She shrugs. She wants to be in Vaucouleurs not for blancmanger but because it’s close to soldiers and armory. Because the English have tried to take Vaucouleurs and failed, so she thinks they may try and fail again, and if they fail, she wants to be there to see it happen, to see her enemies run and weep. And in case of invasion, she could help with…Well, she doesn’t know, but she believes she can be useful. War is not only the half hour of fighting, the seven-month siege; it’s provisioning supplies; it’s driving mules and building and digging; mucking out stables, lending money, collecting taxes, cleaning up after the bloodshed is over, identifying and naming the noteworthy dead. If the English came to Vaucouleurs, she could boil water to fill up the cauldrons and dump them over enemy heads. She could carry buckets of hot oil up to the ramparts. Or, if there happened to be a gambeson and helmet left unattended in the middle of fighting, who would know if a girl from the kitchens had found her way inside them? A spit, a plate, a brine-cured leg of mutton can be a weapon. And there is always her childhood dream: the sword- and shield-polishing stall. French customers only, of course.

The kitchen work would make another throw up his arms and scream at the cook, “I quit and curse you for a slave driver!” But she is used to it. Her time at Neufchâteau under La Rousse was not for nothing. Quails are plucked, feathers flying, as if she is the fox who has slipped into the chicken coop. Fish skinned and filleted. Meat turned on a spit. Floors cleaned. Towels and tablecloths washed and beaten. Basins scrubbed.

And she learns. She learns how to tell the quality of eels by the size of the head, which must be small, the thickness of the body, and the sheen of the skin. She can tell whether a brace of partridges is fresh from a mere glance at the feathers.

In the middle of the day, with a manchet loaf that she kneaded and baked herself, she goes to watch the soldiers train; the knights and squires spar; the pages run to fetch their masters linen cloths and refreshment. She sees the destriers, the great warhorses, take their exercise, manes rippling like glossy flags. There are more crossbowmen than archers, who are few in number, but she watches them practice, waxing and stringing their bowstaves of yew; she counts how many arrows they can shoot in a single minute and thinks it is usually no more than ten or eleven. Their posture is imprinted in her memory. As she watches, she imitates their movements with a bow and arrow of air.