But she still has her sword and a single suit of armor. She has a bed, though the blue coverlet is gone, and a desk where she can take her meals, a low stool placed in front of it. One leg, it seems, has been cut intentionally short, so the stool wobbles dangerously when she sits. She listens as le Maçon explains how meals will be sent up to her twice a day: an eleven o’clock dinner and a smaller supper. She will dine alone, though she is permitted to keep a servant for her laundry.

“What laundry?” she says. “I hardly have any clothes left.”

In the next room, her pages are crying, and though her squire is not crying, he is cursing through the wall in language that makes le Maçon blush like a virgin.

She looks down at the dirty stone floor, the bare walls. No more tapestries. No more oublies. That is something she will miss, she thinks: the taste and smell of cinnamon.

“I want to see the King,” she says.

“That is not possible,” he replies. “I…” He is staring at the floor. “You should know I am here for a purpose.” His gaze falls on her rings.

She removes the Queen’s sapphire, the Bishop of Poitiers’s ruby, a countess’s diamond, and drops the rings into his hand. Her fingers flex from the sudden lightness.

“What about…” He looks at the one ring she is still wearing, which belonged to Catherine and before Catherine to the Duke of Lorraine.

“I had this before I came to Chinon. Even if you ask, I would not part with it. You will have to wrench it from my hand.”

He relents and begins to move toward the door.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His words come out crackling and dry. “I would never have expected things to end this way.”

Her heart is too hard for her to shed any more tears. She shakes her head. “You don’t understand.”