But there is also what you can control. She instructs them: When you are hurt, there is a moment in which you must make a decision about what to do with the pain. For once it hits, you will want nothing more than to curl up into a ball. So you have to be faster than your own pain. You have to strike or turn your mind to the next goal before the wound holds you back or makes you cautious of losing your life, for that is the instinct of the body: to preserve, not necessarily to be brave. Whatever you have broken, whatever your body has taken in terms of damage, you can reconcile it afterward. Always after, never during. With every battle comes the backwash of excitement in the hours following, when your limbs and muscles jump, and even your pulse, as irregular as your heartbeat, leaps and bolts. So, you stay up through the night and watch the sun rise from the top of a fortress or the roof of an inn. And you think to yourself, I have earned this morning as I will earn every morning after this. The glories of the next day will always be greater, and what is suffered today will return to me a hundredfold in blessings sometime in the future. You must have faith this will be so. You must remember your body, the pains of your heart will heal.

She takes the two pages into her arms and plants a kiss on the tops of their heads. Love, tenderness. These are the things a child should have, but they don’t protect him.

She doesn’t tell them about the boy she met at Patay after the battle was over. From a distance, she spotted the restless twitching of a hand, like a rabbit leg jerking in a poacher’s trap.

Walking up, she saw he was English. Her own hand shifted by instinct to her sword. She stepped closer. He was young, about her age: seventeen.

When he noticed her approaching, he startled and his eyes widened. He hiccuped. And then he calmed himself. He was already dying. There was nothing she could do to him that wouldn’t happen in another few moments.

For some time she stood over his body, just watching. Clear drops of sweat gleamed on his forehead. He knew who she was and perhaps was willing himself to die at a faster rate.

“It is you.” Bad French reached her ears, and she blinked.

“Who is ‘you’?” she asked, but her voice was softer than she expected it to be.

“We have many names for you,” he said.

She tried to keep her face still. “I think I have heard some of the names,” she replied easily, “though I try to ignore them.” A breeze rustled her short hair, and her hand left her sword to brush a few strands out of her eyes.