The Executioner's Knife Part 40

DEACON NICOLAS CAVAL--"The relapsed sinner should be treated without pity, according to her deserts. She should be burned to death."

CANON LOYSELEUR--"The said Joan should be delivered to the temporal flames."

THOMAS OF COURCELLES--"The woman is a heretic and relapsed sinner. She may be summoned a second time, and told that if she persists in her errors, she has nothing to expect in this world."

FATHER JOHN LEDOUX--"Although such a second attempt seems to me idle, it might be tried so as to demonstrate the inexhaustible kindness of our mother the Church."

MASTER JOHN TIPHAINE--"I favor this second, though idle, attempt."

DEACON COLOMBELLE--"I am of the same opinion."

ISAMBARD OF LA PIERRE--"Secular justice will take its course if the said Joan refuses to abjure a second time."

From these opinions it transpires that some of the judges demand immediate death, while others, and these are a small majority, favor a second abjuration, although the opinion is general that the attempt is vain. The judges have learned from their accomplices that the heroine is now determined to seek in death the expiation of the confessions which only fear drew from her. More straightforward and frank in his projects, moreover, convinced of the success of his plan, the Bishop sums up the deliberation and absolutely opposes the idea of attempting a second abjuration. Do not most of those who favor the measure consider it idle?

Why, then, try it? And even if it were certain that the relapsed sinner would abjure again, the performance would have a deplorable effect. Did not the soldiers and the people, exasperated at the clemency of the Church, cry "Treason!" and seem ready to riot at the time of the first abjuration? Is it wise to incur and provoke a terrible turmoil in the town? Has not the Church given evidence of her maternal charity by admitting Joan to penitence, despite her perverse heresy? How was this act of benevolence rewarded by her? It was rewarded with renewed and redoubled boastfulness, audacity and impiety! Bishop Cauchon closes, conjuring his very dear brothers in the name of the dignity of the Church, in the name of the peace of the town, in the name of their conscience, to declare without superfluous verbiage that the said Joan is a relapsed sinner, and, as such, is given over to the secular arm, in order to be led to death the next day, after being publicly excommunicated by the Church. The judges yield to the views of the prelate. The registrar enters the sentence of death, and the session rises.

Peter Cauchon is the first to leave the chapel. Outside he meets several English captains who are waiting for the issue of the deliberations. One of them, the Earl of Warwick, says to the prelate:

"Well, what has been decided shall be done with the witch?"

"_Farewell!_ It is done!" answers the Bishop with glee.

"The Maid--".

"Shall be burned to-morrow--burned to death in public," interrupts Bishop Cauchon.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PYRE.

During the evening of May 29, 1431, the rumor spreads through Rouen that the relapsed sinner is to be burned to death on the following day. That same night carpenters raise the necessary scaffoldings while others build the pyre and plant the stake. Early the next morning companies of English archers form a cordon around the market-place, where Joan Darc is to be executed, and a double file extends into one of the streets that runs into the place. The two files of soldiers leave a wide s.p.a.ce between them, connecting the street with the vacant area left around the scaffoldings. These are three in number, the highest of the three being at a little distance from the other two. On one of these, the one to the right, which is covered with purple cloth, rises a daised seat of crimson, ornamented with tufts of white feathers and fringed with gold.

A row of seats equally decked extends on both sides of the central and daised throne, which is reached by several steps covered with rich tapestry. The scaffold to the left is of the same dimensions as the first, but it, as well as the benches thereon, is draped in black. The last of the three scaffolds consists of solid masonry about ten feet high, broad at the bottom, and ending in a narrow platform in the middle of which stands a stake furnished with iron chains and clamps.

The platform is reached by a narrow set of stairs that is lost to sight in the midst of an enormous pile of f.a.gots mixed with straw and saturated with bitumen and sulphur. The executioners have just heaped up the combustibles on the four sides of the pile of masonry. Tall poles, fastened in the ground close to the pyre bear banners on which the following legends are to be read in large white letters on a black ground:

"Joan, who had herself called the Maid, condemned to be burned alive."

"Falsifier, misleader, and deceiver of the people."

"Soothsayer, superst.i.tious, blasphemer of G.o.d."

"Presumptuous, apostate from the faith of Jesus Christ, idolatress, cruel, dissolute."

"Invoker of devils."

"Schismatic, relapsed."[116]

At eight all the bells of Rouen begin tolling the funeral knell. Poor Joan, she loved the bells so well in her childhood! The May sun, that same sun that shone upon the first defeat of the English before Orleans, pure and luminous, floods the three scaffolds with its light. The crowd grows thicker around the s.p.a.ce kept vacant by the archers; other spectators are grouped at the windows and on the balconies of the old frame houses with pointed gables that enclose the market place.

Presently flags and plumes are seen waving, the steel of the casques, the gold and precious stones of the mitres and crosiers are seen s.h.i.+ning between the two files of archers. The casqued and mitred gentry are the English captains and the prelates. Prominent among them is the Cardinal of Winchester, Clad in the Roman purple and followed by the Bishop of Boulogne and the Bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon. Behind them come the Earl of Warwick and other n.o.ble captains. Slowly and majestically they ascend the stairs of the platform to the right of the pyre. The Cardinal takes his seat upon the dais, while the other dignitaries distribute themselves to his right and left. The other scaffold, that is draped in black, is occupied by the judges of the process, its inst.i.tutor, its a.s.sessors and its registrars.

The appearance and arrival of these ill.u.s.trious, learned or holy personages does not satisfy the gaping crowd; the condemned girl has not yet appeared. Menacing clamors begin to circulate. These are loudest among the soldiers and the Burgundian partisans, who say:

"Will the Bishop keep his promise this time? Woe to him if he trifles with us."

"Will the witch be burned at last?"

"The f.a.gots are ready; the executioners are holding the lighted wicks."

"She ought to be burned twice over, the infamous relapsed sinner!"

"She had the brazenness to declare that she abjured under the pressure of force! She persists in declaring herself inspired!"

"What an insolent liar! By St. George! could she ever have vanquished us without the a.s.sistance of the devil, us the best archers in the world? I was at the battle of Patay, where the best men of England were mowed down. I saw whole legions of demons rush upon us at her command. We could be vanquished only by such witchery."

"Those demons, sir archer, were French soldiers!"

"Blood and death! Do you imagine plain soldiers are able to beat us?

They were demons, by St. George! real horned and clawed demons, armed with flaming swords--they plunged over our heads and pelted us with stones and b.a.l.l.s!"

"It might have been the furious projectiles from some artillery pieces that were masked behind some hedge, sir archer."

"Artillery pieces of Satan, yes; but of France, no!"

"As true as our Cardinal has his red hat on his head, if the strumpet of the Armagnacs is not burned this time, myself and the other archers of my company will roast Bishop Cauchon together with all his tonsured brethren."

"Ha, ha, ha, ha! That is well said, my Hercules! To roast Bishop Cauchon like a pig! That would be a funny spectacle!"

"They are taking long! Death to the witch!"

"Do they expect us to sleep here to-night?"

"To the f.a.gots with the heretic!"

"Death to the relapsed sinner!"

"To the pyre with the invoker of demons! The strumpet! Death to Joan!"

"She cheated the people!"

"She denies the religion of Jesus Christ!"

"To the pyre with the idolatress! The apostate! To the pyre with her, quick and soon!"

Such are the clamors of the English and the partisans of Burgundy. The royalists or Armagnacs are much less numerous. A few of them, especially women, experience a return of pity for Joan Darc, whose abjuration incensed all those who believed her inspired. With some this indignation still is uppermost and in full force. As these sentiments are indicative of sympathy, they are not uttered aloud but whispered out of fear of the English.

"Well, though the Maid's strength once failed her, it will not fail her to-day."