“But I would inform you, if le Maçon has not told you already, that I married not at thirteen or fourteen, which is the custom for a woman of my standing. At nineteen, I wed my Louis. He was a man I did not think I could love, though I did love him. After seventeen happy years of marriage, he left me a widow, and this will be my twelfth year without him at my side. But my mother-in-law, Marie of Blois, taught me everything I needed to know. When Louis was fighting wars in Naples for his kingship, I ran Anjou, and I ran Provence. I collected the rents, rebuked lords when they bickered like children, and saved my income. I had my eye on all the figures from ships and trade in the region, and I knew the names of all my household, along with what came in and what went out, down to the basket of the last greengrocer. Would you believe that when the castle in Angers was under attack from the English, I traveled there in my capacity as Duchess? I raised an army of six thousand men, and I am pleased to tell you the English failed to take what was mine. And now…my work is still far from done.”

She sweeps her arm over the scene behind her, the cushions where her women had sat with their needles and thread.

“You think my ladies were sewing, that they were simply admiring my jewelry?” She picks up a silver plate next to one of the pillows. Rolling across it: a smattering of seed pearls, a large winking emerald. “Well, you would be wrong. We are making an inventory of what I possess and taking apart anything of value.” With her foot, she nudges the headdress, now only half-shining; the other half is bare. “I have pawned my stones before, for my husband’s sake, and I will do so again for my children. At the very least, the Dauphin’s butcher must be paid, don’t you think?”

Joan is silent. The cushions, the room itself have taken on a different aspect. The headpiece resembles an emptied coffer. Has it really come to this?

Yolande goes on: “And I have given Charles money from my own treasury for his war because I want to see him crowned king, not with a crown snatched from a cupboard, not in any royal chapel, but in the cathedral at Reims, like all the French kings who came before him. I want to see my daughter Marie, his wife, made queen. So now we arrive at this point, this moment on which the fates of so many depend…”

She moves to a desk, on top of which lies a sheaf of papers. She gathers the pile and returns to stand before Joan.

“You will learn that I make my decisions swiftly.” She takes a page and passes it to Joan.