“It is hard not to feel for the Dauphin,” le Maçon said thoughtfully. “He is his father’s true son and would have been seven years into a peaceful reign were it not for this war. You may have heard that the late King agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Troyes, but this is a falsehood. His Majesty’s father was ill, and it was his mother who gave away her own son’s inheritance. She saw what direction the wind was blowing and aligned herself with Henry, King of England, and the Duke of Burgundy to remove him from the line of succession. Well, we who recognize His Majesty as sole heir to the throne, as ruler and overlord of the duchies of France, do not agree to the terms of that treaty. We refuse to call Henry’s brat, a mere child in England, king. But our enemies take our towns and our cities. They have taken Paris, and it isn’t uncommon now in this kingdom for a town to be French in the morning and, after a long day’s fighting, to fall into the hands of England and Burgundy before the sun has set. This is the problem. After so many defeats, His Majesty has grown discouraged, and he has always been a sensitive young man. He feels that the world is working against him, that fate is conspiring to disgrace his name and strip him of his throne, and he has not had an easy life. He fears whatever he touches will turn out for the worse, and so he is afraid. He does not dare do anything that might tip the scales.”

Then le Maçon stopped. He said, as though it had only just occurred to him, “Do you know why you are here, Joan? You are number four. The one who came before you was a boy who experienced stigmata in the manner of Saint Francis of Assisi, and claimed an angel appeared at his bed every night to whisper prophecies into his ear. It turned out the angel was no angel but his mother and sisters, telling him what to say. Number two was a monk, a disaster we won’t begin to go into. Number one, the first to come to us, was a holy maid, a novice no more than twelve or thirteen. An abbess from Lyons brought her to our attention. She had never had a room to herself or taken a bath in hot water. She ate a lot and gave us vague answers to every question we put her way, until we realized she knew little beyond her Pater Noster and could offer us even less. We had to tell the abbess who recommended her: Being simple should not be confused with holiness.