Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc

by Katherine J. Chen

Tonight, there is a moon, like a perfect Eucharist wafer, pressed into the sky. It seems almost reachable, as though if you stuck your tongue out far enough, you might taste the body of Christ in the air.

Tonight, there is a moon, like a perfect Eucharist wafer, pressed into the sky. It seems almost reachable, as though if you stuck your tongue out far enough, you might taste the body of Christ in the air.

How could I face the same hearth, he said when people asked him why he did not marry, the same roof and dirt floor, the same sad cauldron and sad-faced wife, day in, day out? How could I go against my own nature and sleep for decades in the same rotting straw bed, infested with the same nest of ticks? So, he doesn’t. Sometimes he does not sleep even two nights in the same place. The faces of his women are continually in flux. If they are ever sad, he is never around long enough to wipe away their tears.

It is another way of saying, No, you can’t come. Another way of telling her, You must make your own map of the world. Search out your own piece of sky and patch of earth, your own awning to sleep under when it is raining and it feels the sun may never shine again, for there will certainly be such days. No one can walk this path for you. You cannot simply follow in another’s footsteps, as though life were a complicated dance, every turn and twist memorized and prepared for ahead of time. There are many things in the world one can inherit: money, land, power, a crown. But an adventure is not one of them; you must make your own journey.

War is like a box. Once you open it, there is no way to close it again, to unsee what you have seen. Other people will sometimes show you what they have done while you have been on campaign. ‘Look, I have carved a statue; it is the best statue in the world,’ they might say, or ‘I have painted the finest portrait of the king, and he has awarded me with a chest of coins.’ And you smile at them as if they are children who have made a circle of pebbles or a chain of daisies. You answer, ‘But I have been to war. I have fought at such-and-such a place in this part of the kingdom or in a kingdom far away. I saw a thousand men die. And I killed some, too.’

“My position does not deceive me as to the nature of men . . . and women,” he says. “Praying . . . is just wanting, isn’t it? We both know this. And what do men want but the usual things? Power. Money. Love. To be freed from illness. To be excused from death. To ascend to heaven without actually dying.” He laughs. It is a crackling laugh, like a heel stepping on the delicate shell of a snail.

And do you know? Though I was defeated before the walls of Paris, I feel it in my bones, in my soul: I am still the greatest warrior alive.

“The King has no friends,” Yolande says. “Just people, like La Trémoille, who will lend him vast sums of money when he needs to borrow. Just people, like le Maçon, who will give up their own horse when a city is under attack, to save His Majesty’s life and curry favor. Just people, like you, to raise sieges for him, to win battles, until the day you stop winning. And when you have nothing more to give, you return to nothing. But . . .” She pauses. She looks sad. “I suppose it is not only the King. It is everyone. When you are doing well, you are like a fresh flower, and all the butterflies want to rest on your petals. And when you are wilting, you are plucked and thrown away. No one wants to touch you. They think you are bad luck and pretend they have never known you. Human nature, Joan.