She is the last to leave. She stands, staring up at the sky, as though waiting for the glinting sun to explain to her what has happened. She feels that it is important for her to make sense of this. A boy has died. She watched him die. What did he die for?

When she comes back to herself, she sees that one of her hands is balled in a fist. She is surprised by the effort it takes to open her own fingers, to reveal the rocks she had earlier passed to Guillaume, which are now returned to her. She has been holding them so hard, they have made pink-red indentations in her palm, like tiny bird tracks. She tosses the ordinary stone away. But her prize, the one with the sharp edge, she keeps. She slips the rock into her pocket. She considers, surprised by the calmness with which she reasons, that if Jacques d’Arc, her father, had been Guillaume’s father, then Guillaume would have thrown the rocks to save himself. He would have used his fists, and it is possible he would still be alive.

Her father has said to her brothers (while she was listening out of sight), We will never see a great battle here, not in Domrémy. Can you imagine Agincourt or Crécy taking place in these fields? Not in a thousand years! And he laughed, picking at his teeth with dirty nails the color of blackest earth.

But if we consider how battles begin, then this one, between France and Burgundy, between Domrémy and Maxey, between rock-throwing children born in different villages, began three years ago. It is a tale everyone knows, a tale simple in nature, of vengeance, of how the Dauphin, in the town of Montereau-Fault-Yonne, had John the Fearless killed because John was gaining too much power for himself. And now John’s son, Philip, the present Duke of Burgundy, says he will not rest until the Dauphin is dead.