“Hauviette?” she asks, trying again.

“Unhappy marriage. Comes running back to the village a lot. Is about to give birth to her first brat. Won’t be her last.”

As far as she is concerned, the meeting is over. She sniffs the cup before draining it. She begins to leave, but he steps in her way.

“I have ordered up some supper. For the last three nights, thanks to you, I have been eating for two.”

Supper with Jacques d’Arc? She could almost laugh, except she remembers scraping pottage off the floor with her hands, and she wonders if the hard edge of the bowl she swallowed out of fear is still somewhere inside her. “How sad for you,” she says. If she were a child of ten, she would have gotten a slap in the mouth for that, but his eye falls on her sword and the knife at her waist. He looks across the expanse of her chest and shoulders, which, even under the fine silk of her doublet, are as solid as the limbs of a full-grown oak.

She has reached the door when a thought occurs to her. “Have you heard”—she doesn’t know why she hesitates—“anything from my uncle?”

A second grunt, a shake of the head. “Nothing.”

His voice pulls her back from the door. “You have always worshipped Durand Laxart, but he doesn’t deserve your love. You have never been able to see that man as he is.”

Same old Jacques d’Arc. She looks at him over her shoulder. “And you do?” she says.

“Your uncle was a coward.”

She turns to face him. Before she has even taken a step, her finger is already in his chest, jabbing him backward. She does not need to speak. Careful.

“I never told you.” His voice is quiet as he moves away from her. He rubs the sore spot on his chest. “The day when the English came to our village and Catherine…” He refills his cup, drinks it off. He takes a seat at the table. “Do you remember how Durand went to find her? He found her, not after, as he claimed, but just as she was taken. He was there. He saw all of it happen and did nothing. He confessed to me when she was already dead and buried and asked me to keep it a secret from you. ‘What could I do?’ he said. His whole body was shaking. ‘Three against one. They were armed and would have killed me! Tortured me even!’ I took him by the neck; I nearly strangled him with my bare hands. I spit straight into his eye and said, ‘That is not the point. You watched it happen, and you did nothing! You call yourself a man? You are a disgrace!’ He never returned to Domrémy again. And not long after he went away, you left, too.”