If this conversation were with La Hire or Jean, she would pull a face: stick her tongue out and make choking noises. For a moment, they stare at each other, but this is a contest he will lose. He looks away, tilts his head. He brings his hands together as if to pray. “Ah, but of course,” he says. “I forget you are God’s appointed. A holy warrior. A chaste maid. A tried and tested virgin. That is why they call you La Pucelle. ‘Death by Eve, life by Mary.’ Isn’t that one of the extracts the Duchess of Anjou dug up for you before you went to Orléans? So, I suppose not love then. No man in the world is able to tempt you. But what of power? And what of the money that usually accompanies power? What of gold and precious stones?”

“I will tell you, though I do not expect someone like you to understand,” she says. “In truth, I pray for purpose. When you are no one, as I am, and beholden to nobody, you can only be yourself.”

“And how easily you have stepped into your divine role.”

“Well, if those in divine office cannot please…”

She has struck a nerve. He shudders, collects himself. “I heard a story about you once,” he says. “Perhaps you will be so kind as to confirm whether or not it is true, so that my curiosity may be satisfied. I heard you were singled out by the holy woman Colette of Corbie when you were a child and that she tried to bless you with her own hands but you ran away. Yet before you made your escape, she managed to slip you a medal, which you later sold to the Duke of Lorraine, in exchange for a pretty bauble: a ring.”

She shows him her left hand and points to her third finger. “This one.”

“So, it is true then. You rejected a blessing from a woman as near to a saint as any we possess in this world, to feed your own vanity.”

She grunts. “You were not there. I saw no holy woman, only a woman half-starved with bloodied feet because she refused to wear shoes. We don’t need saints like that, not anymore. Saints who scourge and wear hair shirts, who believe that the will of God is only to punish, that His mercy and love are granted solely by the doling out of pain: who suffers most is blessed, who suffers least must live in sin. This is not God punishing us. It is just men punishing each other. What is there to learn from such lessons?”

“But I suppose we need you?” he says. He is still unruffled. “I suppose you believe…France needs you?”

She is silent.