“I have not forgotten my place. I have always remembered it, which is why I can only speak the truth. If we have come all the way to Reims and do not attempt to take Paris, if we give up this chance because we decide to believe, like innocent babes, the false promises of your sly and power-hungry cousin, then the world may laugh at us. They may laugh at you, and I would not be able to stop them. I would not stop them.”

He turns a little away, does not quite look at her. “Tell me, do you love war so much that you refuse to accept peace even when it is offered? Would you kill innocents, men whose lives can be spared, simply to satisfy your love of victory?”

“Peace, like respect, like love, is won. I envision a day of peace for France. But that is a day when we will no longer need to fight because all the kings of Europe will know that to try to defeat us would be to fail. Because we will have armories in every city and town of this kingdom. A standing army always ready to march. That is how we will secure peace, not through empty promises, not through false treaties that are a ploy to waste time while we grow content and idle.”

She takes a step closer to him. She thinks, Doesn’t the book of misery still bind us? All that we have suffered in our separate lives and that no one else understands…

But he does not meet her eye. He touches his collar, smoothing it. “I heard at Jargeau you were climbing a ladder when an Englishman took up a large rock and threw it at your head. Is it true? There are so many stories about you now, when I hear one, I hardly know what to believe.”

“It is true.”

“Then I would ask you to be careful. Life, like war, like what happens on a battlefield, can also be unpredictable. You would not wish to fall from a great height again.”

The King looks up. A sound has caught his attention. He listens. There is the hum of insects. There is the rustle of a pleasant summer wind making the tiny bells of his cloak jangle. There is, amassed outside the gate of the Archbishop’s palace, a group of no less than a hundred men and women, calling to her.

“It appears you are needed elsewhere…” He hesitates, frowning. He cannot bring himself to say her name.

The coronation feast takes place that night, but she isn’t invited. The Archbishop’s excuse: She is not a prince, a duke, a lord. She has no royal blood. And it is his palace, after all. His party. Can’t he leave out who he likes?

“What does it matter?” She shrugs. “Now I can go to bed early.”