“I don’t see you as a cleaner of armor—I am sorry to disappoint you. I see you as…” In torchlight, he frowns. “I don’t know what I see you as, but when I picture you, it is always alone and standing apart, like a dragon in a cave guarding piles of treasure, somewhere far away, on a mountain protected by mist and fairies. Not in a crowd. Not with others.”

She likes the idea of being a dragon in a cave. She likes even more the idea of guarding treasure on a mountain far, far away from the reach of Jacques d’Arc.

She sighs. Durand echoes her sigh. A question hangs between them, a question she has asked more times than she can count. Perhaps her father’s latest beating will be worth something if it makes her uncle feel sorry for her.

So, she groans. She leans forward, as if to throw up. Her fingers tighten around her ribs.

“Joan?”

She smiles. Her back straightens. “Will you take me with you when you leave?” she asks.

A pause. Durand shifts the torch so the light moves away from him; he turns his head to better hide his face.

Every time he comes to Domrémy, she asks. And every time, he finds a different way to say no. He has told her, plainly, kindly, but with firmness: “I know it seems tempting, the life of one who drifts, sometimes here, sometimes there, like a small boat on the great sea, but you don’t want to spend your days with a scoundrel. And I am a scoundrel, Joan. Your father, whatever his failings, is made of more solid stuff than me. And what of your sister? Will you have her come with us, because you can’t bear to be parted from her, and ask her to sleep beneath an awning, when it is raining and there is thunder, and have cold water drip down the back of her beautiful white neck?”

But she must ask. She must hear her uncle refuse her wish to leave with him, to leave Domrémy, even if it brings her more pain.

She stares. “Well?”

By the time the torch returns to his face, he is faintly smiling; his eyes are mild. He says, “I heard this story once from a sailor. A knight and a lady fell in love with each other.” (She groans again. This time the groan is real, but he tells her to be patient: the story will get better.) “They married. But their happiness did not last. One day, as the knight was on Crusade, he was defeated in battle, and though the Saracen king spared his life, he turned the good knight into a slave, for he wanted to make an example of him.