Chapter Three - The Girl Who Would See the King

CHAPTER THREE

The Girl Who Would See the King

SPRING, 1429.

JOAN of Arc is seventeen now.
For four years she’s lived with the voices, done what they’ve asked, waited for the moment.
Now it’s here.

The message is no longer gentle:

“Go to the Dauphin. Raise the siege. Save France.”

She can’t just walk up to a king.
She’s a peasant girl in homespun.
The roads between Domrémy and the Dauphin’s court are crawling with English patrols, mercenaries, and bandits.
Her family pleads with her to stay.
Her village priest calls her mad.
Everyone says it’s impossible.

She goes anyway.

First she rides to Vaucouleurs, the nearest garrison loyal to Charles.
She tells the captain she has a divine mission.
He laughs, sends her away.
She comes back.
He refuses again.
She returns a third time.

This time, something about her words, her calm, her eyes unsettles him.
He gives her an escort — a few men to take her through enemy territory to Chinon, where the Dauphin waits.
She dresses in men’s clothes for protection, cuts her hair short.
Later they’ll call it cross-dressing.
At the time, it’s survival.

The trip is two hundred miles.
She travels by night, through frost and mud, slipping past enemy lines.
Every mile, she’s praying.
Every mile, the voices stay steady.
She doesn’t falter.

At Chinon, the Dauphin tests her.
They hide him among his courtiers, a trick to expose frauds.
She walks straight past the decoys and kneels before the real Charles.

No hesitation.

No confusion.

They speak privately.
No one knows what she says.
But when they emerge, his face has changed.
The court whispers.

This girl might actually be what she claims.

He orders a theological examination at Poitiers.
Dozens of clerics grill her for weeks.
She answers every question with disarming clarity.
No heresy. No contradictions.

Finally, they run out of objections.
They give her a sword.
They give her armor.
They give her a banner of her own design — white, with lilies, the names of Jesus and Mary.

And then… they give her an army.

A peasant girl, barely grown, who claims to hear God.
Leading the charge to save France.