With the rest of the village, they flee to Neufchâteau, a neighboring town. The roads become a maze of jostling carts carrying poorly knotted sacks and people. Dresses and tunics have been turned into bundles, and already there are disputes over what belongs to whom. She, too, is a weight, carried into Neufchâteau. Noise and the swaying of the cart make her head hurt, and new beads of sweat drip into her eyes. She can only look up; her gaze is fixed on a cloudless blue sky, a too-bright sun. She hears her father say, as she is carried into the inn by her brothers, “Of course she would choose such a time to fall ill. What else would you expect? Any trouble she can give me. Any trouble.”

She tries to speak, though nothing comes out. Later, she thinks. Later she will answer him with a few choice words.

Her body sinks onto a pallet not her own. Outside, there is a commotion. Men are already counting their losses, and mothers consoling weeping children sing them snatches of songs. She hears the creaking wheels of carts as more from Domrémy arrive.

On the landing, footsteps stamp up and down, and Jacquemin is swearing oaths. “I will kill them,” he declares. His voice is high-pitched. He is practically squeaking. Yet something in it sounds hollow, even false, to her. “They are cowards, those English barbarians. What does it take to light a cottage on fire? Hm? Tell me what it takes. A woman can do it. So, is that what they are proud of? Slaying a few chickens! Leading some pigs away!” It reminds her of another moment in another year: a day as fine as this one. She thinks, before her world turns dark: When a boy was dying, you made the same oaths. You could do nothing then. You can do nothing now.

When Joan wakes, there is a new pain to contend with: hunger. The sky outside the single window is nearly dark, the last of the light slipping fast away.

She is still dizzy. The room teeters, as though balanced on a single sharp point. In the far corner by a low table, she thinks she sees the shape of her sister.

She is tired but wants to talk. She is in the mood for swapping stories. “Do you remember,” Joan begins, “that time when I returned home, and as soon as our father saw me he threw a cloak over my head and told me to fix a hole in it.”

“Do you need it now?” she’d asked in protest. Her voice then was small. She was young. Maybe seven or eight.

“Now,” her father said.