For to understand, she thinks, you would have had to grow up with me in Domrémy. You would have had to endure everything I have endured. What is a doublet with slashed sleeves? What is a brooch, even if it should be made of gold? I have lived off bowls of watery pottage and still had the strength to lift a cart out of the mud. For more nights than I can count, I have slept in the shade of trees, my pillow a bed of moss, nothing but fallen leaves to cover my body, while nursing welts that would have turned your stomach to look at. If you took away this feather bed, I could sleep just as well on a straw pallet. If you took away the straw pallet, I would dream the same dreams on the stone floor. And if you took away these rooms, I would sleep as soundly in the stables with the horses. I still know how to cut a straight furrow, to mend a gate or thatch a roof, to skin and fillet a lamprey, to prepare a sauce that would make your mouth water. And I know how to make an Englishman cry from fear or from pain, for I was born to handle those weapons men invented to destroy one another, and can wield them better than any person living. Though I am not cruel, I am the daughter of Jacques d’Arc, and if you aren’t acquainted with my father, then you don’t know the seed from which I come. He is a man who, in peace, in war, in prosperity, in hardship, won’t give away an inch of himself, and I am the same. Put him in a labyrinth, in the middle of a forest, or in a rowboat in the sea with only half an oar, and he will never give in to despair; he is always face forward, his head on straight, calculating what tricks he has left up his sleeve to play.

And do you know? Though I was defeated before the walls of Paris, I feel it in my bones, in my soul: I am still the greatest warrior alive.

She gives le Maçon a hard look. She is about to spit harsh words, but she stops when she sees he is in pain. She turns away. “I am sorry, too.”

Hours later, a story reaches her through Jean. The King had planned to go hunting, but the dogs in their kennels would not come out. The horses, too, were restless and nervous. No sooner was the King’s favorite mount brought to him than the horse reared. Even with three strong men to help him, His Majesty could not calm the beast. The hunt was canceled. In their kennels, the dogs bayed. With fresh meat to tempt them, they still refused to be coaxed out by their masters. They howled, as if in the throes of grieving.