Part 115 (1/2)
[Footnote 2509: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 14; vol. iii, p. 148.]
In the castle yard is Maitre Andre Marguerie, bachelor in decrees, archdeacon of Pet.i.t-Caux, King's Counsellor,[2510] who is inquiring what has happened. He had displayed great a.s.siduity in the trial. The Maid he held to be a crafty damsel.[2511] Now again he desired to give an expert's judgment touching what had just occurred.
[Footnote 2510: De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, pp. 82 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2511: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 354.]
”That Jeanne is to be seen dressed as a man is not everything,” he said. ”We must know what motives induced her to resume masculine attire.”
Maitre Andre Marguerie was an eloquent orator, one of the s.h.i.+ning lights of the Council of Constance. But, when a man-at-arms raised his axe against him and called out ”Traitor! Armagnac!” Maitre Marguerie asked no further questions, but speedily departed, and went to bed very sick.[2512]
[Footnote 2512: _Ibid._, vol. iii, pp. 158, 180.]
The next day, Monday the 25th, there came to the castle the Vice-Inquisitor, accompanied by divers doctors and masters. The Registrar, Messire Guillaume Manchon, was summoned. He was such a coward that he dared not come save under the escort of one of the Earl of Warwick's men-at-arms.[2513] They found Jeanne wearing man's apparel, jerkin and short tunic, with a hood covering her shaved head.
Her face was in tears and disfigured by terrible suffering.[2514]
[Footnote 2513: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 454; vol. iii, p. 148.]
[Footnote 2514: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 5. Isambart's evidence refers to this day, the 28th.]
She was asked when and why she had a.s.sumed this attire.
She replied: ”'Tis but now that I have donned man's dress and put off woman's.”
”Wherefore did you put it on and who made you?”
”I put it on of my own will and without constraint. I had liefer wear man's dress than woman's.”
”You promised and swore not to wear man's dress.”
”I never meant to take an oath not to wear it.”
”Wherefore did you return to it?”
”Because it is more seemly to take it and wear man's dress, being amongst men, than to wear woman's dress.... I returned to it because the promise made me was not kept, to wit, that I should go to ma.s.s and should receive my Saviour and be loosed from my bonds.”
”Did you not abjure, and promise not to return to this dress?”
”I had liefer die than be in bonds. But if I be allowed to go to ma.s.s and taken out of my bonds and put in a prison of grace, and given a woman to be with me, I will be good and do as the Church shall command.”
”Have you heard your Voices since Thursday?”
”Yes.”
”What did they say unto you?”
”They told me that through Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret G.o.d gave me to wit his sore pity for the treachery, to which I consented in abjuring and recanting to save my life, and that in saving my life I was losing my soul. Before Thursday my Voices had told me what I should do and what I did do on that day. On the scaffold my Voices told me to reply boldly to the preacher. He is a false preacher....
Many things did he say that I have never done. If I were to say that G.o.d has not sent me I should be d.a.m.ned. It is true that G.o.d has sent me. My Voices have since told me that by confessing I committed a great wickedness which I ought never to have done. All that I said I uttered through fear of the fire.”[2515]
[Footnote 2515: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 455-457.]