Catherine leads her sister to a stool and instructs her to sit and keep still, while she picks out the white flecks, like snow, and their mother runs to Jehanne for an ointment. Joan could almost take delight in it, the way Catherine wriggles and squeals every few moments. “They have feet! They actually have feet!” she cries. And it is all Joan can do not to giggle at the tiny dance Catherine does with her own well-shaped feet around the stool. But it is taking too long, and she has lost track of how many strands Catherine has already sifted through. “Don’t we have a pair of shears?” she finally asks, and when the shears are produced, she says, “Just cut it. Won’t it be easier?” “But your hair,” Catherine protests. “It’s your hair!” So Joan grabs a fistful and cuts off a generous amount to show her sister what she means. A dramatic gesture; perhaps she does not need to cut quite so much at once, but it is done, and now the rest of her head must also be shorn. A fire is built to burn her lice-infested hair. This is not the first time she or another member of the family has had this problem, but she pledges: From now on, I will wear my hair short.

Across the room, three heads peep around the doorway, and from a distance they consider safe, her brothers watch. They smile at the sight of Joan, arms crossed, wincing when the tip of the shears brushes too close to her scalp.

She casts what she hopes is her most deadly look at them, but this just makes Jacquemin cling to the wall so he doesn’t fall over laughing.

“Go on, laugh,” she says. “When Catherine is done, I shall come for you.”

“Just be glad it is not a tooth worm, Joan,” Catherine says. “Or an ear worm.” And she wiggles a finger next to Joan’s ear, while Joan tries not to smile, to keep her expression angry.

When their mother returns, she stares open-mouthed at her youngest daughter. “You look like a boy!” she shouts. But it is too late. Joan shrugs. A foul-smelling liquid is rubbed into her scalp to drown the remaining lice. She pinches her nose, gags, makes a choking noise.

The sound of choking reminds her of death, of Guillaume. Her head, now shorn of hair, is closer to Guillaume’s head. Yesterday, the boy was buried, and she believes she can smell his blood in the air, though this is probably of her own imagining.