La Pucelle, The Trial of Joan
A play in one act based on the actual court documents and the rehabilitation.
By
Tony Devaney Morinelli
Characters
Joan
St. Michael
St. Margaret
St. Catherine
The Grand Inquisitor Cauchon
4 Other Inquisitors
Christine de Pisan
Baudricourt
Jacquinette
Various Peasants
Soldiers
The action takes place on two levels, the stage and the area immediately in front of the stage (floor or
on visible platforms if the pit is very low.) All action not in the courtroom takes place in this front area.
The stage itself is divided in two. Upstage is a platform arrangement for the three head inquisitors. At
mid-stage writing desks for the clerks. Down stage is Joan and later Jacquinette and eventually the
stake.
Darkness. An off stage voice begins in Latin. Off Stage Choir (or recording) begins the
Dies Irae sung in the traditional chant form.
(Chant:
Dies Irae, Dies illa
Solvet seclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sybilla
Etc.)
In nomine Domini, Amen
Incipit processus in causa fidei
Contra quondam quandam mulierem
IOHANNAM,
Vulgariter dictam “La Pucelle”.
A dim light up stage reveals the shadow of a clerk. He stands and reads:
Clerk 1 In the name of the Lord, AMEN.
Here begin the proceedings
The trial in matters of faith
The trial against the woman
The woman called Joan
Who is commonly called THE MAID.
To all those who shall see these present letters:
Pierre Cauchon, by Divine Mercy,
Bishop of Beauvais.
Brother Jean le maistre, of the Dominican Order
Who, in the diocese of Rouen,
Is especially appointed
To this holy trial.
Jean Craverent
Also a Dominican
Doctor of Theology and most renowned;
By apostolic authority
And lettered learning,
Inquisitor of the Faith
And holy guard against
Heretical error
In all the kingdom of France.
Greetings in that author
And consummation of the Faith
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Clerk 2 Let it be known that on this day
The twenty and first of February
In the year of our Lord and Savior
Fourteen hundred and thirty one
There appeared before us
In the chapel royal
Of the castle of Rouen
The woman by the name of Joan.
The reputation of this woman
Has already gone forth
And spread its treason to many parts.
A woman yet wholly forgetful of womanly modesty!
A woman having thrown off the bonds of shame!
A woman who with monstrous brazenness
Astonishing and blasphemous
Took upon herself the garb and dress
Belonging to the male sex.
And she did perform
And did disseminate
Many such things
Contrary to order,
Not in keeping with a woman’s way
And harmful and vile
To the holy articles
Of our belief.
Clerk 1 Set this down in writing;
Set it out for all to know.
That here we amend
And set aright
Such things as do offend
Our sight and thought and human sway.
Hear now all
Hear all well.
Let no man of rank or station
No person of property, rights or domain
May leave this city of Rouen
Until such time
As we have settled
According to all rights
At the conclusion of this trial
The matter of Joan
Who is called the Maid.
(The clerks and inquisitors part to reveal behind a dimly lit scrim a solitary figure, Joan. From the
corner shadows a figure moves towards her.)
Cauchon: As it is our office
To keep and exalt
The Holy faith
And the unity of the Church
Well do call and admonish
The said Joan
Here seated before us
That she should answer in truth
The questions put before her
Eschewing subterfuge
Shift and deceit
Whose wiles do hinder
Truthful confession.
Clerk: Swear Joan,
Swear here upon the word of God
That you will speak in truth
In all those things which concern the faith.
Joan: You ask me to swear
You ask too much
For I do not know
That you may ask me such things
As my soul and conscience
Forbid me to answer.
Cauchon: Your soul and conscience
Are the charge of the church
And the holy faith
Which convenes you here
With us your judges
To reveal your errors
And redeem your soul.
Joan: Then bring me the gospel
And I shall swear.
(They bring her the book, She kneels, her bound hands on its cover)
This shall I swear
To you before God.
That in all those things
Of my life and my home
Of my father and mother
Of my cousin and kin
And of the road I have taken
Since my coming to France,
These I will tell you
As you may ask.
But of those things
Which God has revealed
They are for my king
And for my confessor
And on them you shall have
No word from me.
Inquisitor 1: Tell the court your name.
Joan: In my own country they call me Jeanette
I have been also called Jeanne.
Inquisitor 1: And the surname?
Joan: Of this name I know nothing.
Inquisitor 1: Your father? Your Mother?
Joan: My father is Jacques
My mother Ysabelle
Also Jacques d’Arc
They call him by name.
Inquisitor 1: When were you born?
Joan: On the night of the Epiphany.
Epiphany night.
Inquisitor 1: In what place?
Joan: Domremy.
Domremy by the church of Greux.
(Transition: lights down on the court. Joan is spotted alone.)
Joan: Where is that place?
That place.
That place.
A light comes up on an up-stage figure. This is Cauchon. Slowly, he moves to Joan and positions
himself at her side, just behind her ear..
Cauchon: Reflect Joan. Reflect.
Turn memory’s dark eye inward
Turn to the soul’s pale mirror
Call up the shadows
The shapes, the ghosts
That led your soul away.
away.
Joan: There beneath the branches leafless,
My wooden shoes, farm girl shoes,
Rustling the sand along the walk,
The sheep, the dung, the scent,
` Lips iced, tasting the cold,
Breathing the damp, dead winter
Cold in my nostrils
My ears burned and open to the wind
Whistling through the branches
Bending boughs and twigs.
Joan: They are too far.
They are too deep.
I despair of them.
They have abandoned me.
Cauchon: Look deeply Joan.
Inward into memory’s womb
Where the demon sowed
His foul bred seed
Whose hideous deformity
Burst forth unaborted
To wreak upon the fields of France
It’s unleashed taste for death.
Joan: It is cold.
My eyes tear.
My nose runs.
My toes are curled
I shiver.
Cauchon: Speak Joan.
Do you hear them?
They wait Joan,
The monsters wait.
They wait to speak.
They call.
Joan: I hear them.
I hear them from the right side.
I hear the silver bells
The great bells
The church bells
Silver notes that break the winter’s freeze.
2nd Inquisitor: Do they call?
Do they speak?
Do you hear them?
Hear them darting
Through the mind’s deep sea
And foaming waves,
Leviathan monsters’
Blackened blood
Spurting from tentacles writhing
Cloud in inky darkness
Light’s bright clarity
That seeks to penetrate
The waves above.
From Stage Right a dark, draped figure appears. It is a woman, but “faceless”, in the shadows.
Temptress: Do you feel the darkness, Joan?
Do you feel the blackness about you?
Hold Joan! Hold and still!
The stilled air
Unmoving air
Motionless air
Black and dark.
The final despair
The despair of the tomb.
It fills your nose
And ebbing pours itself downward
Down through the throat,
From there to the lungs;
Filling, loading, exploding
Hot and bleak and black
In despair’s growing darkness.
Joan: Quiet in your darkness there!
Quiet! Do you not hear?
(Silence)
Do you not hear?
(Silence)
A peasant woman suddenly appears. She is from Joan’s past.
Peasant: Whad are ya starin’ at girl?
Look at ya dumb!
Legs planted sticks in the dirt.
Will ya be growin’ there?
Like a pile the sheep ha’ left in na road!
Wake up girl! Go off to yer work.
Peasant Girl: And she won’t play
Won’t sing with us,
She walks alone,
Twigs and leaves,
Straw and hay,
She weaves and winds
Beneath the trees,
Or by the brook.
And sometimes
Bends and stares
At her reflection.
Then smacks the face
That she finds there
In the water’s flow
And screams and cries
What we can’t understand.
She’s not much fun.
Who’d want to play
With the likes of her.
(Lights return on the court.)
Inquisitor 2 Wake up girl!
Do you hear us?
Do you hear these questions?
Questions of faith,
Questions of holy church?
Cauchon: You claim to hear voices.
The voices of saints.
Holy voices
Voices that guide you.
Joan: Voices that brought me to France.
To my king.
Inquisitor 3 Whose voices?
Inquisitor 4 Saints’ voices?
Cauchon Demons’ voices?
Joan: Holy voices!
That brought me to France,
That raised up my king,
That drove out the English,
That restored the crown.
Inquisitor 1: Blasphemy!
Inquisitor 2: Heresy!
Cauchon: When first did you hear them?
Where first did they speak?
Joan: In my father’s village
In my father’s field.
There I first heard them.
There did they speak.
Sometimes by the church,
Sometimes by the brook
In the bells,
In the water
Silver and clear and cool.
Inquisitor 1: And in what Latin
Or in what French
Did these voices speak to you?
In what tongue
And with what accent?
Joan: In one surely better than yours
Good English sir.
Inquisitor 1: Impudence!
Cauchon: And when they appeared to you, these saints,
Did you touch them
Joan: Yes, I did touch them.
Cauchon: And what part of them did you touch?
Joan: Is this of interest to my lord?
Cauchon: Did ever you embrace these saints you saw?
Joan: I did embrace them both.
Cauchon: And who were these saints that you did embrace?
Joan: They are my saints ,
Saint Catherine
And Saint Margaret.
Cauchon; And was there a fragrance in their embrace?
Joan: Yes, the fragrance of heaven
And it was good.
Cauchon: And when you embraced them
Was it above or below?
Joan: It was in reverence my lord,
That I embraced their feet
And fell before them
As it should be.
And kissed their holy feet..
Cauchon: And when you kissed them
Was it warm
Or was it cold?
Joan: On this my lord
You trouble much
And you shall not have my answer.
Inquisitor 1: And these visions you have
Do they come to you naked
Or are they arrayed?
Joan: Do you not think
That God in his wonder
Has not the wherewithal
To cloth his own saints?
From Stage Right, in the same place as the Temptress, there appears Saint Catherine. She is
arrayed in full medieval elegance, a crown of virginal flowers in her hair. A gobo with branch patterns
lights her to suggest that she appears from out of the trees.
St. Catherine: See yourself Joan.
See yourself through the summer misty wood,
There beneath the sun’s cutting blades
There upon a morning damp
Moist beneath your shoeless feet.
Warm, the fragrance of wild raspberry,
And must from early fallen leaves,
Warm droplets
Upon your arms and legs and brow,
Roll soft upon your lips.
Vapors rise and fill your mouth
Lush and sweet with grape and rose.
Turn, Joan.
Turn to my voice.
Joan: Why do you call me?
Why do you want me?
It is hot.
Airless
Only the straw stacks
The meadow grass
The trellis rose
And arbor grape
Breath out upon the light.
I cannot breath.
Why do you call me?
I’m guarding the sheep.
Do you not see me?
What have I done
Why do you punish
Why do you curse?
Curse me with your voices
With you bidding
With your will.
Where is my will
A will of my own
It is hot
I cannot breath
Your voice is upon me
Your voice is inside me
Your voice is within me
Release me my will !
Release me
Forgive me
What fault is my own?
A 2nd peasant woman appears again. She speaks directly to the audience.
Peasant Woman 2: She was a strange girl.
A good girl but strange.
All the time standin’.
Standin’ and staring.
Talkin’ to trees
Talkin by streams
To her face in the water.
(Pointing stage left)
From by there you could watch her
By there you could see.
But I never quite heard her
Or what she would say.
Peasant Woman 3 Who’d want to listen?
A strange child
Talked to the trees
Babbled to the water,
Did her chores
But always in a dream.
Wasn’t a bad girl.
But never seemed to care
What the other children did,
Or what other folks was doin.
Woman Surely, she had a side of good
A side like other girls?
A joy in life
A sweetness like the other girls?
Woman 3 A joy in life
A touch of sweetness?
If sweetness be madness
And folly to boot
Then she had a sweetness
To cloy the tongue
And set the stomach
In want of salt
Woman 4
Its your tongue’s got salt
And vinegar too
That sours your breath
And the air you belch
Woman 3: Me belch air
Its you make wind
With all your cackle
And gossip and talk.
Woman 1: Bother you both
You own onions boil
And tighten your bowel
With sweeter medicament.
In all of France
Across the land
They talk her name
And what she done.
Woman 2: What she done is ride with men
And what she’s ridin
I’d like t’ know
What’s a girl that age
Got to do with men in mail
And iron and cask,
Astride their horses
At gallop gone
To run up their lance
` In an Englishman’s rump,
And slash up their ears
And their pig pokin noses
\ And them manly parts.
That go pokin and proddin
The loose girls of France.
What she doin I say
That girl from a village
Who should be beddin
A man of her own
And bringin about
A gaggle of babies
To work in her father’s fields.
Joan, back in time, in a trance.
Joan: I hear you.
Where are you?
(Silence)
There, there to my right?
(Silence)
There, by the church?
(Silence)
By the willow?
By the stream?
(Silence)
Is it the water speaking?
Yes. Yes, I will listen.
(Silence)
Yes. Yes, I will go.
Peasant woman 3 Look at ‘er standin
Droopin’ like a willow
Branches all hangin’
Tippin in the water
Peasant Woman 4 Maybe the lass
Ought to bend to the mud
And smear up her face
To save us that jaw.
Peasant Woman 5 Where could a child
Get such a face?
Peasant Woman 2 Not how got the face
But who got her?
Peasant Woman 1 Or who got her mother!
Peasant Woman 3 Was her father who fathered
Or was the nest feathered
By some other fowl?
Peasant Woman 5 Some other fowl
Who set her up foul
With the jaw of an ox
And the grin of an ass.
Joan: (to herself) Make them go away
Make them go away!
I don’t want to hear them.
I don’t want to listen.
(She goes to her knees. She looks into the stream)
Take it away!
(She pushes against her own face, first in the reflection then begins to rip violently at her own face)
Take it away!
Why must I look at it?
Why must you be there?
Break the water (she splashes her hand into the stream)
Break the image, the shape, the form, the shadow.
(Violently against her own face)
Break it away.
Break it away!
Rip it from my bones
Skin it from my skull
Cast its soft and sallow flesh
This woman’s flesh
Soft and sallow
Boneless and without rise
Slash it and rip it
Into the water to wash it away!
From Stage Right, Saint Margaret appears. Like Catherine, she is clothed in full regalia, flowers and
filtered light.
St. Margaret: Soft, Joan, soft.
Do not gaze upon the water’s broken surface
There where ripples, rocks and running
Turn and twist the mouth and nose and eyes.
Gaze instead upon the inner stream
Where the blood within your heart
Fills your veins and stirs your soul
Therein a different self
Fold within your bones and skin and hair and blood.
And nestle within the glowing shadows
That span the soul’s bright unending halls
Of cavernous wonder.
St. Michael: There, Joan. There inside
Awaits the palace halls of your desire.
There the castle towers of your fire.
Go then Joan.
Go to your king.
Go into France
Passed the wood
Beyond the field
The thatch and wattle
The daub and mud.
There will be your glory
And the glory of your people.
Joan: I hear.
I hear.
Clerk 1: Joan
Joan
This council calls you, Joan.
Inquisitor 1: Do you believe yourself capable of sin?
Of mortal sin?
Of sin that damns the soul
And leaves it sullied
To grieve eternal
In the flame unending
Of longing for that face divine
That is our yearning all?
That is that complement
Of man’s own natural bent?
Joan: I do not know your words.
Your words are so unlike
The council of my visions.
I do not know your words
But commend myself
To him whose voice
Has bid my doings.
Inquisitor 3: Blasphemy!
Inquisitor 5: Do you know the weight of your reply?
Do you know the measure of your words?
You speak to saints,
As so you say
To visions thin and born upon the air,
To bells and ringings and winter’s chill.
But our words,
The words of mother church
Whose vast halls of stone and glass
Echo out both loud and clear
To pierce the ear of wayward men
To bring their minds to truth,
To bring their hearts to truth
To bring their souls to truth!
This you do not hear?
.
Inquisitor 2: Her soul is lost in mortal sin
And darkened, so infects the ear
Each sin bound orifice
She sports before us.
The fleshed out image
Of her whore plague crimes.
Mortal sin
And unrepented.
Joan: Mortal sin?
Yes, I know of mortal sin.
But why if I were in this sin
Would voices sweet and kind
Bid me do such things so good as I have done?
Restored my king
And to him his crown.
If I were in this state of sin
Would not my saints
My Catherine dear
And Margaret loved
My Michael warrior at God’s side,
Would not my saints
From me and from my sin
Flee in horror stricken?
Inquisitor 3: Such presumption on your part!
Inquisitor 1: Do you defy our sacred office?
Inquisitor 2: Do you affront our holy laws?
Inquisitor 5: Further counts against your name!
Joan: If I guard and keep me maiden
And likewise keep
The pureness of my soul,
Then as virgin in body and heart
Will God protect me and defend me.
Inquisitor 1: (enraged)
You presume too much.
Inquisitor 2: Confess!
Voces: Confess, Confess!
Joan: And I would confess.
For never can one cleanse
The conscience all too much.
And when I do confess,
And should I be by mortal sin possessed,
Then surely my Lords here present rightly know
That this great sorrow
Is for my God and my confessor
Alone in silence dark to hear,
And not to be adjudged by this assembly.
(Lights down on Joan)
(Lights up on Peasant Women)
Woman 1 She’s not a normal that one.
Not a girl like mine
Or yours
Or any of the neighbors here.
Woman 2 Some thinks she puts on airs
And struts about to show herself
But I’m not one to say such things
Or meddle ‘bout her ways.
Woman 3: But at her age
You’d think by now
They’d a got her up as wife
Or at least as promised bride.
Woman 4: Wha dya talk
It’s nonsense then
Who’d take her on?
Robert the fool
Or club foot Pierre.
No whole built man
In back or brain
Would want the like a her.
Woman 3: Well what’s more than that
Is the gob she’s got
Sallow as goat piss
And sagged as its udder.
Woman 2: And it ain’t her face alone,
You’ll always find a man
Whose eyes is blind
To such as her,
And only want
What they get in the dark.
Woman 3: Muffle it up in the horse’s feed bag
To shut up all but them grey eyes.
Them big strange eyes
Always starin
Lookin at ya like ya got
Your old aunt’s ghost
Sittin behind your shoulder
Woman 4: Or like she sees some spider
Crawlin down from your hair
That’s ready to bite your neck
And she ain’t gonna tell
But let ya get bit
Like she wanted it ta be
To teach ya a lesson.
Woman 2 Ya talk the fool
Like she was some witch
Get on yer way!
Can’t ya see
She’s got air in the head
Like Matthew the beggar
Only he don’t run off
To visit the king
But sits in his corner
With his fleas and his lice.
Woman 1: But it ain’t just her face
Or her eyes
Or her look.
It’s what she has done
To her womanly self.
Look what she done!
What she done to her hair
She cut it up short
Bobbed up like a boy
Like a page or a squire
Or knight of the crown.
Woman4: What man would want a woman well
Who wears her hair
Cropped short like his?
Woman 3: Whose got the eye to see her hair,
Look what she done to the clothes she wears.
Cast off her skirt and blouse and shawl
No apron, pin afore or bib
Not cowell or kerchief on her head.
Like some soldier’s boy she wears a shirt
And britches tight against her legs.
Woman 4: Ya make me blush.
To hear such talk.
What ails this girl,
To make her so?
(Lights down on women. Up on the trial)
Inquisitor 2: How with repugnance we must look upon your dress.
Rejecting woman’s clothing
You have taken shirt and breeches
Hose joined to doublet with twenty points
Leggings laced on the outer side
And surcoat to the knees.
Inquisitor 1: Your hair you have cut in demi-round
Like a young coxcomb
And dagger and lance
You took to side.
Inquisitor 1: Now, think you not more fiiting.
That you cast off this tunic
That you put aside these britches,
These clothes which suit a man?
Inquisitor 2 It does not become a woman
To wear the clothing of a man.
Jeanne: It is not the clothing of a man I wear,
But the clothing of my king’s good soldier.
Inquisitor 2: But is not then a soldier a man!
Jeanne: Is not a soldier any who fights for his land?
Inquisitor 3: But does not a soldier wear a man’s costume.
Jeanne: Does not a soldier wear a soldier’s costume?
Inquisitor 1 (impatient and fierce)
Will you put on a woman’s dress?
Inquisitor 2: In prison they gave you a woman’s dress.
Jeanne: You have taken my woman’s dress.
Inquisitor 1: Your jailers gave you a woman’s dress.
Jeanne: And brought me here in soldier’s dress.
For you have denied me a woman’s ward
And shut me in the keep of men
You have shackled my feet
And bound my hands
In the lustful eye
Of your English guards
Who mock and deride
And threaten .....
Inquisitor 2: (interrupting) You talk in circles!
Inquisitor 1: (interjecting furiously)
Non induetur mulier veste virili-
Abominabilis enim apud Deum!
Let no woman wear the clothing of a man!
It is an abomination before the Lord!
Jeanne: I talk in French and in no Latin.
I wear the soldier’s dress,
Who fights for God and for his king,
And for the saints who bid me wear it.
(Lights come up on the soldiers and down on the court.)
Soldier 1: Rough did she speak against the English king
Soldier 2: And well against Bedford and all his men.
Soldier 1: The young boy in the squad
Soldier 2: The young boy with learnin
Soldier 1: From the monks he took his letters
He wrote it out for her
Soldier 1: Words she could say
Soldier 2: Say well with a full tone voice
Soldier 1: Like the voice of a fighter.
Soldier 2: Stronger than yours.
Joan: King of England
And you Duke of Bedford
Who call yourself regent of France
Do you right now before the King of Heaven!
Hand over to the Maiden
The Maiden now sent
Now sent by Heaven’s great king
The keys to those good towns
Which your villainy and greed
Has violated in this sweet France.
And if you will not so to do,
You shall see fall upon yourself
Your very great misfortune
If you believe not these tidings sent to you
Sent to you by this the maiden
She shall strike within your midst
And you shall cause your own great ruin.
For none shall hold the kingdom of France
But by God, the true heir, who is Charles my prince.
(Lights on the court - down on the soldiers.)
Inquisitor 1: We are fair and upright men
And it is our will
That in your favor
You should have
A counselor, an advisor,
One who will speak in your behalf
And in consideration
Of your unletterdness
Aid you in the comprehension
Of this most serious state.
Loiseleur:(with a parchment and quill in hand)
Hear me Joan.
Hear the words of comfort.
Abjure your testimony,
Forswear this uniform.
Believe me Joan,
For if you are willing,
You will be saved.
Put on your clothes,
The clothes of a maid.
Put down your arms,
Your sword and your shield.
Tend to your hair,
And shear it no more.
Grant what they wish,
Bend and abjure.
If you do not heed them,
Your life will be forfeit,
Your soul in great peril.
Do as I say,
And the church will embrace you,
Call you again daughter,
And ransom your soul.
Sign, Joan.
Sign and abjure.
Jeanne: Promise me that I may hear mass
If I wear a woman’s dress.
Promise me this,
And I will answer you.
Loiseleur: I promise that you may hear mass
If you wear a woman’s dress.
Jeanne: And what would you answer,
If I have sworn to God
And to my king
Never to put off
This tunic of war?
Loiseleur: Swear what you will!
Will you put off this manly garb
And wear a woman’s dress?
Joan: Then have it made,
This woman’s dress,
But modest in cut
With no train or trim.
Give me a cover for my head,
That I may hear mass.
And when I return
I shall put on these clothes that I now wear.
Loiseleur: Do you not hear?
Have you no sense?
Once and for all,
Will you abjure?
Put off these clothes
And cover yourself
In womanly dress
As a young maid should!
Joan: Everything I have said or done
Is in the hand of God
And so in all
I commit myself to him.
` I swear to you this,
That nothing would I do
That is against the Christian faith.
And should I learn
That I have done anything
Contrariwise to that faith
I would rip it from me
And cast it out.
(Lights down on the trial. St. Catherine appears.)
Catherine: There by the water,
Beneath the trees young yellow green,
In sweet spring’s purple misted April,
Pink blossomed coronets
In the young girl’s hair
Golden brown and black,
There Joan, you danced your dance,
Small toes, naked and white
Stirred the sand beneath your feet,
Bending the verdant locks of grass.
And from your fingers,
Pink and slender,
You raised the gentle garland high,
And in soft lilting called my name.
Joan: Saint Catherine, good Catherine,
Why do you forsake me?
Catherine: Forsake you, Joan?
Joan: I loved you.
Catherine: You loved me?
Joan: All my prayers,
Devotions
All upon my knees...
Catherine: Whose devotion?
Joan: Upon my knees,
Upon the earth,
Red with sun and black with mud,
Didn’t I kneel upon the rocks moss green?
Didn’t I bend to blue mantled heaven,
To white ermined clouds,
The princely array of God’s holy saints?
Catherine: Was it Catherine you loved?
Was it Catherine you heard?
Joan: And there in faith in holy church,
Knees upon the stone,
Gray and cold, humble
Beneath her arching vaults,
As though to suckle grace
From God’s bending belly.
Catherine: Joan, Joan,
Were you not weaned of mother’s milk?
Have you no teeth for crusty bread?
Joan: Oh! How you mock me!
You have called me, you have touched me,
With the voice within your heart.
In my innocence you have filled me,
Entered me, driven me,
With passion fired me
And with your love transformed my reason.
And now you, like a whore,
Forget the one who loved you so
(Lights down on Joan.)
(Up on Christine de Pisan and Baudricourt
Like all other characters not present at the trial, Christine and Baudricourt play in the orchestra area.)
Baudricourt: Good friend, good lady
You warm my heart to see you well
Christine: Baudricourt
Old fellow
Too long have you been away
Come sit by me
By my webs and weaving’s
Long white spinnings
And restore to them a bit of color
That since long ago
Has bled from their threads.
Baudricourt: My lady Christine,
Your youth and your vigor
still rush their spicy sap
Into those sharp gray eyes.
Don’t try to coyly pry from me
The compliments you know that you deserve
But that I am to short of wit to offer.
Christine: You are the wit, old Baudricourt
But not just to jest with me
In my listless wanderings,
You are the wit
of that witless king of yours
I’ve heard your doings in this new affair
This girl, this wonder they call the maid.
Baudricourt: A wonder she is
If truth be told
A peasant, a stripling
An unlettered girl
Who came to me one morning
And with words so convincing , so sure
And a face so set, more strong in sweetness than in will
She determined to me that I
Of all the men in France, that I,
Should lead her to Charles, the Dauphin.
For Charles, so she said, by God’s hand and hers
Would be king.
Christine: Tell me Baudricourt
Is she as they say she is?
Has my woman come to France?
The idyl of my imaginings
The rantings of my soul?
Baudricourt: Yes, my friend,\
It is as you have written
A city of women
In the walls of France.
Christine: Do not play with me Baudricourt
A fine soldier you are,
None better,
But a scholar.
There’s another thing!
You’ve not read my book
But play on the word
Of those that have
And scoffed along with them no doubt.
Baudricourt: Too well, my lady
You know me too well.
I have not read your books
My eyes dart across a worded page
In aimless coursing
Awkward at the phrase’s turn
But no eye is swifter to the arrow’s flight
Or the sword’s deft pass
In a battle’s mud and steel and smokey skies.
(Lights fade on Baudricourt. Christine is lit with a pin spot for her monologue.)
Christine: Long have I waited Baudricourt
So long that I thought it only a dream.
Even Anna on the temple steps
Waited no longer than I.
More than I can count
The wrinkles about my sallowed eyes
The fawn brown spots upon my skin
Have I seen snow’s white crystals
Melt to spring’s white blossoms
Upon the branches at my window
But now, now I rejoice,
Like summer’s upturned boughs
In prayer to the noon bright sun,
For these eyes, gray and heavy lidded
See a new light that shines from France’s crown.
To the new city comes a woman,
No, not a woman but a young maid,
Frail in flesh but steel in mind, and soul and heart.
In victory she has led her prince upon the throne.
For Were not you Charles,
on the 17th day of July
in splendor and glory
in the city of Reims
crowned seventh of that name
king of France
And this from a girl
from a maid
Oh! What honor for the female sex!
God’s love for it appears
for what 5ooo men could not have done
a girl of sixteen
who weighs not the armor she wears
but too her seem her very meat.
No not Hector, Nor brave Achilles
possessed such strength
For it is God’s love
that moves her on.
Pass then beyond all brave men
For it is the woman who shall bear the crown.
Arise, sweet France
Your daughter’s valiant cry
Has driven the enemy from your hearth;\
No more to rape and plunder
Your children in their beds.
Your daughter, sweet France,
Has done what no son could do,
For in this year, fourteen hundred and twenty nine
A virgin called forth a new dawn
And brought the sun to shine anew
Upon your gentle fields.
END ACT I
SCENE CHANGE- We return to the courtroom on stage. Joan is not present.
(SILENCE)
Inquisitor1: State your name woman.
Jacquinette: What did you say ?
Inquisitor1: Your name. Please give us your name.
Jacquinette: Name?
Inquisitor 2 The witness will give her name.
Jacquinette: Witless? My father called me witless.
My mother too.
Witless.
Inquisitor 1 Your name woman
Do you have a name?
Jacquinette: Name?
Inquisitor 2 Your name?
Jacquinette: Are you going to put me in prison?
Inquisitor: Woman, give us your name.
Jacquinette: I done nothin wrong
Don’t put me in prison.
They gots rats there.
I don like rats.
&