“I have seen the maps,” Joan adds.

“What? When?” La Hire barks.

“When you left them out for anyone to look at,” she bellows back.

Dunois touches his shoulder, his wound from Rouvray. He looks from the ham to the pitcher to her. Under the table, he taps the foot pierced by an arrow at Verneuil.

“I told you, Dunois,” La Hire says. “Didn’t I say we shouldn’t have set a place for her? In a few days, she will be wanting your seat as well.” But he is no longer spitting at Joan. He is smiling.

A long, long night lies ahead. Her pages, Louis and Raymond, are full of questions, and her squire, Jean, is composing a letter by candlelight, a message to le Maçon, which, since it contains good news, will find its way to Yolande’s perfumed hand. For the first time in what feels like eternity, the result is victoire. Victory. La Hire is sitting before the fire, yawning. He followed Joan to her room after supper, kicking his boots off and making himself at home. How a battle can change a man. It is as if they have always been the best of friends.

She must be honest. War is horrible, she tells her pages, and means it. The noise, for one. The screams of the dying, both man and beast. Broken bones. The sickening thud of bodies colliding, of horse skull against horse skull. Steel against steel. You cannot look down; you don’t even dare. What you see on the ground will turn your stomach inside out, so perhaps better not to eat beforehand. Your nerves will keep you on your feet anyway. La Hire is right about one thing: training is different from battle.

She describes the space: as wide and large as a courtyard, yet the dead are strewn like rushes across the ground. Some look like they’re fast asleep. Others appear frozen, their muscles tense, as if they could still spring to their feet any moment. A few appear shocked. Death took these men by surprise. Most die with their eyes open, though she thought one corpse blinked at her. Sometimes you cannot tell those on your side from the other. They are just men.

Beneath her feet, the ground squelched, but not with rain or mud. When the fighting was over, she stopped and pressed a hand to her metal belly. She vomited straight into a pool of blood.