When she takes off the frog-mouth, the air is sweet and fresh. Her face feels warm. She must look flushed, because the helmet-maker and his apprentices are chuckling at her. They cry, “Another! Another!,” so the master shows her a bascinet, a helmet where the face is mostly exposed and a visor, separately commissioned and sold, may be attached to it. Without prompting, he sticks the bascinet onto her head. This one fits better, so she swivels around. They laugh again; she has an audience now. To amuse them, she throws the side of her armored skull against the wooden boards of the stall to test its effectiveness. Their laughter turns to howls, and a younger lad tumbles from his stool, nearly dropping his hammer on his foot.

Behind her, Durand, who is holding her barking dog, says, “Now, Joan…” while Catherine covers her mouth, trying not to laugh.

Joan takes off the helmet and passes it back to the master tenderly, like a newborn she is returning to its mother. She is tempted to kiss the helmet as she parts with it. She moves on.

The armorers, after observing her exchange with the helmet-makers, are already expecting her. They show Joan a completed mail shirt, long enough to reach a man’s knees. They permit her to run her hand over the individual links, of which they say there are exactly forty thousand. “Exactly forty thousand?” she repeats, not quite believing them. Nothing snags. Nothing cuts. When they shake the shirt, it clinks cheerfully with a life and humor of its own, as if aware of being admired. “How is it done?” she asks them. “I can sew,” she adds, thinking this is helpful for them to know.

“Sew?” She hasn’t yet butted her head against a wall, and already they are slapping their thighs and shaking with laughter.

“This isn’t done by sewing,” they say, and the eldest of them, a grizzled man with a dense beard, explains the process from beginning to end. First, the blacksmith provides the armorer with wire, which is cut to form links, like rings. The links must be hammered, pounded until they are smooth and flat. A hole is added to each link, then connected to four more. In this way do they grow in number, and a shape begins to form after weeks of delicate labor. This shirt, the one she is still stroking, has taken no less than three months to finish and will go to a lord living in Vaucouleurs named Sir Robert de Baudricourt.

“Our work requires both strength and an artist’s touch,” the grizzled man says, showing her a finished breastplate. He seems to forget he is not actually speaking to a potential customer. She stares at his hands, glistening with sweat. He has blackened fingernails, like her father, but from the soot of fire, not of earth. The knuckle of each finger joint bulges beneath toughened skin.