“My grandfather lived to a hundred, God love him. And he was kinder to me than my own father. He would take me often upon his back, and while he worked, he would sing songs he’d heard. He possessed an excellent memory. Recite him a poem, a ballad, and he could repeat it back to you without missing a single word. He told me about the glory days of France, the great battles and the warriors who fought in them, until the stories he told were as clear to me as visions. As a boy, would you believe it, I dreamed of Charles Martel, Prince of the Franks, until my father struck me a blow one morning when I would not wake and said, If you go on this way, Jacques, you shall have to beg your bread.”

There is a murmur, and her father nods. He exhales, lacing his fingers together.

“I never tired of hearing these stories, and my grandfather never tired of telling them. How Charles Martel at Tours defeated an army of thirty thousand Saracens though he had only half their number. During the fighting, a rumor spread that the enemy camp was being plundered of its ill-gotten treasure by a separate force attacking from the rear. See how a rumor is like an arrow, only better. Once it is loosed, it multiplies in the ears of a hundred, a thousand, then ten thousand men. The fools believed what they heard. They turned their horses around, some in the middle of attacking, and were all cut down from behind. And then my grandfather would say to me, after the story had been told, he would say, Jacques, though these are the tales of great men and do not concern the likes of you or me or anyone else here, we live in the same land as Charles Martel, and yes, we may step, without knowing it, where he and his army did when we go about our work each morning. So stand up straight, boy, do not slouch or hang your head, and be glad of what you have, though it may be little. Be glad the earth you till is the same earth turned by the warhorses of the great French knights, for the ground you stand on, the very air you breathe is different because of what came before.”

Jacques pauses. The men are quiet and solemn-faced. They are listening, waiting to see where her father will lead them with this story, and they are ready to be led. She, too, is listening so hard she is holding her breath.