She could be coy. She could say, “Like what?” But Joan knows the moment he is thinking of. She had been unhorsed. Panic made her limbs grow stiff, her sweat turn cold. From the ground, she saw an English knight charging down at her on his horse. Over his head, he waved a mace; the weapon’s sharpened point flashed, catching the light. He was only a short distance away, but she stood her ground. He might have thought that she stood stunned, unable to move from fear, though he would have been wrong. As the knight thundered closer, her ears filled with the sound of hooves, their earth-shattering rhythm. All other noises, the shouts and fighting around her, had diminished to a whisper. She readied her blade. A breath. Another breath. When the horse was nearly on top of her, the knight’s mace already swinging toward her head, she moved swiftly, crouching low. Her sword slit the underside of the beast’s belly. She inhaled the steam of the animal, the dust it kicked up, and felt, inches away, the shudder of muscle; it had been that close. She stood, splattered in horse blood, her face wet and warm, the odor of fresh slaughter tickling her nose. She moved to where the knight landed before he had even risen to his knees. Her hand had only to turn and the point of her sword found him. As the dust settled, she looked around. She saw some men had stopped fighting. They had seen what she’d done: horse and man brought down together. And not long afterward, the battle had ended.

“It is a long story” is her reply. Then: “I am sorry I mocked your wound.”

He nods, accepting her apology. He smiles and she smiles, too.

“What will happen to the dead? Will they be given burial?” she asks.

At this, the men raise their heads and peer at her. Only La Hire answers: “There would not be enough gravediggers, my little shepherdess.”

Most of the ham is gone by the time she speaks again. She has another question: “What next?”

Word has arrived by messenger: English reinforcements are on their way to Orléans, led by Sir John Fastolf, the captain who bested the French at the Battle of the Herrings. The rumor: his army is well supplied and several thousand strong.

“We should wait for reinforcements,” Dunois says, “before we fight again.”

“Why?” she asks. She has been at this table no more than a quarter of an hour, and already she is talking as if these men were her brothers. Brothers can be pushed; they can be shouted at. “Why wait? We should go where the English are thickest.”

She moves the plate of ham and the pitcher, setting them side by side. Meat and water are transfigured into crenellated towers: the two main fortresses of the city, Les Augustins and Les Tourelles. “Take these and take back Orléans,” she says.