But she thought—back, back, to a day of good weather, mild, with open skies. She was thirteen. After church, a boy, one of Jacquemin’s friends, had bounced around her. He was among those who’d laughed while her brothers held her under the water, who made a show of waving his nose whenever she passed. When she looked straight at him, he liked to shield his eyes: to protect himself, he said, from her great ugliness. But that day, she was in no humor to be taunted. “Joan, Joan,” he sang, and he said how no man would ever want her. Fine, she thought. Good. How it seemed impossible that she should have come from the same womb as her sister. This she agreed with, too. But then he’d gone further. He said he’d had dreams of Catherine. Dreams of creeping into her room as she slept, of stroking her beautiful hair and neck, of kissing her—thwack! Before she knew what she had done, her fist had hooked his chin. The blow swept him off his feet, made him seem as light as a cushion, and he fell, like an acrobat executing a perfect backflip. With a crash, he landed, his jaw and nose at an odd angle to the rest of him, and it took not only his brothers but also the priest to pull him up again.

Behind her, she had heard a chuckle, which made her turn. Catherine? No, her sister was frowning, upset at what she’d done. And there was no one behind her, only the statue of Saint Margaret that stood in front of the church. Yet she could have sworn she heard the chuckle again as she walked away, one hand rubbing the knuckles of the other.

She instructs her pages, knowing it is her responsibility to oversee their training. “Sometimes a battle is won before it has even begun,” she tells them. “It is an attitude.” She explains this to their wondering faces. In their laps are plates of armor waiting to be polished, which they have forgotten about. “When you are old enough to fight battles, I want you to look across the distance at the obstacles in your way—the towers, the bridges, the gatehouse, the walls—and I want you to picture how you will topple them. The vision must always arrive before the event, and when it comes, you will know what you have to do. You will know as soon as you set a sabaton on the field that the day is yours.”

After Jargeau, they moved on, taking a bridge at Meung, and left soldiers there to defend it before traveling to Beaugency. When that, too, fell, what remained of the English army fled in the direction of Patay.