Free Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint by Donald Spoto Page A

Moments before, she had told Charles the reason for her presence in Chinon, and that did not make him “radiant.”
    Or did Joan perhaps reveal something about Charles himself that only he could have known, thus demonstrating that she was God’s good servant, a girl with exceptional spiritual insight? That is possible too, and many endorse this—except that Joan (and the God she served) seems not to have gone for mere sideshow tricks. Scholars and hagiographers have wondered and placed their bets about this episode, and they continue to do so. But every opinion is mere hypothesis. Perhaps it is best to accept that in their chat, Joan’s faith and determination infused new hope and confidence into this hitherto indecisive, fearful young man.

    W HATEVER THEY DISCUSSED in private, Charles acted at once. First, he asked that Joan be transferred from the local inn and reside as his guest, in a part of the chateau called the tower of Couldray (or Coudray), which had a chapel nearby. The dauphin also assigned a page, a personal aide, to be taken from Gaucourt’s retinue and charged with her security. His name was Louis de Coutes, he was about fifteen years old and he became a loyal and respectful presence in the months to come. * Of Joan’s time at the castle, Louis later said, “I was continuously with her during the day. At night she had women with her [for protection]. And I recall that while she was there, men of high rank came to see her several times.”
    Among them, none was more prestigious or sympathetic than Jean, Duke of Alençon, a duchy in northwestern France. Then twenty-three, he was a handsome, intelligent and courteous man, a close friend of the king and godfather to his son. Jean had been a prisoner of the English for five years, since his capture at the battle of Verneuil in 1424, when he was seventeen. He had been set free only two weeks before he met Joan, when at last the ransom offered by his wife, Jeanne, was accepted by his captors; she pawned all her jewelry to gain his release.
    Jean was enjoying his emancipation by hunting quail when Charles sent word to him about Joan. At once the duke rode to Chinon, where he found her talking with Charles. “She asked me who I was,” Alençon recalled, “and then she said to me, ‘You are very welcome. The more people we have who share the blood of France, the better it will be.’” This meeting, on Monday, March 7, began a lifelong friendship between Joan and the man she always called “my fair Duke.”
    Next day Joan, Jean and the king dined together, and afterward the duke and the Maid jousted for sport. “Seeing her manage her lance so well, I gave her a horse,” Alençon recalled. This steed replaced the one she had ridden from Vaucouleurs.
    Over the next two days Charles asked for the impressions of several bishops and priests. “They interrogated her in my presence,” according to Alençon, “asking why she had come. She replied that she had come from the King of Heaven, that she heard voices and counsel that told her what she was to do. Later she told me that she could do much more than she had told them.” Joan replied to the queries as briefly as possible and without elaborating on her spiritual experience; for her, the focus was France, not Joan.
    But patience was not among her virtues. Eager for the liberation of Orléans, she reminded her interrogators that the blockade was causing enormous suffering and augured the most critical time for the dauphin’s survival; and the English were making daily advances even as the French were losing ground. In the spirit of Baudricourt, however, her examiners considered Joan naive and impractical, but they found nothing offensive or irreligious in her words or claims; to the contrary, they found admirable her devotion to the cause of France.
    The questions continued from Tuesday through Thursday, March 8 to 10. Alençon saw that Joan was becoming annoyed by this delay and growing intolerant of the