Joan thinks a prostitute has just waved at her—it’s hard not to notice them, even if you aren’t interested in what they’re selling—when she realizes her sister isn’t where she should be, nor her uncle. Only Salaud follows close, watching her expressions. He stops when she stops, his tail thumping the earth.

The moment panic makes her throat close is the moment she becomes aware of smoke and the smell of incense. A crowd is gathering, and a procession of monks heading her way. Joan sees a large wooden cross, wobbling slightly on the shoulder of its stooped bearer.

She steps back to let them pass and observes it is not really the monks the people are craning their necks to gawk at; it is the woman moving with them, in the center of their procession. A woman dressed in a nun’s gown, limping, because she is walking barefoot. Her feet are raw, spotted with blisters. From her neck hangs a crucifix fashioned of crude iron. It can’t be very heavy, yet she keeps her head bowed, her eyes shut. Her mouth moves; she is muttering a prayer. Prayer, however, doesn’t give her a better sense of direction. When she veers off course, the monks at her elbows must nudge her gently back onto her path like mothers correcting the steps of a small child.

From the crowd, coins, which would have otherwise purchased a lovely bolt of rose-pink linen, a garnet pendant, or a carving of the Madonna, are falling into the outstretched palm of a monk who has missed his true calling as a butcher. Keep him away from the knife stall, Joan thinks; he looks ready to cleave anyone who doesn’t give in two.

But now a gasp. A rustle through the crowd. Joan’s eyes are still on the menacing Franciscan, so she doesn’t notice that the woman has stopped, forcing the procession to stop with her. The woman has ceased her prayers, is looking with an expression of bafflement at her audience. A shout goes up from the crowd: “Someone is to be blessed—by her sainted hands!” Slowly, step by painful step, the woman is shuffling through the lines of her cowled protectors. This isn’t part of the procession, they seem to say, holding up their hands to block her path. Yet she is pushing through their ranks with surprising vigor, heading with alarming speed in Joan’s direction.

It feels like a scene from a nightmare one might have after hearing a story of spirits and the dead. Up close, the woman’s eyes are a watery gray. Her face is skeletal, and her mouth is a line etched with a quill fast running out of ink. Joan is rarely afraid, but she is fearful of this woman who looks like she has just crawled out of a grave and who is covered with welts of her own making.