She rests a hand on the shoulder of an elderly man. “Already you have lost your duke, Charles of Orléans. At Agincourt, fourteen years ago, he was taken by the English and is still held prisoner today in a tower in their city of London. So I ask, what good will it do if we pay this ransom, if we raise funds and treasure for his release and do not free Orléans itself? What has your lord to come back to if he sees the flags of Saint George flying from the towers and battlements and not the bishop-saints of his own city, Aignan and Euverte, and the gold fleurs-de-lis of this kingdom?”

She stops. She shows off her armor, her steel-plated body. “If even a backwater village, a patch of cottages in the middle of nowhere, a village that no one may remember or love a hundred years from now can produce one such as myself, what may Orléans make of its tens of thousands of citizenry? What heroes may it find among its own men? So I ask you to fight beside the lords and captains of France. I ask you to fight beside me.”

She does not have to reach out. They are stretching toward her, hundreds of fingertips grazing armor and steel as she passes them. The cheers are deafening. Next time she makes a speech she thinks she will stuff a little wool into her ears.

But someone catches her arm. It is the old man on whose shoulder Joan had earlier rested.

He bends until he is nearly bowing. “I confess I did not believe it before,” he says. “I thought it was nonsense, this talk of sending holy maids and virgins to save us. But I believe it now. I see the prophecies about you—they are all true.”

That evening, Joan fires an arrow into the enemy camp. The arrow carries a simple message, written in her squire’s elegant hand.

“Abandon your posts. Retreat. Last chance.” It is the fifth of May, Ascension Day, when Christ rose to heaven, and therefore a day of rest. But if fighting is not permitted, one can still recruit strong men. Only yesterday she had fought at Saint Loup. Tomorrow—she recalls the plate of ham, the pitcher of water she had placed side by side on the supper table—will be another battle.

“Les Tourelles,” her squire says. Jean speaks like a child learning new words, slowly. “A battle that will be remembered. Yet how can I describe what happened in a way that will make you understand?” He addresses the pages, the servants, the women of the household. Candles are lit in the cramped room. It is two nights later. The seventh of May, and tears stand in his eyes.