Sparrow by Michael Morpurgo Read Free Book Online Page B

Jean de Metz. “That’s why I did what I did, why you did what you did, and why the Dauphin will do just as she tells him to.” He clapped Robert on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Robert. She’ll make your name in history. Yours too, Bertrand, and mine. God help the poor English Godoms, when she gets amongst them.”
    “God won’t help the English,” laughed Bertrand. “I think you’ll find Joan will make quite sure of that!”
    But still Joan did not leave at once for Chinon, as she had hoped. Robert de Beaudricourt was having second thoughts. He sent a succession oflearned priests to question her and examine her, to be quite sure she was who she claimed she was. All of them came suspecting her to be a witch, and left overwhelmed and convinced by her piety, by her sincerity. As word of the miraculous Maid got about she found herself invited into the houses of the great and the good – many of them, until now, known sympathisers of the English cause. Much encouraged, Joan always went and was always disappointed. These people, she soon discovered, were not in the slightest bit interested in joining her to drive out the English as she had hoped, but wanted instead only to have their ailments healed by her, by her ‘miraculous’ powers. After weeks of this nonsense and still no reply from the Dauphin, Joan had had enough. She stormed into the great hall of the castle and sought out Robert de Beaudricourt, her eyes on fire with anger.
    “You told me I could go! You told me! Do you want me to sit here while France collapses all around us? This very morning at my prayers, my voices told me news of the Dauphin’s army, how they have been driven from the field at Rouvray. I told you that he should not let his soldiers take the field, not until I was with him. Did you not tell him? Does he want to lose all of France to the English? Does he want to lost his kingdom?”
    “I have heard nothing of any battle at Rouvray, nor anywhere else,” said Robert de Beaudricourt. “If there had been a battle, do you not think I should have heard of it?”
    It was two days later when the news came that the Dauphin’s army had indeed been routed, and at Rouvray just as Joan had said. At long last his doubts were over. Robert de Beaudricourt believed her. Even he could see that there was no other wayshe could possibly have known of the battle. It had to have been some kind of divine revelation. She did not need to wait any longer. She could go to the Dauphin, he said, but even now he would not part with a penny piece to help her on her way. In the end it was the people of Vaucouleurs who raised the sixteen francs needed to buy Joan the horse she would need for the journey.
    Dozens wanted to go with her. But dozens would be conspicuous. In the end there were just seven of them: Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy, their servants, Richard the Archer, a deaf-mute fabled for his strength and his uncanny accuracy with a bow and arrow, and Joan herself. Enough to afford some protection, they hoped, but not too many to attract attention. Their road would take them through the heartland of occupied Burgundian territory. Even if they did manage to avoid themarauding Burgundians, the forests were thick with robbers and malcontents. It would be a journey fraught with danger.
    Joan could not have cared less about this. She just wanted to be on her way. “They worry so much, Belami,” she told him one night. He always perched close to her at night, close enough so she could reach out and touch him. These days, it was the only time Joan could be alone with him. With Joan so lauded and fêted wherever she went, they could scarcely ever be alone as they used to be, and they both missed the quiet intimacy of each other’s company. “We’ll get through somehow,” she went on. “I know we will. My voices say we will. They want me to dress as a man. They tell me that as I am a soldier now, I must look like one. But I so like my red skirt.