After meeting her father, she was angry. Everything he’d said about Durand somehow fit. What she found endearing—his simpering nature, his ability to wriggle out of any difficulty, his tricks—these things now repulsed her. What she would never have believed possible: that if her father and her uncle were standing in front of her, it would be Durand she knocked against the wall and Jacques she left alone.

When she returned from the inn, she headed straight for le Maçon’s rooms. She pushed past his servants. In front of the aged councillor, she fell to her knees.

“I need your help,” she said, looking up.

He was alarmed.

“Appeal to the King for me,” she said. “Tell His Majesty to give me an army to take Paris.”

He shook his head. “You know I cannot do this, not even for you. It can’t be done.”

“It can. He trusts you.”

She stayed on her knees until he gave in.

The next day, as she waited, restless and pacing in her rooms, le Maçon came to her. His face was gray; he looked ill. “The King will give you an army,” he said.

She sighed with relief.

“Three thousand men.”

For a moment, she forgot to breathe. “Three thousand men,” she repeated slowly, “to take Paris.”

“Or give up the enterprise,” he said. “I have done all that I can. I asked for ten thousand men. The King smiled. Five hundred, he offered. It went back and forth like that until I dropped to my knees and begged. I reminded him of your victories at Orléans and in the Loire Valley. I said, ‘Have we not seen with our own eyes the gates of Auxerre and Châlons open to us on our journey to Reims without a single life lost?’ To this, His Majesty said, ‘Then three thousand. No more, or I shall have to consider your place at court, too, le Maçon.’ La Trémoille was with him. And the Archbishop. They never leave his side now. So, you understand, they watched me beg. And as I left, the King said, in my hearing, ‘La Pucelle must perform another miracle. Let us see if she can.’ And they laughed.”

She went to him, gripping his shoulder, as if to pass on courage. “We may be able to take a smaller gate at Paris with three thousand men. It is possible. Believe it.”

“This is the most I can do for you. I can do no more than this, so, please, do not ask. You have put yourself in a dangerous place with the King.”

She nods. “There is still much we can do with three thousand men. Have faith.”

So, here they are, before Paris.