“And I know you, La Hire,” she replied. “Oh yes, I have heard of your reputation. You are a cheat and a liar, a mercenary of the very worst kind. I have heard that years ago, you were the honored guest of a duke, and what did you do when your visit came to an end? You locked your host in his own dungeon and demanded that he pay you ransom for his release. If you weren’t on the side of His Majesty, I would knock your head off your shoulders right now.”

The fact that she talked back seemed to take him by surprise.

“I would like to see you try,” he growled.

“Try?” she repeated. “I wouldn’t have to try.”

They were nearly nose to nose. He scoffed, “Oh, I have heard what you are able to do in training. But the battlefield isn’t a closed pen, sweetheart. It isn’t an empty yard with one straw target for an opponent.”

Dunois stepped between them. “Leave her be,” he said, facing La Hire and ignoring her. “She will soon find out the difference for herself, though she may not live to tell anyone about it, and then the Dauphin will see the error of his judgment.”

“My lord Dunois,” Joan said. It was the first time she had ever addressed him. “How is your wound healing?”

His lip curled at her. “What wound?”

“Your wound from Rouvray, the Battle of the Herrings,” she replied. “The French, as I recall, lost that fight, though they outnumbered the English. And you were forced, I think, to run for your life. So, how is that wound healing, my lord?”

“You unnatural bitch,” La Hire said before Dunois could answer. “I would not lie with you if you were the last whore in the last brothel of the kingdom.”

Joan smiled. She was already rolling up her sleeves. Let me only make an example of this one, and then they will see, she thought. “If you tried to lie with me,” she said cheerfully, “you would be dead before your breeches fell to the floor. This I can promise you.”

Dunois gave his friend a shove and a look, and Joan and La Hire backed away from each other, like two snarling dogs postponing a fight.

The women of the house, the treasurer’s wife and her daughter, had witnessed the scene. From the staircase, they gaped. Joan was only a little regretful. This was probably not how a holy woman, an instrument of God, should behave. But faced with such fools, what choice did she have? She raised her eyes to the ceiling. God give me patience!

A polite cough shakes Joan out of her thoughts. One of the women is offering her something: a helmet. She refuses it. She wants the men—English, French, she doesn’t care which side—to see her face. She wants them to remember it.