Hours later, she is summoned. The King, recovered from his fainting, shows her a book tied crudely together with string. A courtier, a good friend, had thought it wise, in light of recent events, to bring it to his attention.

“You have written your name next to mine,” he says. “And, on some pages, above mine.”

“Yes,” she says. “I was practicing my letters.”

“For the future?”

“For the purposes of practicing my letters,” she answers.

He tosses another medal onto the table between them. “Explain this.”

“I cannot explain,” she replies. “Though perhaps Your Majesty should ask those in his company if they have any ideas. Their answer might surprise you.”

“I do not need to ask. I have only to trust my own eyes and ears, what I have seen and heard since arriving in Reims. This medal alone, these pages. Either would be enough to condemn you. And we have not even discussed what is unspeakable, how when you were with your household, you made a mockery of my kingship, thinking I would not find out.”

She looks down. She supposes the moment calls for her to kneel, that she should grovel and beg, but she doesn’t want to. She is angry.

“I am guiltless,” she says.

“These proofs do not support your innocence.”

On the tip of her tongue, Then you are a fool to be so easily tricked.

She expects him to keep barking at her, like an angry dog, but the King sighs, slumping back in his chair. All his energy seems to have left him. “I do not want this, Joan.”

Her reply: “Nor do I.”

“This rift between us, it must be healed.”

She bows. “I agree.”

“Return with me to Chinon, and all will be forgotten. We have completed our mission, what we have set out to do.”

A pause. “But I want Paris.” Her voice is small for so great a demand.

“Paris! Paris!” The King stands, and because he stands quickly, the desk in front of him teeters on its legs. He is angry; his right hand shakes, and he has to press his palm against his robes to still the trembling.

“I am sick of hearing about Paris. It is as if you are deaf to everything I have told you. My cousin has promised to turn over the city. But I would not expect you, a commoner, a woman, to understand one nobleman’s pledge to another. No, and why should you? You have grown up listening to the lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep. You do not know anything about statecraft.”

She has to bite down to keep from talking. What difference does that make, she wonders. Your Majesty does not know a thing about war!