his bulk. We stayed in our saddles because we had help. We are
equally lame to-day, and if he likes to sit down, let him; I prefer to
stand.”
Chapter 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
WE WERE called to quarters and subjected to a searching
inspection by Joan. Then she made a short little talk in which she
said that even the rude business of war could be conducted better
without profanity and other brutalities of speech than with them,
and that she should strictly require us to remember and apply this
admonition. She ordered half an hour’s horsemanship drill for the
novices then, and appointed one of the veterans to conduct it. It
was a ridiculous exhibition, but we learned something, and Joan
was satisfied and complimented us. She did not take any
instruction herself or go through the evolutions and
manœuvers, but merely sat her horse like a martial little
statue and looked on. That was sufficient for her, you see. She
would not miss or forget a detail of the lesson, she would take it all
in with her eye and her mind, and apply it afterward with as much
certainty and confidence as if she had already practised it.
We now made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues
each, riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving
band of Free Companions. Country-folk were glad to have that sort
of people go by without stopping. Still, they were very wearying
marches, and not comfortable, for the bridges were few and the
streams many, and as we had to ford them we found the water
dismally cold, and afterward had to bed ourselves, still wet, on the
frosty or snowy ground, and get warm as we might and sleep if we
could, for it would not have been prudent to build fires. Our
energies languished under these hardships and deadly fatigues, but
Joan’s did not. Her step kept its srping and firmness and her eye its
fire. We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it.
But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the
five nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing,
the baths as cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in
addition, and lost two novices and three veterans in the resulting
fights. The news had leaked out and gone abroad that the inspired
Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making for the King with an escort,
and all the roads were being watched now.
These five nights disheartened the command a good deal. This was
aggravated by a discovery which No‰l made, and which he
promptly made known at headquarters. Some of the men had been
trying to understand why Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and
confident while the strongest men in the company were fagged
with the heavy marches and exposure and were become morose
and irritable. There, it shows you how men can have eyes and yet
not see. All their lives those men had seen their own women-folks
hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields while
the men did the driving. They had also seen other evidences that
women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than
men–but what good had their seeing these things been to them?
None. It had taught them nothing. They were still surprised to see a
girl of seventeen bear the fatigues of war better than trained
veterans of the army. Moreover, they did not reflect that a great
soul, with a great purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep
it so; and here was the greatest soul in the universe; but how could
they know that, those dumb creatures? No, they knew nothing, and
their reasonings were of a piece with their ignorance. They argued
and discussed among themselves, with No‰l listening, and arrived
at the decision that Joan was a witch, and had her strange pluck
and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to watch for a safe
opportunity to take her life.
To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a
very serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan’s