“Then, seven years ago—hard to believe it is already seven years—I heard of Agincourt, that most terrible of battles. At first, it was a game of patience. The English waited three hours for the French to attack, and when there was still no charge, they changed position, replanted their stakes, and fired their arrows. The French knights had no choice. They charged. Though some say the charge came too soon, that the attack was disordered, and there were not enough men.

“The English King spared no one. When I was young, I had felt that the strength of France was the strength of us all. I did not think the descendants of Charles Martel could ever lose, not in this way. And then lose and lose again.

“But you know,” he continues, “the harvest that year, poor though it may have been, was still brought in, and the groundwork laid for the next harvest, which, if I remember, was not half bad. And though my wife lost a child before it was born only two months after Agincourt, the following year, I was blessed…”

She nearly gives herself away, leaning into the doorway to catch, though it must be impossible—an admission of affection? But no, in her head, she counts backward. It is seven years since Agincourt, and she is already ten. The blessing is not her, Joan, but Pierre.

“We are none of us soldiers. We are none of us the descendants of Charles Martel. We are as far from the kings and princes of the realm as the fish that swim in the sea are to birds that fly,” he says. “But we are still men. We are fathers and husbands. We are, some of us, landowners. And though it has been hard, though we live in a time of strife and war and our losses cannot compare with the losses of the kingdom, even we simple men cannot be expected to sit and scratch our heads and wonder what we should do when a child’s life is taken from us unnaturally. If the boy had died from illness, if he did not eat the bread and drink the water that was placed before him and slowly faded, then we should feel only sorrow and pity for his parents. But how can I forget the lessons my grandfather hoped I would learn from his stories? How can I forget the duty we owe to the land we live on and to ourselves? Will we let our village take this mildly? Are we shameless enough to say, France has lost many battles of late, so let us also hide our faces and take this child’s death in silence? Will the only expression of our grief come in the form of tears and howls and moans? Well, this may appease the priest’s conscience. It will not appease mine.”