It was De Gamache, the captain who had said that he would not follow a girl of the fields whom nobody knew, who raised her, and carried her back.
“Take my horse, brave creature,” he said. “Bear no malice. I confess that I was in the wrong.”
“It is I that should be wrong if I bore malice,” cried Jeanne, “for never was knight so courteous.”
Her own people had followed her when she was carried out of the fray. The bolt stood out a hand-breadth behind her shoulder, and the maiden wept with the pain. She was General-in-Chief of the army, but she was seventeen, and after all but a girl, so she cried just as any girl would have done. Some one of the soldiers proposed to charm the wound with a song of healing, but the maiden cried:
“I would rather die than do so, for it would be sin.”
And then, because none of her attendants would drag the bolt from her shoulder for fear of hurting her, she herself pulled it out, and as the blood gushed out she swooned. Father Pasquerel, who was surgeon as well as priest, dressed the wound with a compress soaked in oil, and Jeanne, recovering from her faint, made her confession to him, then lay quiet.
Meantime the battle languished. Discouraged assailants were drawing back from the boulevard out of bow-shot, and Dunois himself thought that there was no hope of victory, the day being nearly spent, and the men weary. So he had the recall sounded, and gave orders to retreat across the river. Brave work had been done, and the captains had not hoped to take the place in a month. The bugle notes of the retreat were welcome music to the English, and to the wearied French who had fought without cessation for thirteen hours. But when they sounded on the ears of the wounded Maid she heard them with amazement.
She rose in haste, and somehow managed to mount her horse, and so rode to Dunois.
“Doubt not,” she said. “They are ours. Rest a little. Eat something. Refresh yourselves, and wait for me a little.”