She wonders, Is this why the Dauphin has memorized the shape and lines of France: its valleys, its rivers and lakes, its major cities, its rural clusters of wattle-and-daub cottages, its forests, meadows, and pastures, its marshes and swamps, its caves and nooks, its mountain passes? Imprinted in his mind is a map stuck with miniature flags, like a general’s plan of battle. Red for England, my enemy. Blue for France, my friends. He has drawn, with a mental stick of charcoal, various escape routes. If this and this are blocked, then we can still flee to such-and-such a place, which has remained loyal to me and my ancient forefathers. And if the English are at our backs, we can escape along this tributary, which empties into this river. All other options exhausted, we can always jump into barrels and trust to the current.

“I am pleased God has favored your journey,” he says, and does not say, Because goodness knows, He seems to favor little about France these days. “I am pleased that you and those who traveled with you have arrived safely in Chinon.”

She senses a shift in the air. The courtesies are over, idle talk come to an end.

“We remain unclear, however, as to what services you may render for our benefit,” he says with another sigh.

For a moment, she marvels at the smooth transition, the sleight-of-hand swap of pronouns, the personal “I” tossed aside for the royal “we.” For a king, shedding his human skin is the equivalent of changing hats: the fashionable chaperon, with its liripipe, its tail of cloth, switched for the heavy crown. In an instant, the mortal body swells into something less definable: one part flesh-and-blood man, one part sovereign whose power derives from none less than the Divine.

“Do you claim to be a holy woman?” he asks when she hesitates.

She shakes her head. “No.” The word falls like something heavy dropped.

A frown creases the Dauphin’s forehead. His expression says, Haven’t I been informed I was to be served a dish of salmon tonight, which I was looking forward to, and now I do not even recognize what has been placed before me?

“But you have enjoyed visions,” he says, insisting. He leans slightly forward. “Have you not? Didn’t my lord the Duke of Lorraine tell me so in a letter? Well, in several letters. He said you were standing in a field one morning and God spoke to you, that you have performed impossible feats—miracles.”

It is like the old Duke to exaggerate, she thinks. “I believe I told His Grace that it was I who spoke to God.”

“About?”

“I made a wish. Several wishes.”

She remembers, Your Majesty was on my list of names. And if you were a better prince, king, whatever you call yourself, then we would all be living in a different world.