”A saint! A saint!” whispered Marie. Religious awe infused her lovely face. “Her flesh is not marked with the evil that stains all other women’s flesh. Why, she cannot even produce the odorous waste that ordinary sinners must daily unburden themselves of. She is a saint! Her flesh is holiness incarnate!”
Isabeau finally lifted her hands and stepped back. A true saint? Isabeau had a frantic desire to wash her hands, but as she had not thought to prepare a bowl and water was left rubbing them up and down her skirts.
Catherine still stared at Joan, unable to comprehend what she had just seen.
Sweet Jesu, she had not thought her such a powerful opponent. How was Bolingbroke going to counter her evil mane? How?
Joan finally spoke, unclasping her hands and raising her head to look at the women still staring at her. “I am God’s true instrument, unsullied and pure,” she said, and then looked between Isabeau and Catherine. “Now none may gainsay it.”
CHAPTER XI
The Feast of SS. Simon and Jude
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(Friday 2.8th October 1379)
— II —
THE ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS, Regnault de Chartres, assembled his investigatory panel in the hour just after Nones in the hall of la Roche-Guyon. Apart from himself, the panel consisted of five other clerics.
They sat in straight-backed chairs set on the dais. On the floor, immediately below the dais, was a humble bench.
Charles sat on a throne to one side, his legs crossed, now uncrossed. His mouth was thin with worry: what if Joan were proven a fraud. .. and, worse, what if she were not? What road then would she push him down?
With Charles were seated Isabeau, Catherine and Philip. All three looked stiff and ill-at-ease:
Catherine had told Philip the results of Joan’s morning examination, and Philip was now very unwilling to allow himself to be pushed into any move against her. He could not allow Catherine’s hatred to undermine his own position.
She is devil-constructed, not God-gifted, Catherine had whispered to him as they’d entered the hall. Even Jesus Christ had his privates intact.
But Philip had shaken his head, and gestured to Catherine to be silent. This situation needed to be observed far more closely, and his next move—should there be one at all—
taken only after much greater deliberation within himself. Philip was prepared to do many things to gain the French throne for himself, but speaking out against a possible saint incarnate was not one of them.
Not when the maid had God’s vengeful anger as her weaponry; Philip—as the entire garrison—had heard what had transpired on the wall during the night.
Around the hall were several score of nobles and knights and, as on the previous day ranks of guards and soldiers at the back of the hall.
If Isabeau, Catherine and Philip appeared uneasy, then the men in the ranks were even more so. Would their casual ribald words about this maid Joan, so nonchalantly passed among them during previous weeks—and they meant no ill, indeed not, ’twas just the day-to-day talk of common soldiers, sinners all!—come back to haunt them in the shape of God’s judgmental hand?
None among the common soldiers was now ready to even think of Joan in sexual terms. She was Joan of Arc, Holy Maid of France, and she was apart from any other, male or female, on this mortal realm.
There was a movement at a side door—Joan, still wearing the simple shift she had worn to her examination at Isabeau’s hands. She was escorted by the midwife Mane, who now and again glanced adoringly at Joan’s face. Joan murmured a word to Marie as they came through the door, and the midwife halted a pace or two inside the chamber, allowing Joan to walk forward on her own.
Joan smiled sweetly at Charles, who returned it tremulously, and then bowed to the assembled clerics.
“My lords,” she said, “I greet you well in the name of the Lord our Father.”
Archbishop de Chartres waved a hand dismissively. “You invoke God’s name easily, Joan.
Perhaps too easily. No, do not speak—”
Joan’s lips twitched. She had not been about to speak at all.
“—but take your place on the bench. We will address you in due course.”
Joan inclined her head and sat down on the bench, folding her hands in her lap.
“Madam de Bavière,” said de Chartres, “this morning you performed a great service to this panel in examining the maid Joan to determine if she is truly a virgin as she has claimed. Will you now step forth and tell this assembly of your conclusions?”
Isabeau slowly rose and stepped forth, stopping several feet from the bench on which sat Joan.
She did not look at the girl.
“My Lord Archbishop,” Isabeau said, then stopped. She had been steeling herself for this humiliation for several hours now, but several days would never have been enough to enable her to speak her findings with any peace of mind.
“Madam?” de Chartres said.
Isabeau wet her lips, and wished that she’d never left the English court. Even Richard would have been a preferable fate to this.
She turned her head slightly, and caught a glimpse of Catherine. Her daughter’s face was suffused with sympathy, and Isabeau grew purposeful. She would not let this dumpy peasant girl get the better of her.
“My Lord Archbishop,” Isabeau said again, her voice clear and strong now. “This morning, assisted by my daughter Catherine, several noble ladies, and two midwives, one of whom you see standing by the door, I did so examine the girl Joan to determine if she was the virgin she claimed to be. We viewed her flesh as close as any might, and what we say cannot now be gainsaid by any within or without this hall.
“My lords, the girl Joan is truly a maid. Indeed, she cannot be otherwise.”
“What mean you by this?” asked a priest by the name of Seguin, who sat at the Archbishop’s right hand.
“Father,” Isabeau said, “Joan is a true miracle. Her private parts are completely absent.
Where all other women have the clefts which tempt men, and which birth infants, as well as those breaches which enable them to piss and shit, Joan has smooth clear flesh. She is completely untainted, so pure that not only can she never bed with a man, but does not need
means to evacuate the foulness that all other sinners need to rid themselves of each day of their lives.”
There was silence throughout the hall, all eyes on Isabeau de Bavière as she returned to her chair.
Then, pair by pair, the eyes shifted to Joan, and shocked whisperings began to rustle up and down the assembly.
The archbishop, as the clerics seated with him, stared at the maid, almost unable to come to terms with what de Bavière had said.
Charles had put his shaking hands over his mouth, staring at Joan with eyes wide with awe and fright, and Joan graced him with yet another smile.
As she did so, her eyes flickered triumphantly at Isabeau, then to Catherine, sitting stone-faced by her brother.
Then she turned back to the panel seated on the dais. “I am so blessed,” she said. ‘God has been good to me.”
“Have … have you always been thus?” said de Chartres.
“Nay,” said Joan. “I was born as any girl-child is, and grew as every woman does, but last night Saint Michael approached me, and was with me, and took away from me those parts of me which God has sent to humiliate every daughter of Eve. I am no longer cursed by Eve’s sins.”
To one side Isabeau rolled her eyes, and leaned toward Catherine.
“God has graced her with everything save the virtue of humility!” she whispered. “No doubt she hopes to eventually take sweet Jesu’s place at our Father’s side!”
In her turn, Catherine glanced at Philip to make sure he’d heard Isabeau’s remark, then whispered back to her mother: “Her pride betrays her, madam. Perhaps she is more the devil’s monster than the saint.”
Philip shifted uncomfortably, then shushed them. For the moment he wanted no part of any accusations flung Joan’s way. It wouldn’t be politic at all.
Although neither Isabeau’s nor Catherine’s words had reached the clerics seated on the dais, it was clear that several among them entertained their own doubts. Such physical malformation could as easily be a mark of the Devil’s favor as of God’s.
Who had visited Joan last night? St. Michael… or Satan?
One of the investigatory priests, Seguin, whispered to de Chartres. “Perhaps we should have had her examined for a witch’s teat. I do not like this absence of natural parts.”
“There will always be another day should we need it,” de Chartres whispered back, and Seguin nodded slightly.
Now he leaned forward, his eyes sharp. “You say that Saint Michael has spoken to you on numerous occasions. In what tongue did he speak?”