joan of arc: aftermath

Irish Jesuit Province

Joan of Arc: AftermathAuthor(s): Mary PurcellSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 77, No. 915 (Sep., 1949), pp. 414-420Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516045 .

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JOAN OF ARC-AFTERMATH By MARY PURCELL

The fim, Joan of Arc, ended as the smoke and flames of the execution

fire closed for the last time about their victim. For the many who saw the film, and wondered about the events which followed, Miss

Purcell adds a vivid final sequence.

T 4 HIRACHE, the executioner, tossed the last few bundles of faggots on to the fire. They had been good and dry, those faggots he had gathered yesterday in the woods of Eu. Yet,

despite their noisy crackling and the rage with which they bumed high against the noon-day sun, there was no drowning the piteous cries of " Jesu ! " that rang from the heart of the flames. In his long experience no one of all those Thirache had burnt at the stake had cried so loudly as did this Lorraine that last time she uttered the name of Our Lord.

His two assistants swept in the remains of the brushwood while the executioner stood back, carefully flicking the smuts off his red suit-the official clothes he donned only for burnings. It had been quite a while now since that last loud " Jesu ! " had pierced the clouds

of smoke and flame. She should be dead, this one whom the Eng lish called witch and the French saint. It was part of Thirache's duty to show how well he had done his work; waiting a few minutes more for the last twigs and old branches to kindle and bum them selves out, he signed his assistants to fork away the mass of embers, tossing some to the back, some to the sides of the great heap of

mortar and rubble. The smoke parted like grey curtains to disclose the poor corpse hanging limply in its chains; the limbs, so straight and finely-formed when Thirache had made fast the bonds, were now contorted and blackened; the head that the Maid had always carried

so erect-with the coal-black hair cut right round to chin level, like

a page-boy's-now fell forward, as unsightly as the charred chest

and bosom on which it lolled; the chains that bound her still held

smouldering remnants of the long robe she had begged to be allowed to wear to her burning.

"Dead! " cried Thirache, pointing to the stake and its burden.

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"Dead! " exulted the Maid's enemies. " The witch is dead. The

harlot of the Armagnacs could make no spell strong enough to save her from the fire. The devil has got his own at last! "

" The Maid is dead! " the whisper ran through the crowds that

packed the Old Market in Rouen, like a rain-laden wind swishing

through ripening corn; heads lifted only to droop again.... The Maid was dead. . . . Hope was dead.

Slowly, the people began to move away; already the English cap tains were shouting orders to the eight hundred archers who had

escorted the Maid from Warwick's dungeon to the stake. Thirache

proceeded with his grim task. He had been warned that there must

be no remains. Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, had warned him.

Warwick, the English commander, had wamed him. One said he

did not want her partisans venerating her ashes as the relics of a

martyr; the other said that, witch-remains being in much demand by

those who practised sorcery-and they were many-Thirache should see to it that there was nothing for such wicked ones to carry away.

Bidding his helpers pile up the remains of the firewood about the butt of the stake, the executioner added the charcoal he had ready, dashing

all generously with sulphur and oil. There! The orders of the Earl and the Bishop would be carried out to the letter. What could with

stand that heat? The new conflagration burned with such intensity that he had to move down from the mortar-heap; drawing his arm

across his brow every now and then to wipe away the sweat, he stood

watching the crowd disperse.

On the far side of the Old Market stood John Tressart, Secretary

to the King of England. He was a queer one. Thirache had seen him

turn away and strike his breast while his countrymen cheered at the dead witch. " We are lost," he kept muttering; " we have burnt a

saint! " A crowd was still listening to the English man-at-arms who

had crept in near the stake to fulfil a vow he had made some months

before; he had vowed to add an extra stick to the fire. It was just then

that she had cried on Our Lord with that great cry. The Englishman

had clutched Thirache, one moment yelling that the Holy Name was written in the fire, the next raving about a dove that flew aloft from

out the fire. Half-crazed he had seemed; it was unusual for the English Goddams to gibber and shake like that; they were a taciturn

lot, adept at concealing their feelings. Thirache threw more tallow on 415



IRISH MONTHLY

the fire and shouted at his men to keep shoving in the embers. Even

the stake was burning fiercely now. Soon his work would be done.

By degrees the crowd ebbed away. The fish-wives, whose business had been held up by the burning, were carrying their baskets and

stands to where they usually stood, grumbling loudly over the loss of trade. Their children gathered round Thirache, to watch him at work.,

Somc of them had seen him before, busy at his awful trade. They

plied him with questions. "Did you strangle her with a rope, Thirache, or with your hands?"

"No, answered the executioner. Not this one." "Why not, Thirache? Don't you always strangle them first?" "Only the ones who have friends to pay me well-before and

after." "Had the Maid no friend to pay for her?"

"Not one-in Rouen. She had friends a-plenty in Orleans and at

Rheims, I hear. The two Dominicans, Ladvenu and Isambard, were the only ones to befriend her to-day; they have no gold to bribe any

one; not a sou between them, let alone a gold piece."

"But, Thirache, were you not sorry for her? She was only as old as your own Marie."

" Out of my way, chattering ones, and let me finish."

Chasing the children away, Thirache turned back to the spent fire

and began raking, raking. Christ in Heaven! What was that in the

embers? A heart! her heart-unhurt by the flames and distended with blood. Such a thing had never happened before. In a frenzy he

raked all together again, flinging the last of the oil and sulphur into

the glowing charcoal. Where had those worthless helpers of his gone?

Into some wine-shop nearby, probably, taking advantage of the few

minutes Thirache had spent with the children. He walked up and

down, waiting for this last fire to burn out, pondering now the burning,

now the unburnt heart, now the children's chatter. Memories of

Marie, who had died of the plague only recently, came to his mind.

What if it were Marie who had been bound to that stake? The

accursed English had raised it so far aloft above the rough mortar

platform that the torments of the Maid must have been worse than

those of anyone Thirache had ever burned .... .

There; the flames had ffickered and -died. Now, he could surely 416



JOAN OF ARC

go and report to hard-faced Warwick and to Pierre Cauchon. But no, it lay as he had left it, that untouched, unscorched heart of flesh and

blood. He stared at it horror-stricken. Slowly his mind struggled with the problem. It was a heart like any heart. Why then had it remained

unconsumed in the terrible heat to which it had been subjected? Why? If she were a witch her heart would have perished; Thirache had burned witches time and again, and never once had the fire failed to function, drying the blood and burning the flesh and in the end reducing all to ashes. So, Thirache reasoned, the Maid was no witch. But what was she, then? A patriot? Even patriots were not proof against fire; Thirache had burned many a patriot's body; he remem

bered well, for their friends usually bribed him to strangle them. Slowly Thirache caffe to the conclusion that the heart of this Maid of Or

leans was immune to the flames because it was the heart of one deat

to God. He it was Who had said to the fire: " Be cold. Burn no

more," when it would have laid its tawny fingers on that which He

wished to preserve intact. And the fire had obeyed. Was it not as truly His servant as were the winds and the waves?

But it was he, Thirache the executioner, who had with his own

hands made a martyr. He had tortured a saint of God. Others he had

strangled; even that scant relief he had denied her. It was not to be

borne, the torment of mind that surged in upon him. Lest his reason give way under the sudden deluge of misery, he fled from the Old

Market to the Dominican Priory, not far away. Isambard and Lad

venu, the two who had befriended the Maid, were walking in the

quiet of the garden. " Fathers! " cried Thirache, thrusting his red

garbed self between the black and cream robes of the Dominicans, "I

am damned. I have burned a saint. God will never forgive me. He

preserved her heart unhurt in the hottest fire I ever made! " And he

told them of what had happened. "Come and see for yourselves, Fathers. Nothing remains but ashes

and her heart-filled with blood. Such a thing was never known. And

it was I who bumed her; burned one whose heart was so truly God's

that He would not suffer it to be destroyed. And I did not raise a

finger to ease her sufferings. Others I strangled to save them torture. I let her face the torments I knew were before her. I made no excuse

when Warvwick-may his name die with him ! -gave his orders. 'We'll

make an example of her,' he said; 'let the French King and his men

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see what we think of their Pucelle. Build the witch's scaffold high and let her burn long, that all may see how the English deal with spell

mongers and sorcerers. Let them see if her Voices will come save her.' And I obeyed him well. I gave her an awful death-God's holy One. I will never be pardoned. I am damned for ever! "

" That is no way for a Christian to speak," said Father Isambard,

sternly. " Thlus Judas spoke, yet even he would have been forgiven had he sorrowed for the hurt he did Our Lord."

" You were but the instrument of others," consoled Ladvenu. " We

will come back with you and see this wonder."

As Thirache, miserable and worried, was raking the ashes to show the heart to the Maid's friends, Warwick and Cauchon arrived to see

if their orders had been carried out. "What brings you two back here?" Warwick demanded, remem

bering how Isambard and Ladvenu had served the Maid in her last moments, holding up the crucifix until she had bidden them descend lest the flames envelop them.

" This," the executioner answered for the friars, pointing to the remains. " I brought them to see the miracle. With oil and sulphur and three fierce fires I tried to burn her heart but, see! -God has preserved it!"

" Devilry and witchcraft have preserved it." Cauchon's face was livid with rage. " Back to your priory, monks. I know why you came

back here. You hoped to rescue the witch's heart and place it in a reliquary. Then her followers would come to pray there and leave rich offerings to the Dominicans. Begone! "

Warwick, unconvinced, sent his squire back to the keep for grease, sulphur and faggots. As he waited on these combustibles he stared at the heart of the rebel Maid. Even in death she was true to form a trouble-maker. Soon the squire was back, and Warwick himself helped Thirache, suddenly grown inefficient at his work, to kindle and light a hot fire; taking the rake, he himself tossed the heart into the centre of the flames. Then, standing by, they waited ....

" Rake out, now," ordered Cauchon, as the fire petered out in

thinner and thinner wisps of smoke. Indestructible as ever, there lay that which so much offended them, on its bed of ashes. The com

mander strode towards his charger, undid the saddle-blanket, and spread it on the ground near the stake.

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JOAN OF ARC

"Sweep all into this," he ordered Thirache, "and carry it to the quay. We shall walk behind you."

Thirache would have liked to disobey but the great English Earl was a hard man. Slowly, the executioner did as he was bidden. " To morrow is Corpus Christi, the FCte Dieu," Warwick reminded Cauchon. "There will be a procession. There must be nothing here

for anyone to see. Now, executioner, go on before us quietly-and quickly. We want no crowds gathering about. And have a care; no

stumbling and losing your load in the gutters; though indeed, the garbage and stinking fish-heads would be the proper burial-place for the witch's ashes."

It was pitifuly Eght, what Thirache carried to the Seine-side. Behind the remains of the Maid there walked no mourners, only her most

exalted enemies. His mind benumbed with woe and remorse, Thirache obeyed mechanically when Warwick and Cauchon demanded the blanket. He watched as they shook it wide of the quay-wall. The ashes blew about in the afternoon breeze before finally settling on the slow waters beneath. Thirache wondered if the heart would float, but, suddenly blinded with tears, he could not see what happened when it plashed softly in the Seine. In a dream, he followed those who were to pay him for his day's work back to Warwick's Castle, his

heart grieving for that other heart now moving seawards with the ebb tide. . .. for the Maid leaving France. The others were jubilant.

There, they said, was the end of Jeanne d'Arc. Sootnthe last of her would be lost in the Western Sea-her grave the lmitless wastes of water that stretched forever westward, going on without end beyond the remote land of Erin, that island which, as everyone knew, lay on the rim of God's world.

It was a quarter of a century later. Thirache, hobblng on two sticks, dragged his creaking old bones to where the crowd had gathered in the centre of the Old Market. This was to be a wonderful day. A cross would be erected where once the stake had stood. Learned judges, some sent by the Pope himself, would read a proclamation vin dicating the Maid and censuring her accusers. Where were they now, the enemies who had done her to death? Midi, dead of leprosy. d'Estivet, found dead on a dung-heap outside a house of ill-fame. Cauchon-false to friends, country, and Church alike-smitten sud

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IRISH MONTHLY

denly, going before his God unshnrven, unhouseled, unanealed. Driven from French soil, the proud English were now in the throes of civil

war, having lost the Hundred Years' War only to start the Wars of the Roses.

The people made way for Thirache. Long since, he had changed his trade of executioner for that of caretaker of the Old Market. Day in, day out, he had tended the little square where pilgrims came to pray and where now the cross was being lifted into position. He hobbled along until he stood beside the Maid's mother; how often she had come as a pilgrim to where her daughter had died; how often Thirache had told her the story of the heart. She stood erect, Isabel d'Arc, as became the mother of the one who had saved France. The

crowd pointed her out to one another, speaking of her indomitable spirit-a woman who, despite poverty, advancing years, ill-health and lack of influence, had ceaselessly petitioned successive Popes for a just enquiry into her daughter's trial and condemnation. Stand ing behind her were her sons, Pierre and Little-Jean. There, too, were the captains and mareschals and great lords who had fought side by side with the Maid at Orleans and elsewhere. They were all here to-day

for her triumph, Thirache mused, the July sun making him sleepy . ..

none of them had been there when she needed them . . . . Only

Thirache was with her then ... And he had failed her . . . . The

preacher was thundering: "I called upon my God."' Thirache felt suddenly consoled. If he had strangled her as he strangled those others she would never have died calling on Our Lord. " And there

are some of whom there i.s no memnorial," continued the preacher; " who are perished as if ti/ey had niever been." Thirache thought of

the heart. Where was it now'? Had He Who saved it in the fire,

saved it in the sea? Had it come back up the Seine or the Loire to

the heart of France? Had it gone, that warrior-heart, to the aid of

the Irish, sore-pressed by France's ancient enemy? Suddenly Thir ache knew where it was. It was in the only grave big enough to hold its greatness-the waters of the world. It would be borne hither and thither for all time, bringing now to this country, now to that, some

thing of its own courage and faith and holiness and love.

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joan of arc: aftermath

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