A moment of quiet follows, and Durand sighs into the lull. “Now,” he says, “does my story make you want to embrace your father and give him a big kiss?”

She elbows her uncle, not in the ribs, which she can’t yet reach, but in the thigh. She watches him wince; it isn’t an expression he makes solely for her pleasure.

“You are getting strong,” he says, rubbing his leg.

“You are getting old” is her answer, and again their eyes meet; again, they laugh. The sound sends birds sweeping into the air. The noise they make is so loud, the vast field begins to feel like a very small room, and they are stamping around in it, drunk on the smell of earth and golden wheat. Salaud circles them, barking.

She can barely see herself in the dark. Since her birth, she has never known a time of peace. If it isn’t the French being beaten in battle, it is news of marauders, who are sometimes French themselves, setting fire to villages and performing fresh atrocities. Like it or not, she is always thinking about the war. She is always hearing stories, though some are made up. Go out and fetch a bucket of water, and if it is too quiet, her ears will strain for the sound of footsteps coming from behind. When the church bell rings, it could be ringing for Vespers or it could be ringing because a company of brigands with torches has been sighted in the distance. She cannot look at a field without picturing how it would appear razed, the grain destroyed, and the long winter months still to be weathered. One can die at the end of a sword, from bad humors in the body, which create worms, or from hunger, and these days she cannot look at a bowl, even when it is full, without also seeing it empty. They say a dragon lives in the Bois Chenu, the dark wood where once she shook acorns down from trees. She knows a wood can be the home of a dragon, but more likely, it is where a small army, Burgundian or English, may hide itself before attacking. A wolf’s shadow can also be a man’s.

Durand says every misfortune is likewise an opportunity. Consider the Black Death, how many that plague killed. But after those long years when it seemed God Himself had given up on the world, the price of labor went up. Every plowman was worth his weight in gold. The common man bought land and suddenly, almost in the blink of an eye, found himself a landowner. One went to bed terrified; the air itself was rancid with the smell of corpses, of death. But if you woke up the next morning, you might live to see a new world. And your place in it will have changed.