I remember very little about my journey. I saw few people along the way, for most were afraid of the war, and so declined to travel. I kept to the road Pierre had shown me, and one morning, I saw the walls of a great estate ahead, and I shouted to a passing peasant, “What place is that?”
He, keeping some distance away, called, “Why, leper, that is the Dominican convent of Saint-Louis-de-Poissy, and no leprosarium.”
“Thanks to you all the same,” I replied, pleased that the convent was named for the saint of my own dear Louis, and I walked toward it.
I came to a low gate set into the wall, so I went aside and pulled off my shroud. From it, I fashioned a rough skirt so at least the nuns would see I was a woman, for of course I could not hope to gain entrance as a man. I tried, too, to comb out my hair, which was full of tangles and leaves and hay, and lice, too, I have no doubt. It had grown, and though it was long for a man, it was still short for a woman, and as unruly as ever.
And then I went to the gate and knocked.
“What would you?” asked a small voice, and then out peeped a head. I saw a nun’s dark habit and a white wimple surrounding a fresh young face with refined features. Then came a gasp and a sharp “Mon Dieu!” and the nun looked as if she were about to shut the gate again.
“I mean no harm,” I told her quickly, “despite my rough appearance. My name is Gabrielle de Domremy, and I have traveled long and far to see Madame de Pisan, who I am told lives here.”
The nun looked doubtful. “Madame is very old,” she told me, “and often sick, and sees no one.”
“Perhaps you could tell your prioress,” I said, knowing I should mention her as well, “that I have traveled with Jeanne the Maid and her brothers, and have …”
“Ah, the Maid!” exclaimed the nun. “We have heard of her. It was she who had King Charles crowned, is it not? Our prioress is his sister,” she went on, “but”—she looked at me kindly—“all are great ladies here, I am afraid.”
“I am sure they are,” I said, feeling weariness sweep over me, “and I am not one, as you see. But I must speak to Madame de Pisan even so. Say”—I cast about for something plausible that would not be too great an untruth—“say I have come from the Maid.”
Well, it was true in fact, although what it implied was not.
The nun nodded, and, saying apologetically, “You will have to wait here,” she closed the gate and left me.
I sank down weakly upon the ground, hardly caring what transpired next, for all my energy was spent.
But in a while—I know not how long—the nun returned, and opened the gate to me. “The prioress says you may come in,” she told me, “and that you may see Madame, for she spoke with her, and Madame is curious. But I did explain that you have been traveling—and she has ordered me to—to take you to our infirmary, there to wash and put on some other garments.”
I nodded, wondering with wry amusement if she had noticed that my skirt had begun life as a shroud and my bodice was what was left of a warring page’s tattered doublet.
She led me through the gate and across a lawn so green and lush I wanted to lie down upon it and sleep there forever, dreaming of my Louis. Above me I heard the sweet song of a thrush, and I could smell perfume from the tall blue and yellow flowers that nodded at me as I passed. The cruelties of war and want had not touched here; it seemed another world.
The nun led me to one of several gray stone buildings and put me in the care of an older, buxom nun with a heavily lined face and rough red hands. “I am Sister Georgette,” she said, with controlled disapproval in her voice, “the infirmarian, and I have been told to prepare a bath for you. Follow me.”
She led me past rows of beds in a pleasantly light and airy room. Some of the beds were occupied, and I realized dimly I was again in a hospital. Under my sorrow stirred the thought that perhaps I could work here, could learn. But I said nothing; Sister Georgette, I felt, would not be willing to teach me until she had seen beneath the layers of dirt and until I could show her a mind less stupefied with grief.
She took me into a chamber with fresh rushes on its stone floor and a higher window that let in light but little air, so there was no draft. Lay sisters came with ewers of steaming water, which they poured into a wooden tub. Sister Georgette assisted me out of my poor clothes, averting her face, not for politeness, I think, so much as for the stench that must have come from me.
The water acted as balm to my tired body; I sank into its warmth, and knew no more.
When I woke, I was lying in the softest, warmest place I had ever known, and an elderly woman with a sweet pale face, holding a book in her lap—a book!—was smiling at me. “You rejoin us at last, Gabrielle de Domremy,” she said. “How do you feel, now that you have rested?”
“I—I feel better, madame, thank you.” I struggled to sit up.
“I am glad. I am Christine de Pisan,” she said, putting a graceful hand for a moment on my stubby one, “and when you are better still, you must tell me your story. I see from the medal you wear that you have been to Le Puy, and I am told you have traveled with the Maid, France’s fair savior. Rest now; we will talk of all this in time.”
Then she left, and I sank back again into warmth, feeling more content than I had in many days.
But later that night, I dreamed of Louis; we were wed, and lying together in a bed as soft as the one in which I now was. And then Death came, with great black wings, and took him from me, and I woke with a cry. When memory returned, I wept sorely.
Soon the same sweet-faced woman was beside me again. Without speaking she took my hand and held it, rubbing my shoulders as I wept. When I was quiet, she said softly, “You have seen much, my child; is that not true? And lost a love, perhaps?”
“Oh, yes, madame,” I said, and I told her of Louis as if she had been my mother, and tired her, I fear.
She listened patiently and then she said, “You will not believe me now, but the grief will ease. I, too, have lost a love—my husband, long ago. We must find occupation for you; you said you and your Louis spoke of learning, and you of medicine. I have some books that might interest you …”
“Alas,” I said, “I cannot read, only a few letters. Louis did not have time …”
Here I wept again.
“Perhaps I have more time than he,” she said. “I shall help you learn. You are a brave young woman, and”—she smiled and pushed my damp hair away from my face—“you must tell me of the Maid, whom I greatly admire.”
“Oh, yes, madame,” I said eagerly, overcome by the thought that she could continue what Louis had started, and I could learn to read for him—for me as well, but at that moment, it was for him that I wished to learn, to finish what he had begun. “The Maid’s brother was greatly pleased to hear of the poem you wrote about her …”
And so began a quiet time, during which I healed, and studied, and began another life.
Christine de Pisan had a small hut, the back of which was set into the convent wall, with a door there as well as in front, so it was reachable from both inside the grounds and out. It was a trusted place, for the convent was strict about allowing outsiders onto its wide grounds. No one but the nuns could sit in the beautiful walled garden with its many fruit trees, or walk in the park among the deer and hare, wild goats and rabbits, or sit by the fishponds. The only place besides Madame Christine’s hut where visitors, be they men or women, were permitted was the parlor. Madame Christine herself had been entertained in it, years earlier, when visiting her daughter, who had taken vows there. Then Madame Christine had left, but she had returned to the convent later, seeking refuge from the war, saddened by it—as was I. And because the prioress loved Madame’s writing, and wished her to help instruct the young nuns, she let her live in the small hut, which had originally been built for receiving supplies and storing tools.
It was to that hut that Madame took me when I was recovered, and after I had met the prioress, who gave me permission to stay, for she felt kindly toward Jeanne because Jeanne had made her brother king. And it was there, as the chill of autumn came to us on the wind, that Madame taught me the letters Louis had not, and then the words they could form. It was a precious day when she put a book into my hands, its pages thick and beautiful. “This book is French, Gabrielle,” she said, “unlike much written about the art you love, so you should be able to read it. I think it will interest you greatly.”
When I looked at it more closely, I was amazed to see that it told how infants are delivered, and how to comfort new mothers and care for babies, and how to treat the ills of women.
“A wise and learned woman, Dame Trotula, who lived in Salerno, in my country of Italy, more than three hundred years ago, wrote this,” Madame said, smiling, “and here it is in French. Her knowledge is sound, even though she lived so long ago.”
I looked up at her, hardly knowing how to thank her, hardly able to speak.
“You will be midwife, physician, and surgeon, too, Gabrielle, if books can make it so.”
And so every day, in an uncomfortable gown of thick brown stuff given me by Madame, I sat by the small window in Madame’s hut, or outside on a bench by the door where the birds sang sweetly, and I struggled eagerly to read Dame Trotula’s book. At first it went slowly, but the more I read, the more I found I could read, and it was like having a midwife like Maman at my side. Dame Trotula wrote of much that I knew, and much that I had seen but did not understand—like the elongated dead twin that time long ago in Domremy—and I stored all that I could absorb in my mind. Madame Christine sat nearby, sewing or writing, sometimes softly singing, and helping me with the difficult words—and always, always smiling when our eyes met. Some days she did not feel well, and I remembered that the nun at the gate had said she was often ill. But she never complained, and I could not diagnose any illness, though she had a swelling of the ankles and feet, and some shortness of breath.
Sometimes she talked of her past, of her girlhood in Italy, where the sun, it seemed, always shone, and of her young womanhood in France, where her father was a physician and astrologer at King Charles V’s court. She had married at the age I had left Domremy. Her husband was a man called Etienne, whom she loved as I loved Louis, and she bore him three children. “And then,” she said, taking my hand and looking deep into my eyes, “he died when I was but twenty-five, soon after my father had also died, and, Gabrielle, I thought the world had ended, for my world surely had. I had nothing, no means of livelihood, and my children and my mother and my niece were all dependent on me. I was so full of grief I could not think, or move, for a long time.
“But my father had taught me well, and I slowly began finding peace in study, as you are doing even now. I thought much on woman’s lot, and men’s abuse and also men’s kindness, and in time I began to write. God allowed me to earn a modest income with my pen, to keep myself and my family. I still, though I am an old woman, long for my Etienne, as you will doubtless long for your Louis. But I think you will find comfort in study, as I did. You can, if you wish, also find it in work, for our Sister Georgette is not young, and there is no one to follow her. The prioress has said that you may learn her tasks if you wish, and tend the nuns when they are sick. You could perhaps tend the village women, too, when they are with child, for the midwife lives some distance from here, and prefers to stay closer to Paris, where payment is better.”
And so work was added to my day’s activities, and how I welcomed it! Sister Georgette’s hands were, as I have said, red and rough, for she believed in bathing the sick often, in hot water strewn with fresh herbs. Nicolas had spoken of this too, as being beneficial in healing wounds, but he and I had little way to bathe men at the edge of battle and in the open air. Sister Georgette’s hands were also painful from an inflammation of the joints, which I was able to ease for her somewhat with flax and honey mixed with oil, and by rubbing at the end of the day. Gradually, she let me do more and more of the work, and the nuns were sweet to me, most of them, when they were ill or needed to be bled, which I disliked doing, for the blood tongs and the blood cloths reminded me too much of tending the wounds of war.
Soon Madame began to teach me Latin, for even though most of the few books the nuns had were in French, she herself had two Latin ones that she was anxious to have me read. They were written by one Hildegard of Bingen, a German abbess, and were very old, but I could see from the one I looked at most, called Physica, which was full of artfully drawn pictures of herbs, that this Hildegard understood healing well. The other book, Causae et curae, which I could not read till much later, was a study of diseases and their cures. In it she spoke much of how girls develop into women, and how infants form inside their mothers. This book, too, was of great help to me in my work.
One snowy day that winter, when I rose before Madame to make up our fire, and looked around the hut, thinking how content I was and how, in many ways, I had at last found what I sought, though I had lost much in the finding, Madame stirred in her bed and moaned softly. I ran quickly to her, alarmed. “Madame, what is it?” I asked. “How may I help?”
“It is nothing, Gabrielle, except perhaps the infirmities of age.”
But her face was pale and her skin was clammy, and her breath came shallowly. I felt her heartbeat, with her permission, for the heart often fails or overworks when one is old, and it was racing, then slowing, with uneven space between the beats. Quickly I made a weak tea of dried foxglove and gave it to her to drink. In time her heart quieted and she wished to go to her table to write.
“I think you should stay abed, Madame,” I told her.
“But, child, there is work to do!”
“None that you cannot do in bed,” I told her, putting on a severe look to make her laugh, which it did. And I handed her a stylus and her inkhorn and parchment, and a flat board to serve as a table across her lap. “You can write where you lie,” I said, and I put all the soft things I could find—shawls, coverlets, cloths—behind her back to support her comfortably. “There, now you are a great lady in her chamber, lying abed all day from dalliance.” We both laughed, for of course she was a great lady, though she no longer lived like one, and dalliance was unknown to her.
At times I grew discouraged at the amount there was to learn, for it seemed to me that the more I read of illness and wellness and the human body, the more there was I did not know, and the more mysteries there were to unravel. Once, when I put my aching head down on my book, Madame said softly, “You must not give up, Gabrielle. Though you cannot, it seems, study in Paris, you can study much on your own, and so become as great a physician as Jacoba Felicie, or Joanna, or Margaret of Ypres, or Belota the Jewess, or even Dame Trotula, and many others—women all, and learned as you will be. Each one, Gabrielle, helps the next, and so when you are discouraged, you must think of the women who will follow you, and those who will follow them, until the day when women may practice medicine as much as men, and as legally. For I believe that women can do nearly all things as well as men if they wish it and the need is there—though,” she added playfully, “until I knew you and heard of Jeanne the Maid, I would not have included feats of arms!”
We both laughed then, and I squeezed her hand, and thought how much I loved her.
We spoke much of war, also, for I was struggling to understand what I had done and what I had helped do, and what Louis had done as well. The picture of him cleaving that Englishman’s head rose often in my mind. I felt that Louis’s sin that day had been beyond the need of battle, and so I prayed much for his soul. I prayed for Jeanne, too, and for all the good people who fought with her. If war was evil, then were they not all doomed? And if war was evil, surely the Crusades were evil as well, even though the Church called them holy. How could war on God’s behalf be good if war itself was evil? Surely the English and the Burgundians thought their cause was as just and perhaps as blessed by God as we thought ours! I knew Jeanne had said she liked not killing, and that she had helped that dying English soldier to confess, but she still led troops into battle, to kill and to maim …
I wrestled with these thoughts, but found no answers.
Then one day Madame and I were sitting by our fire, and I was stroking one of the convent cats, a pretty, gentle fellow, orange-and-white-striped, who had come inside out of the winter’s cold to warm himself. He was purring, but suddenly the sound stopped, and his body stiffened. He sprang off my lap and onto the floor, where he pounced on a mouse that had scurried from behind the wall, unseen by us till the cat moved.
He batted at the mouse, covering it with his paw, and I leapt to my feet, crying, “No, no!” I ran to the cat, cuffing him aside to free the mouse.
The cat, blinking at me in surprise, sat back on his haunches and cleaned his whiskers.
“You,” said Madame softly when I returned to my seat, “are like the Maid after all.”
I turned to her, astonished.
She nodded. “Oh, yes, my little Gabrielle, you are. For the cat had in his paw a helpless being, as the English had France, and you made war on him, as our French have made war on the Engish. Does God frown on you for punishing a bully?”
The thought startled me, and I lay awake that night wrestling with it. I heard the bells ring for Matins, and did not fall asleep till nearly Prime, when it was time to rise again.
