Saint Joan · Scene V (2/2) (1/2)
Dunois Come, Joan! you have had enough praying. After that fit of crying you will catch a chill if you stay here any longer. It is all over: the cathedral is empty; and the streets are full. They are calling for The Maid. We have told them you are staying here alone to pray: but they want to see you again.
Joan No: let the king have all the glory.
Dunois He only spoils the show, poor devil. No, Joan: you have crowned him; and you must go through with it.
Joan Shakes her head reluctantly.
Dunois Raising her. Come come! it will be over in a couple of hours. It’s better than the bridge at Orleans: eh?
Joan Oh, dear Dunois, how I wish it were the bridge at Orleans again! We lived at that bridge.
Dunois Yes, faith, and died too: some of us.
Joan Isn’t it strange, Jack? I am such a coward: I am frightened beyond words before a battle; but it is so dull afterwards when there is no danger: oh, so dull! dull! dull!
Dunois You must learn to be abstemious in war, just as you are in your food and drink, my little saint.
Joan Dear Jack: I think you like me as a soldier likes his comrade.
Dunois You need it, poor innocent child of God. You have not many friends at court.
Joan Why do all these courtiers and knights and churchmen hate me? What have I done to them? I have asked nothing for myself except that my village shall not be taxed; for we cannot afford war taxes. I have brought them luck and victory: I have set them right when they were doing all sorts of stupid things: I have crowned Charles and made him a real king; and all the honors he is handing out have gone to them. Then why do they not love me?
Dunois Rallying her. Sim‑ple‑ton! Do you expect stupid people to love you for showing them up? Do blundering old military dugouts love the successful young captains who supersede them? Do ambitious politicians love the climbers who take the front seats from them? Do archbishops enjoy being played off their own altars, even by saints? Why, I should be jealous of you myself if I were ambitious enough.
Joan You are the pick of the basket here, Jack: the only friend I have among all these nobles. I’ll wager your mother was from the country. I will go back to the farm when I have taken Paris.
Dunois I am not so sure that they will let you take Paris.
Joan Startled. What!
Dunois I should have taken it myself before this if they had all been sound about it. Some of them would rather Paris took you, I think. So take care.
Joan Jack: the world is too wicked for me. If the goddams and the Burgundians do not make an end of me, the French will. Only for my voices I should lose all heart. That is why I had to steal away to pray here alone after the coronation. I’ll tell you something, Jack. It is in the bells I hear my voices. Not today, when they all rang: that was nothing but jangling. But here in this corner, where the bells come down from heaven, and the echoes linger, or in the fields, where they come from a distance through the quiet of the countryside, my voices are in them. The cathedral clock chimes the quarter. Hark! She becomes rapt. Do you hear? “Dear-child-of-God”: just what you said. At the half-hour they will say “Be-brave-go-on.” At the three-quarters they will say “I-am-thy-Help.” But it is at the hour, when the great bell goes after “God-will-save-France”: it is then that St. Margaret and St. Catherine and sometimes even the blessed Michael will say things that I cannot tell beforehand. Then, oh then⁠—
Dunois Interrupting her kindly but not sympathetically. Then, Joan, we shall hear whatever we fancy in the booming of the bell. You make me uneasy when you talk about your voices: I should think you were a bit cracked if I hadn’t noticed that you give me very sensible reasons for what you do, though I hear you telling others you are only obeying Madame Saint Catherine.
Joan Crossly. Well, I have to find reasons for you, because you do not believe in my voices. But the voices come first; and I find the reasons after: whatever you may choose to believe.
Dunois Are you angry, Joan?
Joan Yes. Smiling. No: not with you. I wish you were one of the village babies.
Dunois Why?
Joan I could nurse you for awhile.
Dunois You are a bit of a woman after all.
Joan No: not a bit: I am a soldier and nothing else. Soldiers always nurse children when they get a chance.
Dunois That is true. He laughs.
King Charles*, with Bluebeard on his left and La Hire on his right, comes from the vestry, where he has been disrobing. Joan shrinks away behind the pillar. Dunois is left between Charles and La Hire*.
Dunois Well, your Majesty is an anointed king at last. How do you like it?
Charles I would not go through it again to be emperor of the sun and moon. The weight of those robes! I thought I should have dropped when they loaded that crown on to me. And the famous holy oil they talked so much about was rancid: phew! The Archbishop must be nearly dead: his robes must have weighed a ton: they are stripping him still in the vestry.
Dunois Drily. Your Majesty should wear armor oftener. That would accustom you to heavy dressing.
Charles Yes: the old jibe! Well, I am not going to wear armor: fighting is not my job. Where is The Maid?
Joan Coming forward between Charles and Bluebeard, and falling on her knee. Sire: I have made you king: my work is done. I am going back to my father’s farm.
Charles Surprised, but relieved. Oh, are you? Well, that will be very nice.
Joan Rises, deeply discouraged. !
Charles Continuing heedlessly. A healthy life, you know.
Dunois But a dull one.
Bluebeard You will find the petticoats tripping you up after leaving them off for so long.
La Hire You will miss the fighting. It’s a bad habit, but a grand one, and the hardest of all to break yourself of.
Charles Anxiously. Still, we don’t want you to stay if you would really rather go home.
Joan Bitterly. I know well that none of you will be sorry to see me go. She turns her shoulder to Charles and walks past him to the more congenial neighborhood of Dunois and La Hire.
La Hire Well, I shall be able to swear when I want to. But I shall miss you at times.
Joan La Hire: in spite of all your sins and swears we shall meet in heaven; for I love you as I love Pitou, my old sheep dog. Pitou could kill a wolf. You will kill the English wolves until they go back to their country and become good dogs of God, will you not?
La Hire You and I together: yes.
Joan No: I shall last only a year from the beginning.
All the Others What!
Joan I know it somehow.
Dunois Nonsense!
Joan Jack: do you think you will be able to drive them out?
Dunois With quiet conviction. Yes: I shall drive them out. They beat us because we thought battles were tournaments and ransom markets. We played the fool while the goddams took war seriously. But I have learnt my lesson, and taken their measure. They have no roots here. I have beaten them before; and I shall beat them again.
Joan You will not be cruel to them, Jack?
Dunois The goddams will not yield to tender handling. We did not begin it.
Joan Suddenly. Jack: before I go home, let us take Paris.
Charles Terrified. Oh no no. We shall lose everything we have gained. Oh don’t let us have any more fighting. We can make a very good treaty with the Duke of Burgundy.
Joan Treaty! She stamps with impatience.
Charles Well, why not, now that I am crowned and anointed? Oh, that oil!
The Archbishop comes from the vestry, and joins the group between Charles and Bluebeard.
Charles Archbishop: The Maid wants to start fighting again.
The Archbishop Have we ceased fighting, then? Are we at peace?
Charles No: I suppose not; but let us be content with what we have done. Let us make a treaty. Our luck is too good to last; and now is our chance to stop before it turns.
Joan Luck! God has fought for us; and you call it luck! And you would stop while there are still Englishmen on this holy earth of dear France!
The Archbishop Sternly. Maid: the king addressed himself to me, not to you. You forget yourself. You very often forget yourself.
Joan Unabashed, and rather roughly. Then speak, you; and tell him that it is not God’s will that he should take his hand from the plough.
The Archbishop If I am not so glib with the name of God as you are, it is because I interpret His will with the authority of the Church and of my sacred office. When you first came you respected it, and would not have dared to speak as you are now speaking. You came clothed with the virtue of humility; and because God blessed your enterprises accordingly, you have stained yourself with the sin of pride. The old Greek tragedy is rising among us. It is the chastisement of hubris.
Charles Yes: she thinks she knows better than everyone else.
Joan Distressed, but naively incapable of seeing the effect she is producing. But I do know better than any of you seem to. And I am not proud: I never speak unless I know I am right.
Exclaiming together.
Bluebeard Ha ha!
Charles Just so.
The Archbishop How do you know you are right?
Joan I always know. My voices⁠—
Charles Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king, not you.
Joan They do come to you; but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do. Turning brusquely from him. But what voices do you need to tell you what the blacksmith can tell you: that you must strike while the iron is hot? I tell you we must make a dash at Compiègne and relieve it as we relieved Orleans. Then Paris will open its gates; or if not, we will break through them. What is your crown worth without your capital?
La Hire That is what I say too. We shall go through them like a red hot shot through a pound of butter. What do you say, Bastard?
Dunois If our cannon balls were all as hot as your head, and we had enough of them, we should conquer the earth, no doubt. Pluck and impetuosity are good servants in war, but bad masters; they have delivered us into the hands of the English every time we have trusted to them. We never know when we are beaten: that is our great fault.
Joan You never know when you are victorious: that is a worse fault. I shall have to make you carry looking-glasses in battle to convince you that the English have not cut off all your noses. You would have been besieged in Orleans still, you and your councils of war, if I had not made you attack. You should always attack; and if you only hold on long enough the enemy will stop first. You don’t know how to begin a battle; and you don’t know how to use your cannons. And I do.
She squats down on the flags with crossed ankles, pouting.
Dunois I know what you think of us, General Joan.
Joan Never mind that, Jack. Tell them what you think of me.
Dunois I think that God was on your side; for I have not forgotten how the wind changed, and how our hearts changed when you came; and by my faith I shall never deny that it was in your sign that we conquered. But I tell you as a soldier that God is no man’s daily drudge, and no maid’s either. If you are worthy of it he will sometimes snatch you out of the jaws of death and set you on your feet again; but that is all: once on your feet you must fight with all your might and all your craft. For he has to be fair to your enemy too: don’t forget that. Well, he set us on our feet through you at Orleans; and the glory of it has carried us through a few good battles here to the coronation. But if we presume on it further, and trust to God to do the work we should do ourselves, we shall be defeated; and serve us right!
Joan But⁠—
Dunois Sh! I have not finished. Do not think, any of you, that these victories of ours were won without generalship. King Charles: you have said no word in your proclamations of my part in this campaign; and I make no complaint of that; for the people will run after The Maid and her miracles and not after the Bastard’s hard work finding troops for her and feeding them. But I know exactly how much God did for us through The Maid, and how much He left me to do by my own wits; and I tell you that your little hour of miracles is over, and that from this time on he who plays the war game best will win⁠—if the luck is on his side.
Joan Ah! if, if, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans there’d be no need of tinkers. Rising impetuously. I tell you, Bastard, your art of war is no use, because your knights are no good for real fighting. War is only a game to them, like tennis and all their other games: they make rules as to what is fair and what is not fair, and heap armor on themselves and on their poor horses to keep out the arrows; and when they fall they can’t get up, and have to wait for their squires to come and lift them to arrange about the ransom with the man that has poked them off their horse. Can’t you see that all the like of that is gone by and done with? What use is armor against gunpowder? And if it was, do you think men that are fighting for France and for God will stop to bargain about ransoms, as half your knights live by doing? No: they will fight to win; and they will give up their lives out of their own hand into the hand of God when they go into battle, as I do. Common folks understand this. They cannot afford armor and cannot pay ransoms; but they follow me half naked into the moat and up the ladder and over the wall. With them it is my life or thine, and God defend the right! You may shake your head, Jack; and Bluebeard may twirl his billygoat’s beard and cock his nose at me; but remember the day your knights and captains refused to follow me to attack the English at Orleans! You locked the gates to keep me in; and it was the townsfolk and the common people that followed me and forced the gate, and showed you the way to fight in earnest.
Bluebeard Offended. Not content with being Pope Joan, you must be Caesar and Alexander as well.
The Archbishop Pride will have a fall, Joan.
Joan Oh, never mind whether it is pride or not: is it true? is it common sense?
La Hire It is true. Half of us are afraid of having our handsome noses broken; and the other half are out for paying off their mortgages. Let her have her way, Dunois: she does not know everything; but she has got hold of the right end of the stick. Fighting is not what it was; and those who know least about it often make the best job of it.
Dunois I know all that. I do not fight in the old way: I have learnt the lesson of Agincourt, of Poitiers and Crecy. I know how many lives any move of mine will cost; and if the move is worth the cost I make it and pay the cost. But Joan never counts the cost at all: she goes ahead and trusts to God: she thinks she has God in her pocket. Up to now she has had the numbers on her side; and she has won. But I know Joan; and I see that some day she will go ahead when she has only ten men to do the work of a hundred. And then she will find that God is on the side of the big battalions. She will be taken by the enemy. And the lucky man that makes the capture will receive sixteen thousand pounds from the Earl of Ouareek.