I was awakened the next day, which was cloudy, by Louis shaking me. “Madame and Brother Antoine have long since left,” he said, “and I have let you sleep for hours. But I began to fear the Devil had taken your soul and you would never wake. Here.” He handed me bread—flat, stale, and hard—but I munched it gratefully, forgiving myself for the double laziness of sleeping late and of eating upon awaking.
Soon we were working our way through the throngs again, this time along the outside of the walls and across a field to the foot of the thin stone mountain at whose very top perched the chapel of Saint-Michel-d’Aiguilhe.
Below, where we were, was a building with a small eight-sided chapel attached, and two monks hurrying toward it carrying an old man between them. The man’s head lolled and I could see that he was ill. “How kind of the monks to take him home,” I said—for I thought the building must be where he lived.
Louis looked at me as if surprised, then took my hands in his and stretched me out at arm’s length from himself. “Why, friend healer,” he said, “the house where they take him is a hospital, where monks or nuns tend the sick, and the very old and young, and the infirm. Surely there is at least one such place near where you live!”
“I have not heard of it,” I said, gazing in wonder at the building. How I wished that I could go inside and see how the sick were cared for in such a place! But Louis was in a hurry to climb to Saint-Michel—and so was I once we began.
Only a few other pilgrims toiled along the rough-hewn rock steps that led up the narrow mountain. The way was not only steep but also open, with nothing to keep one from falling off the edge; the wind howled more fiercely around us with every step we took. I was ashamed of wanting to crawl like an infant, but after a gust of wind whipped my skirt around my legs and nearly blew me off, I did not mind what anyone thought. Louis, too, crawled a little. I tried to place my knees on the greening spring moss that grew between the loose stones of the path.
“I know not,” Louis panted, standing shakily, “how men can have built anything on so high a peak.”
We stopped at a tiny chapel partway up, in a cavelike resting place scooped out opposite where the drop at the edge was steepest. From there we could see the red-tiled roofs of Le Puy looking like small scraps of cloth below us. We fell into the scooped-out haven gratefully, both of us pale with fright—at least Louis was pale and I was frightened, and I think he shared my feeling. There were signs that people had stopped there before us: a bit of wool, a few crumbs, and a morsel of moldy cheese. “Too moldy even for birds,” Louis said when we left and were struggling to climb the last steps, and I answered, “It is too high and too windy for birds”—and then we were there, rewarded handsomely for our toil.
It was in this chapel, where only two or three others worshipped as we entered, that I began to understand something of what Jeannette must have felt in her parents’ garden, for here, atop this thin mountain, I felt closer to God than I ever had before. Saint-Michel-d’Aiguilhe was a simple building, with low stone arches inside, thick and humble and clumsy. Frescoes on the walls showed Christ and Saint Michael and angels and animals—the eagle of Saint John, the ox of Saint Luke, the lion of Saint Mark—and clouds and stars. But I was most drawn to a painted wooden cross, with a Christ so slender his limbs and body were the cross, and enormous eyes that looked startled as well as in pain at finding Himself so cruelly tortured. I stood there until Louis made a sign to me that he would wait outdoors. I nodded, but went on looking into those eyes, for I could almost feel the agony and the sadness of His suffering. I remembered what Messire Guillaume had often said about his dying for our sins. Christ was holy, of course, but what would it be like to die for others? Could I do that, I caught myself wondering, and felt myself blush with the shame of my presumption. Then I wondered, could Jeannette, if she went to war to save France?
Louis looked at me oddly when I came out, but he did not ask me what I had been thinking, and I was thankful for it.
The sky was darker by then and in it we could see the moon as well as the sun, a daytime moon, pale and dim. We scrambled back down to the cave-chapel, and sat there watching the sky darken even more and the moon brighten. Then the sun emerged again, and the moon dimmed.
“I sometimes think,” said Louis, “that the moon is God’s way of smiling on the world, on His sleeping children, and that He is most a loving Father when He shows us Himself in the moon.”
A monkish thought for a scholar-knight, I felt, liking him the more for it. “It is a nice idea,” I said aloud. “I wonder if Jeannette has such thoughts.”
“No,” said Louis emphatically. “Your Jeannette is too fierce for them, since she wishes to lead an army to crown the dauphin, and to fight! Though she is a woman, it seems to me she has a soldier’s mind.”
“But she is gentle,” I told him, “more gentle than I.” I waited, then dared to say, “I think I should be a soldier with her. I am stronger, and I am not gentle.”
“You are gentler than you think,” said Louis, as if he knew all the world’s knowledge. “And your Jeannette, I think, is not.” He looked into my eyes, as no one, not even Pierre or Maman, had ever looked. “I saw your face in there,” he said, “in the chapel. I cannot read your thoughts, Gabrielle, but the woman who thought them is strong without being fierce, for fierceness is anger. Your Jeannette is angry at those who keep the dauphin from his crown, and anger is needed now. If God has chosen Jeannette,” he said, holding out his hand, “and not you, that is why. Come.” He touched his hand to mine. “Let us go.”
