Near the door, Salaud is barking. She wills him, with every taut and leaping nerve in her body, to please, please shut up, or there’s every chance Jacques d’Arc will take a knife from the table, stamp across the room, and slit his throat.

But, happily, Salaud will live another day. Her father is still swatting at her head, like it’s a fly he’s trying to smudge out of existence, and the most she can do is cover her face with her arms to dampen the blows.

Tomorrow, there will be bruises. She can feel them already, planted beneath the film of her skin and primed to sprout blooms of indigo and cornflower blue. He takes a swipe at her chin, and the punch knocks her, as she hopes, straight into the door. He lunges, charging like a whole mountain range on legs. But she quick-steps around the door—she is in such a rush to leave that she almost rolls into the fresh air—and her dog slips out between her feet, as though they had planned this escape together. She doesn’t stop, not for anything, not even to crow in triumph. Though her jaw feels loose (possibly it is broken), she’s giggling over her shoulder, spit dribbling down the length of her chin as she runs, and Salaud catches up in a few bounds. He’s nipping at her shoes, as if it were all a game and he’s annoyed that until now, he’s been left out of the excitement. She looks down, he looks up, and without pausing, she ruffles the mud-colored fur sticking up on his head. Behind them, a trail of dust rises up as dense as a layer of fog. When they reach the dirt road that winds through the village, Joan lets out a whoop, a victorious wolf-cry, and her dog’s tongue flaps out, like a flesh-pink flag heralding their tiny victory. If these are not moments to live for, she wonders, then what are? For the moment, she has forgotten about Guillaume, about the dress her sister washed for her, which, when it was rinsed, leaked blood and stained Catherine’s palms as if she had been eating fresh berries. Her body is throbbing with pain, but she is never more alive than when she slips like an eel out of Jacques d’Arc’s grasp.

She doesn’t stop running until Hauviette’s cottage, at the other end of Domrémy, is in sight. Hauviette is always laughing, always bright like a moving sunbeam. Like Joan, ten years of age. Unlike Joan, who is serious, with an angular jawline, and constantly grinding her teeth, she is marked by the village as a beauty. She is auburn-haired and hazel-eyed, a child made in the glorious colors of autumn.