Free Joan of Arc by Mary Gordon

Loup, that the English had taken and fortified. Things were going badly for the French until Joan appeared. Then the English saw the tide turn; they perceived that with Joan at the head of the French they would be defeated. In order to escape, they dressed themselves up in the church vestments they found in the old monastery. Joan appears to have been taken in by this ruse, and stopped the soldiers from slaughtering the people she believed to be priests.
    This was the first time the French had succeeded in capturing an English work. It meant that the French could pour supplies and troops into the city by a second gate. Joan insisted that the troops should all be confessed, and decreed that there be no fighting on the next day, May 5, Ascension Day. This reluctance to fight on a feast is important, for it indicates that at this point in her career her military judgment and her religious scruples were coordinated; later, when she was more desperate, they would not be.
    After the fall of Fort St. Loup, the English fled to a well-fortified fort or bastille called St. Augustin on the other side of the river. When Joan arrived there, she planted her standard on the edge of the first ditch. But she stepped on a caltrop, a spiked ball, which put her out of the fight. Undiscouraged, the soldiers pushed on and took the fort of St. Augustin. Joan soon returned to her men, made St. Augustin her new headquarters, and prepared for the major Battle of Orléans.
    That night the French captains, fearing they didn’t have enough troops for a major battle, asked Joan to wait until more help arrived, but she refused and vowed to attack in the morning. Even wounded (it was her first battle wound, though a minor one) she exhibited her characteristic bold courage.
    The next morning, May 7, Dunois attacked. Joan charged into the boulevard. About noon, an arrow entered her body, just above her left breast, at exactly the place she had prophesied to her confessor on her way from Chinon to Orléans. She fell back, in shock and in great pain. She wept, despite her foreknowledge of the nature of her wound. It is as though she were surprised, not that she had been struck by an arrow, but that it would hurt. This is a particularly adolescent brand of surprise: the shock at the vulnerability of a body imagined invulnerable. The arrow is said to have penetrated six inches. She is said to have pulled the arrow out herself, but this detail, as well as the detail of the depth of six inches, may be more myth than reality. What is undeniable is that after her wound was dressed with fat (she refused the offer of charms being placed on it) she rested awhile, but joined the fighting again. At 8 P.M., the Bastard wanted to quit for the night. Joan begged him to go on, and she withdrew into a vineyard, where she prayed for a quarter of an hour. She then returned to the battle. Upon seeing her, the soldiers reacted with “great ardor” to the sight of their wounded heroine with them again. But then the trumpet was blown for the retreat. Joan ignored it, disobeying the orders of the other commanders.
    Joan was on foot, taking part in an assault that involved crossing the moat and scaling the wall. The soldier who was carrying her standard fainted from exhaustion, and he passed the standard to another soldier, called Le Basque. Jean d’Aulon, the master of her retinue, challenged Le Basque to follow him and charged into the moat, covering himself with his shield to protect himself from stones. Le Basque was slow to follow, and Joan caught up with him before he entered the moat, outraged that a stranger was carrying her standard. She seized it. The soldiers could see the standard, blown by a wind so that it pointed toward the bridge. The soldiers believed, either because Joan had told them or because they had invented the story, that when the standard blew in the direction of the enemy, they would take the wall. The wall was taken, and quickly the