Ride The Wind, Choose The Fire E-Book

Veronica Schwarz

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Come on a whirlwind ride across time and place with one of the most recognizable figures of Western history - Joan of Arc.

We all know of her, but few know the details of her life. Travel back in time with The Maid, in a series of imaginary interviews conducted by the author. Join her journey from shepherdess to warrior woman, to her rise to sainthood. Enjoy Joan's own words, recorded through two arduous trials. Admire her courage and stoicism, her compassion for the enemy, her battle strategies and her horsemanship.

Under the duress of imprisonment and trial, she still maintained her sense of humor, to the point of making her accusers and judges laugh out loud. Five hundred years later, the Catholic Church that condemned her as a heretic, made her a Saint.

Come with Joan the Maid. Ride the wind. Choose the fire.

Leseprobe

RIDE THE WIND, CHOOSE THE FIRE

A Journey with Joan of Arc

VERONICA SCHWARZ

Copyright (C) 2009 Veronica Schwarz

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

This book is based on historical facts. Names, characters and places are real. Many of Joan of Arc's words and those of other characters were recorded during two trials and are still extant. However, the interviews conducted are the product of the author's imagination, used as a creative technique to present information based on fact.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

CONTENTS

Also by Veronica Schwarz

Foreword

Pronunciation Guide

The Maid

Section I: DOMREMY

Map of Domremy

1. Getting There

2. Giving Voice to Joan

3. Let’s You and Him Fight

4. The Mother of all Wars

5. Home is Where the Hearth Is

Section 2: VAUCOULEURS

Map

6. Home and Away

7. Clothes Maketh the Woman

8. Wives and Mistresses

9. Good or Evil?

10. Across Enemy Lines

Section 3: CHINON

Map

11. Tricks and Traps

12. My Bonny Duke

Section 4: POITIERS

Map

13. Put to the Test

14. I Had a Banner

Section 5: ORLÉANS

Map

15. The City of Orléans

16. The Arrival

17. The Welcome and the Not-so-Welcome

18. Surrender to a Woman! Never!

19. First Victory

20. True Grit

21. You have been to your Council and I to Mine

22. Wounded but Winning

23. The Glorious Eighth of May

Section 6: TOURS, JARGEAU, PATAY

Map

24. Hastening Very Slowly

25. The Fall of Jargeau

26. On the Front Foot at Last

27. The Battle of Patay

Section 7: REIMS

Map

28. Dauphin or King? What’s in a Name?

29. Oh Brother! Troyes Again

30. The Crowning Moment

Section 8: PARIS

Map

31. A Woman Disordered and Defamed

32. Betrayal by a King

33. Not like the Good Old Days

34. Not the Done Thing

Section 9: COMPIEGNE

Map

35. Compiègne under Attack

36. Caught!

37. The Long Arm of Mother Church

38. Escape Attempts

Section 10: ROUEN

Map

39. Feel the Heat!

40. Chained like an Animal

41. A Presumptuous Woman

42. Let’s Try a Little Treachery

43. One at a Time, Please

44. Threats and More Threats

45. Choose the Fire

46. Trapped and Tricked

47. Death!

Section 11: AFTERWARDS

Afterwards

About the Author

Bibliography

ALSO BY VERONICA SCHWARZ

Children's Books

Water Falling, (A children's picture book) Mimosa Publications

Read and Do Kangaroo, (A children’s reading and puzzle book)

William Brooks, Brisbane, co-authored with

A. Canterbury (Tulku Rose)

Educational Publications

Learn Howto Learn, a manual of study skills

Reading Program and Phonic Cards,

William Brooks, Brisbane, Co-authored with

A. Canterbury (Tulku Rose)

New Directions in Social Studies,

William Brooks, Brisbane, co-authored with

A. Canterbury (Tulku Rose)

Editing and Publishing

Editor and publisher of The Dawn, an alternative magazine for women.

FOREWORD

Why would anyone write another book about Joan of Arc?

There are thousands of books, numerous movies and countless websites about her.

In spite of that, I felt inspired to write this particular book for a number of reasons.

I wanted to make Joan’s story accessible to people of all ages who might not usually read history but would find these interviews (imaginary as they are) an easier way into her amazing but short life. I also hope that teachers will direct their students to this story, as its accuracy is based on many years of research and several trips to France.

This work is a salute to and a celebration of one of the most amazing human beings of all time. Brave beyond belief on the battle field, stoic when wounded repeatedly, gentle and compassionate, staunchly loyal even in the face of betrayal. She died horribly when she was only nineteen, yet she is a role model of faith, persistence, devotion and courage.

My aim is to keep Joan’s memory alive, not as a saint or a superwoman with extraordinary powers but as a wonderful human being with the same fears and pain and frustrations as the rest of us. A human being who steadfastly stuck to her purpose and showed us what belief and commitment can achieve.

To the friends and family members who supported me through this long project, my sincere thanks. It helped immensely knowing that you were cheering me on.

My thanks to my friends Olive Stonyer and Suzanne Pinchen for their invaluable help with proofreading. Any errors remaining are solely mine, made in the final moments of completion. I have retained the French spelling of place names.

For the courage to write a creative non-fiction version of Joan’s life, I am grateful to Mark Twain, Bernard Shaw and Tom Kenneally.

Above all, Joan the Maid, I salute you. This book is for you.

Veronica Schwarz

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

There are quite a few differences in pronunciation between French and English, and French has many nasal sounds.

This section does not try to give you a total outline of French pronunciation but mainly covers sounds in the names or words you will read in the book.

One major difference occurs when the very last letter in a word is a consonant. It is not pronounced. For example, Denis is pronounced in French as duh-nee. No s on the end. One major exception to this is the letter c so Joan’s family name d’Arc is pronounced dark. The word for Duke, duc is pronounced dook. The oo sound is not exactly like oo in English. Hold your lips as though you are about to say oo and say ee instead. Now try saying duc.

The letter j is pronounced the same as s in the English word pleasure.

The vowel a is pronounced the same as it is in the English word apple except when it is written â. Then it is pronounced ah. So Joan’s name is Jeanne d’Arc is pronounced jan dark in French, making sure you get that j sounding like the s in pleasure.

The nasal sounds are better listened to rather than described but the following will give you some idea.

The letters m and n after certain vowels are not pronounced at all in French. To say these sounds, pretend you have a bad cold and your nose is blocked. Now try saying n. The m is pronounced the same as the

n. In the list below, this sound is shown by a black dot.

Alençon —> A-lo●-so●

Augustins —> oh-goo-sta●

Beau duc —> boh dook

Beaugency —> boh-jo●-see

Beauvais —> boh-vay

Cauchon —> koh-sho●

Chinon —> shee-no●

Com-piègne —> kom-pee-en-yuh

Dauphin —> doh-fa●

Domremy —> do●-ray-mee

Dunois —> doo-nwa

Durand Laxart —>doo-ro● laks-ar

Fierbois —> fee-air-bwa

Isabeau —> ee-za-boh

Jacques d’Arc —> jak dark

Jargeau —> jah-joh

Jean Lemaitre —>jo● luh-maytr

Jeanne —> jarn

Jeannette —> jarn-et

La Hire —> la eer

La Pucelle —> la poo-sel

Loire —> lwah

Neufchateau—> nerf-shat-oh

Orléans. —> or-lay-o●

Pierre —> pee-air

Poitiers —> pwah-tee-ay

Pucelle —> poo-sel

Reims —> ra●s

Robert de Baudricourt —>ro-bair duh boh-dree-koor

Rouen —> roo-o●

Saint Denis —> sa● duh-nee

Saint Loup —> sa● loo

Saint Ouen —> s● too-o●

Seine —> sayn

Tourelles —> too-rel

Vaucouleurs —>voh-koo-ler

THE MAID

She was going to die, and more than ten thousand people had come to watch.

The rumbling cart carried her into the town square, and the crowd stirred like a huge beast turning toward her. A roar went up, then all was quiet. Necks craned to see her. Men hoisted small children onto their shoulders to make sure they could see her, too.

And what did they see? A young woman weeping with terror, supported by two priests. Her head was shaven, and she wore a shapeless dress of rough black cloth.

Three platforms had been built in the centre of the town square. On one, officials and churchmen in their finest robes of red velvet, ermine and silk, sat on chairs placed specially for the occasion. They would miss nothing.

On the second platform, a lone churchman stood, ready with his sermon and his judgment.

The third platform held a tall stake. Firewood leant against it, piled high.

No one would miss her death. The stake had been built so high even the executioner would be unable to reach her to strangle her mercifully. She would die in the fire.

The place was Rouen, in France. The year: 1431.

What had she done to earn so much hate? She was only nineteen. Hardly time to stir up such feelings in so many.

And now, she's been dead for nearly six hundred years.

So much was recorded from the time when she lived that we can piece it together. Come with me on a remarkable journey through time and place as I "interview" one of the most amazing people who ever lived—Jeanne d'Arc or Joan of Arc, as she is known in English—Joan the Maid, as she called herself.

My journey with Joan began when I visited the small town of Domremy, her birthplace. The town has been renamed Domremy-la-Pucelle after Joan’s chosen surname, “la Pucelle,” meaning “the maid.”

SECTION I: DOMREMY

France in 1429 Joan’s birthplace, Domremy, is marked with a star.

1

GETTING THERE

At the time of my travels, getting to Domremy without a car was complicated, but I was determined. I figured if Joan could crisscross France on horseback, I could get myself to Domremy. A train trip from Paris to Nancy then a regional train to Neufchateau and a two-hour wait for a bus. By the time the bus got to Domremy, I was the only passenger. My French grew more fluent as I chatted to the driver and told him I was interested in Jeanne d’Arc. As he stopped the bus for me to get out, he pointed to a small church on his right.

“Start here. I’ll be back in four hours for the return trip.”

I stood in the middle of the dusty road as he drove off. The air was dense and dry; the sun was hot on my skin. There was no breeze. Shading my eyes against the glare, I looked at the small stone church. It had been built in the fourteenth century and remodeled in the sixteenth. Joan of Arc took her first Communion there around 1423.

I walked across the road and into the church. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I felt the peace and calm of this tiny place. The air was cool. I had the place to myself, so I sat on a pew, soaked in the atmosphere and looked at the beautiful stained-glass windows. The brilliant colours showed scenes from the last few years of Joan’s life. The story started at the back on the left and continued clockwise to the front of the church and then up the right-hand side to the back of the church. The final scene on the left showed, in vivid colour, a young woman chained to a stake, burning to death.

Aloud, I asked, “If you knew how it was going to end, would you have begun at all?”

In my mind, an answer formed. Perhaps it was imagination. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.

“You deserve to be better known,” I said. “Many people have heard of you, but few know the amazing details.”

It was then I decided to put together the mountain of information available about her and record it as a series of imaginary interviews.

I left the church and walked into the dazzling sunlight of Domremy in May. Momentarily blinded after the cool darkness, I paused and looked back at the church. In the nineteenth century, the original altar was removed and the nave destroyed to make way for the road on which I stood. The original steeple was left standing and a new nave and altar built behind it. This means that the steeple is now at the front of the church. Back to front from when Joan knew it.

The air was hot and heavy. Nothing stirred as I wandered across the dusty street to a small tavern. To the right was a souvenir shop, so I detoured in and bought a couple of souvenirs of Joan of Arc—a postcard and a small poem.

The poem Fumées et Cendres (Smoke and Ashes) by Andrée Nex gave powerful sound and life to the image in that last stained-glass window. The fear, the horror, the savagery and the loss as Joan’s defenceless body is turned to a charred carcass in Rouen. The last verse reads:

Et pour toujours, Un cri

Un cri d’honneur

Du corps devenu carcasse

De Jehanne, en place de Rouen.

And forever, a cry. A cry of honour. Of body turned to carcass. Of Joan, in Rouen’s marketplace.

Almost gasping for breath at the horror of it, I left the souvenir shop, and returning to the sidewalk, I sat at

one of the tables outside the tavern. A waitress appeared, and I ordered a pichon of white wine.

I had three hours to wait for the next bus out of Domremy. Plenty of time to look around the village, but first I wanted to think about Joan and my sense of a mission to bring her back into the minds—and perhaps the hearts—of as many people as possible.

It’s said we need heroes, and I think that’s true. Here is one of the greatest of heroes and perhaps one of the most amazing human beings of all time. Mark Twain wrote a book about her and considered it the best thing he had ever written. Most of his readers are unaware of the book about Joan but love Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, two fictional boys.

Bernard Shaw wrote a play about her. In his preface, he summed up the amazing and the paradoxical. He wrote:

She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar… Though a professed and most pious Catholic … she was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was also one of the first apostles of Nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic realism in warfare as distinguished from the sporting ransom-gambling chivalry of her times. She was the pioneer of rational dressing for women …

It is hardly surprising, he continues, that she was judicially burnt, ostensibly for a number of crimes… but essentially for what we call unwomanly and insufferable presumption.

I pulled myself back to the present. I had finally made it to Joan’s birthplace.

This small village is in Lorraine, one of the twenty-six Regions of France. It is the only French Region to have borders with three other countries: Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. As the crossroads of four nations, it was a strategic asset to whichever of them possessed it. But beyond this fact, it had given birth to a nation’s hero, one whose name is recognised in most of the Western world—Joan of Arc.

The small village gave no sign of its reflected greatness as it dozed in the sun. The heat and glare grew stronger, and I moved to the shade of a large umbrella over one of the other tables. I sipped a little more of the wine, still refreshingly cool in its earthenware jug. I felt myself relax. Taking a deep breath, I wrote the words, “Hello Joan. Bonjour Jeanne,” in my notebook.

In the glaring heat of the afternoon, my imagination began to work, and I continued to write. What follows is a record of a series of imaginary interviews over a long period of time, interviews with Joan of Arc—as she might have told her story.

“I’m glad to hear from you,” said a voice in my head. “What are you doing?”

The page of my notebook fluttered slightly as if a breeze stirred it. But there was none. I wrote: “I want to write your story, as told by you. Will you help me?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be ‘as told by me’ if I didn’t.”

I could see immediately why her judges had found her difficult and far from diffident when they were questioning her.

“True,” I said. “Lots of people have written about you, of course. There’s enough recorded material.”

The voice in my head answered, “Then let’s do it.”

Just what I wanted to hear. “Terrific,” I said. “Let’s just clear up something about your voice and language. You don’t sound much like a fifteenth-century maid—and you’re speaking English.”

I thought I heard her laugh. “After what I’ve been through, your voice would change, too. Dead at nineteen. That was a rude shock.”

“And the English language?”

“Well, in my situation, I can afford to be flexible. This reminds me how those learned judges and the English could not believe that St Catherine, St Margaret and St Michael spoke to me in French! They assumed all saints spoke only English!”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m glad we cleared that up. So what or where will we start about those nineteen years?”

“My most vivid memory is the fire. You try putting your feet in a fire and gazing to heaven. Neither good for the Soul nor the soles. Those artists and filmmakers must be crazy or stupid or both, depicting me with a blissful expression gazing up to heaven while I’m being roasted alive. I still shudder at the thought. Let’s talk about something else.”

A shudder ran through me, too. Death by fire is fairly high on the list of everybody’s major fears. I had read enough to know that her death had been particularly gruesome with even the executioner beside himself with grief and remorse.

She spoke clearly and with little trace of an accent. But perhaps I was dreaming. I was hearing voices in my head. No, make that one voice. I was hearing the voice of a girl who heard voices.

“Do you mind if I call you Joan?” I asked. “It’s what we call you in English.”

“I prefer Jeanne, but if it’s easier for you, call me Joan.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You are called Jeanne d’Arc in history, but that wasn’t your name was it? Later writers, following the custom of their own time periods, have given you that surname because it was your father’s surname. You were never Joan of Arc. When your trial judges asked you to state your names and surnames (yes, plural), you answered:

In my town they called me Jeannette, and since I came to France, I have been called Joan. As for my surname, I know of none.”

“That’s true,” she replied. “In the area I lived, children were more often given their mother’s surname than their father’s. Or a combination of the two parents or something different again. Sometimes the surname was relevant to the place a person was born in, or even the work they did. Once my mission began, I called myself simply Jeanne the Maid. The French word for maid or maiden in the sense of being a virgin is pucelle. I was usually referred to as La Pucelle, the Maid. Later, when the King ennobled my family, we were all given the surname du Lys. My brothers chose to use it. I did not. I continued to call myself The Maid.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Joan, one of the things you’re best known for is that you heard voices telling you to do amazing things for France. Can you tell me about those voices?”

There was a long silence, and I wondered if I had lost her. I remembered she had not wanted to discuss her voices when her judges questioned her at her trial. Had I ended our talks before they had begun?

2

GIVING VOICE TO JOAN

At last, I heard her voice: “What would you like to know?”

Delighted that she had chosen to respond, I asked, “When did you first hear the voices?”

“The first time—it was in 1425; I was about twelve. It was quite near our house in my father’s garden. I'll show you the spot later. No one else was around. It was almost midday and hot. A bit like today, actually. I heard, ‘Jeanne. Jeanne.’ At first I was afraid. The voice was coming from the right-hand side toward the church over there. There was also a brightness on that side.”

The date struck me. It was the year that the Burgundians had raided the village and burnt the church. It would have been a tremendous shock to all the village, not least of all a young girl on the verge of puberty. I wondered if this had made her vulnerable to hoping for divine assistance, but I did not want to distract her at this point.

“What did the voice say?” I asked.

“Nothing much in the beginning. But I began to hear it quite regularly. It told me to be a good child and to go to church regularly. It also told me that God would look after me.”

“Whose voice was that?”

“I believed from the things he said that it was the Archangel Michael. After a while he told me that St Catherine and St Margaret would also advise me, and I should listen to what they said.”

“The voices were with you constantly for almost five years before you were able to do what they said to help France and the King.”

“Yes, and they remained with me for the rest of my life.”

Not that that was long, I thought.

Aloud, I said, “There are many who believe your

voices were a common mental problem. What would you say to that?”

“They were very clear and always helpful. So all I can say is they were very real to me. They began to tell me that I should go into France. They told me of the state of the war there and said that I must help the King of France.”

“Weren’t you born in France? Wasn’t Domremy part of France?”

“Yes and no. Things were different then. I’ll draw you a map later. But to get back to my voices. They told me I must raise the siege of Orléans, but I was not to tell my father what I was doing. I replied that since I was only a girl, I couldn't even ride a horse, let alone lead an army.”

“Did you tell anyone about the voices?”

“No, not for quite a while.”

“Right. Let’s go back a bit. Tell us about your childhood.”

“Fairly ordinary for the time. My mother and father lived here in Domremy. As you know, nowadays it’s not far from the German border. Of course, there was no such thing as Germany back then. For that matter, there wasn't…”

I interrupted her. “I want to get back to the geography and politics of it all a little later, but for now, can you tell me about your family?”

Although I could not see her, she seemed to take my interruption in her stride and answered, “Our house is over there still, on the other side of the church. The church used to face the other way in those days.

“My father was Jacques d'Arc. He came from Ceffonds, a village in Champagne. He was an important person in Domremy, being lower in rank only to the mayor and the sheriff. He represented the village on a couple of occasions in legal matters.”

“How did you get on with your father?” I asked.

“He kept me under his thumb, especially after the

dream he had about me. I’ll tell you about that when we get to it.”

“All right,” I said. “Tell me about your mother.”

“My mother was Isabelle Romée or Isabelle de Vouthon. Romée is a surname usually given to people who've made a pilgrimage to Rome or some other important pilgrimage.”

“Had she?” I asked.

“I don’t think she ever got to Rome, but she had gone on at least one pilgrimage to Puy-en-Velay. When she was sixty years old and Papa was dead, she started the appeal to the Pope to re-examine my trial. Imagine it, a peasant and a mere woman, in the fifteenth century, tackling the Pope in faraway Rome to exonerate her dead daughter.”

“I begin to see where you got some of your characteristics. Tell me what your life was like. Were you different from the other children?”

“No. I didn't think so. I did go to confession and Communion more than most. The other children teased me a bit for being overly religious. I helped around the house. I was very good at spinning. I was also able to wander off and spend time on my own a bit.”

“Did you learn to read and write?”

“No. Most people didn’t. I never learned to write, but I could recognise some of the letters and words I saw in the church. Later on, I learnt to write my name. Jehanne. That’s how it was spelled in French in those days. Nowadays, it’s written as Jeanne.”

Joan’s signature

“How much did you know of the politics of the time, the battles and the war with England?”

“Not a lot, to be honest,” Joan answered. “We were raided by the Burgundians a couple of times and had to escape to shelter for a few days. Sometimes, we’d have

one of our soldiers come through the village. We listened to their stories and gave them food. Sometimes they'd stay overnight, and I'd let them have my bed.”

“So where did you sleep when that happened?” “Usually under the hood of the fireplace. Anyway,

they were our main source of news. Quite a bit different to your day, eh? Now you can sit at home and watch a war on the other side of the world as it's happening.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “It has become a lot more part of our lives without actually being part of our lives.”

Joan went on. “There was also talk of the need for the Dauphin Charles, or crown prince as you would call him, to be crowned in the cathedral at Reims3.

“The voices kept telling me that I was the one to do it. Now, believe me, that was a shock. Up until then I was just an ordinary sort of a girl. After I began to hear those voices, I dedicated myself to God and made up my mind to remain a virgin and never get married. Meanwhile, the voices continued to tell me to help the Dauphin.”

I said nothing, so she continued.

“I asked the voices, ‘How, how can it be done?’”

“Go to the Dauphin. Tell him you are sent by God,” they replied. “Go to him. We’ll help you. Just go.”