Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a girl after all, and,
under illness and exhaustion, subject to a girl’s weaknesses.
Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly said herself that
under the bitter pains of the rack they would be able to extort a
false confession from her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it
was remembered.
She had furnished another hint at the same time: that as soon as the
pains were gone, she would retract the confession. That hint was
also remembered.
She had herself taught them what to do, you see. First, they must
wear out her strength, then frighten her with the fire. Second,
while the fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper.
But she would demand a reading of the paper. They could not
venture to refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that
during the reading her courage should return?–she would refuse to
sign then. Very well, even that difficulty could be got over. They
could read a short paper of no importance, then slip a long and
deadly one into its place and trick her into signing that.
Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to
abjure, that would free her from the death-penalty. They could
keep her in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her.
That would not answer; for only her death would content the
English. Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had
escaped from two prisons already.
But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make
promises to her; in return she would promise to leave off the male
dress. He would violate his promises, and that would so situate her
that she would not be able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn
her to the stake, and the stake would be ready.
These were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make
them, each in its order, and the game was won. One might almost
name the day that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in
France and the noblest, would go to her pitiful death.
The world knows now that Cauchon’s plan was as I have sketched
it to you, but the world did not know it at that time. There are
sufficient indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs
except the highest one–the Cardinal of Winchester–were not let
into the secret, also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the
French side, knew the scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even
Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the whole of it at first. However, if
any did, it was these two.
It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in
peace, but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the
rumors of the time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and
in the character of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and
hater of England, he spent some hours in beseeching her to do “the
only right an righteous thing”–submit to the Church, as a good
Christian should; and that then she would straightway get out of
the clutches of the dreaded English and be transferred to the
Church’s prison, where she would be honorably used and have
women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew
how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane
English guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised
something which she interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of
some sort, and the chance to burst upon France once more and
victoriously complete the great work which she had been
commissioned of Heaven to do. Also there was that other thing: if
her failing body could be further weakened by loss of rest and
sleep now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the
morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions,
threats, and the sight of the stake, and also be purblind to traps and
snares which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate.