The hard work of the day ended, the mood is one of idleness. Joan is tired of the ground, where she has crouched for hours, tying sheaves and gathering from the field the leftover wheat the men have missed. So, she is in a tree, nibbling one of the cakes the women of Domrémy have prepared. She is a resting panther on a thick branch, blinking dark eyes behind a thicket of sage-green foliage and observing the village from up high: the young girls dancing, barefoot, in the grass, their shining waist-long hair catching the sunlight; the boys gaping at the girls and her own idiot brothers among the open-mouthed. The women chatter and laugh, though their hands remain busy. They spin flax and look away from their work to check that their smallest children are where they have left them. Joan stretches on a limb as if it were a bed; she licks a crumb into her mouth and lets it dissolve on the tip of her tongue. Most of the noise below is coming from her father and the other men who are drinking and eating. Their laughter is like storm clouds rolling in, rumbles of thunder.

And her uncle? Her uncle is making Hauviette’s mother, Jehanne, giggle. He looks like he might sweep her up in his arms if they were alone and if Jehanne's husband were not giving him dark looks a few feet away. From his smiles, his not-so-innocent glee, Joan guesses he is telling her a story, perhaps the account of how he once inserted himself among a group of bricklayers and earned a full week’s wages without lifting a finger or how he acquired his latest pair of shining boots.

From a distance, she hears whispers rise, a stir, and catches a single word: Maxey. She narrows her eyes. A stranger has come, and he is walking in the direction of the men. She is surprised. For all the bluster about shame and weakness, a boy dead, a family’s only son buried, nothing has been done. Not even another rock battle has been scheduled.

Her father jumps to his feet. He strides forward to greet the man, who looks about forty, with a swaying paunch and thick, flabby arms. His tunic is a light blue, and the cloth so worn, the threads seem in danger of snapping and exposing his chest. He is a large man, larger than her father, yet the number of people who stare makes him bashful.

Jacques offers him cakes and ale, which the man turns down. To everyone else, thinking to themselves, What is Jacques d’Arc doing with someone from Maxey, our sworn enemy?, her father says in a congenial voice, “It is just business. Please excuse us.”