One time, a guest complains about the ale. “What’s in this?” he groans. “It is upsetting my stomach.” So, she goes back to the kitchen, adds water to both pitchers, and returns. “This is from a new batch,” she says without blinking and pours the man a fresh cup. She watches him drink it off. “Better?” she asks, and the man shrugs at her before nodding.

An old knight arrives at the inn. For three drinks, he will tell a story—a good price for half an hour’s entertainment, don’t you think? Before anyone can offer, she is there to hand him a clean cup and fill it, and fill it, and fill it again; she wants to hear all the stories he has to tell. Ale dribbles down his unwashed beard; his thirst is impossible to quench.

He says he knew the famous knight Bertrand du Guesclin. “Oh, did you,” the crowd roars, not believing him. “How old are you really, Grandpère? A hundred?” But he insists and grows so angry, tears spring from his eyes. “I did, I did!” he shouts. As proof, he talks of past victories, his own name in the tournament lists, and how once he unhorsed a man and his lance pierced both armor and mail, entering the flesh below his opponent’s left shoulder just short of the heart. He talks of the Battle of the Thirty. He wasn’t there, of course, but he heard about it growing up. Thirty French chevaliers against thirty English men-at-arms. And oh, the French victory, sung and resung by the troubadours, recorded by all the chroniclers of the time. Ah, those were the days!

Mid-story, he loses his train of thought. Both wars and tournaments have taken their toll on him, and now he is poor, reduced to traveling from town to town, like a beggar, and performing tricks with his horse, the only possession of value he has left in the world. He can make his horse bow as if it were a person. He can make it kick, to ward off wolves and attackers. He can make it step in a perfect circle as if it were dancing.

Joan listens while moving around the room, filling cups that don’t need to be filled, and taking the knight’s cup from him to pour more ale into it so he won’t stop talking. The more he drinks, the more stories he tells, though the more incoherent he becomes, too.

The next day when he limps out of the inn, shielding his eyes from the sting of daylight, he discovers that someone is sitting on his horse. He peers at this figure, and his eyes narrow. Wasn’t she the girl always bobbing around him last night with her pitchers of ale? And it was terrible ale, he thinks. Worse than horse piss.

“Who are you? Get off my horse!”