By morning, discussions have begun, and meetings are being held at the inn. People talk about what has been lost. Gardens and their herbs. A spare linen shirt. A pot not three months used. A plow newly fixed by the blacksmith, now for nothing. Fresh batches of ale, made with hops only recently picked and dried. Grown men lament lost sows and sheep as if they were their children. Yet even now they must remember their blessings. To appease God’s rage, they also talk about what has been saved. For as long as anyone can remember, ever since the English began to ravage the land with fire, the hems of women’s dresses have been weighted with coins, a whole family’s savings concealed on a single body.

But there are still things people won’t speak of: the jump of the pulse as the tip of a knife presses against the skin; how there is strength in numbers, even when the person who faces you is a young woman unarmed; how as soon as the first blow is dealt, she falls, and the circling wolves close in, marveling at their own strength.

“There were three of them,” Catherine says.

Joan listens. She listens as she sweats out her fever, a blanket over her shoulders. Outside, the day is warm. You can even smell the heat.

Catherine’s arms are spotted, marked where fingers have pressed into her flesh. Next door, a friend of their father’s, a brutish man, is lamenting the loss of a cow days away from giving birth. “What will happen to her now?” he asks. “What will they do to her, do you think?” His voice cracks.

But in this room, there are no tears. This is a place, Joan thinks, beyond tears. Catherine’s eyes are swollen but dry. Across her jaw, Joan spots the outline of a purple shadow. A slap delivered backhanded to shut up her screams.

“What did they look like?” Joan asks. “Did they address each other by name? Did you catch a name?”

Catherine shakes her head. They both know it’s a foolish question. Unless you put a whole country on trial, you will never find these men.

But Catherine replies so that Joan has something to hold on to: “One had a long scar on his arm. They didn’t speak French.”

Men who are cruel. Men who don’t speak French. Men with scars.