She will remain until she hears a bellow: the sound of her name. It is the cook. She is a good worker, he tells her, one of the best he has ever had, but she is never around when he needs her. He would bind her legs and tie her to a chair if it meant she would stay put. Again and again, he has found her standing like a sad orphan near the stables or the yard where soldiers train. “Do you have your eye on someone?” he asks her kindly. “These are young men of good family, so your chances of success are not high,” he explains, “but you never know. Stranger things have happened in the course of history. If you continue to do your work, I will give you a plate of warm Parma tarts to take to your loved one, and he may love you back.”

She groans and folds her arms. “I love no one,” she declares, and she can tell the cook does not quite believe her. He has hit on the truth in a way. She is in love. Not with the men—the squires or the knights—but with their work, their weapons, their noise. She is in love with the smell of horses and horse sweat.

At night, Joan is assigned to guard the pantry; the cook complains of thieves who may be persons in his own employ, for there are always fresh eggs missing, a hare he meant to prepare for the captain of the garrison’s dinner vanished (the captain is none other than Sir Robert de Baudricourt—when Joan hears this, she bursts out laughing), or even a whole goose and section of pike gone. Her pallet is placed before the door, and she sleeps deeply but not so deeply that a footstep or even the scratch of mice feet can’t wake her. She sleeps, in fact, with a skillet tucked in one hand.

A week passes. Another week. Then a month. The pain in her chest is heavy but not as heavy as it once was. It lifts an inch, two inches, and some days, she feels she can breathe again without a weight inside her. In the hem of her dress, she has sewn the Duke of Lorraine’s ring. It was her sister’s. Now it belongs to her.

The cook sings as he works. He has taught her a song listing the names of meat dishes and cheeses. The song is part of a tale about a peasant who stumbles across a lord’s feast and eats everything, though instead of punishing him, his host lets him go.

One day, Joan hears a second voice singing along. The voice, she is surprised to discover, is her own.

But it cannot last—the peace, the days all slipping and sliding into each other, one day not unlike the one that came before.