Now they were waiting. There was the pedestal, the ladder which she was to mount; there were the faggots which would be lighted.
They took her to the scaffold and forced her to mount the ladder. A chain was fastened about her waist to hold her firmly to the stake and almost immediately the smoke began to rise.
‘So I die,’ she thought. ‘No cross to hold, no comfort to help me on my way.’
‘Will you not give me a cross?’ she cried in anguish and one of the English archers who had come to witness the spectacle was moved to sudden pity which he found inexplicable. He leaped forward and snatched a branch from the wood at her feet. He formed it into a cross and gave it to her.
She seized it gratefully and held it before her eyes.
One of the monks came up with a cross he had taken from the altar of a nearby church. He held it before her eyes.
The flames were thick now. The crowd was shouting so loudly that they could not hear the moaning mingled with the prayers of the victim.
Then suddenly there was a cry of ‘Jesus’.
For a few moments there was a deep silence in the square.
Then an English soldier spoke and his words were clearly heard by those around.
‘God help us,’ he said, ‘we have burned a saint.’
Part Three
Eleanor of Cloucester
Chapter XVI
THE WITCH OF EYE
THE young King was excited. For the first time in his life he was going to leave England.
The Cardinal had come to him with much solemnity and had explained to him that he was going to his land of France and would there be crowned as King.
But I have already been crowned once, thought Henry. He remembered well the weary ceremony and the weight of the crown they made him wear and all those people coming up one after another and kneeling to him. There were times when he heartily wished they had made someone else King.
But to go to France! That might be exciting.
He looked at the Cardinal, an old, old man he seemed and very serious. He had heard his uncle Gloucester refer to him as ‘that old rogue’. That puzzled him. It was hard to think of the Cardinal as anything but one of those good men for whom the gates of Heaven would open wide when he made his journey there, which, thought Henry, judging by his age must be imminent.
In the meantime he was on Earth and appeared now and then to make sure that the King did his duty.
Henry missed his mother and Alice and Joan. Life had been very different when he was with them. But apparently people like himself who were born with the burden of kingship already on them could not be brought up by women. They had to have people like the Earl of Warwick and the Cardinal of Winchester around them – and occasionally his uncles, stern Bedford and jolly Gloucester, both of whom, in spite of their different natures, alarmed him more than a little.
‘There will be a service at St Paul’s Cathedral,’ the Cardinal was saying, ‘and you must remember that God will be watching you – and so will the people.’
It was rather frightening to be so spied on; but if God loved him as much as the people obviously did, he thought he might be as welcome in Heaven as the Cardinal would be. ‘You will understand,’ went on the Cardinal, ‘that a great deal of preparation has gone into this visit so it remains with you, my lord, to make sure that no one is disappointed in you.’
Henry replied brightly: ‘The people shout a lot and cheer me and say “Long live the little King”.’
‘That is because you are a boy. But at the same time they expect a great deal from you. The higher the position the better you must be. You must never forget that you are King of this realm.’
‘People are always telling me,’ commented Henry, ‘so I could not easily forget.’
‘That is well,’ said the Cardinal. ‘After the service we shall go to Kennington and we shall be in Canterbury on Palm Sunday, where we shall celebrate Easter which will be fitting. Then we shall make our way to Dover.’
‘Will my mother come with us?’ asked Henry.
‘No, no, indeed no,’ said the Cardinal quickly. He did not wish to be reminded of the Queen Mother. There were some unpleasant rumours about her, some connection with a Welsh squire. There were anxieties enough without her adding to them. Things were not going well in France and the Duke of Bedford was deeply concerned about the abandoning of the siege of Orléans.
So the journey began as they had arranged it should. From Kennington to Canterbury where the people came out to cheer the little King. They remained there over Easter and all thought it was a good omen that Henry should set sail for France on St George’s Day.
It was exciting to land in a new country. It seemed he was its King as he was in England. His father had won it. Henry was always a little disturbed when people talked to him of his father because the admonition usually followed that he must learn to be like him; and Henry was beginning to think that it was not going to be very easy to do that.
They rode across the country which was rather flat and not unlike England in many ways except that the people did not seem to love him so much. They came out of their houses to look at him but they did not cheer as they did in England and some of them looked as though they would rather he had stayed away.
He heard a good deal of talk about Joan the Maid. The servants were always whispering about her. ‘Who is Joan the Maid?’ he asked. ‘She is a witch,’ he was told.
A witch! His eyes were round with horror. Where was she now?
She was where she should have been long ago. In prison. They had caught her. Now she would have to pay for her wickedness.
He thought about her a great deal. That was because she seemed to be in everybody’s mind.
She had used her witchcraft against the English, it seemed, and consequently they had lost some battles. They had taken that very badly. Battles, Henry had always thought, were won by the English. He was constantly being taught about Crécy and Poitiers and Harfleur and Agincourt. Nobody could withstand the bowmen of England – unless it was by witchcraft.
They were going to Rouen and soon he saw the towers of the capital city of Normandy which had been for so long the dominion of the English. William the Conqueror had made it so when he came to England; Henry had learned that years ago.
His uncle Bedford was at Rouen. Henry was greatly in awe of him. He was always so stern and never failed to remind him of his wonderful father. The Duchess was different. She was kind and friendly and seemed to remember quite often that although Henry was a King he was also only a boy.
Henry realised that they were all very concerned about Joan of Arc. They seemed to talk of nothing else. There was a sort of trial going on and his uncle Bedford was in close conference with the Bishops of Winchester and Beauvais and other men; they were all very grave.
They told him little. All he knew was that there was a wicked woman who was a witch and she had come to some arrangement with the Devil to crown the Dauphin of France who thought the crown of France was his although it really belonged to the English through the conquest of Henry’s great father and something called the Salic law which the French followed and was no true law at all apparently.
Well, he had to prepare himself for his coronation and there was a great fuss about that too. The Kings of France were crowned at Rheims and owing to the witchcraft of Joan of Arc Rheims was now in the hands of the French and as the Dauphin had been crowned there it was hardly possible for Henry to be crowned there as well.
His uncle fumed about it. He had heard him cry out: ‘The woman must be proved to be a witch.’