I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night.
Nor for No‰l. We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall,
with a hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of
Joan’s Voices which seemed to promise a rescue by force at the
last moment. The immense news had flown swiftly far and wide
that at last Joan of Arc was condemned, and would be sentenced
and burned alive on the morrow; and so crowds of people were
flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being refused
admission by the soldiery; these being people who brought
doubtful passes or none at all. We scanned these crowds eagerly,
but thee was nothing about them to indicate that they were our old
war-comrades in disguise, and certainly there were no familiar
faces among them. And so, when the gate was closed at last, we
turned away grieved, and more disappointed than we cared to
admit, either in speech or thought.
The streets were surging tides of excited men. It was difficult to
make one’s way. Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to
the neighborhood of the beautiful church of St. Ouen, and there all
was bustle and work. The square was a wilderness of torches and
people; and through a guarded passage dividing the pack, laborers
were carrying planks and timbers and disappearing with them
through the gate of the churchyard. We asked what was going
forward; the answer was:
“Scaffolds and the stake. Don’t you know that the French witch is
to be burned in the morning?”
Then we went away. We had no heart for that place.
At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time with a hope
which our wearied bodies and fevered minds magnified into a
large probability. We had heard a report that the Abbot of
JumiЉges with all his monks was coming to witness the burning.
Our desire, abetted by our imagination, turned those nine hundred
monks into Joan’s old campaigners, and their Abbot into La Hire or
the Bastard or D’Alen‡on; and we watched them file in,
unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering
while they passed, with our hearts in our throats and our eyes
swimming with tears of joy and pride and exultation; and we tried
to catch glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared
to give signal to any recognized face that we were Joan’s men and
ready and eager to kill and be killed in the good cause. How
foolish we were!
But we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things,
believeth all things.
Chapter 20 The Betrayal
IN THE MORNING I was at my official post. It was on a platform
raised the height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of
St. Ouen. On this same platform was a crowd of priests and
important citizens, and several lawyers. Abreast it, with a small
space between, was another and larger platform, handsomely
canopied against sun and rain, and richly carpeted; also it was
furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were more
sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level. One
of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of
England, his Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by
Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat three
bishops, the Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars
and lawyers who had sat as Joan’s judges in her late trials.
Twenty steps in front of the platforms was another–a table-topped
pyramid of stone, built up in retreating courses, thus forming steps.
Out of this rose that grisly thing, the stake; about the stake bundles
of fagots and firewood were piled. On the ground at the base of the
pyramid stood three crimson figures, the executioner and his
assistants. At their feet lay what had been a goodly heap of brands,
but was now a smokeless nest of ruddy coals; a foot or two from
this was a supplemental supply of wood and fagots compacted into
a pile shoulder-high and containing as much as six packhorse
loads. Think of that. We seem so delicately made, so destructible,