The men are quiet. Though they say nothing, neither for nor against him, she knows her father has won. A lull follows in which she collects pebbles and drops them in lines in front of her. Here are the French. Here the English. She takes a fistful of grass, casts what she has grabbed over the French ranks. Here are the arrows unleashed by England’s archers, by the deadly longbow, which is their specialty. On that island, they are all masters of this weapon. She has heard that on the day of Agincourt, the sky was stained black with arrows. And when they dropped, the ground turned white with feathers, the arrows’ fletching; it was possible for a person to look about him on the field and imagine he stood ankle-deep in snow.

From her neck, Hauviette’s chain of flowers snaps with ease. The head of each daisy floats over the pebbles and the strewn grass. And here is the flower of chivalry.

The meeting ends, but not before Jacques has treated his guests to cups of ale, so everyone can leave happy.

When he sees the men off, she is still squatting on the doorstep. As they pass her, most of them jump. No wonder. She is frightful to look at. Only the priest smiles. He thinks she is making a pretty portrait with flowers and rocks.

“Ah, I think I see a lady’s face,” he says, pausing to stare over her shoulder. “And you have decorated her hair with daisies.”

When he is out of sight, Jacques emerges. His gaze slides down to where his daughter is, still nudging pebbles east and west, north and south. He, too, looks at what she is making, and for an instant, she registers what seems to pass for comprehension. Is that a battle? But if there is recognition, then it is a flash like a lion’s eye behind a bush, there and then gone.

And to prove no understanding exists between them, that no such shared insight will ever bind them, not in this lifetime or the next, he strikes the rocks she has positioned with his foot. He stomps on each white daisy, twisting his heels in. Then he ambles away, a bounce in his step, without a word.

V

She is still crouching, peering at the destruction left in her father’s wake, when the tip of a shiny boot carefully inserts itself into the circle of her Agincourt. The boot does not belong to her father. It hovers over a crushed daisy, marveling at itself.