Some distance. If over three hundred miles is some distance, then yes, His Majesty is correct. She nods.

“From Vaucouleurs,” she says, looking up.

The Dauphin tilts his head. He is thinking, Vaucouleurs, Vaucouleurs, where in my formerly vast kingdom does this place lie? The answer comes to him. He seems to smile, or possibly it is the leap and glow of candlelight stretching the ends of his mouth.

“They have remained loyal to me,” he says. So perhaps it was a smile she saw. “Sir Robert is an able captain. The English tried to take this town and failed. I remember the letters informing me of their attempt. You were born in Vaucouleurs, then?”

“No, I was born in a village called Domrémy. I doubt Your Majesty will have heard of it. I have lived there most of my life.”

Again, the head tilts, this time in the other direction. The eyes blink, counting over duchies, cities, rivers, towns, as the map of France turns and turns.

“A little too close to my cousin Burgundy,” he says at last.

“Domrémy is loyal to Your Majesty,” she replies.

A pause, filled with the pop and crackle of fire. When he speaks next, it is a new beginning.

“What protection were you given for your journey from Vaucouleurs to Chinon?”

She names the men who were her guards: the knight, Bertrand de Poulengy; the squire, Jean de Metz; and Richard the archer. She names Colet de Vienne, the royal messenger in the employ of His Majesty’s mother-in-law, and the two servants of de Poulengy and de Metz who accompanied them, tasked with guarding the supplies, though they all took their turn keeping watch.

“We traveled by night and kept off the main roads,” she says. “In daylight, we took sanctuary in churches and abbeys, and if none were to be found, the trees and hedges protected us from discovery. It was the safest way.”

“How long did your journey last?”

“Several days. Eleven in all.”

It registers: the danger, the sleepless nights, the fear of betrayal. From the book of misery, the Dauphin nods, acknowledges the shared experience. So when he replies, “A quick journey, all considered,” you know he is thinking back to a not-so-distant memory, eleven years into the past, his adolescent self on horseback, hair standing up on scrawny arms and neck. That night, no matter how hard he rode, the screams of Paris were never far enough behind him. Blood washed the streets when John the Fearless took the capital for his own.

The Dauphin sighs. He looks tired. What is a decade, a mere eleven years, when so little has changed?