She stops to look around her, to meet each man’s gaze. She has learned, a speech made for a king can be adapted for a commoner and lose none of its effectiveness. She continues, “Should the English break through the walls of Orléans, they may spare your lives. They may take possession of your goods, burn a few homes, and shame you. But when the city is opened and the water mills rebuilt, you will regain your strength. You will wake in the early hours of the morning and there will be no siege outside of the gates. No more soldiers. No arrows shot over the city walls. Your wife and children will kiss you good morning, and you will be much as you were before. Laboring. Plying your trade in the marketplace. Sitting down each evening to a hearty supper. Praying before every meal and before sleep. You may one day smile again and laugh. And yet…”

She pauses. Her voice echoes over their heads; it rises from deep within her. “Yet I tell you now it will be different. A door, though you can still open it; a window, though you may look out of it; the very air you breathe will not be the same, though you may be alive. I do not know this city as you do. I do not know the sermons preached to you and your families in your great cathedral. I do not know the rooms where your fathers held you when you were children, and where you as fathers hold your own children. I do not know the streets where good men, men with skilled hands and skilled minds, make beautiful things and take pride in their work. I do not know the night skies that cover this city, the view of the Loire at the hours of sunrise and sunset. Only you, the people of Orléans, know these things.

“But what I know is this: though your life and the lives of your family may be spared, though you may resume your work and trade, it will be as if an invisible yoke had been placed around your neck. You will feel a heaviness you cannot explain to any physician or apothecary. And you will not be able to shake off this burden when you die, but it will pass from you to your sons and daughters, until it grows so light your children and your children’s children will come to wear it with ease. A generation, two generations, and they will not even feel it, for by then it will be a common thing to name their children after the rulers of England, to bow not to their own king but to a king across the sea. And so, your grandsons’ names will be Henry and Richard, not Charles, Philip, or Louis.”