Sparrow by Michael Morpurgo Page B

be done, Joan,” her father was saying, reaching forward across the table to grasp her hands. “Today, when the Dauphinis crowned, you will have done enough, done all anyone could ever have expected of you. Come home with me, Joan. Come home.”
    “You think I do not want to, Father? You think I haven’t seen enough of this killing? You think I’m not tired of it? Oh, Father, I long to lie again under my apple tree and dream my dreams, to sit spinning beside Mother, to go wandering in the fields with Hauviette. I long for it. But my work is not finished. My voices tell me I may not rest until the last of the enemy is driven from the soil of France. I must listen to them, you know I must. Have they not always been right? Have they not always protected me? They will never abandon me. They have promised me. Dear Father, no more pleadings, no more entreaties; else you will weaken my resolve. And no matter what happens, I must be strong for France, strong for my Lord in Heaven.”
    On the day of the coronation they breakfasted together with Uncle Durand and her two brothers and d’Alençon. It should have been a joyous affair, but it was not. The impending parting of their ways hung over them like a shadow.
    As she rode at her king’s side that day through the streets to the cathedral, she was blind to the rapture and adoration all around her, deaf to the blessings they called out to her. Belami sat on the pommel of her saddle and she stroked him with her finger, just as she did when she was in bed and crying herself to sleep.
    All through the glittering ceremony, the anointing of the royal head, and the crowning itself, the tears welled in her eyes and would not be held back. Tears of joy, the people thought, but they were not. This crowning was all she had strived for. She had achieved the impossible injust a few short months, yet she could not rejoice in it.
    That same evening her father prepared to leave for Domrémy. “I came here to bring three children home,” he told her. “I leave with none. Neither of your brothers will leave your side. No father in France can be sadder than I am today, and none prouder either. Go then, if you must, and chase the Godoms out of France. But when you have done it, come home, Joan. We shall be waiting for you.”
    Joan could not bear to watch him go, but ran inside and hid herself in her room. “Sometimes, Belami,” she said, sitting on her bed, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth, “sometimes I know things even my voices have not told me. I shall not see him again, Belami, nor hear his voice, not on this earth, not in this life. I know it, butI must not think of it. There is Paris still to take. There is still God’s work to be done, and I must be about it. I must go to the king. We must take Paris at once. There must be no delay.”
    But there was nothing but delay. The new King Charles, basking in the glory of his coronation, strutted about his court like a puffed up peacock. “Patience, Joan,” he told her. “If things go my way, we shall take Paris without ever lifting a sword.”
    “How?” Joan demanded.
    And the king, surrounded as he was by La Trémoille and his friends, all of them deeply envious of Joan and only too happy to see her thwarted, put his arm around her, and said cryptically: “You will see, Joan. You will see.”
    For days on end the king would say nothing more, and then at last he summoned her to him. He was waving a scroll at her as she came in. “Yousee Joan? I have it. I have it from the Duke of Burgundy himself. Peace. I have his word, his promise. In fifteen days he will surrender Paris to us. What do you think of that?”
    “I think it is a trick,” Joan replied. “You have been ill advised, Charles. Ask yourself why he should ask for fifteen days if it is not to reinforce his garrison with English soldiers. You have been fooled, and not only by the Duke of Burgundy, but by La Trémoille and your own advisers, too. I tell you