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Chapters (43)
  1. Cover
  2. Epigraph
  3. CAST OF CHARACTERS
  4. Map
  5. Part One
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. VII
  13. Part Two
  14. I
  15. II
  16. III
  17. IV
  18. V
  19. VI
  20. VII
  21. VIII
  22. IX
  23. X
  24. Part Three
  25. I
  26. II
  27. III
  28. IV
  29. V
  30. Part Four
  31. I
  32. II
  33. III
  34. IV
  35. V
  36. VI
  37. EPILOGUE
  38. afterword
  39. Dedication
  40. acknowledgments
  41. By Katherine J. Chen
  42. about the author
  43. What’s next onyour reading list?

The Dauphin is still alive, but in this place, a boy has died. This, her uncle Durand has told her, finishing another of his battle stories, is the way of war. One day, all is well with the world. The affairs of kings are solely the problem of some ancient and royal bloodline that has nothing to do with the poor cottager who eats cabbage for every meal. The princes are feuding, but the earth is being tilled, the grass is being cut, the sheaves are being tied. Until one day, the yawning guard climbs the stairs to the battlements and, peeping over the crenellated edge, sees an army ten thousand strong waiting for his surrender. One day, the cottager wakes in the dead of night with the tip of a sword pressed against his ribs. It is not always parents and grandparents who die first. A father, sweating over his work, hears a shout to come and come quickly and, running, he steps as through a nightmare, into a clearing to see a face familiar to him from its birth. The face will never wake again. It is cold to his touch.

II

At supper, the mood is black. From her seat, as far from the head of the table as she can sit, Joan keeps her head down to escape the stream of oaths flying like an arc of sour piss out of her father’s mouth.

It is not the boy, Guillaume, he is grieving, though there may be a little of that, too, since he is also a father to sons. Mostly, however, it is anger. It is the indignity of knowing that Domrémy has lost a battle, even one between children. The humiliation is what he can’t stomach. If he were there, if he were only there, he keeps repeating, to face those tit-sucking whoresons drunk on their famous Burgundian wine, those curd-eating milksops who kill a man and then don’t take the credit for doing it; he closes his right fist in his left hand: what he would have done if only he were there…

“But that wouldn’t have been permitted, Father,” Jacquemin says practically. “You are too old.” His intent is to soothe, but its effect only makes his father’s skin jump, the blue vein like a swollen rivulet in the side of his neck throb. He has no need for words. He answers his eldest with a curled lip, eyes hard as splinters of bone. In war, what is not permitted? What tricks? What traps? What subterfuge? Tell me. In fact, I dare you to say it to my face again.

Jacquemin looks down, cowed. So, her father goes on. And on.