February 1429
Advienne que pourra
(The last words of de Baudricourt to Jeanne)
AT Petit Burey, where Jeanne was living in the beginning of the year 1429, there was relief from the strain of home disapproval, but not less anxiety as to how her mission was to be fulfilled. The Voices of the Maid had fixed Mid-Lent as the time when she must “be with the King.” This was fast approaching, but Jeanne, sewing and spinning in the house of her uncle, and later at that of other friends at Vaucouleurs, was seemingly no nearer accomplishing her purpose than before.
In later years witnesses from the little town spoke in touching words of their memories of the Maid at this time; of her quiet patience, her frequent confessions, her earnest prayers in the Chapel of Our Lady, in the Castle, before the battered image that can still be seen there. But at first all seemed hopeless enough. More than once she managed to gain an interview with de Baudricourt at the Castle of Vaucouleurs, but still he scoffed, though with less assurance, and she was forced to return, downcast but not disheartened, to her hostess. To her she spoke openly and with absolute confidence.
“I must be with the Dauphin by Mid-Lent though I should travel on my knees. I must certainly go, for it is the Will of my Lord. It is by the King of Heaven that this work is entrusted to me. Have you never heard how it has been prophesied that France shall be lost by a woman, and restored by a maid from the Marches of Lorraine?”
These words made a good deal of sensation in the town. Some scoffed, others looked with fresh interest at the tall, bright-faced girl with the earnest eyes, who, in her shabby red dress, had become a familiar figure about their streets.
In the second week of February, one of the scoffers, a careless young man of twenty-seven named Jean de Metz, who knew something of her and her people at Domrémy, met her in Vaucouleurs and said teasingly:
“Ma mie, what are you doing here? Must the King be turned out of his kingdom and are we all to be made into Englishmen?”
To which she answered with sweet dignity, “I am here because this is a royal town, and I would ask Robert de Baudricourt to lead me to the King. But Baudricourt cares nothing for me nor for what I say; none the less I must be with the King by Mid-Lent if I wear my legs down to the knees by walking there. No man in the world can recover the kingdom of France, nor hath our King any hope of succour but from myself—though I would far rather be sewing by the side of my poor mother, for this deed suits me very ill. Yet go I must, and the deed I must do, for my Lord wills it.”
“And who is your Lord?” asked the youth, half convinced, and striving with difficulty to keep up his jesting tone.
“My Lord is God,” said the Maid very simply.
The young soldier’s defences utterly gave way. Seizing her hands he cried, “Then I, Jean de Metz, swear to you, Maid Jeanne, that God helping me, I will lead you to the King, and I only ask when you are prepared to go.”
“Better to-day than to-morrow,” she answered with her ready smile. “Better to-morrow than later.”
But though Jean meant what he said, he did not want to take the whole responsibility. A chance of shifting it on to other shoulders seemed just at that moment to present itself, for the Duke of Lorraine, having heard the reports of a wonderful Maid who was said to foretell the future, sent for her to Nancy, some sixty miles away. With her on horseback Jean travelled for part of the way, Durand Lassois being her guide and guardian; and since anything was better than inaction, Jeanne’s heart beat high with hope. But she found at Nancy only a diseased old man, full of anxiety about his own health, who cared for her concerns only so far as he hoped she could prophesy good things as to his recovery. Boldly the Maid told him she knew nothing of such matters, and begged him to send his son-in-law with an army to lead her into France, where she “promised to pray for his better health.” But he, disappointed on finding her only a sensible, clear-eyed maiden instead of the visionary he had hoped, sent her off with four francs for her trouble, and possibly a horse; and so Jeanne was obliged to return once more to Vaucouleurs.
Perhaps it was on this return journey that her Voices again spoke to her, revealing events that as yet had not penetrated so far to the south-east. For immediately she reached the town she seems to have sought out Baudricourt once more and to have said in solemn warning, “In God’s name, you are too slow in sending me; for this day, near Orleans, a great disaster has befallen the gentle Dauphin, and worse fortune he will have unless you send me to him.”
Still bluff de Baudricourt, though inwardly uneasy, shook his thick head, with a clumsy jest; but some few days later a story in confirmation of Jeanne’s words arrived by means of a king’s messenger. At Rouvray, in the Battle of the Herrings, on February 12, 1429, the Constable of Scotland, in alliance with the French, had been badly defeated by the English, and a heavy blow had been struck at the Dauphin’s cause. “There must be something in this girl,” Baudricourt seems to have argued when he heard this news; and then a light dawned upon him. She must be bewitched; it is the evil spirit within her that speaks, not herself. Anyway, the matter shall be put to the test.
So, into the kitchen of the good-wife, with whom Jeanne was staying, loomed the sudden apparition of the bluff knight and the priest of the Castle chapel. The woman and the girl, busy with their spinning, sprang up in astonishment; the former was asked to withdraw, and Jeanne, seeing the priest putting on his stole, fell on her knees.
Over her the good man proceeded to utter the words by which evil spirits were exorcised, “If thou be evil, away with thee; if thou be good, draw nigh.”
Then the girl understood, and with her gentle, half-reproachful smile, came toward him on her knees.
That settled the matter. Jeanne, in talking of the matter with her hostess, said quietly that the priest had had no right to do this, for he had heard her confession and knew her for what she really was; but the effect upon de Baudricourt was remarkable. From this time, though never an enthusiast in her cause, he no longer treated her as a silly child, but as one to be reckoned with, as a person of consideration. All opposition to her setting off to the Dauphin was dropped, though, either from meanness or from dread of being mistaken in her, he took little share in her equipment. The people of Vaucouleurs, now full of faith in the Maid and of enthusiasm for her mission, subscribed toward her expenses, the main burden of which were borne by Jean de Metz, still her firm friend, and Bertrand de Poulengy, the young officer who had been so deeply impressed by the girl on her first visit to the Castle. The presence of the King’s messenger gave added point to her departure, as he was prepared to accompany the little band to Chinon.
One detail of her equipment may have been Jeanne’s idea for her own safety, or it may have been first suggested by de Metz, in his fear of the ridicule that might fall upon him were he seen by his gay friends as the cavalier of the peasant maid in her shabby red frock. Jean certainly seems to have asked her if she would consent to ride in boy’s dress, to which she readily agreed. Probably her own knowledge of the difficulties of the journey, and of her own ignorance of the art of riding, had already suggested the plan to her.
She rode forth from the “Gate of France,” therefore, clad in the dark cloth tunic reaching to her knees, high boots and leggings, and black cap of a page. She was escorted by Colet de Vienne, the King’s messenger, Richard the Archer, his squire, and the two young knights, de Metz and de Poulengy, with their two men-at-arms; and all the inhabitants of the little town flocked out to see her depart.
“Go, and let come what will!” growled de Baudricourt, as he handed her a sword, gazing still with puzzled disfavor at the slight boyish figure on the big white horse.
“Turn back, little Jeanne,” cried the voice of a woman in the crowd, her heart filled with mother love and pity for the young maid, “you cannot go—all the ways are beset by rough men-at-arms.”
But the girl replied with joyful dignity:
“The way is made clear before me. I have my Lord to make the way smooth to the gentle Dauphin; for to do this deed I was born.”
And thus the little band rode forth into the night.