Chapter Eight - Trial by Cowards

CHAPTER EIGHT

Trial by Cowards

ROUEN, 1431.
JOAN is nineteen.
She’s been a prisoner for nearly a year.
Chained, alone, denied Mass, denied a lawyer, denied everything but the voices in her head and the men who want to silence them.

The trial is a joke.

It’s not run by the Church.
It’s run by the English.
But to make it look holy, they stack the room with pro-English clergy — dozens of priests, bishops, scholars, and inquisitors.

They aren’t there to seek truth.
They’re there to extract a confession.

Every question is a trap.
Do you claim to speak with God?
Do you believe your soul is saved?
Do you wear men’s clothes by divine command?

She answers with fire.

She doesn’t stutter.
She doesn’t break.
She answers with boldness, brilliance, and brutal clarity.

When they ask if she knows she’s in God’s grace, she replies:

“If I am not, may God place me there.
If I am, may God so keep me.”

Even the judges blink.
It’s theologically flawless.

But they’re not after theology.
They’re after obedience.

Joan refuses to say the voices were false.
Refuses to denounce her visions.
Refuses to betray what she knows is true.

They hate her for it.

They call her a heretic.
A liar.
A sorceress.
A cross-dresser.

The clothes would be the final nail.
She refuses to wear women’s dresses.
She says the voices told her not to.

To them, it’s rebellion.
To her, it’s protection.

She’s surrounded by guards.
Dressing as a man is the only way to preserve her safety, her dignity — her mission.

But they don’t care.

They want her broken, not understood.

They threaten her with torture.
They try to trick her into signing false confessions.
They drag the trial on for months.

And through it all, she keeps saying the same thing:

“I am guided by God.
He speaks to me through His saints.
I have done nothing but obey.”

And that’s the problem.
Because if she’s obeying God —
Then they’re not.