It is said that the men who burned Joan of Arc died very bad deaths. Several got leprosy, a few the plague. D’Estivet was found in a sewer outside Rouen, his head bashed in. Cauchon died of apoplexy, in his barber’s chair. He never did become archbishop of Rouen. The local churchmen wouldn’t have him.
But her king, Charles VII, lived long—long enough to still be on the throne, in Paris, twenty years later, when an old woman was escorted down the aisle to him, in tears.
“I am Joan of Arc’s mother,” she said, kneeling before him. “I come for justice.”
And justice was granted her. Hearings were held, from 1450 to 1456, in Domrémy, Orléans, and Rouen. Everyone who’d ever known Joan of Arc got a chance to come forward and testify. This testimony was recorded, and Joan of Arc’s name was officially cleared.
It was mostly here, in the so-called Process of Rehabilitation, that I found this story. It comes like the light through the slit in Joan of Arc’s window—not much, but if it’s what you have, enough.