“My son will turn six this year,” he continues. “Not three days ago, his nurse brought him out to where I was walking in the garden. It was early. I wanted to be alone, to think and to plan for the future. But my son approached me and bowed. I did not take him in my arms, as I should have done. I did not comfort him. How do you tell your child, who is also your heir, It is possible that one day soon we must run from our home and leave this behind? How could I say, I may lose what is your birthright, and we may never in our lifetimes return to this kingdom again? So, I left him standing, and I heard his cries even when I was already far away.”

What is it about our early years, Joan thinks, that leaves its indelible mark? A slap, a punch, a violent shake stays in a child’s memory like kernels planted in new earth, and from these seeds spring sometimes bitterness, sometimes violence, other times fear. For what is put in a child’s heart will never grow there of its own accord. So, we must be careful. We must, if we can, be tender.

“I knew another boy,” Joan says when there is a lull. “He was a year older than your son. He had a father and mother who loved him. An elder sister and a grandmother who doted on him. He liked animals and had a cat he would feed from his own meals.” She tells him the story of Guillaume, the season summer, and how the air was filled with birdsong; how he died in her arms of a head wound, the front of her dress soaked with blood.

“My brother had said to me before the fight, ‘Look for sharp rocks, Joan. Ones that fit snugly in the hand.’ I gave the sharpest to this boy. As he bled, he returned the rocks to me. He had not thrown them to save his life.

“He died for Your Majesty just as any of your soldiers on the battlefield.” She thinks, My sister, too, died for you. She lowers her head as she remembers Salaud. Why are the good always the ones to be sacrificed?