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Copyright
HarperCollins Children’s Books
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published as Joan of Arc in Great Britain in paperback by Pavilion Books,
London House, Great Eastern Wharf, London SW11 4NQ in 1998
Published in 2001 by Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hodder Headline
Limited, 338 Euston Road, London, NW1 3BH
This edition published as Sparrow – the story of Joan of Arc by HarperCollins
Children’s Books in 2012
SPARROW. Copyright © Michael Morpurgo 1998.
Michael Morpurgo asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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SOURCE ISBN: 9780007465958
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007465965
Version: 2017-11-02
Dedication
For Christine Baker
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: One Joan a Year
Chapter 2: Voices in the Garden
Chapter 3: For France
Chapter 4: What is it About that Girl?
Chapter 5: We Need a Miracle
Chapter 6: Go Godoms, in God’s Name, Go!
Chapter 7: Joan the Miraculous, Joan the Invincible
Chapter 8: Alone in the Wilderness
Chapter 9: Trial and Tribulation
Chapter 10: Where Shall I be Tonight?
Chapter 11: The Sparrow and the Saint
Author’s Note
Author’s Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Michael Morpurgo
About the Publisher
To begin with it was the picture. It was the picture that made it all happen – I am quite sure of it.
In the house where I grew up, in our old house in Montpellier, the picture always hung at the top of the stairs. Every time I went up to bed at night, there she’d be – Joan of Arc in her shining armour, holding her standard, with a shaft of light falling across her uplifted face. I would often gaze up at her and yearn to be serene and strong, just as she was. I wanted to have the same visionary, faraway look in my eyes, and the same hairstyle too.
But I learned very early on that my father did not share my enthusiasm. He disliked the picture intensely, about as intensely as my mother loved it. Apparently it had hung in her house when she was a child. But I didn’t like it just because my mother did. I had my own reasons, reasons I always kept to myself – until now.
My name is Eloise Hardy. I was seventeen last May. Something extraordinary has just happened to me, something so extraordinary that I feel I have to write it down. I want to remember all of it as it really happened, every moment of it, every word of it. Maybe, in the remembering of it, in the writing of it, I will begin to understand it better. I hope so.
One of my very earliest memories is of me standing in front of the full-length mirror in my mother’s bedroom, a red tablecloth over my shoulders for a cloak, a broom with a towel tied to it for my standard. I would contrive to strike my saintliest pose. I once wrote out every adjective I could think of that described her perfectly: noble, honest, kind, brave, and a few others besides. I made a resolution to be all those things for the rest of my life. It lasted for about a day, I think. I read all the books I could find about her; and the more I read, the more I wanted to be her. I made a serious start in this direction when I was about ten years old. Without ever disclosing my reasons I managed to persuade my mother to let me have my hair cut en boule, just like Joan in the picture. Seven years later and it’s still cut the same way. It suited me then. It suits me now.
Thinking back, I suppose I have always been a strange sort of girl, never quite happy being who I was, dumpier, more ordinary than everyone else around me. My face was too round, my hair too thick. At my primary school I was ‘a dreamer’, or so my teachers often said. ‘Bright as a button. Such a pity about her spelling’ ran one school report. Dyslexia was diagnosed. I didn’t mind that much. It made me different, distinctive, for a while at least. Besides, I reasoned, Joan of Arc couldn’t read and she couldn’t write either. And she managed well enough, didn’t she? I found out about all sorts of other worthy people who had done good and great and exciting things in their lives, who had changed the world – Louis Pasteur, Mother Teresa, Mongolfier, Francis of Assisi. But to me these were mere fleeting interests, no more. Joan of Arc, La Pucelle, Johanne of Domrémy, the Maid of Orléans, always remained
