I spoke to no one of my feelings, but I think my mother knew them. It would have been hard for anyone close to me not to, for thinking of my brother’s position had made me see that to which I had been blind before.
But soon, Maman began instructing my younger sisters to do much of my household work, and she taught me more healing lore. She herself dreaded some of it, she told me, like the putting together of broken bones and the stanching of bleeding wounds, fearing she would hurt more than heal. So it was that one day when she was called to a child who had fallen from a loft and hurt his arm, I went with her, carrying her basket of boneset and crushed feverfew and lemon balm in case the child was faint as well. He was screaming with pain when we arrived, and Maman’s face grew pale when she saw the arm, bent back in the wrong direction. Her mouth tightened into a firm line that I knew was to disguise her fear.
But the child’s pain and terror pushed all fear from my mind. It was as if I did not exist except as a means of helping, almost as if I were a vessel into which God poured, if not knowledge, then at least a sense of what must be done. I knew what an uninjured arm looked like, and had felt the bones of my own shoulder to discover how they went together, as indeed I had studied my whole body in secret to understand how it worked. “Let me,” I said quietly to Maman, and when she moved willingly aside, I smiled at the child and said, “I must touch your arm, little one, and it will I think hurt very much worse for a short while and then I think it will be very much better. At least this is what I hope and pray,” I added, looking up at the child’s worried parents.
They nodded, and the mother held him as I felt his shoulder with my fingers, keeping my eyes closed so that my fingers could see. It was as I had thought. The part of the arm that fits into the shoulder had come out; it did not seem broken off so much as twisted and loose. The child screamed louder when I touched him, exploring, but I had to close my ears and my heart to that—though afterward Maman said I had set my teeth as if to prevent adding my scream to his. I felt the part that had come out, and felt as much as I could of where it belonged. Then I pressed it with the heel of one hand and with the other supported the place in which I knew it should fit. And—I still thank God for this, for had it gone wrong I might never have continued with my work—the bone slipped neatly back.
The child stopped mid-scream and stared at me as if I were not human.
“Is it better?” I asked him, daring to smile. “Hmm?”
He nodded, as if he could not speak, and his mother, with a cry, seized me and hugged me close. “Merci, merci,” she said. “Thank you, thank you! It is a miracle your daughter has wrought, madame,” she said to Maman.
“She has a gift for healing,” Maman said modestly, accepting the eggs the father gave us in payment.
Once we were outside, though, she hugged me, too.
That same winter, Jeannette’s friend Mengette told me Jeannette had gone away again with her cousin Laxart, secretly, without telling her parents—“for fear,” Mengette said, “that they would stop her.” And then Pierre told me that when the d’Arcs had found her gone, Jacques was angry and Isabelle worried, and that word had come to them that Jeannette was staying with a family in Vaucouleurs. “She is determined to see Robert de Baudricourt,” he said, “and it seems no one can stop her.”
Soon all the village was talking of it, and then Pierre said that she had seen Baudricourt and that he had given her a horse to ride and men to follow her. “And armor,” Pierre told me outside the church one cold February day. “Laxart came to us and said that she has been given men’s clothes—leggings, a tunic, hose—and that she has a horse that cost 16 francs; she will ride on it to Chinon to see the dauphin.”
“Men’s clothes!” I said in awe and envy, lifting the skirt of my red dress, on which I had often tripped.
Then Jeanne Baudot, whom Pierre was soon to marry and who stood there with us, said, “But surely that is a sin, for a woman to wear men’s clothes?”
“If a woman is to ride among men as a soldier,” Pierre said sternly, “she had better wear men’s clothes. You do not know what beasts men are, my Jeanne.” He slipped an arm around her waist and she giggled, raising her eyebrows at me.
“And you, Pierre,” she asked, flirting. “Are you a beast?”
He laughed, and pulled her closer to him, and I thought it best to leave them. But all the rest of that day I thought about Jeannette, remembering the prophecies and the time at the Ladies’ Tree when we had heard her say that she did not know how to wear armor or ride in a saddle or lead an army.
That night I thrashed on my straw pallet, and more than once Paulette and Marguerite beside me grumbled and asked me to be still or get up. When at last I slept, I dreamed I myself rode a war-horse, in armor, and held a sword. I woke drenched in sweat despite the cold, and knew it was a sinful dream, for no saint had come to me and told me I must do this. And yet, though I knew Jeannette was more pious than I, I felt much more suited than she to lead an army into war. It was I, not Jeannette, who hated to spin and cook; it was I who had played with boys; it was I, alone among the girls of our village, who had fought the boys of Maxey.
But I had not been chosen.
For days I went morosely through my chores, pretending to ignore the rumors that now flew thicker than blackbirds around the village. Jeannette’s name was on all lips, with shock and disbelief as well as praise—and under it all, a spark of hope for France.
Only Pierre and my mother seemed to know of my distress, Pierre because he felt it, too, often saying that he wished to go with her, and my mother because she, as always, saw into my heart.
Later that cold spring, Maman said to me, “What do you think, Gabrielle? Jeannette’s mother tells me that she herself will go soon to Le Puy, far to the south, to pay homage to the Black Virgin in the cathedral there. The Virgin, Isabelle says, is a famous statue of Our Lady, but with black skin, very old and very holy. And this year, since Annunciation Day falls on Good Friday, it is a year of Jubilee in Le Puy. Many pilgrims will go there, and Isabelle told me she will go herself and would welcome a woman’s companionship on the journey. I cannot go, nor can any other wife, it seems, and Isabelle’s own daughter must be in Chinon by now, if what everyone says is true.” Maman gave me a little poke, as well she might, for I was still mystified. Her words seemed more than gossip, but I could not yet tell what lay beneath them.
“Isabelle will stay,” she continued, “as pilgrims do, at inns and monasteries along the way.” At this her eyes sparkled like a mischievous child’s and she poked me again. “Monasteries, Gabrielle, where the monks grow herbs and study healing!”
I held my breath then. “A woman’s companionship?” I managed to ask.
“Oui,” she answered, smiling. “Yes. I think I could spare you here if you would like to go, and if your father agrees.”
And so it was that I went with Isabelle Romée to Le Puy, and my long journey and my new life began.
