Voices
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 trade.permissions@hmhco.com 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?”