These events drive the now “illegitimate” Dauphin, a young man of seventeen, to take sanctuary in the Loire Valley, where he establishes his own court. This is a time of turmoil. A town seized one day by the English may be recaptured the next by the French, and vice versa. Though Charles VII has his supporters—those who do not recognize or accept the terms of the Treaty of Troyes, believe his claim to the throne is valid, and have no wish to live under English rule—it is a miserable period for France and its people. The Dauphin has much against him. His mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, no longer recognizes him as her son. His sister Catherine is allied in matrimony to his English enemy. And England has taken a great deal of French land, albeit at no small cost to its own purse. Though he is heir by blood to the French throne, the Dauphin must end the war with England and Burgundy if he is ever to fully assert his kingship and reign in peace.

This is where our story begins.

I

DOMRÉMY, SUMMER 1422

Her job is picker-upper of stones. Not pebbles but rocks of heft and edges and sharp corners. As the boys of Domrémy gather in the field, Joan is bent-backed over the ground, digging missiles out of the earth with blackened fingernails. From her skirts, the ends gripped in a tight fist, she makes a bundle weighted down with hard treasures.

At her brother Jacquemin’s whistle, the others come padding over, a shuffling and uncertain army of which he is captain, being the eldest—sixteen—and tallest. From his mouth, a stem of wheat curves in a long arc like a single whisker. He looks out at the scorch of afternoon sun in a clear blue sky and stretches a leg, shakes a foot as if to wake it. Above them, a hot wind exhales, stirring a few hairs on every head. A stillness eases into the grass. One boy opens his mouth to yawn.

She shows Jacquemin her collection, and he nods. As captain, he has first pick of stones. He takes two of the largest for himself and flicks his eyes in the direction of the rest of his men. She goes slowly, deliberately, down the line. What she distributes is not randomly given. She examines each outstretched hand, assessing whether it is one accustomed to splinters, cuts, and scrapes, to dusty fights in yards and haystacks, or as yet uninitiated in the rites of boyish scuffles and hard labor. You don’t want to give a boy a rock that is bigger than his palm, that he cannot clutch in his fingers and throw with precision. So, she gives her brother’s friends, the square-shouldered boys of twelve and thirteen, rocks she thinks suit them: stones blunt and heavy.