Rain drips, the slow warning patter before the angels dump their buckets over the heads of the living. The torch in her uncle’s hand hisses. They are laughing because Joan is making different faces (“This is my mother’s penitent look,” she says), and the fire, casting shadows that tremble and waver, lends her expressions a demonic quality.

They are still snickering when shouts come from behind a patch of trees. In a clearing, an argument is taking place. Her uncle grabs her arm, pulls her back.

She wriggles away from him, creeps closer, bends. She is curious. Between the narrow space of two trunks, she sees men, their backs to her. Her father is here; next to him, Guillaume’s father, and three other men from Domrémy who are Jacques d’Arc’s closest friends. They are always with him.

She recognizes their shapes: Guillaume’s father is reedy—a gust of wind might knock him down—while Jacques d’Arc is muscular and square. The others are lesser versions of the man they worship like acolytes. They make a half circle around another figure she can’t see. She motions to her uncle for the torch, and he passes it to her, all the while beckoning her away. She keeps the torch low beside her so the men don’t notice the light.

“Leave,” she hears her father say. “Leave before we make trouble for you.”

From behind the wall of bodies, a voice protests: “But we had an agreement. And you have taken my money. You cannot keep your pigs and also keep the money. Return one or the other, and I will say no more of this deception.”

Joan recognizes the voice. It is the man from Maxey.

Then Guillaume’s father speaks up: “What money are you talking about? I don’t think any money was exchanged, do you, Jacques?”

She can just make out her father shaking his head. “I never received any money. We may have discussed the idea of selling certain pigs to you, but a price was never agreed upon.”

“We are only taking what we’re owed,” Guillaume’s father breaks in; his speech is rushed. “And what we have taken is far less in value than what was first stolen from us. From me. My son’s life, or don’t you remember?”

“I had no part in that,” the man from Maxey replies after a pause. He is in earnest; his voice is shaking. He swallows so hard, it is like he has gulped down a whole egg. “I swear to you. My own sons are too young to play such games. They were not there. I was not there. And wasn’t it an accident? I was told the boy fell and hit his head.”

Now it is the voice of Guillaume’s father that shakes: “It was not a game. It was not an accident.”