Alternative Ending

I owe my life to Emmanuel. He chooses, or pretends he chooses, not to attach any especial significance to his name, but I could not blame him if he did. He risked his own life to save mine, and he saved it. And he is, he always was, a good, kind, generous man. 

     So why do I feel as if I hate him at times?

     Why do I resent him and feel this urge to say cruel, hurtful, bitter words that nobody, or almost nobody deserves and certainly not Emmanuel?

     He risked his own life, and risked it twice, and the second risk was far more horrible in its implications than the first. I was prepared to take the first one myself. 

     He tells me that he worshipped me from afar, and though, may the Good Lord forgive me for such pride, I was not unaccustomed to men telling me that. In my defence, I didn’t read too much into it. I knew that I was little more than a symbol, and that if they worshipped anything, it was what I might do, and what I might lead them to do.

     There are even those who claim I was beautiful and radiant. What nonsense! Even Papa, who doted on me to an extent many thought foolish, believed it was a sin to tell a lie and that men would appreciate the fact that I “Came with a bit of land” and “Was smart – men like that, leastways, men who are worth bothering with, even if they make out they don’t.” I do have quite nice eyes, though some find it off-putting that they don’t really know what colour they are, and I had a decent skin, though at that time what they call prison pallor had temporarily spoilt it. 

     Yet Emmanuel did worship me from afar. What comes across as fake and facile on the lips of so many, or at least, something they think they believe that is not so, was true in his case. He treated me with the utmost respect, and even now I half expect him to call me Madame sometimes, but though he would not so much as let his arm carelessly brush against mine in some masque of flirtation, he would not hesitate to grab me by the arm to pull me back from danger.

     “I will help you,” he said, once. “Whenever you need me, I will help you. My whole life means nothing without you, and even if you can never feel the same about me, and I don’t blame you, and even if your heart and soul belong to duty and not love, I will still love you.”

     They were the words of some love-sick flattering lad, and yet they were spoken by a brave, devoted, compassionate man. And yes, they set something fluttering and echoing within that very heart and soul. Despite what you will hear to the contrary (and I’m not blameless in spreading this notion) I never stopped having the feelings and wishes of a woman, and despite their practical ways and strong arms, the women of my native land are passionate in their love.

     Emmanuel was not of the nobility, but was far more gently and highly born than I was. He had been taught at quite an early age to read and write, and his mother had never knelt on weary knees to scrub a floor, nor his father shivered in the small hours amid the muck and blood and glory of lambing. He was raised in a town, and though I learnt to cope with life in town, I never learnt to love it. I wonder if he knows that. Sometimes I think he knows everything about me and nothing. He has seen me exalted and has seen me humiliated.

     “I will save you,” he promised me, as he saw me in chains. And that was a simple, practical statement, a promise he intended to keep, even as his eyes glowed and his voice trembled ever so slightly – not with fear, but with intensity. Nobody could ever doubt the colour of his eyes – that deep, dark brown, like good fertile earth touched by the light of the sun. 

     “There’s no need,” I said, and tried to convince myself I meant it. I also knew he would ignore it.

     That day seems like a distant dream and yet as vivid and immediate as the sun that rose this morning. 

     I thought of Our Lord and how the people who worshipped him and flung palms in his path in homage brayed for his blood less than a week later. Not, of course, that I compared myself to Our Lord. He seemed close to me, and yet very far away. 

     Courage can seem to be firm and unwavering in our minds and souls, and yet, our bodies can still betray us. I was not afraid of pain. You can’t either be raised on a farm or fight in battle without developing a certain stoicism in the face of pain, a certain capacity to detach yourself from it. But I knew this would be beyond any pain I had ever felt or any pain I had ever feared or imagined. I had heard tell that there was sometimes a chance someone would act in mercy, and make the pain shorter, but I could not rely on that. And as I took that long walk, I began to pray not for courage, but for weakness, and that I would pass out quickly, and wake in the arms of Our Saviour. I did believe in that, I told myself, I did believe in that. Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and staff comfort me ……

     Yet there are times when even the most beautiful and comforting of words lose their strength to comfort. 

     And then my Emmanuel came. He came with a sword and with his own bright, brilliant courage, and he snatched me out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, though his own hands still bear the scars. He did not flinch. He carried me in his arms, his hands burnt and painful, to a refuge with a man he trusted, a man called Guillaume, who spoke few words, who was burly and rough in his ways, but who tended wounds with the tenderness of a mother.

     Now Emmanuel and I have been married for over twenty years, and he runs the biggest and best bakery in town – he even jokes that it is as well he does not fear those flames. We have two children, a son called Jean, who is already apprenticed to a saddler in town (Emmanuel half-hoped he would follow in his footsteps, but never tried to force him, as some fathers do) and a daughter called Isabelle, who is pretty as I never was, but still has my independent mindedness. She is a very capable baker, and Emmanuel has even begun to wonder if she could be his heir at the bakery, though such things, while not unknown, are definitely looked askance at. Both of them are healthy and loving, and we are well-blessed, though I still think of my little Madeleine, who was only given to us on earth for a couple of weeks.  I have a servant woman to scrub my floors, live in a fine stone house, and am respected in the town, where I doubt anyone now knows much of my past.

     Yet in the small hours of the night, which are really the small hours of the morning, I sit awake and I wonder. I think about how it could have been different, and this is often after waking from strange dreams, half-realistic, half-fantastical. And in them, I am not the baker’s wife, a pillar of the community, growing plump now, hair starting to grey, who will probably be forgotten by the townspeople a couple of months after I’m gone. I am Jeanne la Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans, the martyred heroine and saint of my people.

     I owe my life to Emmanuel. And he must never know of these thoughts.