Voices Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Before You Read

  Map of Holy Roman Empire

  Prologue

  The Candle

  Joan

  Fire

  Joan

  The Fairy Tree

  Joan

  Isabelle

  Joan

  The Needle

  Joan

  Silence

  Joan

  Fire

  Alms

  Joan

  The Cattle

  Joan

  Saint Michael

  Joan

  The Crown

  Joan

  Jacques D’Arc

  Joan

  Virginity

  Joan

  The Road to Vaucouleurs

  Joan

  Robert De Baudricourt

  Joan

  Fire

  Joan

  The Sword

  Joan

  The Red Dress

  Joan

  The Tunic

  Joan

  Joan

  Fire

  Saint Catherine

  Joan

  Lust

  Joan

  Her Hair

  Joan

  The Altar at Sainte Catherine De Fierbois

  Joan

  The Castle at Chinon

  Joan

  Charles VII

  Joan

  The Sword at Fierbois

  Joan

  Fire

  Joan

  The Armor

  Joan

  Victory

  Joan

  The Arrow

  Joan

  Joan

  The Pitchfork

  Joan

  Fire

  Joan

  The Stag

  Joan

  The Warhorse

  Joan

  The Banner

  Joan

  Fire

  Joan

  Charles VII

  Joan

  The Crossbow

  Joan

  The Gold Cloak

  Joan

  The Tower

  Joan

  Saint Margaret

  Joan

  The Stake

  Joan

  Bishop Pierre Cauchon

  Joan

  Fire

  Joan

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Sample Chapters from BULL

  Buy the Book

  More Books from HMH Teen

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Copyright © 2019 by David Elliott

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  All trial excerpts from “Saint Joan of Arc’s Trials,” Saint Joan of Arc Center (stjoan-center.com), New Mexico, founded by Virginia Frohlick.

  hmhbooks.com

  Cover illustration © 2019 by Charlie Bowater

  Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Elliott, David, 1947– author. | Title: Voices / by David Elliott.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2019]

  Audience: Grades 9–12. | Audience: Ages 14 and up.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018025855 | ISBN 9781328987594 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412–1431—Juvenile literature. Christian women saints—France—Biography—Juvenile literature. Christian saints—France—Biography—Juvenile literature. Women soldiers—France—Biography—Juvenile literature. Soldiers—France—Biography—Juvenile literature.

  Classification: LCC DC103.5 .E45 2019

  DDC 944/.026092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025855

  eISBN 978-0-358-04915-9

  v1.0319

  To Kate O’Sullivan, editor extraordinaire and Kelly Sonnack, agent nonpareil—women warriors in their own right. How lucky I am!

  Before You Read

  Much of what we know about Joan of Arc comes from the transcripts of her two trials. The first, the Trial of Condemnation, convened in 1431, found Joan guilty of “relapsed heresy” and famously burned her at the stake. The second, the Trial of Nullification, held some twenty-four years after her death, effectively revoked the findings of the first. In both cases, the politics of the Middle Ages guaranteed their outcomes before they started. It is in the Trial of Condemnation that we hear Joan in her own voice answering the many questions her accusers put to her. In the Trial of Nullification, her relatives, childhood friends, and comrades-in-arms bear witness to the girl they knew. Throughout Voices, you will find direct quotes from these trials.

  Oh, one more thing: Because the book is written in rhymed and metered verse, it’s important to get the pronunciation of the French names and places right. Here’s a quick pronunciation guide to help you out.

  DOMRÉMY: dom-ray-MI (very much like the song)

  TROYES: twah (rhymes more or less with “law”)

  CHINON: she-NOHN

  VAUCOULEURS: voh-koo-LEUHR

  ORLÉANS: OR-lee-OHN (three, not two, syllables)

  PATAY: puh-TYE

  REIMS: rahnce (not reems)

  ROUEN: ROO-uhn (kind of like the English word “ruin”)

  Prologue

  ROM her earliest years till her departure, Jeannette [Joan] the Maid was a good girl, chaste, simple, modest, never blaspheming God nor the Saints, fearing God. . . . Often she went with her sister and others to the Church and Hermitage of Bermont.

  * * *

  Perrin Le Drapier, churchwarden and

  bell-ringer of the Parish Church

  Trial of Nullification

  The Candle

  I

  recall

  it as if it were

  yesterday. She was

  so lovely and young. In

  her hand I darted and flick-

  ered away, an ardent lover’s ad-

  venturing tongue. I had never known

  such yearning, exciting and risky and

  cruel. As we walked to the church, I was

  burning; she was my darling, my future,

  my fuel. I wanted to set her afire right then.

  But she was so pure, so chaste; her innocence

  only increased my desire. Still, I know the

  dangers of haste. So I watched and I studied

  and waited, and I saw that her young blood

  ran hot. She had no idea we were fated. I

  could name what she craved; she could

  not. Then in her eye, I caught my

  reflection. In her eye, I saw my-

  self shine, and I saw the heat

  rise on her virgin’s com-

  plexion. That’s when

  I knew: She was

  mine.

  Joan

  I’ve heard it said that when we die

  the soul discards its useless shell,

  and our life will flash before our

  eyes. Is this a gift from Heaven?

  Or a jinx from deepest Hell? Only

  the dying know, but what the dying

  know the dying do not tell. What

  more the dying know it seems I

  am about to learn. For when the

  sun is at its highest, a lusting torch

  will touch the pyre. The flames will rise.

  And I will burn. But I have always

  been afire.
With youth. With faith. With

  truth. And with desire. My name is

  Joan, but I am called the Maid. My

  hands are bound behind me. The fire

  beneath me laid.

  Fire

  I yearn I yearn I yearn my darling

  I yearn I yearn I yearn

  Joan

  Every life is its own story—

  not without a share of glory,

  and not without a share of grief.

  I lived like a hero at seventeen.

  At nineteen, I die like a thief.

  * * *

  I’ll begin with my family:

  a father, a mother, uncles

  and aunts, one sister, two brothers,

  all born in Lorraine in the

  Duchy of Bar. Domrémy is

  our village. It’s north of the Loire,

  the chevron-shaped river that cuts

  across France. My parents were peasants,

  caught up in the dance that all the

  oppressed must step to and master:

  work harder, jump higher, bow lower,

  run faster. The feel of the earth

  beneath my bare feet, the sun on

  my face, the smell of the wheat as

  it breaks through the soil, the curve of

  the sprout as it bends and uncoils,

  the song of the beetle, the hum

  of the bees. I was comforted

  by these, but they would not have

  satisfied me, for something other

  occupied me. To take the path

  that I have taken, I have abandoned

  and forsaken everything I

  once held dear, and that, in part, has

  brought me here, to die alone bound

  to this stake. Each decision that

  we make comes with a hidden price.

  We’re never told what it is we

  may be asked to sacrifice.

  * * *

  A shape begins to form itself

  in the air in front of me. Trunk . . .

  and roots . . . an ancient tree, its limbs

  so low they touch the earth. I know

  it now. Around its girth we village

  children sang and danced. The tree was

  thought to be entranced; our elders

  said beneath its shade a band of

  brownies lived and played. I wonder

  if they live there still, or have, like

  me, they been betrayed?

  OT far from Domrémy there is a tree that they called “The Ladies Tree”—others call it “The Fairies Tree.” . . . Often I have heard the old folk—they are not of my lineage—say that the fairies haunt this tree. . . . I have seen the young girls putting garlands on the branches of this tree, and I myself have sometimes put them there with my companions.

  * * *

  Joan

  Trial of Condemnation

  The Fairy Tree

  I sing the mournful carol of five hundred passing

  years. Nurtured by the howling wind and the

  music of the spheres, I have retained the record

  of every heart that ever broke, every wound that

  ever bled. I remember single drops of rain, every

  day of golden light, the sorrow of the cuckoo’s

  crimes, the lightning strikes, the trill of every

  lark. And I have stored the memory of these

  consecrated things in the scarred and winding

  surface of my incandescent bark. Etched there,

  too? The face of every child who cherished me,

  who sang my name—the Fairy Tree. They came

  to celebrate the sprites who lived beneath my

  canopy, for I was the fairies’ chosen, their syl-

  van hideaway. The brindled cows looked on at

  human folly when the fairies were charged and

  banished by the village priest. The children, too,

  have vanished, undone by years, and worms, and

  melancholy. Yes, all my children I recall, but it

  is Joan who of them all stands apart in the con-

  centric circles of my ringèd memory. She hid it

  well—the burning coal that was her heart. But

  a tree is ever watchful in the presence of a flame,

  and I saw in her a smoldering, a spark, a heat

  well beyond extinguishing. I feel it even now, that

  heat. It blazes just the same. Elements not rec-

  onciled, as disparate as day and night, sparked

  an unrelenting friction destined to ignite some-

  thing hybrid, new, and wild. It was a heavy fate

  for such a child, so small and young. And yet

  among the girls she was a favorite, their affec-

  tion for her zealous. But the boys were threat-

  ened. Rough. Rugged. Strong. Athletic. They

  did not know that they were jealous. I see now it

  was prophetic, the rancor hidden in their hearts.

  But rancor is a stubborn guest; once lodged, it

  won’t depart. The village priest abides here still,

  or his likely twin, still finding evil in every joy,

  still scolding the girls, still eyeing the boys, still

  holding up pleasure and calling it sin. As for the

  girl, for Joan, she remains a mystery. Who can

  say why some arrive and then depart forgotten

  while others fashion history?

  Joan

  The illusion of the tree is

  fading. I see my mother now,

  separating good peas from the

  bad. Clad in homespun, she has just

  come from the stable. But the light

  is dim. I am unable to

  see her careworn face, and so I

  trace the swift movement of her hands—

  the blunt fingers callused and bent,

  the rough knuckles swollen and cracked.

  But those earthly imperfections

  could never detract from the inborn

  grace with which they move, the rough

  gestures that I know and love. When

  I left Domrémy to join the

  world of soldiery and men, how

  could I have known that I would

  never feel my mother’s touch or

  see her hands again?

  EANNE [Joan] was born at Domrémy and was baptized at the Parish Church of Saint Remy, in that place. Her father was named Jacques d’Arc, her mother Isabelle—both laborers living together at Domrémy. They were, as I saw and knew, good and faithful Catholics, laborers of good repute and honest life.

  * * *

  Jean Morel, laborer

  Trial of Nullification

  Isabelle

  What is a woman?

  Her brothers’ sister, her father’s daughter,

  Her husband’s wife, her children’s mother.

  Milk the cow, churn the butter, slop the pig, spin

  the flax, nurse the sick, boil the soup, knead

  the dough, bake the bread, mind

  * * *

  the children, mind the sheep, mind

  your manners. These are what a woman

  learns to become a wife, skills all women need,

  and skills I have passed on to Joan, my daughter.

  I taught her to churn, to bake, to plant, to spin.

  Wasn’t that my duty as her mother?

  * * *

  I learned them as a girl from my own mother,

  who learned them as a girl from hers. Mind

  you, there are days my head spins

  like the stars over me, but a woman

  is not her own master. She is the daughter

  of Urgency, a servant to Need.

  * * *

  From the start, Joan didn’t need

  or want what other girls needed, her mother,

  for example. It hurts to have a daughter
/>
  who so clearly knows her own mind.

  Such qualities are dangerous in a woman.

  She was a contradiction, able to sew and spin

  * * *

  better than any girl in the village, married or spin-

  ster. And what she could do with a need-

  le, well, there is still not a woman

  who could match her. But a mother?

  A farmer’s wife? No. In my mind

  she was more son than daughter,

  * * *

  keeping her silence, a daughter

  who would churn, cook, sew, spin

  without complaint. Yet her mind

  was elsewhere, settled on another need,

  a need she could not share with her mother

  or any other woman.

  * * *

  Mothers should understand what their daughters

  need. But Joan and I were never of one mind.

  Spin! I begged her. Spin like a woman!

  Joan

  To spin like a woman was not

  my fate. I had other talents,

  concealed but innate, that even

  now are hard for me to comprehend.

  I only know that to wash and

  mend my brothers’ tunics aroused

  in me an aching discontent.

  This low unhappiness was the

  advent of everything that followed. But

  I swallowed my pride, nodded, smiled,

  and swore that I would best every

  female task my mother assigned. All

  that to which I felt more naturally

  inclined I vowed to put aside.

  But the harder I tried, the more

  it pressed. I was beset by my

  own nature, possessed by a ruthless

  and persistent urge, as if there

  were another me waiting to

  emerge from all that was constraining.

  But about this, I said nothing

  and continued with my training.

  N your youth, did you learn any trade?”