She hesitates. Even before she speaks, she feels sure this is something her father would try to do: to get as much value as possible out of the money one has already paid. “The boy who died…his name was Guillaume,” she says. “He was only seven years old. I know you think it was an accident, but have you heard anything else in Maxey…You see, my village believes something different happened. We heard he was pushed.”

They stare at each other, and his gaze goes flinty before he shakes his head and leaves her side. It is the first time he has been unkind to her. He will not betray his people, as she has done.

Joan turns in the direction of home. It is still early; the sun has opened only a single eye, and the air is mild, the land covered in a translucent yellow mist. Later, it will be hot, and dust from the roads will billow up in clouds whenever a cart or mule passes. But for now, each blade of grass is dressed in last night’s rain, and dreams are still spinning out their threads behind the shuttered windows of cottages.

She is surprised to find her sister waiting for her at the door. She looks up. Catherine is crying.

At first, she thinks this is because she has been missing for a whole night. But these are not tears of relief. It is quiet, and she has grown used to the tap-tap of paws running out to meet her. Where is the shrill bark that can wake a whole village, the single howl that can raise the dead?

What comes out of Catherine’s mouth is an incoherent blubber, but Joan thinks she hears a curse word somewhere. It takes her by surprise, her sister cursing, before she remembers. Her dog’s name. “Salaud…”

And then it is Joan’s turn to wail. Her throat strains from the effort of forming words in a pitch higher than usual. “Could no one protect him?” she asks, each word stretched thin, though she is not really asking. She is begging. She doesn’t wait for an answer. She bows her head, and her chin sinks like a weight to her chest. She is aware her sister is trying to pull her into an embrace, but she slips through Catherine’s hands, as easily as a minnow through a hole in a net. She moves away, tripping over her feet. She weeps.