Early in November 1430, Joan was taken to the English stronghold of Rouen by a roundabout route. Along the way, the prisoner was displayed to curious crowds. She arrived at Rouen on December 23, 1430. The remaining five months of her life would be an ordeal of humiliation and abuse.
As an accused heretic, Joan was legally a prisoner of the church. As such she should have been lodged in a church prison, attended by women. The English, however, had paid an enormous sum for her and did not intend to run the risk of her escape or rescue. Cauchon maintained the fiction that Joan was a prisoner of the church by keeping a key to her cell in his possession.
Placed by his English employers in charge of the trial, Cauchon set to work at once and on January 9, 1431, began trial proceedings. Nearly two months passed as officers were sworn in and evidence was gathered. One of the preliminaries was a physical examination to determine the fact of Joan’s virginity, conducted by Anne duchess of Bedford. It was rumored that her husband concealed himself behind a curtain to watch.
On February 21, Joan was presented to the court. The first sessions, open to the public, were held in the chapel of Bouvreuil Castle, the Rouen residence of the earl of Warwick. When Cauchon perceived that Joan was making a favorable impression on the spectators, he switched to closed sessions with limited attendance. Between sessions Joan was kept in a windowless dungeon. Warwick sometimes took his dinner guests to taunt Joan in her cell. Although the nine-year-old English king Henry VI took up residence at Bouvreuil in March, there is no record that he and Joan ever met.
Joan was provided with a “confessor,” who passed on everything she said to Cauchon. She was also spied on through peepholes in her cell. Five Englishmen “of the lowest rank” guarded her at all times. Three spent the night in her cell, and two remained outside to guard the door. Wherever she went, to the trial sessions or to the privy, she hobbled along in leg irons. At night, she slept with two pairs of irons on her legs, attached by a chain to another chain connected to the foot of her bed, itself anchored by a large piece of wood five or six feet long. The whole contraption was fastened by lock and key. For added security, Cauchon had an iron cage made “in which she could be kept standing upright ‘fastened by the neck, the hands, and the feet.’” There is no evidence that the cage was ever used, but in a 1999 television production, Joan is shown in a cage suspended in a void.
Not surprisingly, these miserable living conditions took their toll on Joan’s formerly robust health. On April 16 she fell ill after eating a carp sent to her by Cauchon. She accused him of trying to poison her. More likely, a sudden dish of rich fish after her usual prison rations had led to a gastric upset. Warwick, fearing that Joan might die before she could be burned, sent his own physicians to treat her.
Although the court at Poitiers had found the wearing of men’s attire acceptable, given the nature of Joan’s mission, the inquisitors at Rouen decided to make it evidence of Joan’s “dissolute” nature and a sin against the biblical command in Deuteronomy 22:5:
A woman shall not be clothed with man’s apparel, neither shall a man use woman’s apparel; for he that doeth these things is abominable before God.
The most learned theologians and lawyers Cauchon was able to muster could not trap Joan into saying that her mission to save France for King Charles VII had been anything but divinely inspired. On April 18 a delegation of judges went to Joan’s cell and exhorted her in kindly terms to admit that her voices were not from God. She insisted that they were. On May 2 she was admonished to recant. She remained firm. On May 9 Joan was shown instruments of torture and told what effect they would have on her body. Cauchon wanted to use them on her, but only 3 of the 12 judges he polled would agree to it. He had to settle for threats. Joan agreed that she would probably say anything they wanted her to if they tortured her, but said she would take it back afterward:
Truly, if you pull my members apart and make the soul leave the body, I will not tell you anything else, and if I should tell you something, afterward I shall always say that you made me say it by force.
Cauchon decided to stage an elaborate public spectacle designed to terrorize Joan into admitting that both she and Charles VII were heretics.
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