonium that followed, someone thrust a paper into her hand, and told her to sign. She could see nothing but the executioner’s cart. She would have signed anything. “But I cannot write,” she cried.

  “Make your mark then,” said Master Erard. And he took her hand and helped her mark the document with a trembling cross. Then he flourished it in triumph above his head and then he read it out loud, straining to make himself heard against all the jeering of the crowd. They scarcely heard a word of it. But Joan did.

  “She has signed. The Maid has signed,” Erard began. “Here it is. Here it is. ‘I, Joan, called The Maid, a miserable sinner, after I recognised the snare of error in which I was held; and now that I have by God’s grace, returned to Our Mother Holy Church; I do confess that I have grievously sinned in falsely pretending that I have had revelations from God and his angels, St Catherine and St Margaret, etc… All my words and deeds which are contrary to the Church, I do revoke; and I desire to live in unity with the Church, nevermore departing there from. In witness whereof my sign manual.’ And see, she makes her mark with this cross.”

  As she listened, Joan hung her head and cried bitterly. Through her tears she looked down at the seething crowd below her, lusting for her death. They were shaking their fists at her, cursing her, screaming at her.

  “Witch! Slut! Fiend! Harlot! Whore!” She put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes to shut it all out.

  By the time she opened them again, Cauchon had almost finished pronouncing her new sentence. “Wherefore we have condemned you to perpetual imprisonment with the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction that you may weep for your sins and never more commit them.”

  “Take me, then, to your church prison,” she cried, “so that I may no longer be in the hands of these English.”

  But Cauchon simply said, “Take her back where she has come from.”

  Belami was there at the window of her cell when Cauchon and other priests came that evening to see her.

  “The Church has dealt kindly with you, Joan,” said Cauchon. “Learn humility, learn obedience. Leave all your revelations and stupidities behind you. If you do not then you cannot count on our protection and we will be forced to hand you over to the English. You do understand that, Joan?”

  “Yes, my lord bishop. But may I say Mass? May I be released of my chains?”

  “If you will at once leave off your men’s clothes and henceforth wear only women’s clothes. Your boy’s hair will be shorn.”

  That night, her head shorn, and wearing women’s clothes for the first time since she left Vaucouleurs two years before, Joan sat and endured the coarse jibes of her guards. Her men’s clothes lay in a heap in the corner of the cell.

  There was no sleep for Joan that night.

  Belami came to her whenever he could, but it could not be so often. She was ever more closely guarded now, and one guard seemed always to be awake.

  Joan sat all the while, unmoving and staring into space. Belami waited till the moment was right, till the guards were distracted, and landed behind her, where he could not be seen. It was nothing then to flutter up and perch, hidden behind her shoulder. “What I have done today, Belami, I should not have done,” she whispered. “So I will undo it. I will. I’ll make you proud of me again, Belami, that much I promise you. I will try again to be brave, I will try.”

  The next day the judges were called to the prison. They found Joan dressed once more in her man’s clothes and refusing to change back.

  “Why have you done this?” Cauchon asked.

  “Because being with men it is more convenient and more suitable. Because you have not allowed me to say Mass as I asked, nor to have my irons rem
oved.”

  “Have you heard your voices again, Joan?” the Bishop asked her.

  “Yes. They have told me what I ought to do, and I’m doing it.”

  “So you claim again that these are the voices of saints, of St Catherine and St Margaret?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they say to you?”

  “They told me that in saving my life I was damning myself, that if I were to say that God had not sent me, then I should be damning myself, for it is true that God did send me. My voices have told me that I did very wrong in doing all I did. It was only the fear of the fire which made me say what I said.”

  “Out of your own mouth you have condemned yourself to the fire,” said Cauchon.

  “I know it,” Joan replied. “Let it come swiftly. But before it happens let me say my confession. Let me have a last communion. And no chains, for once, no chains. It is all I ask.”

  As Cauchon looked down at her, he felt for her for the first time and pitied her.

  “I should not allow it,” he said, “but I shall.”

  She spent her last night on earth sitting with Belami in her lap, just as she had done when she first found him all those years before. She said little, but stroked him constantly. At dawn she took him to the window. “When it is over, Belami, go back to Domrémy. Hauviette will look after you.”

  She took communion in her cell and made her confession to Brother Martin, looking to him for a last reassurance.

  “Where shall I be tonight?” she asked.

  “Have you no faith in Our Lord?” he replied.

  “Yes, God helping me. Today I shall be with Him in Paradise.”