JOAN OF ITALIA

Chapter 8

Jeanne the Pawn

(Author's Note: the story about the crucifix is traditional, and so is the story of the Englishman who feared divine punishment for killing a saint, though they were not necessarily the same man)

(Author's Note: since Michel is Italian, and Luke is reading an unedited document, I followed the European method of using dashes rather than quote marks to represent conversation inside his story.)

Joan and Adam were planning to do a day trip to Florence for Tuesday, and asked Luke to come along. Luke was tempted, because he had read about the famous dome and speculations on how the builders could have managed without modern technology. But he didn't to want sit through his sister's lovey-dovey flirtations with her new husband (as Grace had put it), and besides, he was curious about the story that Michel had sent him. The next morning, he caught a streetcar back to the students' district.

"Ah, bon giorno, Luke. What brings you here?"

"That story about Joan of Arc -- do you have other parts of it?"

"Ah, si, I have written the gran scena, but not the material in between."

"Could I see it?"

"Si-- you could have simply asked me to Email it."

"Yeah. I, um, wanted to read it on a side-trip, when I didn't have my computer with me."

"Fa bene, I will print it out. It is a pleasure that you are so interested in my story."

A few minutes later, Luke boarded a streetcar to nowhere, and read through the story while passing by the historical relics of two and a half millennia.

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---Greetings, Oidli, said the Temporal Computer. How did your mission to Constantinople go?

---Never mind that, Oidli 3 said. I was riding through a town and I heard a proclamation that "Jeanne la Pucelle" had been condemned by the Inquisition, and sentenced to burn as a witch. That's the girl I talked to just five years ago, isn't she?

---Do not worry. Everything is going according to plan.

---Do you mean that you have a plan to rescue her?

---No. A plan to use her death. Were she to be released now, there would be too much doubt about whether she has been inspired by God or the devil. The Inquisition has besmirched her reputation. But a heroic death will create a martyr, as it did in the case of Jesus of Nazareth's own death.

---Heroic death? You're talking about letting a girl be burnt alive!

---My analysis of her character is that she will be faithful to her ideals.

----Ideals? What ideals? To God and the saints? They never really spoke to her. I did. And I don't want her to be faithful to me. Her blood will be on my hands if she dies because I gave her a fake vision five years ago. I'm going after her, now.

-----Wait, Oidli! Do not run! You have not yet told me of Constantinople!

(At this point there was a break in the narrative)

----You must understand. I am the true sorcerer. The maid was the victim of my magic. You must release her.

Oidli trembled, realizing that if his ruse worked then he would be in danger of being burnt himself. His only hope was that his fellow time travelers would be loyal and rescue him, in spite of his defiance of the Computer's plan.

----The Inquisition has decided otherwise. Begone, said the Duke.

----But they did not have sufficient information.

----They had the guidance of a higher power.

Supposedly the officer meant God, of course, but Oidli realized who was really giving the orders. The English needed Jeanne declared a witch, because how otherwise could they explain her defeat of good English soldiers? Having her instead revealed as somebody else's tool would not suit their story.

(Another break)

Jeanne was tied to the stake, dressed only in a flimsy robe that failed to cover her lower legs or her cleavage. The women of Oidli's culture would see nothing wrong in dressing like that, but by contemporary standards she was nearly naked, and that was part of her degradation.

-----I have a last request, she called out.

-----You are not in a position to make requests, said the Duke of Bedford.

-----I wish to behold a cross as I die, that I can think on my Redeemer.

-----It is a holy wish, said the friar, turning to the Duke.

-----We have not the time. Continue with the execution.

Soldiers threw more logs around the stake. The official executioner held aloft a torch.

-----Ma'amselle! cried a voice near Oidli. Look on this.

An English soldier had tied an arrow to his pike so that the two weapons formed the shape of a crude cross, and was holding it up so that Jeanne could see it. Oidli was humiliated; this enemy was doing more to help Joan than Oidli himself.

-----Merci, kind sir.

-----Put that down! ordered the Duke in annoyance.

-----For shame! You would remove a symbol of God? said the friar.

The Duke was annoyed, but clearly he could not argue with the Church when he needed them to justify his killing.

------Burn the witch.

Oidli could not look. He averted his eyes, but the sound of the tormented girl still reached his ears.

-------Augggh! May God and the saints receive my soul!

The English soldier with the cross was of sterner stuff: he looked at the burning victim, but with an expression of horror. He had done more to ease her dying agony than Oidli himself.

----- We are lost! We have burnt a saint!

(end of fragment)

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Luke was rattled by his reading, and not only by the gruesome ending. To Michel, of course, Jeanne d'Arc was simply a mysterious historical character around whom he could write an exciting story. To the Girardis she was far more. Even Luke's mother, who knew nothing of her daughter's weird activities, had considered her daughter a proper model for her painting of Jeanne d'Arc. Luke's sister had been fascinated by her namesake ever since Driesbach's history class. But none of them had squarely faced the question: did God abandon Jeanne d'Arc to die horribly? And could He do it again?

Three years ago Joan had had conventional but vague notions of God. Once convinced that He existed, she took for granted that He matched the common notions of Him: that he was all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good. Luke had approached theology from a different angle. Basically he accepted God's existence because Einstein did, as a highly abstract entity representing the law of the Universe. Merging that with Joan's friend had been difficult; it was like particle-wave duality, where you simply had to believe two things at once.

In Michel's story a distinctly un-godlike meddler had used special effects to bamboozle Jeanne d'Arc into thinking she was inspired by God. Could the same thing have happened again, five and a half centuries later? Sir Arthur Clarke, in a witticism known to all science nerds, had remarked that a sufficiently advanced technology could be indistinguishable from magic. Luke had even considered the possibility a year ago when Joan had first told him her secret. But "God"'s rescue of Grace's suicidal mother, and the general thrill of befriending such a powerful being, had lulled his suspicions. Now they were coming back.

Luke had been in Europe three days, and the general psychological effect on him was to help him see things a new way. Here there was a cynicism about God, that he was unused to. Modern Romans would look around at 500 year-old churches and think, not of the Glory of God, but a fallen theocracy that had pretended to speak for the Almighty. Was "God" tricking Joan? Would he lure her to an early death if it suited his purposes? He had, after all, let her lose Judith and suffer an attack of Lyme Disease. Should Luke be protecting his sister?

"La Fine!" called out the conductor. The streetcar had reached the end of the line, wherever that was, and Luke was the only one on it.

"Sorry," he called out in English. "I passed my stop by accident and thought I'd get off on the way back."

The conductor shrugged. "Un euro."

"OK." He got out the money and handed it to the conductor, who seemed satisfied. The streetcar made a loop and headed back toward the center of Rome. But Luke knew that his own thoughts were not going to return to their own courses any time soon.

TBC