“I saw his intent, as soon as the torch was lit. I blocked his way, but you know your father’s arm. It knocked me clean across the room. Your poor mother had to fetch me up from the ground. I did not see what happened, though I heard it. The cries. Catherine tried to flee downstairs, to shield…It was no use. He was torn from her. Lit, like the wheel on Saint John’s Eve. He died in her arms, half his body burned, and your sister held him, though he was in agonies, and so was she for being unable to save him. All of us knew what he meant to you. I, who have sinned so much in my life, could still never have done such a thing. The smell alone…I went out of the house and was sick into a bush.”

She thinks, Another person might not have gone into such detail. They would leave out the burning, the cries, say it was done with a single blow, as easy as twisting the neck of a sparrow. He died quickly, Joan, her uncle might have said. That is all.

But they are two soldiers, one old, one young, and this is a battle they have lost. It cannot be only victories. They cannot always escape unscathed.

With Catherine, he never talks about the war. It’s always little jokes, how many hearts has she broken today and how many hearts does she plan to break by the time they sit down to supper tomorrow? It is always songs and stories of love, of pining, tales of lovelorn knights and princesses, and these princesses must all be sisters or twins, for they are identical in every tale, with straw-colored hair and gowns of silver brocade; they wear pointed slippers and walk through airy rooms in ancient palaces. The stories he tells her sister usually end well: in marriage to widowed kings or with the birth of healthy, pink-faced children who giggle as soon as they are born.