“Either way.” I sat down on the edge of the bed because I wanted to look at her, and I knew if I got too close I’d get distracted again by all the fascinating novelty of touch and smell and taste.

I know it sounds crazy, but right at the moment I was thinking of a picture I’d once seen of this ’60s actress, Jean Seberg, wearing armor to play Joan of Arc. Unlike Caz, she had her hair cut really short, and, of course, she was wearing a couple of dozen pounds of metal to Caz’s absolutely-nothing-but-half-a-bedsheet. But there was still something compellingly similar—the delicacy of her face, maybe, the fragility of that slender body set against a big, dangerous world. I don’t think that actress had a much better time of things than Joan, so maybe it wasn’t a very healthy comparison.

“You’re still staring.”

Caught, I laughed. “Sorry. You’re . . . I was just thinking about Joan of Arc.”

“Why, are you planning to set me on fire?”

“Only with mah love.”

Caz laughed, which was nice of her. On her back now, she pulled the sheet up to her navel, which didn’t really solve the problem of me staring or being distracted. “I remember when she was executed.”

“Wow. Were you there?”

“Me?” She shook her head. “No, of course not. You’re such an American! I was in what’s now Poland, at least a thousand miles away. But the word of it spread all over Europe. My husband, may his soul never rest, heard about it when he was traveling and couldn’t wait to come home and tell me about it. He thought it was—I don’t know. Fascinating. Exciting.” She was silent again. “When my own time came, I thought of her. Not of her faith, though. I had none of my own left at that point.”

I was about to ask a question, but the look on her face stopped me.

“I thought of her because the horror was not in dying, but in the hatred of the crowd. There must have been at least a few watching in Rouen who thought she was innocent, after all, or at least not worth hating—someone gave her a cross made of sticks, so she wouldn’t have to face the end without God. But I don’t think there was a single person in that crowd in our city square, not even my own children, who didn’t think I deserved to die in agony.”

At that moment, for the first time, I really felt the difference between her and me, or rather, between her memories and mine. I shuddered, imagining the avid, hostile faces of the medieval crowd.

“Don’t,” I said. “It’s over. You’re here—I’m here.”