Her skin has returned to its childhood shades of blue, indigo, yellow, and green, where the guards have struck her. They tell her a story they have heard, in the hopes of frightening her. A woman named Pierronne was brought before the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. As a sermon was read, she was tied to the stake. And then she was burned. Her crime? She’d had a vision of God, and God had told her Joan was good, her cause just. As the guards share this account with her, they smile. Pierronne was lucky, they add. Her death was quick, the fire built up large, and there was no ill wind to blow the flames away. Her agony lasted only a handful of minutes. So perhaps yours will be the same.

Yet even now there are better moments. There is the time she passed through a town; she has forgotten its name, whether it was Burgundian or English. She held a piece of bread, but her left cheek was swollen from being slapped too many times by her right-handed guards, and it became difficult to chew. As the cart jolted down the roads, a boy ran up to the bars. In his hand, he had a stone with a sharp edge, which he carried like a prize. He threw it at her, and the rock flew through the bars of the cage and cut her across her cheek. When she touched her face, she felt the wetness of blood. A cheer went up, and people began scooping dirt and stones to follow the boy’s example. But she reached through the cage to pass him her piece of bread, and he took it. He ate it hungrily, and the crowd forgot about the dirt and stones they had gathered. They stared after her, in silence.

This morning, they are riding along a narrow road, uneven and steep. The wagon and her cage lurch, and she has to close her eyes. She rests, an arm draped around a bar, her forehead leaning against the shaft of iron, and the chains that shackle her wrists clinking gently. The guards are tired—one of them is snoring—so they do not taunt her.

But a sound rouses her, and for a moment, she is confused. It is a sound like thunder, though the sky is clear today, a rosy mist of soft colors: pink, white, and gold. She looks out and wonders if she has died; if so, is this heaven? But not far away, a guard coughs. The cart has stopped; he is pissing into a bush, and she knows she is still alive. She looks around for the source of the sound and finds it. It is the sea.

The sea is flat and calm. Its surface is placid; the current moves as though a sleeping giant breathed across the lapping waves. But one day, she thinks, it will wake. It will storm.