And the misery doesn’t end when you have righted your fences and rebuilt your pens or put Saint Margaret’s head back on her shoulders. No, misery, too, must play out its cycle, in the fullness of the seasons. In autumn, food is scarce. But in winter, the meadows for grazing razed, the livestock starve. She has watched the spirits of horses and oxen break. She has witnessed the moment of collapse when they could take no more. Nothing could be wasted. Any beast that died was cut up for meat, though there was always little to salvage. She has pulled out a newborn calf, wet and shining with mucus and blood, only to hold its head in her lap as it died, because there was no milk to spare and its mother was already gone. She has wondered, What is the point of this? To bring new life into the world and then to extinguish its light so soon, a mere hour of consciousness on this earth? What lesson can be learned from this?

And without the horse and ox, the plow must be pulled by a man and his wife, though both are hungry and sick. Even the crows would be hard-pressed to make a meal of them.

She tells him: For war is not just battle plans. It isn’t France’s preeminent chefs de guerre gathered around a table, signing off on orders for provisions and discussing formations of attack. It isn’t the various implements of war: the sword, the special dagger that finishes a felled knight, which she learned about from the men who trained her. It isn’t the shifting borders of a kingdom, the towers and battlements that change names and hands and loyalties in the space of a few violent hours. To her, it isn’t even the dead on a battlefield, the casualties, young, middle-aged, and old, who know that to be struck down is what happens when you choose to stand your ground against those who wish to take it from you by force.