“You have started on this road, Joan, and you should know it is a path without an end. War is like a box. Once you open it, there is no way to close it again, to unsee what you have seen. Other people will sometimes show you what they have done while you have been on campaign. ‘Look, I have carved a statue; it is the best statue in the world,’ they might say, or ‘I have painted the finest portrait of the king, and he has awarded me with a chest of coins.’ And you smile at them as if they are children who have made a circle of pebbles or a chain of daisies. You answer, ‘But I have been to war. I have fought at such-and-such a place in this part of the kingdom or in a kingdom far away. I saw a thousand men die. And I killed some, too.’ And then they blink at you. They are speechless, for they know you have lived through something they have never experienced in their little rooms and comfortable hovels and probably never will. You have skirted death, run circles around that king of kings. You have taken a man’s life, felt it trembling at the tip of your blade or perhaps in your own hands. What is this to a statue, a painting, or a book? You have teetered on the edge of graves—your own and those of other men—and you are never the same again after you have returned from that place. You would be surprised. When you are an old soldier, winning matters less than you may think. Victory is just a prize. Winning is survival. Winning is to keep breathing until the next battle begins.”

Joan lets a moment pass. She turns from the window to La Hire. “I am looking for three men. They came to my village last summer.”

“You will not find them.” He answers her quickly. “I heard from Dunois, who heard from le Maçon what happened in your village. By now everyone at court knows your story, but your search would be for nothing. These men, whoever they are, could already be dead. They could be anywhere, anyone.”

“Then I will go everywhere,” she replies, “and I will kill every Englishman I come across.”

He raises an eyebrow. That will take some doing, he seems to say.

“This morning was the first time I went on my knees and prayed,” he says. “I had not prayed for years. What was the point? The angels never seemed to heed the prayers of France. England is now God’s favorite daughter. But I said to myself, This time God warrants La Hire’s thanks, for He has seen fit to grant us a miracle. And that miracle is you. May you never stop fighting, little maid. May there always be battles so long as you draw breath.”