“Back whence she came,” said Cauchon grimly.
Dismayed, miserable beyond words, Jeanne was taken back to the irons, and the
unspeakable torment of her awful cell.
[28]
“Into France.” A phrase used frequently by people living on the borderland; also because all the country about Domremy and adjacent villages was held by the enemy.
This must be crossed to reach the king. Where he dwelt was regarded as the real France.
[29]
Herring, sprats, shad––in warm countries acquire, probably from their food, highly poisonous properties so as to be dangerous to persons eating them.
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CHAPTER XXVII
FOR HER COUNTRY
“There was grandeur in that peasant girl,––in her
exalted faith at Domremy, in her heroism at Orléans, in
her triumph at Reims, in her trial and martyrdom at
Rouen. But unless she had suffered, nothing would have
remained of this grandeur in the eyes of posterity. ”
LORD. “Great Women” in “Beacon Lights of History. ”
In the afternoon the Duchess of Bedford sent a tailor to Jeanne with a woman’s
dress. She put it on without a word, allowed her hair to be dressed in feminine fashion, and to be covered by a coif. Courcelles, Loyseleur, Isambard and other priests also visited her, telling her of the great pity and mercy of the churchmen, and warning her that should she return to her errors the Church must abandon her. And so at last they left her.
Left her to her thoughts and her conscience which now began to trouble her. For in that moment of recantation Jeanne had been false to the highest that was in her: the Voice of God speaking in her heart which was higher than the Church.
“I have sinned,” she cried in anguish. “I have sinned grievously.” And piteou
3 s
75 ly
she invoked her Saints.
In the meantime life in that cell was a horror of which it is well not to think. She was supposed now to be under the gentle ministrations of the Church, but she was still a captive, shorn, degraded, hopeless, lacerated by fetters, and weighed down by heavy chains; for even at night when she lay on her bed her feet were in irons, with couples fastened to a chain, and attached by a log to a great beam of wood. Cauchon had been given to understand that the English would not be content with “perpetual imprisonment on bread of anguish and water of affliction” for this captive. The girl must burn, but now this could not be done
unless she relapsed. Relapse she must, willingly or unwillingly. A word to John Grey’s varlets would help matters, and the word was given.
It was on Thursday, May twenty-fourth, that Jeanne recanted, and took the woman’s dress. On Sunday following she awoke to find that her feminine attire
had been taken from her while she slept, and on her bed lay the old page’s suit of black.
“Sirs,” she said protestingly in her gentle voice, “this dress is forbidden me. Give me the woman’s dress, I pray you.”
The guards refused, laughing. Jeanne knew what the end would be now, but she
accepted her fate calmly. The tidings flew that by this act she had revoked her abjuration. Monday word was sent to Cauchon and his acolytes, who flocked at
once to the castle. They found the girl overborne with grief, her face tear-stained and disfigured; the hearts of some of them were moved to compassion.
“Why have you done this?” demanded Cauchon.
“It is more suitable for me to wear it, being among men,” said the Maid, taking the blame of the whole matter. “I have resumed it because the promise to me has not been kept; that is to say, that I should go to mass and should receive my Saviour, and that I should be taken out of irons.”
“Did you not promise and swear not to resume the dress of a man?”
“No; I am not aware that I took any such oath. I would rather die than be in irons. But if you will release me from these irons, and let me go to mass, and lie in gentle prison, I will be good and do as the Church desires.”
“Since last Thursday have you heard your Voices?” asked the Bishop, wishing to
find some basis for the charge of “relapse.”
“Yes;” Jeanne’s sad face brightened at once.
“What did they say to you?”
“God made known to me by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret the great pity there was for the treason to which I consented by making revocation and abjuration in order to save my life. I have condemned myself that my life might be saved. On Thursday my Voices told me to answer that preacher boldly, and he
was a false preacher, who preached. He accused me of many things that I never
did. If I said that God did not send me, I should condemn myself, for God did
send me. My Voices have told me that I committed sin in declaring that what I
had done was wrong. All that I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire.”
And Manchon, the clerk, wrote on the margin of his record: “Responsio mortifera.” “The answer that caused her death.”
“Do you believe that your Voices are St. Margaret and St. Catherine?”
“Yes, I do believe it,” she cried gladly. “And I believe that they come from God.
I would rather do penance once for all; that is to say, in dying, than endure any longer the misery of a prison. I have done nothing against God and the faith, in spite of all they have made me revoke. What was in the schedule of abjuration I did not understand. I did not intend to revoke anything except according to our Lord’s pleasure. If the judges will have me do so, I will resume woman’s dress; for the rest, I can do no more.”
It was enough. She had relapsed, and the will of her enemies could now be accomplished. The next day Cauchon assembled his assessors in the chapel of his house, the palace of the Archbishop of Rouen. They all agreed that Jeanne must be handed over to the secular arm of the Church, praying that it “might deal gently with her.” If she showed signs of sincere penitence, she was to be allowed to receive the sacrament of confession so long denied to her. Then the Maid was cited to appear the next morning at eight o’clock in the Old Market Place, “in order that she may be declared relapsed, excommunicate, and heretic, and that it may be done to her as is customary in such cases.”
