She doesn’t need to call for help. Two servants have already come running. Her squire is on their heels, followed by her pages. Candles are lit. A hand offers her a cup of warm mulled wine.

She looks down at her bed. Where she had been asleep, there is a long gash in the satin coverlet. In the place of blood, a spray of goose feathers.

Jean picks up the weapon, and his mouth tightens as he passes it to her. “A misericorde,” he says, though he does not need to name the blade. She has used the weapon herself. It is a dagger crafted long and thin to pierce the breathing holes of helmets, to slip through the cracks of armor and finish a knight who is already wounded and dying.

What had Yolande said? “It is not always possible to see your enemy running at you from a distance, for at court we are masters of sleight of hand. Here, it is all shadows and cunning.” Her heart is beating so fast, she wonders the others in the room can’t hear it. Or maybe they can, but they do not want to shame her.

It is the eve of their departure for Reims.

Joan’s prayers are less appeals to God than updates on the latest news. “Someone tried to kill me last night. I think it was one of La Trémoille’s men,” she says, kneeling in the chapel. “Luckily, I am a light sleeper.

“Do not worry,” she tells God. “I can look after myself.”

God is silent, which she interprets as agreement.

She tells Him, These are my concerns: I am worried about bad weather, which will slow down the journey to Reims and take up supplies, for the army is much bigger than we can sustain. I am worried about the towns we must pass through, some of which are English, others Burgundian. If they fail to open their gates to us, then we will have to settle in for a siege, and sieges take both time and resources. I am worried about money. No, not money for myself, she clarifies, but money to pay for everything I want done, money to pay the soldiers, to keep their spirits up. You know what unpaid soldiers do? she asks God, as if He doesn’t know. They turn on their own people. It’s not just English and Burgundians setting fire to French villages. It’s discontented men, masterless men from any kingdom, including France. I’m worried that with the first cold supper, the first pang of stomachache, His Majesty will complain and wish he hadn’t come. And sometimes I am worried that my worries are beginning to sound like a courtier’s worries, like le Maçon’s.