She doesn’t answer. Around them the haze of candlelight blurs into memory. She is thinking of another wafer wrapped in a piece of clean linen cloth, of blancmanger, a dish as intangible as a dream.

“But you are like me,” he continues, still watching her. “We no longer permit our tears to fall.”

A pause. Then, as she leaves, the Dauphin’s voice reaches her at the door: “The time of miracles that cannot be seen has passed. If you are truly blessed by God, it must be proved. You will be tested.”

Le Maçon has given her a room in Chinon, with a bed, a small table, a chair, and a window that looks out onto the starlit valley below. At night, the room is locked and guarded by two men in his own employ. “Why should I be a prisoner?” she asked him in protest, but he shook his head. “You are mistaken. It is for your protection, not for the protection of others.” He is thinking of his rivals at court and the men who work for them: the current favorites of His Majesty, the men Joan saw that morning at the chapel.

“And do not say you don’t need protection!” he snapped, anticipating her reply.

In bed, she inhales the scent of the wafer, holding it under her nose as the Dauphin had done. For a moment, it is as if she has stepped into the body of the French King. The fragrance is like nothing, no flower or herb or sap of a tree she has ever come across. She takes a bite, and her teeth graze the top of Saint Michael’s wavy locks. The warmth travels across the surface of her tongue. She cannot help smiling.

The Dauphin had said, upon giving her this gift, “For your troubles.” She thinks there may be some truth to this, however accidental the wisdom. Perhaps all she has been through feeds into the seconds it takes to finish a single oublie. Perhaps troubles eventually distill themselves into something else, as a few lines of the troubadour’s poetry distill the pains and secrets of love.

On a cloudless night in another time, the moon like a perfect Eucharist wafer, she had dreamed of tasting, if only once, the spice of the cinnamon birds. Now she has.

VIII

The tests come in different forms, most of which feel less like tests in holiness than exercises in patience: How much will she, Joan, take before she goes back to her village?

“It is in the hands of the Archbishop and La Trémoille,” le Maçon says grimly.

“Why?” she asks.

“They believe I am biased in this matter.”

“And they aren’t?”