She was already a prisoner when she was brought before the provost of Paris to account for what she knew. People believed she could find lost things and name whoever had taken them. That belief had brought them to her door. It had also brought her to the Châtelet.
On 29 October 1390, Jeanne de Brigue, known as La Cordière, appeared before the provost at the Châtelet, the royal court and prison of Paris. It was the first day of a case that would run for almost ten months. People had come to her wanting stolen possessions recovered, illness explained and suspicions given a name. Before her interrogators that October, she denied knowing anything about divination.
Her reputation had arrived before her.
Among the people who had sought her help was Lucette, whose son Hennequin de Ruilly was seriously ill. In later testimony, given after torture, Jeanne described the mother coming to fetch her. Lucette wanted her to visit Hennequin at Guérard and do what she could for him. On the way, the request became more particular. There were suspicions that his wife, Macette, had bewitched him. Neither mother nor son wanted to make that accusation themselves. Jeanne, reputed to know everything, could say it for them and preserve the peace of the household.
It was a considerable amount of peace to expect from an accusation of witchcraft.
Jeanne said Macette took her aside when they arrived. She, too, wanted Jeanne to name someone, but she had a different woman in mind. Gilete Verriere lived in Paris and had borne Hennequin two children. Macette asked Jeanne to say that Gilete was responsible for his illness, and promised her cloth for a hood in return. Jeanne admitted giving Hennequin that explanation. The woman called in to discover the truth had been offered an answer before she began.
There was another Hennequin in Jeanne's life, Hennequin Le Cordier, the father of her own children. He would not marry her. She told her interrogators that his better connections stood in the way, and that she had asked Macette for help. She wanted him to marry her for the sake of the children. Whatever means Macette suggested, she stipulated that he must not die from it.
Here the woman supposed to know everything was asking another woman what to do. Her reputation could bring a mother to her door and make her word carry weight in a stranger's household. It could not obtain a marriage in her own.
According to Jeanne's account, Macette offered a preparation of wax and pitch, to be rubbed between the sleeping man's shoulders. She lent Jeanne a pan and spoon. Jeanne said she tried the mixture on two nights and saw no improvement in his willingness to marry her. The promised remedy had left her with the same man and the same refusal.
Macette's own account described what could happen after a woman obtained the marriage. She said her husband beat her, that their life together was full of quarrels, and that he treated her harshly when she answered him back. In her confession, she described magical practices intended to leave him unable to beat her. Jeanne had asked for a husband. Macette said she had sought relief from the one she had.
These accounts came from women whom the court had tortured. When Jeanne would confess no more, she was stripped, bound to a trestle and subjected to water torture. She asked to be released and promised further admissions. Taken off the trestle, she was brought to the kitchen to be warmed, then returned for questioning. The clerk described the confession that followed as made without constraint. Untying her had not ended the trestle's work.
Macette initially denied the accusations. Put through the same procedure, she too asked to be taken down and said she would confess. Admissions to invoking demons and working harmful magic became part of the case against them. The court now had words it could use. Whether either woman could make a man ill, well or willing to marry was not something a trestle could establish.
Nor did those words require every adviser to recommend death. Robert Broisset proposed the pillory and six months in prison on bread and water for Jeanne, followed by a prohibition on further invocations. His was a punishment she could have survived. The majority favoured burning, and the provost sentenced her accordingly.
On 19 August 1391, Jeanne and Macette were taken to the Marché aux Pourceaux in Paris and burned. At the end, Jeanne maintained her accusations against Macette. Macette repudiated them and her own confessions. They did not leave the same account of what had happened between them.
Before her death, Jeanne also described something that had happened inside the Châtelet. A silver cup belonging to the gaoler had gone missing. His household had asked the prisoner whether she could identify the thief. Even there, people still wanted the knowledge for which she had been brought before the provost.
In Jeanne's account, a young prison servant called Jehannin, who had taken the cup, came to her. He begged her not to name him and promised to reward her if she would say the chambermaid had stolen it. The prisoner was still useful. As at Guérard, the name had been chosen before anyone asked her for it.
