3rd March 2018
Today in 1431, Joan of Arc faced a sixth session of public examination at Rouen. The Bishop Cauchon and more than 50 assessors interrogated Joan’s reputation as a witch. After today’s session, the Bishop moved them to her prison cell, with just a handful of assessors.
Joan’s visions of the Saints, her belief she was chosen by God, her decision to wear men's clothing, assume a man's duties as well as her "manly” characteristics of bravery and leadership, put her at risk of a witchcraft charge.
In almost every session, they asked her about her soldier's clothing. She was wearing a soldier's outfit which had a tunic, hosen, and long boots that went up to the waist, all of which were tied together with cords. She said she needed the clothing to protect herself from being raped and that a woman’s dress, which was open at the bottom, would leave her vulnerable.
Joan was eventually, after months of interrogation, found guilty and burned as a witch. She joins many women who suffered because of their gender. Her power and success was seen as ‘unfeminine’, ‘unwomanly’ or downright ‘manly’. Since she was not a man, she must have been a witch.
This is a scene from my novel The Lady of the Rivers. A young Jacquetta, who would later become Duchess of Bedford and mother to Elizabeth Woodville, befriends her family’s prisoner – Joan.
My great-aunt believes that if she can bring Joan into our company, talk with her, cool her religious fervour, perhaps educate her, then the girl will be led, in time, to wear the dress of a young woman, and the fighting youth who was dragged off the white horse at Compiègne will be transformed, like Mass reversed, from strong wine into water, and she will become a young woman who can be seated among waiting women, who will answer to a command and not to the ringing church bells, and will then, perhaps, be overlooked by the English, who are demanding that we surrender the hermaphrodite murderous witch to them. If we have nothing to offer them but a remorseful obedient maid in waiting, perhaps they will be satisfied and go on their violent way.
Of course, all the maids in waiting to my great-aunt want to know about the adventure that is ending in this slow creep of defeat, and as Joan spends her days with us, learning to be a girl and not the Maid, they pluck up the courage to ask her.
‘How were you so brave?’ one demands. ‘How did you learn to be so brave? In battle, I mean.’
Joan smiles at the question. There are four of us, seated on a grass bank beside the moat of the castle, as idle as children. The July sun is beating down and the pasture lands around the castle are shimmering in the haze of heat; even the bees are lazy, buzzing and then falling silent as if drunk on flowers. We have chosen to sit in the deep shadow of the highest tower; behind us, in the glassy water of the moat, we can hear the occasional bubble of a carp coming to the surface.
Joan is sprawled like a boy, one hand dabbling in the water, her cap over her eyes. In the basket beside me are half-sewn shirts that we are supposed to hem for the poor children of nearby Cambrai.
But the maids avoid work of any sort, Joan has no skill, and I have my great-aunt’s precious pack of playing cards in my hands and I am shuffling and cutting them and idly looking at the pictures.
‘I knew I was called by God,’ Joan said simply. ‘And that He would protect me, so I had no fear. Not even in the worst of the battles. He warned me that I would be injured but that I would feel no pain, so I knew I could go on fighting. I even warned my men that I would be injured that day. I knew before we went into battle. I just knew.’
‘Do you really hear voices?’ I ask.
‘Do you?’ she replies.