CHAPTER XVI — THE ABJURATION. MAY 24, 1431.
On the 23d of May Jeanne was taken back to her prison attended by the officer of the court, Massieu, her frame still thrilling, her heart still high, with that great note of constancy yet defiance. She had been no doubt strongly excited, the commotion within her growing with every repetition of these scenes, each one of which promised to be the last. And the fire and the stake and the executioner had come very near to her; no doubt a whole murmuring world of rumour, of strange information about herself, never long inaudible, never heard outside of the Castle of Rouen, rose half-comprehended from the echoing courtyard outside and the babble of her guards within. She would hear even as she was conveyed along the echoing stone passages something here and there of the popular expectation:—a burning! the wonderful unheard of sight, which by hook or by crook everyone must see; and no doubt among the English talk she might now be able to make out something concerning this long business which had retarded all warlike proceedings but which would soon be over now, and the witch burnt. There must have been some, even among those rude companions, who would be sorry, who would feel that she was no witch, yet be helpless to do anything for her, any more than Massieu could, or Frère Isambard: and if it was all for the sake of certain words to be said, was the wench mad? would it not be better to say anything, to give up anything rather than be burned at the stake? Jeanne, notwithstanding the wonderful courage of her last speech, must have returned to her cell with small illusion possible to her intelligent spirit. The stake had indeed come very near, the flames already dazzled her eyes, she must have felt her slender form shrink together at the thought. All that long night, through the early daylight of the May morning did she lie and ponder, as for far less reasons so many of us have pondered as we lay wakeful through those morning watches. God's promises are great, but where is the fulfilment? We ask for bread and he gives us, if not a stone, yet something which we cannot realise to be bread till after many days. Jeanne's voices had never paused in their pledge to her of succour. "Speak boldly, God will help you—fear nothing"; there would be aid for her before three months, and great victory. They went on saying so, though the stake was already being raised. What did they mean? what did they mean? Could she still trust them? or was it possible——?
Her heart was like to break. At their word she would have faced the fire. She meant to do so now, notwithstanding the terrible, the heartrending ache of hope that was still in her. But they did not give her that heroic command. Still and always, they said God will help you, our Lord will stand by you. What did that mean? It must mean deliverance, deliverance! What else could it mean? If she held her head high as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so often left with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon have dropped upon her tired bosom. Slowly the clouds had settled round her. Over and over again had she affirmed them to be true—these voices that had guided her steps and led her to victory. And they had promised her the aid of God if she went forward boldly, and spoke and did not fear. But now every way of salvation was closing; all around her were fierce soldiers thirsting for her blood, smooth priests who admonished her in charity, threatening her with eternal fire for the soul, temporal fire for the body. She felt that fire, already blowing towards her as if on the breath of the evening wind, and her girlish flesh shrank. Was that what the voices had called deliverance? was that the grand victory, the aid of the Lord?
It may well be imagined that Jeanne slept but little that night; she had reached the lowest depths; her soul had begun to lose itself in bitterness, in the horror of a doubt. The atmosphere of her prison became intolerable, and the noise of her guards keeping up their rough jests half through the night, their stamping and clamour, and the clang of their arms when relieved. Early next morning a party of her usual visitors came in upon her to give her fresh instruction and advice. Something new was about to happen to-day. She was to be led forth, to breathe the air of heaven, to confront the people, the raging sea of men's faces, all the unknown world about her. The crowd had never been unfriendly to Jeanne. It had closed about her, almost wherever she was visible, with sweet applause and outcries of joy. Perhaps a little hope stirred her heart in the thought of being surrounded once more by the common folk, though probably it did not occur to her to think of these Norman strangers as her own people. And a great day was before her, a day in which something might still be done, in which deliverance might yet come. L'Oyseleur, who was one of her visitors, adjured her now to change her conduct, to accept whatever means of salvation might be offered to her. There was no longer any mention of Pope or Council, but only of the Church to which she ought to yield. How it was that he preserved his influence over her, having been proved to be a member of the tribunal that judged her, and not a fellow-prisoner, nor a fellow-countryman, nor any of the things he had professed to be, no once can tell us; but evidently he had managed to do so. Jeanne would seem to have received him without signs of repulsion or displeasure. Indeed she seems to have been ready to hear anyone, to believe in those who professed to wish her well, even when she did not follow their counsel.
It would require, however, no great persuasion on L'Oyseleur's part to convince her that this was a more than usually important day, and that something decisive must be done, now or never. Why should she be so determined to resist her only chance of safety? If she were but delivered from the hands of the English, safe in the gentler keeping of the Church, there would be time to think of everything, even to make her peace with her voices who would surely understand if, for the saving of her life, and out of terror for the dreadful fire, she abandoned them for a moment. She had disobeyed them at Beaurevoir and they had forgiven. One faltering word now, a mark of her hand upon a paper, and she would be safe—even if still all they said was true; and if indeed and in fact, after buoying her up from day to day, such a dreadful thing might be as that they were not true——
The traitor was at her ear whispering; the cold chill of disappointment, of disillusion, of sickening doubt was in her heart.
Then there came into the prison a better man than L'Oyseleur, Jean Beaupère, her questioner in the public trial, the representative of all these notabilities. What he said was spoken with authority and he came in all seriousness, may not we believe in some kindness too? to warn her. He came with permission of the Bishop, no stealthy visitor. "Jean Beaupère entered alone into the prison of the said Jeanne by permission, and advertised her that she would straightway be taken to the scaffold to be addressed (pour y être preschée), and that if she was a good Christian she would on that scaffold place all her acts and words under the jurisdiction of our Holy Mother, the Church, and specially of the ecclesiastical judges." "Accept the woman's dress and do all that you are told," her other adviser had said. When the car that was to convey her came to the prison doors, L'Oyseleur accompanied her, no doubt with a show of supporting her to the end. What a change from the confined and gloomy prison to the dazzling clearness of the May daylight, the air, the murmuring streets, the throng that gazed and shouted and followed! Life that had run so low in the prisoner's veins must have bounded up within her in response to that sunshine and open sky, and movement and sound of existence—summer weather too, and everything softened in the medium of that soft breathing air, sound and sensation and hope. She had been three months in her prison. As the charrette rumbled along the roughly paved streets drawing all those crowds after it, a strange object appeared to Jeanne's eyes in the midst of the market-place, a lofty scaffold with a stake upon it, rising over the heads of the crowd, the logs all arranged ready for the fire, a car waiting below with four horses, to bring hither the victim. The place of sacrifice was ready, everything arranged—for whom? for her? They drove her noisily past that she might see the preparations. It was all ready; and where then was the great victory, the deliverance in which she had believed?
In front of the beautiful gates of St. Ouen there was a different scene. That stately church was surrounded then by a churchyard, a great open space, which afforded room for a very large assembly. In this were erected two platforms, one facing the other. On the first sat the court of judges in number about forty, Cardinal Winchester having a place by the side of Monseigneur de Beauvais, the president, with several other bishops and dignified ecclesiastics. Opposite, on the other platform, were a pulpit and a place for the accused, to which Jeanne was conducted by Massieu, who never left her, and L'Oyseleur, who kept as near as he could, the rest of the platform being immediately covered by lawyers, doctors, all the camp followers, so to speak, of the black army, who could find footing there. Jeanne was in her usual male dress, the doublet and hose, with her short-clipped hair—no doubt looking like a slim boy among all this dark crowd of men. The people swayed like a sea all about and around—the throng which had gathered in her progress through the streets pushing out the crowd already assembled with a movement like the waves of the sea. Every step of the trial all through had been attended by preaching, by discourses and reasoning and admonishments, charitable and otherwise. Now she was to be "preached" for the last time.
It was Doctor Guillaume Érard who ascended the pulpit, a great preacher, one whom the "copious multitude" ran after and were eager to hear. He himself had not been disposed to accept this office, but no doubt, set up there on that height before the eyes of all the people, he thought of his own reputation, and of the great audience, and Winchester the more than king, the great English Prince, the wealthiest and most influential of men. The preacher took his text from a verse in St. John's Gospel: "A branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine." The centre circle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring of English soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that the witch should be condemned.