Dove and Sword: A Novel of Joan of Arc

I will never, I thought, as we arrived in Tours, get used to cities. Father Pasquerel reminded us that all manner of tricksters lie in wait in them ready to take money from unsuspecting country people in exchange for worthless trinkets. I, of course, had no spare money with which to test this. But I did spy someone selling what he claimed was a potion to cure fever, and his liquid was clear as water. I knew well that gooseberry porridge, dried cherries, or burning mugwort was best for that, and I saw no sign of any of them in the cart on which he displayed his bottles.

Pierre led us through the streets, and we found Jeannette outside the house where she was lodging. At first I did not know her, but thought the person there, mounted on a black charger and clad in gleaming silvery armor, with a sword in a crimson scabbard, was a young man. But when Pierre strode up to her and she turned, I saw that this handsome knight was Jeannette—and yet not Jeannette at all, for she was very changed. Her beautiful long black hair that I had so admired had been cut short and bowllike above her ears, as most men’s hair was cut. Its severity made her face look softer and more feminine, though at the same time boyish, if both can be said to be true at once.

I stood gaping at her, trying to convince myself that inside the armor and behind that face was still only Jeannette.

But then I thought, only Jeannette, who has spoken to the dauphin, and perhaps to saints?

In front of her, holding her horse, was her brother Jean, his broad back to me, scowling at Pierre, as if he were displeased with both his siblings.

For a moment when I went up to her, tentative and nervous, she, Jeannette—Jeanne—just stared. But suddenly all solemnity vanished and a little smile broke across her face, as a ripple grows in the River Meuse when a child throws a pebble into it. She leaped from her horse, kicking aside the stirrups that encased her booted feet, and moved, awkwardly in her armor, clanking, toward us.

“Plague take this armor,” she said crossly, sounding more like Pierre’s and my childhood companions than the pious maid I had known in Domremy. “I move like a land snail in it! Gabrielle, what brings you here? Oh, it is good to see a woman I know, one from home who knows me, instead of these fancy town folk!” She made as if to embrace me, her arms moving stiffly in the shiny steel garde bras that encased them. Then, lifting her arms toward me as I lifted mine to embrace her, she burst into a laugh heartier than I had ever heard from her. I laughed as well, for I, too, felt how good it was to see a woman from home who knew me. What matter that she had seemed mannish at first? It was clear now that she was not, and I liked her new spirit.

“If I touch you, I will crush you. Come inside.” She waved her brothers impatiently off after quickly greeting Pierre. “No, no, d’Aulon,” she said to a kind-looking man with very round brown eyes who followed her—her squire, I was to learn. He seemed to have a fatherly concern for her, though I later heard he was only eight or so years older. “We will manage, Gabrielle and I,” she said to him. “You may leave us.”

D’Aulon glanced at me and inclined his head in a brief nod, and Jeannette, taking my hand as if we were still herdgirls in the fields along our river at home, led me inside the house. It was tall, and each story was faced with wide vertical stripes, for its timbers were set up and down instead of across. “This house belongs to one Monsieur Dupuys,” Jeannette whispered as we went in through the low door. “He is as important here in Tours as my papa is in Domremy, and his wife is lady-in-waiting to Marie d’Anjou herself.” Jeannette gave me a sideways glance, and then laughed and poked my arm, saying, “Marie d’Anjou is married to the dauphin.” She gave me another poke and then said, “She is almost a queen—but I see that to you, Gabrielle, she is just another woman, eh?”

“I—no,” I said, confused. “That is impressive. It—I did not know.”

Jeannette patted my shoulder, saying, “I am jesting; I did not mean to tease. And I am learning that one person is much like another, regardless of their station, and we are all accountable to God.”

She led me into an upper chamber toward the back of the house, where there were a bed and a chest, very elegantly carved, and rushes and herbs strewn on the floor. “Yes,” she said, “I sleep in this bed, me and the daughters of the house—whom I will ask to leave tonight so that you may join me and we may gossip undisturbed. Here—a pox on this buckle!—help me remove my shell; I feel like one made of stone in it, though it is splendid, is it not?”

Before I could answer, and tell her that yes, I agreed it was splendid—for I did—she went on, asking, “How came you here, Gabrielle, and why? Oh, it is good to see you! How did you leave them in Domremy? Well, I hope—my mother and father especially. Had the planting begun, when you left? How is Messire Guillaume, and how …”

“I will tell you, Jeannette,” I interrupted, struggling to undo unfamiliar fastenings, “if you will leave off asking long enough for me to answer.”

“A ready wit and a saucy tongue as always,” she said merrily. But despite her new and rougher manner, she did not seem hardened, and about her face was that same glow, as if it was with her now always.

At length, we freed her from her armor, from cuirass and vambraces and gauntlets, greaves and sollerets, names I did not know then but was soon to learn. I noticed a ring on her finger, gold, with three crosses and some writing. She must have seen me looking at it, for she smiled, saying, “The writing says, ‘Jhesus-Maria,’ I am told, and the ring is from my parents, for love and safety.”

Then we embraced like sisters, and sat on the great bed while I told her of all that had befallen me, and gave her news of her mother. I explained about Father Pasquerel, whom we had rudely left standing in the street, and said that her mother wished him to accompany her, and that he was willing.

“I will send for him, then,” she said, “for it would be good to have a friar at my side, and if my mother wishes it, I will obey. Is she much worried? Is my father angry? He was, for a time …”

“Your father I have not seen since I left,” I told her. “He did not seem angry then. Yes, your mother is worried. She prays for you constantly, but I think she feels you are on a holy mission, and must accomplish it. Are you, Jeannette? On a holy mission?” I wanted to ask about the times we had spied on her, but I dared not, for Pierre and I had agreed we would let her keep that secret for as long as she wished.

Her face sobered and she said, “Yes, Gabrielle, I am. And surely it is from God that I come, for the dauphin agrees and the men follow me willingly.” There was no boasting in her words, despite their sound, only humility. “All except my brother Jean follow willingly,” she added, smiling sadly. “He comes because our father asked him to, but he does not approve of what I do, nor does my father, who fears for my safety and my morals. That saddens me, because both of them should know I do this not for myself but because God wants me to do it.” She paused a moment, as if reflecting, then seemed to shake the sadness off.

“Listen,” she said, “do you see this sword?” She pointed to the one we had put aside, still sheathed in crimson velvet, its hilt topped with five crosses.

I nodded.

“The scabbard,” she said, “and another of cloth of gold, are from the people of this city of Tours and the priests at the place where the sword was found.” She paused again, looking beyond me, and beyond the sword and the room as if at something I could not see. “Gabrielle,” she said, “when I was first here, I was told—I may not say by whom—that there was a sword in a village church, the village of Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, which is not far from here, and that I should have it. So I sent for it, saying, as I had been told, that it was hidden behind the altar there.” Her voice dropped and her eyes shifted to mine as she said softly, “People said no one had ever seen it. But it was there nonetheless.”

I realized then that whatever had spoken to her in her father’s garden must have told her of the sword.

She stood and, picking up the sword, drew it as easily as if she had been handling swords instead of spindles all her life. “See how bright it shines?” she asked, and it was true; it shone as if the light were coming from within it, instead of reflecting from it.

“When the sword was found,” Jeannette continued, sheathing it again, “it was covered with rust. The rust fell away when the priests took cloth to it, fell away, without scrubbing. I do not wish to use it to kill,” she went on, as if more to herself than to me, “but one who leads an army must have a sword. And”—she smiled now—“a stout leather scabbard, I think, instead of the soft pretty ones I have been given—as if for a courtier’s sword, or a woman’s plaything.”

I nodded, knowing how she must feel, for I would have been sore on that point as well. But to console her I said, “That armor is no plaything.”

“No,” she said, “it is not.” And she stretched then, lean and supple despite the heavily padded doublet and thick hose she had been wearing underneath her armor, and still wore.

“What is it,” I asked, “that you will do now?”

“I will wait for the men-at-arms who are coming from Chinon, and take them to Blois, where more men-at-arms will join us. And I will lead them all to Orléans,” she added, as if it were nothing, “where the English hold the city under siege, and God will let us vanquish them, so that they may go no farther into France. And then the dauphin will come to us, or we will go to him, and we will take him to Reims to be crowned. That is what I will do. I must do it, for God wishes it, and so I shall. Although”—and here her face softened again, and she looked like the Jeannette I knew—“I miss our quiet valley and my father’s house, and I long to sit and spin again with Hauviette and the others. How is Hauviette? And Mengette—how is she?”

“They were well when I left,” I said, “but remember that I have been gone nearly two months myself. I miss home, too,” I told her, “and yet I would like better than you, I think, to lead an army. But I would not know how.”

“You would,” she said gently, “if God were guiding you as He is guiding me. You are more suited than I, Gabrielle, to this work—and yet it is I who must do it. And I rejoice in it, for it brings me closer to God, and it brings the dauphin closer to the throne.”

We went on in this way, privately, for some time, talking now of war, now of home and those we knew. In every minute that passed, I could see more clearly how much Jeannette—Jeanne—had changed. She was stronger than before and, as Louis had said, fierce in her anger at the English and Burgundians, transformed with zeal for her mission. I knew that in that way she was indeed stronger than I, and I was sure she was truly guided by God.

But later that night, when we were lying in the great bed and she spoke of her secret fear of weakness in battle and of wounds, and of her annoyance at the tears which she had always shed easily, I told her I had asked her mother if I might go with her, and that Isabelle had agreed, thinking that it would be good for her to have a woman as well as a priest with her.

For a long time Jeannette was silent, and I feared she had fallen asleep or had not heard me. Just as I was about to speak again, she said, very softly, “If you are sure you want to go, and if you will understand that I will rarely be with you, and if you will let Pierre look after you, and if”—here she sat up and looked down at me gravely in the gray darkness of the room—“if you will promise to wear men’s clothes as I do, and never reveal that you are a woman—if you will promise all these things, I will let you come with me. I would like you to if you wish it, but I would not want harm to come to you, and it will, if the soldiers think you are a woman. I do not want women following my holy army, as they follow most others, and if it is known there is one woman with us, others will surely come. Do you promise all this, Gabrielle? Do you swear it?”

“I promise,” I said, “and I swear.”

“We will have need of a healer”—here she smiled—“though, I trust, not of a midwife. It is the custom for squires to help their masters if they fall, I have learned, but what of the men who have no squires—and the squires themselves?” She lay back down again. “It is as healer that you will accompany us. Tomorrow we go to Blois, to prepare ourselves to lift the siege, save Orléans, and make the dauphin truly king.”

And that is how I came to go to war with Jeanne d’Arc.