He’d taught her to swim. She remembered the day, a mild afternoon in springtime; the two were on the banks of the Meuse, and she edged away from the gently rippling water. “I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t.” Back then she was afraid of anything that wasn’t solid beneath her feet. But her uncle reached down and said to her, “My little dove is afraid, is she?” And she fell into his outstretched arms, realizing too late her error. The arms snapped closed behind her, and he dropped her, shrieking, into the water. But when she had stopped kicking, stopped flailing her arms like small whips, turning the water into a froth of white foam, she realized he was holding her up, her chin bobbing just above the surface. First, she learned to paddle like a dog. Later, to hold her breath underwater. Still later, to glide like a darting tadpole, a minnow with shining scales.

He taught her other things, too, after they became friends. He knew he shouldn’t pick favorites, but he chose Joan and not her siblings because she was the quickest, the only one who would listen to an entire story carefully from beginning to end, even if she was skeptical. Because she would look at the sky and see that it did not terminate at the farthest cottage in Domrémy. Because she believed in cinnamon birds.

The world is a globe, he once told her. When formerly he had worked in the household of a lord, he met an astrologer, who was the oldest person he ever saw, and the astrologer showed him a book of the planets and the stars. “The planets are like people,” the astrologer said. “Here is Saturn,” and he pointed to a man with a scythe. “Can you believe it, Joan?” he’d asked, and she had nodded solemnly. She could believe it.

He’d taught her that there are different kinds of people in the world. “They do not all look like me or like you, so handsome and stunningly beautiful,” he said seriously. “There are islands where little people live. Though they are small, they age very quickly. One who is as old as you, Joan, would appear a wrinkled crone.”

She always listened to his stories, even if she didn’t think they were wholly true.

“Where have you been?” she asks him now. She blushes, shy after betraying so much pleasure at his arrival. It has been at least three months since she last saw him.

“I’ve just rolled out of a fine lady’s feather bed,” her uncle replies. “Else, how do you think I could afford these?” And he sticks out a foot to show her the polished boot. “The leather is soft as a woman’s…” He reddens.

“Hair?” she offers.

“Yes, soft as a woman’s hair. That is what I was going to say.”