“I was walking this way,” a voice says from above, bright as birdsong, and indeed, it is a voice that at any moment may burst into singing. “I saw your father’s house, and I thought, He’s really gone mad this time, poor Jacques, for he has installed at the door one of those stone demons that usually decorate the walls of cathedrals and abbeys to ward off evil spirits. They are called gargoyles, and I have seen ones with goat heads and horned devils curling their beards with a taloned finger. I have seen some with human faces grinning like idiots and others in mid-scream. But I have never in any of my travels seen a gargoyle quite like you.”

She moves, and the movement is stonelike, a crouched statue, mossed over, finding its feet again. One leg has fallen asleep, so she rises unsteadily. Durand Laxart reaches out a hand to help her, but she is not really made of stone. To show she is flesh and blood, she throws her arms around her uncle’s neck. She inhales the damp warmth of his shoulder and permits herself to be squeezed until she’s out of breath with joy.

“I first took you for a statue,” he says when she’s done hugging, clinging, and burrowing her bristly head into his chest. “Then I said to myself, No, it is a boy. A poor begging boy moving from door to door because he is hungry for a crust of bread. Then when I came closer, I saw the boy was wearing skirts, and I rubbed my eyes with my fists to make sure the devil was not playing tricks on me. And then I saw it was you.”

“Me,” she says simply, grinning.

He puts off asking what has happened to her hair. That will come out later. Instead, he looks down at the wreckage of greenery at his feet.

“What have you done here?” he asks.

“It is Agincourt,” she replies.

A pause. He studies the scene carefully: the spray of pebbles where Jacques d’Arc broke the French lines and, it seems, the English lines, too.

Her uncle nods and appears so solemn that even his expression darkens as he speaks: “I did not think you were there, Joan, on that cursed day, so terrible for the kingdom of France. But now—now I know better. You would have been only three years old, but you have captured what happened at Agincourt perfectly.”

It is one of those things one should not really joke about. So many dead. The flower of French chivalry trampled into the mud. Seven years later, outrageous ransoms are still being paid by a bankrupted nobility.

Nonetheless, they are laughing.