The priest, who has heard her dog has died but not how, feels sorry for her. So, the next morning, he invites her to the church and lets her sit at a table with a slanting surface. He places a book in front of her and opens it gingerly, as if the pages were made of butterfly wings. It is the first book she has ever seen or touched, a compendium of the lives of the saints. He lets her turn the pages and look at the pictures, since she cannot read. She sees Sebastian, body pierced with arrows, a human porcupine, and recognizes Michael, stomping on the head of the serpent Satan. She sees a young woman with a face very like her sister’s touch the spoke of a giant wheel, which cracks at her small feet, drawn in the shape of flower petals. The priest, stealing glances at Joan’s swollen eyes, her wet nose rubbed raw, wants to show her suffering that is great and noble so she will forget her own misfortunes. But it doesn’t work. There is no contest between her grief and the martyrdom of the saints, who take their pain mildly even as they are clubbed or beheaded. She tells the priest she likes the colors, the dark blues of skies and soldiers’ cloaks and the stars and halos cut from gold leaf, and the priest closes the book, aware that he has failed. She leaves.

Later that day, when she is again with Durand, he turns to her. She is still crying. She thinks she will never stop crying.

He touches her shoulder. “You made a choice, Joan. They might have killed him or left him for dead, and then his wife would be a poor widow and their children without a father.”

He says, “Here. I have a gift for you.” She looks down and sees a small knife in his outstretched hand, the kind for paring fruit or cutting sticks.