Jean sighs, and for all of three seconds, it is as if he, too, has passed into the next world. “But her last breath did not come, and suddenly I heard my lord Dunois cry out. I felt my head spin as I saw the same hand that had fallen limp creep up to the shaft of the arrow at the base of her neck and pull. We heard the sound of flesh tearing. Her eyes were wild. I could see how her face trembled with pain. She bit down, gritting her teeth, and with one last twist, one agonizing wrench, the arrow came free. She threw it aside and gasped for air before sitting up, one hand over her wound. I saw she was as pale as the dead, that her shirt was stained with blood and the grass she lay on soaked through like a dyer’s vat. She called my name, and I nearly fainted. It was only Dunois who kept his head and applied pig fat to the wound to slow the bleeding. But when she rose to her feet, we felt our insides turn. Her first few steps, she stumbled. You could see she was still light-headed, yet she made straight for Dunois’s horse, which was guarded by his squire. When the man did not shift from his post—he, too, was stunned—she shoved him aside. I ran to her with her sword, and she took it. She did not hear La Hire’s protests or Dunois’s shouts. ‘She will bleed to death if she goes back,’ La Hire cried. ‘That is my horse!’ Dunois complained. But she mounted his destrier, and she did not have to call for me to follow. I was already riding behind her on another charger, and I held her banner over my head. No words passed between us as we returned to the fighting.”