“Where are you staying?” Next to her, La Hire and Dunois flinch. This is how she shouts at her men on the field. Her voice is like a marching order.

“An inn.”

“Which one?”

“The Striped Ass,” he replies.

She blinks. It is hard to keep from laughing, and her companions don’t try. Like drunkards, they bellow in the street, howling, and Joan follows them. She glances back only once. On his own, her father looks older. She could almost feel sorry for him, standing there alone and without any friends to make him bold, but she doesn’t. When she visits him, if she visits him, she tells herself, it will take all her strength not to knock him down. From the crowds cheering after her, she thinks she hears, beneath the shouts, the sound of a single bark. Her eyes grow heavy. It is never easy—perhaps it is impossible—to forget the past.

The King has taken off his crown and put on a new outfit: white satin with gold trimming. And La Hire has gifted him a cloak, which has become His Majesty’s new toy. The cloak is a deep, plush crimson and decorated with row upon row of tiny bells. When the King moves, he rings. And like a child, he is so amused by the sound that he walks with a jaunty air. Ring, ring, ring.

“How does Your Majesty feel?” she asks. She is curious. Does being anointed change a person?

He considers a moment before answering. They are outside, in a courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace.

“Whole,” he replies. “There are good days ahead. Your surprise, Joan. Were you pleased to see your father again?”

She can’t even stop herself. She groans, as if someone has just stuck a knife in her and twisted the blade, and he laughs. “Can we send him back again, Majesty?” She is not really joking.

“This…” He touches the base of his neck to indicate where she was wounded at Orléans. “Does it still give you pain?”

She shakes her head. “I heal quickly.”

“I have been thinking,” he announces, as if this were something novel. He runs a hand along his sleeve, sewn with fleurs-de-lis. “As your friend, I deserve to be chastised. I have driven you too hard. In March, you arrived in Chinon, and we met for the first time. By May, you had raised the siege at Orléans. And now it is July. The summer is not yet over, and yet from Chinon to Reims, we have retaken all the towns in between. I feel you should rest, Joan.”

“I am not tired.”