Catherine, third-born of Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée, will turn thirteen later this year. She is the only beautiful one in the family; others in Domrémy say Joan and her brothers are nothing to look at, and Joan, in this instance, is inclined to agree. Catherine is so beautiful, even their father, who people say could knock Satan on his back in a fair fight, won’t dare to hit her face, for fear of misshaping her nose or chipping a tooth. Just like cinnamon, how did Catherine come into this world? No one can tell, not with parents such as theirs. It seems both a lucky and an unlucky accident: lucky for Jacques and Isabelle, unlucky for Catherine. If she were a noblewoman, knights would compose verses to honor her; they would bankrupt their households buying chests of rubies and gold for a glimpse of her enigmatic smile and white neck.

Yet it is her goodness, not her beauty, that makes Joan love her. How long would Catherine have stood alone in the lane, if Joan had not left Hauviette’s cottage when she did? How many times have they sat, just so, beneath the Faerie Tree, Catherine’s arms draped around Joan’s shoulders to warm her, as they waited for sleep to come or for first light to dawn?

As for Joan, no one in the whole village wonders from whom she springs. First to be thrashed and beaten by Jacques d’Arc when he is in a bad temper, she is also her father’s daughter: ugly, dark-eyed, large. Put them side by side, and her unwieldy shoulders are simply a miniature of his, her thick ankles a girlish copy of his ox-bull legs. They are alike in other ways, too: always thinking, aware of what is happening, what has just happened, and what might happen next. They are constantly ready for a quarrel and a challenge.