La Hire blinks at the stones. “Christ, Joan,” he says, forgetting himself. “What a pity you were not born with a dozen fingers on each hand, for then you could wear the treasures of the whole kingdom on your person. Here, let me look at that lovely blue jewel, I want to admire it…”

He takes her hand. “Very nice. But I wouldn’t recommend wearing these into battle.”

“And they say you should not drink before a battle either,” she replies, “but…” She looks down. “Give me back the ruby. You thought I wouldn’t notice you slipping the ring off, La Hire?”

The other men snicker. They are like boys playing tricks on their sister.

Her own household has expanded. She has clerks, and her clerks have assistants. She has two overly contented pages growing chubby on sweets, and a smug squire who walks among the other squires like he is head rooster. She has five servants, some of whom do her laundry, others who fetch water for her basin and sweep the floors of her rooms, and light-footed youths who send and receive messages, run errands at all hours of the day and night, and look after her horses, of which she has no less than four.

Wine finished, they play a game of bowls—the rules are simple enough, and she learns quickly. The Dauphin wins because, La Hire whispers into her ear, he has been practicing while they have been fighting his war for him. Another servant brings clean towels and a plate of sliced apricots and plums, and they set aside most of the apricots, His Majesty’s favorite fruit, for the Dauphin. Then they walk, the sweetness still in their mouths, to supper. La Hire capers around them. He sneaks up behind Jean and spooks him.

But soon he and Dunois are back to swapping crude jokes.

“Know any others?” Joan asks. “I have heard these before. In Orléans. And all across the Loire Valley.”

“Dunois, La Hire,” the Dauphin says. He clears his throat and puffs out his chest. “What displeases Joan’s ears displeases mine.”

“Oooh!” La Hire says with delight.

For supper, they eat beef pastry and roasted lampreys in a brown sauce with cloves and galingale. They savor almond-milk flans garnished with saffron. But when the dish called blancmanger is brought to the table, a shadow passes over her face.

“Joan, you look at your food as if you want to kill it,” La Hire says. “If you have no appetite, the rest of us will assist you.”

One tries to leave the past behind and fails. From her grave, Catherine’s cold hand touches the back of Joan’s neck. She stops eating.

Now she knows why she prefers battles to candlelit suppers. In war, there is no time to think about your own dead. The noise alone is enough to drown out their cries from Purgatory.