The Last Days of Jeanne d'Arc Read online

  THE LAST DAYS OF JEANNE D’ARC

  This text has been slightly reformatted for ebook.

  ALSO BY

  ALI ALIZADEH

  FICTION

  The New Angel

  Transactions

  NON - FICTION

  Iran: My Grandfather

  POETRY

  Elixir: A Story in Poetry

  Eyes in Times of War

  Ashes in the Air

  TRANSLATION

  Fifty Poems of Attar

  (with Kenneth Avery)

  Six Vowels and Twenty-three

  Consonants: An Anthology

  of Persian Poetry from

  Rudaki to Langroodi

  (with John Kinsella)

  ALI ALIZADEH

  The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc

  FIRST PUBLISHED 2017

  FROM THE WRITING & SOCIETY RESEARCH CENTRE

  AT WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY

  BY THE GIRAMONDO PUBLISHING COMPANY

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  © ALI ALIZADEH 2017

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  CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  ALIZADEH, ALI, AUTHOR

  THE LAST DAYS OF JEANNE D’ARC / ALI ALIZADEH

  9781925336405 (PBK)

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FOR ANNA

  Part I

  1

  A place of grey stone. Iron bars on a small window and iron bars make up the door. Rusted shackles bolted to the floor. A dark, confined space.

  The door is opened. Two men enter. Agitated, brusque. Steel helmets and steel kneecaps. Red surcoats sport black crosses. One has a spear, the other the key to the room. He shouts something incomprehensible. For unseen ears outside the cell. Sounds of more feet approaching.

  The door remains open. Two more men enter, tense and compact. Steel helmets and poleaxes. In between them, another person. Being escorted by the guards. Being held by her wrists. She’s shorter than the room’s other occupants. A young woman. Filthy face. Her dark hair, a shoulder-length mess. Barefooted. Brought into the space unwillingly.

  The guards take her to the centre of the cell. The captain with the key orders something in a foreign language. The other men avoid looking at the woman, continue to grip her wrists. She’s dressed like a man, in black tunic and black leggings.

  The captain exits. The soldier with the spear glances at her. Her eyes are closed. The soldier’s fists tighten around his weapon. He grunts a phrase, puerile, forceful. Her lips tremble. One of the prison guards grins, stops grinning when the captain marches back in. He has brought something with him. Rough, white fabric. Throws it onto the weathered floor, at her feet. Her blackened feet. The captain commands, in her language.

  Wear it.

  Orders the guards to release her wrists. Her eyelids quiver. She opens her eyes. Large, dark, petrified eyes.

  By decree of the abjuration. Wear it.

  She’s still. Shakes her head. The men are firm. A frozen instant, a stunted image. The end of judgement. A zone the colour of ash or metal or nightmare. She whimpers. The captain’s voice batters.

  Wear it or be in breach of your renunciation.

  Stifled cries in her throat. Her fingers shiver, undo the strap of the tunic. Enemy men no longer fear viewing her. Black tunic falls from her torso. Quickly covers her breasts with one hand. Reaches for the thing hurled in front of her on the floor. The wrinkled white gown. Men glimpse her breasts. Then the white gown covers her body.

  Manly attire is forbidden. Remove it completely.

  She shudders. The gown covers her, but that’s not enough. Not for her. The officer signals to the guards. Rough digits make contact with her body. A shrivelled gasp. Her tears. She reaches under the gown herself. She’s disconsolate. She unties the strap around her waist. Black leggings fall to her ankles. Men have seen her buttocks. Thighs. Pubic hair.

  She hurries. The gown is too long for her, and now covers her completely. A more feminine appearance. She’s stiff with dread and embarrassment. The captain bends and reaches for the shackles fixed to the floor. Lifts the hem of the gown’s skirt. An iron cuff around each of her ankles. The cuffs are linked to the shackles. She’s fixed to the cell.

  The captain barks something. Men exit, with her previous outfit. The door locks. She kneels. The first day of perpetual imprisonment. Clasps her hands and loneliness gives her permission. To cry openly. In a cage of stones. A small window and empty torch-holders.

  2

  There’s no one else here. None of her Voices, no imaginary visitors. No devout enthusiasts of her story, not even an obscene voyeur. The girl who has changed history. Knights and sieges and kings and queens, whose chronology she ruptured. An entirely unexpected occurrence. The shepherdess who ran away from her village and spoke to a king. She who wore a bright suit of armour. Who rode a black warhorse and led heavy cavalry in epic battles. The world’s most famous female warrior.

  Now a captive in a stark underground place. Cold stone and manacles. Soldiers outside whisper. Their simmering excitement. Their words are not recognisable but their tone is that of coarse young men anywhere. These professional killers, men of the king of England. Terrified until today of her terrible powers and sorcery. The holy female warrior to the French, a deadly instrument of the Devil to the English.

  Her back coils over her knees on the floor. Clasped hands are now knotted fists. Rigid with fear and remorse and more, unutterable dread. This gown feels queer, this thing that other women wear. She’s not used to it. And the horrid acquiescence before being brought back to the dungeon. Too horrid to think about. The letter of abjuration.

  Who knows the truth. Things that compel a peasant girl to convince knights to arm her and the king of France to give her an army. History’s most important young woman. An opportunist who lied about communication with divinity – or a suffering saint in the making. Finally opens her eyes. Brown eyes, larger than most, brimming with tears.

  Lord Jesus. Sire. Holy Christ…

  And so on. In pitiful whimpers. Not what may have been hoped from the chapped lips of the historical archetype of female heroism. Touches the iron cuffs around her ankles compulsively. As if they could’ve magically disappeared. As if an angel will come to save her as, according to legend, an angel saved her beloved Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

  Saint Catherine, Catherine, please hear me…hear me, my holy sister…

  Rises and walks as far as the chains allow her feet. In the direction of the window, those big eyes seeking the bright rectangles bisected by black bars. Wishes she had a cross to clutch in her hands. She knows they won’t let her see a priest. A condition of her conviction, life in a dungeon without access to spiritual succour. Her disavowal established her disdain for the Church. So that the judges would not subject her to torture. To save her body from what they showed her. In one of the castle’s vaults, the room of the ecclesiastical court’s engines of authority: the rack, cat o’ nine tails, bastinado and other tools of Inquisition.

  Please, holy Sister…please…

  Breathless. She sinks to the floor again. The court had tried to find her guilty of so
rcery and heresy. So many months of hostile questions, unending frowns and intrusive speculations. Men in robes and scholarly habits, assembled by the English to find her guilty of collusion with the Beast. To discredit her mission, to defame the king of France. To reveal her as a satanic aide to the sworn enemy of the king of England.

  I didn’t mean to…Saint Catherine, are you here?

  Do you hear me?

  She can just be heard. The guards no longer speak cautiously beyond the prisoner’s space. In a variety of British accents, they boast about what they’ll do to her. When the Earl of Warwick is not around to enforce chivalry. She’s not an honourable guest. The swarthy slut who had the temerity to pretend to be God’s messenger. Now she’s just a whore in chains. In their possession. The historic virgin warrior of the foolish French. The guards will show her who owns this land.

  Won’t you speak to me anymore?

  The facts are known and there are myriad theories for interpretation. Theorists propose and cast doubt. Sceptical of known things and in awe of sensational narratives. How intrigued people have become by this petite, mysterious girl. And how surprising that she has evaded execution and torture. That she signed a letter of abjuration on 24 May of 1431. With two strokes of a quill: a cross, on a scroll of paper. She has not been found guilty of heresy and sorcery. She has not been burnt at the stake.

  I’m sorry. Sorry. Forgive me. God. Lord Jesus. Holy Father… Holy Virgin…

  Please Saint Catherine, can you hear me?

  She has been spared martyrdom. Jeanne lives. The English call her Joan of Arc. She’s all theirs. A future of loneliness and enchainment. Deprived of her protective man’s outfit. In a white, feminine gown.

  3

  An account of what precedes this.

  23 May 1430

  Jeanne d’Arc, known as the Maid to the French, their flag-bearing armoured champion in the Hundred Years’ War, one year after the triumphant crowning of her liege King Charles VII, the final period of England’s declining dominion in France; now eighteen years old, skinnier than ever, her black hair still short, round, soldierly; her face pale, these days often inexpressive, almost sullen. She is captured.

  After leading France’s armies to unprecedented victories in the name of God and Archangel Michel. She is – it’s been suggested – betrayed by the venal mayor of the town of Compiègne. The warrior girl, flaunting her tattered battle flag, in her dented armour, dragged off her horse by a mercenary. By the scruff of her recognisable blue cape. A painful fall. Disarmed, handed over to a local warlord. Ten thousand gold pounds bounty set by the vengeful English regent, Duke John of Bedford.

  No one attempts to negotiate her release. None of her previous comrades-in-arms. The English, certain of the cause of their bad luck and their dishonourable defeats in the war: this bizarre, cross-dressing girl’s demonic terrors. Gladly they pay the reward to her captor. She attempts escape by jumping out of the window of the captor’s tower. Or perhaps a suicide attempt. Survives. No one offers to pay her ransom. None of her royal French patrons. English buyers examine her bound and bruised body, spit in her face. Transport her to their garrison in Normandy.

  December

  Black and blue, weeping incessantly, begging to be allowed to hear mass. Confesses to a priest, the famous prisoner – a despicable travesty, the limb of Satan, this Joan of Shark, muses the regent of England – handcuffed, chained to iron halters bolted into the floor of a dank, hexagonal cell in the dungeon of the Treasury Tower, in the custodianship of the English knight the Earl of Warwick. Entrapped in late-medieval solitary confinement.

  9 January 1431

  Official commencement of Jeanne’s Trial of Condemnation for heresy, idolatry of saints, refusal to submit to Church, transvestism, etc. The assembled Ecclesiastical Court and Inquisition: a stout bishop as Supreme Judge and seventeen assessors, all pro-English French, commissioned by the English to find the shackled girl guilty of bloodcurdling sins. And send her to Hell.

  No one objects to this spectacle. No French duke, duchess, peasant or burgess. No recorded attempt for her rescue by Charles of Valois, the king of France. She brought him victory, transformed France into a regional power. One of the first known female military leaders in European history. It seems she has outlived her historical efficacy.

  21 February 1431

  The first session of Jeanne’s interrogation. In her customary dark manly outfit (tunic, leggings and boots) the dark-haired young woman in iron manacles in the royal chapel of Rouen Castle. Her spectators soon include English captains, their wives, and hundreds of soldiers and dignitaries. Some smirk. She’s asked to name herself, to outline her background and family for confirmation of identity.

  In my village they call me Jeannette. In France, I’m Jeanne.

  My soldiers call me the Maid.

  First, the controversial matter, the pretext for the deadly charges of heresy: her so-called Voices – which, as rumour has it, she attributes to some saint or angel or other. These Voices which commanded her to see the king of France and lead his armies to expel the English from the kingdom.

  And then the matter of her sacrilegious appearance. Her masculine hair and outfit. Unwomanly refusal of her sexual character. Theologians remind all: in the Bible, Deuteronomy 22:5: Women shall not wear men’s clothing, and men not women’s. The Lord your God hates people who do such things. It is evident that the girl’s tight leggings amply display the shape of her thighs and knees, and the short doublet that she’s reported to have worn on occasions would have made no secret of her buttocks. Such immodesty, such perversion.

  A lonely performer. One-woman defence against a volley of deadly suspicions. She stiffens, refuses to answer at first. Then, officially harangued by the assessors and unofficially threatened with brutality by the guards in her cell. One wrong answer could intimate misappropriation of Christianity. Refusal to answer could intimate heretical disobedience.

  An illiterate peasant girl despite two years of an unlikely military career and association with French nobility. She can barely write her own name. Abandoned by supposed supporters and past admirers. One wrong answer could trigger death by burning. The English parliament has passed a bill: the Burning of Heretics Act. Abandoned by King Charles and the knights she led to conquest. Her mother, brothers and father have not come from her village.

  Three months of trial. Asked if her Voices speak in French. Asked what the angel who apparently visits her looks like. She finds the questions unbearable. Did the angel come to her naked?

  Don’t you think God can afford to clothe him?

  She speaks calmly, forcefully, cries, dries her eyes. Continues to respond angrily, patiently. Is it true that in your village old crones practice witchcraft? Do they revere a fairies’ tree?

  No, it’s called Our Lady’s Tree.

  Have you seen any fairies?

  No, I have not.

  Focussed, overwhelmed, frustrated and unflinching.

  Your Voices, how do you know that they issue from God? How can you be certain, child?

  I know their holiness by the great comfort they give me.

  So an uneducated laywoman assumes to discern sacredness. You presume to know if you are in God’s grace?

  One wrong answer could ignite the pile of branches below the stake in Rouen’s market square.

  If I’m in God’s grace, may He keep me there. If I’m not, may He place me there.

  Sighs and beads of sweat on learned men’s foreheads. Glints of metal wink from the guards’ weapons, the necklaces of decorated English ladies in the audience. Weeks pass. Why did you hold your banner so high above others at the pretender king’s false coronation? Are you not aware of the deadly sin of vanity?

  My flag had endured the agony of battle. It deserved the glory.

  Were you not wrathful in battle? Did you not authorise the execution of a Burgundian captain, a prisoner, in May of last year?

  I did not. He was a confessed murderer and thief. The
bailiff decided his fate.

  Your Voices. So they comfort you. But the Devil is seductive. Can you assure us that these visions are not demonic?

  The Voice comes with a great light. Always with a great light.

  Weeks pass. The ominous air of sexual violence in her cell, and she has not divulged any incriminating words. Almost emaciated. She can’t stomach food. Becomes ill after eating a fish. Fearful of poisoning.

  Who are these Voices? Name them.

  Catherine and Marguerite. Saint Catherine and Saint Marguerite.

  Early virgin martyrs of our mother the Holy Church? Indeed?!

  Prays and weeps in her cell. Or curls up with her eyes closed in the corner of the dungeon. The judges convene. The English regent demands a favourable outcome. The harlot and her king must be defeated. Judges devise a stratagem. They have the guards escort Jeanne out of her cell, to Rouen Castle. To the vault at the base of a great tower. They show her the tarnished objects of metal, ropes and screws, hinges, spikes and chains, made into frames and contraptions the size of her body, with straps for her arms and neck, and a wheel to turn to tighten the ropes, to stretch her flesh. The court’s instruments, to be used to lead her back to the path and knowledge of God. She cringes. Can hardly speak.

  Even if you tear my limbs apart, even if you rip my soul from my body, I won’t agree with you, with the lies you tell about me.

  And so, the next day. A rather grave ceremony. The main cemetery of Rouen, in the shadow of a grim, colossal cathedral. A preacher tells Jeanne to abide by the rule of the Church. To submit to God’s command. Or else, she’ll be fed to the machines. Or perhaps worse, burnt at the stake. She trembles, rejects three times. Finally accepts, and signs this prepared text:

  I, Jeanne, known as the Maid, a doomed sinner, having understood the cloister of error in which I have been hiding; and having returned to the Truth of the Saviour and of the Holy Church; so that I may demonstrate that I am no longer deceitful and that I have returned to the Holy Church with good heart; I admit that I have most egregiously sinned by erroneously pretending that I have had revelations from God and his angels and Saints Catherine and Marguerite. And I revoke all my words and deeds which have been in disagreement with the Truth of the Holy Church; and I truly desire to submit to the Church and never again depart from it.