Saint Joan · Scene IV (2/2) (1/2)
The Nobleman Now this is what I call workmanship. There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran that you are scribbling.
The Chaplain I must say, my lord, you take our situation very coolly. Very coolly indeed.
The Nobleman Supercilious. What is the matter?
The Chaplain The matter, my lord, is that we English have been defeated.
The Nobleman That happens, you know. It is only in history books and ballads that the enemy is always defeated.
The Chaplain But we are being defeated over and over again. First, Orleans⁠—
The Nobleman Poohpoohing. Oh, Orleans!
The Chaplain I know what you are going to say, my lord: that was a clear case of witchcraft and sorcery. But we are still being defeated. Jargeau, Meung, Beugency, just like Orleans. And now we have been butchered at Patay, and Sir John Talbot taken prisoner. He throws down his pen, almost in tears. I feel it, my lord: I feel it very deeply. I cannot bear to see my countrymen defeated by a parcel of foreigners.
The Nobleman Oh! you are an Englishman, are you?
The Chaplain Certainly not, my lord: I am a gentleman. Still, like your lordship, I was born in England; and it makes a difference.
The Nobleman You are attached to the soil, eh?
The Chaplain It pleases your lordship to be satirical at my expense: your greatness privileges you to be so with impunity. But your lordship knows very well that I am not attached to the soil in a vulgar manner, like a serf. Still, I have a feeling about it; with growing agitation and I am not ashamed of it; and rising wildly by God, if this goes on any longer I will fling my cassock to the devil, and take arms myself, and strangle the accursed witch with my own hands.
The Nobleman Laughing at him goodnaturedly. So you shall, chaplain: so you shall, if we can do nothing better. But not yet, not quite yet.
The Chaplain Resumes his seat very sulkily.
The Nobleman Airily. I should not care very much about the witch⁠—you see, I have made my pilgrimage to the Holy Land; and the Heavenly Powers, for their own credit, can hardly allow me to be worsted by a village sorceress⁠—but the Bastard of Orleans is a harder nut to crack; and as he has been to the Holy Land too, honors are easy between us as far as that goes.
The Chaplain He is only a Frenchman, my lord.
The Nobleman A Frenchman! Where did you pick up that expression? Are these Burgundians and Bretons and Picards and Gascons beginning to call themselves Frenchmen, just as our fellows are beginning to call themselves Englishmen? They actually talk of France and England as their countries. Theirs, if you please! What is to become of me and you if that way of thinking comes into fashion?
The Chaplain Why, my lord? Can it hurt us?
The Nobleman Men cannot serve two masters. If this cant of serving their country once takes hold of them, goodbye to the authority of their feudal lords, and goodbye to the authority of the Church. That is, goodbye to you and me.
The Chaplain I hope I am a faithful servant of the Church; and there are only six cousins between me and the barony of Stogumber, which was created by the Conqueror. But is that any reason why I should stand by and see Englishmen beaten by a French bastard and a witch from Lousy Champagne?
The Nobleman Easy, man, easy: we shall burn the witch and beat the bastard all in good time. Indeed I am waiting at present for the Bishop of Beauvais, to arrange the burning with him. He has been turned out of his diocese by her faction.
The Chaplain You have first to catch her, my lord.
The Nobleman Or buy her. I will offer a king’s ransom.
The Chaplain A king’s ransom! For that slut!
The Nobleman One has to leave a margin. Some of Charles’s people will sell her to the Burgundians; the Burgundians will sell her to us; and there will probably be three or four middlemen who will expect their little commissions.
The Chaplain Monstrous. It is all those scoundrels of Jews: they get in every time money changes hands. I would not leave a Jew alive in Christendom if I had my way.
The Nobleman Why not? The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.
A page appears.
The Page The Right Reverend the Bishop of Beauvais: Monseigneur Cauchon.
Cauchon*, aged about 60, comes in. The page* withdraws. The two Englishmen rise.
The Nobleman With effusive courtesy. My dear Bishop, how good of you to come! Allow me to introduce myself: Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at your service.
Cauchon Your lordship’s fame is well known to me.
Warwick This reverend cleric is Master John de Stogumber.
The Chaplain Glibly. John Bowyer Spenser Neville de Stogumber, at your service, my lord: Bachelor of Theology, and Keeper of the Private Seal to His Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester.
Warwick To Cauchon. You call him the Cardinal of England, I believe. Our king’s uncle.
Cauchon Messire John de Stogumber: I am always the very good friend of His Eminence. He extends his hand to the chaplain, who kisses his ring.
Warwick Do me the honor to be seated. He gives Cauchon his chair, placing it at the head of the table.
Cauchon* accepts the place of honor with a grave inclination. Warwick fetches the leather stool carelessly, and sits in his former place. The chaplain* goes back to his chair.
Though Warwick has taken second place in calculated deference to the Bishop, he assumes the lead in opening the proceedings as a matter of course. He is still cordial and expansive; but there is a new note in his voice which means that he is coming to business.
Warwick Well, my Lord Bishop, you find us in one of our unlucky moments. Charles is to be crowned at Rheims, practically by the young woman from Lorraine; and⁠—I must not deceive you, nor flatter your hopes⁠—we cannot prevent it. I suppose it will make a great difference to Charles’s position.
Cauchon Undoubtedly. It is a masterstroke of The Maid’s.
The Chaplain Again agitated. We were not fairly beaten, my lord. No Englishman is ever fairly beaten.
Cauchon Raises his eyebrow slightly, then quickly composes his face.
Warwick Our friend here takes the view that the young woman is a sorceress. It would, I presume, be the duty of your reverend lordship to denounce her to the Inquisition, and have her burnt for that offence.
Cauchon If she were captured in my diocese: yes.
Warwick Feeling that they are getting on capitally. Just so. Now I suppose there can be no reasonable doubt that she is a sorceress.
The Chaplain Not the least. An arrant witch.
Warwick Gently reproving the interruption. We are asking for the Bishop’s opinion, Messire John.
Cauchon We shall have to consider not merely our own opinions here, but the opinions⁠—the prejudices, if you like⁠—of a French court.
Warwick Correcting. A Catholic court, my lord.
Cauchon Catholic courts are composed of mortal men, like other courts, however sacred their function and inspiration may be. And if the men are Frenchmen, as the modern fashion calls them, I am afraid the bare fact that an English army has been defeated by a French one will not convince them that there is any sorcery in the matter.
The Chaplain What! Not when the famous Sir John Talbot himself has been defeated and actually taken prisoner by a drab from the ditches of Lorraine!
Cauchon Sir John Talbot, we all know, is a fierce and formidable soldier, Messire; but I have yet to learn that he is an able general. And though it pleases you to say that he has been defeated by this girl, some of us may be disposed to give a little of the credit to Dunois.
The Chaplain Contemptuously. The Bastard of Orleans!
Cauchon Let me remind⁠—
Warwick Interposing. I know what you are going to say, my lord. Dunois defeated me at Montargis.
Cauchon Bowing. I take that as evidence that the Seigneur Dunois is a very able commander indeed.
Warwick Your lordship is the flower of courtesy. I admit, on our side, that Talbot is a mere fighting animal, and that it probably served him right to be taken at Patay.
The Chaplain Chafing. My lord: at Orleans this woman had her throat pierced by an English arrow, and was seen to cry like a child from the pain of it. It was a death wound; yet she fought all day; and when our men had repulsed all her attacks like true Englishmen, she walked alone to the wall of our fort with a white banner in her hand; and our men were paralyzed, and could neither shoot nor strike whilst the French fell on them and drove them on to the bridge, which immediately burst into flames and crumbled under them, letting them down into the river, where they were drowned in heaps. Was this your bastard’s generalship? or were those flames the flames of hell, conjured up by witchcraft?
Warwick You will forgive Messire John’s vehemence, my lord; but he has put our case. Dunois is a great captain, we admit; but why could he do nothing until the witch came?
Cauchon I do not say that there were no supernatural powers on her side. But the names on that white banner were not the names of Satan and Beelzebub, but the blessed names of our Lord and His holy mother. And your commander who was drowned⁠—Clahz‑da I think you call him⁠—
Warwick Glasdale. Sir William Glasdale.
Cauchon Glass‑dell, thank you. He was no saint; and many of our people think that he was drowned for his blasphemies against The Maid.
Warwick Beginning to look very dubious. Well, what are we to infer from all this, my lord? Has The Maid converted you?
Cauchon If she had, my lord, I should have known better than to have trusted myself here within your grasp.
Warwick Blandly deprecating. Oh! oh! My lord!
Cauchon If the devil is making use of this girl⁠—and I believe he is⁠—
Warwick Reassured. Ah! You hear, Messire John? I knew your lordship would not fail us. Pardon my interruption. Proceed.
Cauchon If it be so, the devil has longer views than you give him credit for.
Warwick Indeed? In what way? Listen to this, Messire John.
Cauchon If the devil wanted to damn a country girl, do you think so easy a task would cost him the winning of half a dozen battles? No, my lord: any trumpery imp could do that much if the girl could be damned at all. The Prince of Darkness does not condescend to such cheap drudgery. When he strikes, he strikes at the Catholic Church, whose realm is the whole spiritual world. When he damns, he damns the souls of the entire human race. Against that dreadful design The Church stands ever on guard. And it is as one of the instruments of that design that I see this girl. She is inspired, but diabolically inspired.
The Chaplain I told you she was a witch.
Cauchon Fiercely. She is not a witch. She is a heretic.
The Chaplain What difference does that make?
Cauchon You, a priest, ask me that! You English are strangely blunt in the mind. All these things that you call witchcraft are capable of a natural explanation. The woman’s miracles would not impose on a rabbit: she does not claim them as miracles herself. What do her victories prove but that she has a better head on her shoulders than your swearing Glass‑dells and mad bull Talbots, and that the courage of faith, even though it be a false faith, will always outstay the courage of wrath?
The Chaplain Hardly able to believe his ears. Does your lordship compare Sir John Talbot, the heir to the earldom of Shrewsbury, to a mad bull?!!!
Warwick It would not be seemly for you to do so, Messire John, as you are still six removes from a barony. But as I am an earl, and Talbot is only a knight, I may make bold to accept the comparison. To the Bishop. My lord: I wipe the slate as far as the witchcraft goes. None the less, we must burn the woman.
Cauchon I cannot burn her. The Church cannot take life. And my first duty is to seek this girl’s salvation.
Warwick No doubt. But you do burn people occasionally.
Cauchon No. When the Church cuts off an obstinate heretic as a dead branch from the tree of life, the heretic is handed over to the secular arm. The church has no part in what the secular arm may see fit to do.
Warwick Precisely. And I shall be the secular arm in this case. Well, my lord, hand over your dead branch; and I will see that the fire is ready for it. If you will answer for the Church’s part, I will answer for the secular part.
Cauchon With smouldering anger. I can answer for nothing. You great lords are too prone to treat the Church as a mere political convenience.
Warwick Smiling and propitiatory. Not in England, I assure you.
Cauchon In England more than anywhere else. No, my lord: the soul of this village girl is of equal value with yours or your king’s before the throne of God; and my first duty is to save it. I will not suffer your lordship to smile at me as if I were repeating a meaningless form of words, and it were well understood between us that I should betray the girl to you. I am no mere political bishop: my faith is to me what your honor is to you; and if there be a loophole through which this baptized child of God can creep to her salvation, I shall guide her to it.
The Chaplain Rising in a fury. You are a traitor.
Cauchon Springing up. You lie, priest. Trembling with rage. If you dare do what this woman has done⁠—set your country above the holy Catholic Church⁠—you shall go to the fire with her.
The Chaplain My lord: I⁠—I went too far. I⁠—He sits down with a submissive gesture.
Warwick Who has risen apprehensively. My lord: I apologize to you for the word used by Messire John de Stogumber. It does not mean in England what it does in France. In your language traitor means betrayer: one who is perfidious, treacherous, unfaithful, disloyal. In our country it means simply one who is not wholly devoted to our English interests.
Cauchon I am sorry: I did not understand. He subsides into his chair with dignity.
Warwick Resuming his seat, much relieved. I must apologize on my own account if I have seemed to take the burning of this poor girl too lightly. When one has seen whole countrysides burnt over and over again as mere items in military routine, one has to grow a very thick skin. Otherwise one might go mad: at all events, I should. May I venture to assume that your lordship also, having to see so many heretics burnt from time to time, is compelled to take⁠—shall I say a professional view of what would otherwise be a very horrible incident?
Cauchon Yes: it is a painful duty: even, as you say, a horrible one. But in comparison with the horror of heresy it is less than nothing. I am not thinking of this girl’s body, which will suffer for a few moments only, and which must in any event die in some more or less painful manner, but of her soul, which may suffer to all eternity.
Warwick Just so; and God grant that her soul may be saved! But the practical problem would seem to be how to save her soul without saving her body. For we must face it, my lord: if this cult of The Maid goes on, our cause is lost.
The Chaplain His voice broken like that of a man who has been crying. May I speak, my lord?