Seven years later, answering her judges, she speaks thus of the matter:
"When I was thirteen years old (or about thirteen) I had a Voice from
God, to help me in my conduct. And the first time, I was in great fear."
We may well believe it. We can fancy the child, her eyes still dazzled
with the heavenly light, the heavenly voice still in her ears, stealing
back into the house, pale and trembling. She said no word to mother
Isabel or sister Catherine of what had come to her; for many a day the
matter was locked in her own faithful heart.
The vision came again. The archangel promised that St. Catherine and St.
Margaret should come to give her further help and comfort, and soon
after these heavenly visitants appeared. "Their heads were crowned with
fair crowns," says Joan, "richly and preciously. To speak of this I have
leave from the Lord.... Their voices were beautiful, gentle and sweet."
We are not told which of the six St. Catherines it was who came to
Joan; whether the Alexandrian maiden martyred in 307, she of the wheel
and the ring; or St. Catherine of Siena, who at Joan's birth had been
dead but thirty years, who had herself seen visions and heard voices,
and who by her own voice swayed kings and popes and won the hearts of
all men to her; or whether it was one of the lesser lights of that
starry name.
As to St. Margaret, there can be no doubt; she was the royal Atheling,
queen and saint of Scotland, one of the gracious and noble figures of
history. We may read to-day how, sailing across the narrow sea, bound on
a visit to her mother's father, the King of Hungary (through whom she
could claim kinship with St. Ursula and with St. Elizabeth of Hungary)
her vessel was storm-driven up the Firth of Forth, to find shelter in
the little bay still known as St. Margaret's Hope. (Close by was the
Queen's Ferry, known to readers of Scott and Stevenson; to-day the
monstrous Forth Bridge has buried both spots under tons of stone and
iron.) Visitors were rare on that coast in the time of Malcolm III.,
especially ladies "of incomparable beauty." Word was hastily sent to
the King hard by in his palace of Dunfermline, and he as hastily came
down to see for himself; saw, loved, wooed and won, all in short space.
History makes strange bedfellows; it is curious to think that Joan's
saintly visitor was so early Queen of Scotland only by grace of
Macbeth's dagger, which slew the gentle Duncan, her husband's father.
Joan knew St. Margaret well; there was a statue of her in the church of
Domrémy. The gracious ladies spoke kindly to her: permitted her to
embrace them; bade her, as St. Michael had bidden her, to be good, to
pray, to attend church punctually.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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