Yolande sighs. She needs no prompting. She says, meeting Joan’s gaze, “How do you think a mother feels when she sees her child suffering? My heart breaks every day. For we are all waiting, from me, his good mother, to the lowest servant of the castle. We are waiting to see what king he will become, and I harbor no illusions. My Charles may be a great king, like his grandfather, or merely a good king, though let us hope he will not be like his father, who was mad, or a horrible king, like England’s Richard, not the first, but the second, to whom, believe it or not, I was once almost engaged. But in order to become any of those things, he must first take up the mantle passed down to him. He must act to show his people and the world what king he will be.”

Joan watches Yolande glide back to her in a vision of blue. How do the dyers manage to capture such a color, Joan wants to know. When she looks down, she stares at her own rough boots, scuffed, one buckle already broken. She feels her hands squeezed. “I can tell what you are thinking,” Yolande says. “You see all of this, you see me, and you think, Ah, what can a woman know of the court, of kings, beyond her wifely duties and childbearing? You have, if I am not mistaken, spent more time in the company of men growing up. So, you see me in this fine room with my sewing and my ladies-in-waiting, and you think I asked you here only to marvel at your size and your strength, and to tell you how much I love His Majesty. You think, because I am a woman, I am capable of appealing only to your heart, to your feelings. See? I am right! You are blushing again, Joan!