She asks them to stay with Catherine. “As a favor to me,” she says. “I have nothing to pay you with, but I will sneak what I can out of the kitchen when I have the chance.”

“Payment!” Jehanne cries, as if the word has a bad taste. She shakes her head at Joan. “Not everything is resolved with money and bargaining, Joan. You are becoming as bad as Jacques.”

When Joan goes downstairs, La Rousse is waiting with her father, who is tapping his foot. “Well? Where is the other girl, her sister?” the woman complains. Her face is as red as her hair. “Wasn’t I promised two girls, not just the one?”

Joan gives the innkeeper a hard stare. “Look at me,” she says, and she does not even try to keep the edge out of her voice. “I am two girls.”

La Rousse stares back. “You needn’t worry. I will work you as hard as two girls,” she replies.

And she means it. First, Joan is given sacks of flour. “Weevils out,” the cook says, jutting his thumb. So, she sits down on a low stool with a bowl by her feet, into which she drops wriggling beetles; some manage to crawl out of the bowl, and she stamps them dead. Next, she beats eggs, until the cook’s hands fly to his ears and he shouts, “That’s enough, woman. That’s enough! Move on to something else!” She pounds dough, kneading it with her fists, until what is left is like a sad death mask.

With her uncle’s knife she pares vegetables, and the small boys who are hired by the day to run errands or make deliveries gather at the table to watch her. “You are so quick,” they say in awed voices. “Don’t distract me,” she replies seriously, “or my knife may cut you into strips of tender meat for a fresh pie.” She smiles to show she is only teasing, and they smile back.

She plucks birds, slices eels, and scours pots until her callused palms are rubbed pink. She rinses brine-cured pork. And when she is done in the kitchen, she is sent out to serve with a pitcher of acrid-smelling ale in each hand. By the third day, she has developed an unnerving habit of appearing at customers’ elbows when their cups are nearly empty. It becomes a kind of joke: guests will shout or jump in surprise when they see her standing over them, waiting to refill their cups. “Where have you come from?” they ask her kindly. She says, “I don’t know. Ask that man over there,” and points her chin at her father, who struts about the inn as if he, and not La Rousse, is the real owner.