She had slept well, and the sheet beneath her was clean when she woke. The bleeding had stopped. But her neck still swelled. She couldn’t put on her armor, so the women helped her slip on a doublet, the castoff of Yolande’s eldest son, and they left the buttons unfastened at the collar when they saw she was in pain. This is how one dresses for a night of merrymaking, for a pleasant supper with friends, not for a battle, but what can you do?

She arrives a little late, sword at her side, and on her best charger. The captains nod their welcome. The fact that she is not wearing any armor doesn’t surprise them. Wasn’t it just last night that she had ridden into the thick of battle in a blood-soaked tunic?

In the distance, the English are small as ants, and Joan covers the line of the horizon with one hand. The width of her palm and her fingers block out half the English force from sight, from existence.

Her squire is behind her, torn banner held high.

She lowers her hand, and it is like a child who has just drawn a picture in the dirt with his fingers. Where her thumb was, the ant line of the English wavers, as though it had been smudged. And then—it breaks.

“They are turning.” She hears Dunois at her side. His voice is amazed. “They are retreating without even fighting.”

“If only all battles could be so easy,” La Hire sighs. “But then we would be out of a job.”

No one says, The line broke only when you arrived, Joan; they were ready to fight until you appeared, though she knows they are thinking it. She is quiet. This moment is one to be savored. She learns: It’s not always armies that win a battle. Sometimes it’s fear. Fear can stop a battle before it is even fought. Fear can turn an enemy back before they have unsheathed a single sword.

“This is a beautiful morning,” Joan says to no one.

She looks up at the sky. She is stepping through memories as one steps into puddles of light in a shaded wood. Seven years ago, when she returned from a night spent in Maxey, the morning was not unlike this one: warm, gold-tinted. Her dog was dead, yet the sun still shone; a lark sang a high note from a tree. The sky is the same, she thinks, but what a difference from that morning. What a difference from that weeping child on a hill. She was master of nothing then. She could control nothing. Now men run at the sight of her.