Jehanne: Chapter outline copyright (c) 2009 by Freeman Ng This is a young adult novel about the life of Joan of Arc that I'm currently shopping around to publishers. The entire book is written in the second person, from the point of view of Saint Margaret of Antioch, one of the Voices that Joan claimed spoke to her. You can read the first page of the book here. I've also written a second book, a retelling of the Quest for the Holy Grail, which you can see here. Chapter 1 - "The Butterflies of Domrémy" Joan begins to be visited by her Voices: the archangel Michael, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and the person through whose point of view the story is told: Saint Margaret of Antioch, a Christian martyr who lived almost exactly one thousand years before Joan. Sometimes, lying with Joan in the rustling grass of a meadow looking up at the stars, with your sight filled entirely by their distant brilliance, you imagine yourself that child again, lying on the roof of your house as you often did, dreaming of the future. In a thousand years, the stars have not changed. Chapter 2 - "The Regions of Light" Joan is called to save France by freeing the besieged city of Orléans and bringing the Dauphin (Charles the seventh, the rightful heir to the French throne) to Rheims to be crowned. A shimmer in the air catches your eye, and Catherine stands before you. You race over to her and bury your face in her chest. She holds you firmly, but when you look up into her eyes, you see they are fixed on Joan. "Catherine!" cries the child of Domrémy. "When will my time come? When will France be freed?" "Now," says Catherine. "The time is now." Chapter 3 - "The Gates of Vaucouleurs" Joan makes her first attempt to convince the garrison commander of nearby Vaucouleurs to send her to the Dauphin, but is rebuffed. For the first time, you understand that what you are sending her into is no small skirmish or village raid like the one that struck Domrémy, but War, perhaps even on the scale of wars in your own time, involving thousands of men and terrible engines of destruction. Chapter 4 - "The Maid at the Gates" Joan runs off to Vaucouleurs again, and this time, with the help of Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy, two officers whom she befriends, convinces the garrison commander to send her to the Dauphin. De Metz bows his head, a shadow framed by night, but the face of Bertrand de Poulengy glows in the torchlight. He draws himself up and takes one step, formal and processional, toward his despairing friend. "Orléans is not taken yet," he says. Chapter 5 - "The Palace of Dreams" Joan and her companions come to the temporary royal palace in Chinon, where the Dauphin tests her in various ways before agreeing to send her to Orléans. You become so distressed by these nightmares that you stop trying to enter Joan's dreams, but it does no good. Night after night, you are drawn into them anyway. You take to spending nights in her antechamber, and then in the common room or out on the balcony. You try visiting the dreams of Jean de Metz or Bertrand de Poulengy instead. No matter what you do, the moment always comes when you stand in that cathedral again, and then on the blood soaked bridge. Chapter 6 - "The Towers of Orléans" Joan leads the French defenses at Orléans to victory against the English besiegers. Just then, a roar goes up among the attackers in the field. It begins near the base of the Tourelles, and spreads swiftly outward in a wave. It is like the rumble of thunder that washes across the land. When it reaches the high ground where you stand, you shiver despite your bodiless state. "The Maid!" shouts de Metz, pointing toward the tower. "The Maid for France!" Chapter 7 - "The Road to Rheims" Joan leads the army to victory after victory in the Loire Valley, paving the way for Charles to march to Rheims to be crowned. "You're the Maid!” cries the boy. “Leave me alone, in God's name!" "Be still," she tells him. "I won't hurt you." "Witch! Devil!" Removing her helmet and laying down her sword, she kneels beside him, cradling his head in her hands. "Do I look like a witch to you?" Chapter 8 - "The Maid in the Court of the King" Margaret becomes alarmed by her growing realization that Joan is fated to die and that Michael and Catherine intend to do nothing about it, and finally forces her way into Michael's presence to confront him. Meanwhile, Joan chafes under Charles' inaction now that he has been crowned. She finaly rides out on her own initiative to the defense of threatened Compiègne, where she is captured by the English. Wiping your tears, you see with a shock that Michael is now speeding toward you across the landscape of light. He stands as still as always, but his hair and the flame of his sword stream backward in a long train behind him. He is already twice the size he normally appears and looms larger by the second. Soon, he dwarfs the landscape itself. His feet are mountains, his face a bloated, blazing sun. His sword, as he swings it down upon you, sweeps the stars from the sky. Chapter 9 - "The Maid of Antioch" At the capture of Joan, Margaret tries to transport herself into Michael's presence again, but instead, gets lost and finds herself in Antioch, where she lives out the last day of her life over and over, trying to find a way to escape her martyrdom. Was everything you went through really just a horrible dream? But it was so vivid: the crackling of the flames, the numbing cold of their touch. You look down at your arms lying above the covers; they're sunburned as usual but otherwise undamaged, though they do tingle a little, the way the flesh of your right hand did for hours after you held it as close as you could for as long as you could to a fire once. Chapter 10 - "The Bishop of Rouen" Joan goes on trial for heresy. That night, you and Joan soar among the butterflies as you have many times in the past, but even as you participate in her dream, a corner of your mind frets over her irrational gaiety. Does she think she’s going to escape this net the English have caught her in? Around and around she flies, rising so high at times that her fluttering friends cannot keep up and must circle below, waiting for her return. The air is clean and cold. The skies of her mind, bright and unclouded. Chapter 11 - "The Fire" Joan is burned at the stake. Later that night, when you feel that daylight must be just leaking into the skies above the castle, Joan slips off the tatters of her dress and begins to re-don the male clothing she wore during her year of military campaigning. She starts off tentatively, picking blankly through the various articles, but soon leaves all hesitation behind. She pulls on the undergarments and leggings; she expertly ties the bindings and snaps the buckles of shirt, vest, breeches, and surcoat. You watch all this in mute horror, for you know what it means: she is assembling her own coffin piece by piece around her. Nevertheless, as the lights begin to come on in the rest of the prison and cast their illumination into the cell, your heart leaps in momentary joy, for standing before you once more, tall and strong and unbound by any chains, is the Maid of Orléans. Epilogue - "The Ways of God" The future course of the war and the Trial of Rehabilitation, in which the original judgment of heresy against Joan is reversed, are recounted from the points of view of various major and minor characters. Though once upon a time, she sat right here beside you on this very bench, the figure of Joan of Arc appears more and more in your mind's eye in the colors of stained glass, distant and stylized, a prism through which the Divine Light once passed into the world. Freeman Ng Freeman@FreemanNg.net