“At first light, the fighting began. She, Joan, was like a cliff in an ocean, and the English who had witnessed what she was capable of at Saint Loup, her first battle, came upon her in waves. They knew if she was defeated, our spirit would die with her. So they broke against her body, her armor. Each time they bounced off and scattered like sea-foam at her feet; then another wave of men would gather, only to break again. Her body was like a wall of stone, and she cut through the English as a jutting cliff through water, parting each attack. One sweep of her arm: boom. A dead Englishman falls into the man behind him, then he the man behind him, until an entire line is downed by the resonance of her fist. That is how it was.”

His hand grazes the space over his heart. He shuts his eyes and continues: “Hours passed of heavy fighting. I had just helped put up a scaling ladder. And as Joan climbed, our luck turned. An arrow struck her—here.” He touches the base of his neck, shows his horrified audience the tender white skin, the pulsing blue vein inches away from the throat. “From below, I saw her head whip back like someone had dealt her a blow, and on the ladder, her body wavered before she fell. The crash was terrible. At least…” He pauses dramatically. “A twenty-foot fall.

“I did not need to call for help. If a thousand men, not soldiers but the common people of Orléans, had answered her call to arms, then at least a hundred defended her body. No Englishman dared come near her. No second arrow from the sky could finish her off without striking one of us first. But a cheer went up among the enemy, and we felt the chill of doom close at our backs.

“I remember I took her feet, La Hire her arms, and all the while she bled. Her great strength bled out of her, and she struggled for air. She was choking on her own blood. We carried her to the periphery of the fighting, and my lord Dunois rode up. He asked, ‘What has happened?’ Then he saw who we were standing over. ‘Is she dead?’ he questioned. And no one answered, not even La Hire, who is never silent on any occasion. Then La Hire said, ‘With the English, it is always arrows. They do not possess the courage to face a man, so they must kill him from afar.’ I had never heard that old soldier speak so tenderly, as though each word gave him pain to utter aloud.