Often she thinks of the three men. She pictures them: the dark grizzle of their chins, their lightless eyes, their giant fists. She has seen the bruises they left on Catherine’s body and memorized their shape and breadth, created from them what these men’s hands must look like. If it had been her and not Catherine, Joan wonders, would she have escaped?

“They wouldn’t stand in the same room as you, Joan,” her uncle says, trying to smile and failing. “You’d scoop them up and shake the teeth out of their heads. They’d take one look at you and run.”

She doesn’t think this is true. Anyone is fair game in war. So why not her? She clenches and unclenches a fist. It isn’t beauty the enemy wants but power.

A month passes. One morning, Catherine comes to her, says nothing, but her face tells Joan everything. A cold sweat washes through her, like the day when she fell ill. She had asked Catherine to forget, but forgetting is no longer an option. When their father is told, he is speechless; he stumbles into a chair to sit and stare at his own feet. Their mother prays, weeps, prays again. Durand covers his face. Joan watches as his free hand floats to his chest, to the place where his heart is, and hovers there, senseless. She learns that the body cannot distinguish between a laughing tumble in a feather bed with what is taken by force. The result is the same.

She watches Catherine grow weaker and confine herself to their room. “Keep the shutters closed,” Catherine says. Light pains her, and she wants to keep the sounds, the chatter and noise of the village, outside. And there are girls, Catherine’s former friends, who gather beneath the window and think it funny to ask when the wedding feast will be. Joan’s response: she collects a bucket of pig feces and empties it over their heads.

“I feel you are growing smaller,” Joan says.

Catherine’s mouth twitches. She looks as if she would like to tuck herself away into oblivion. “Will you take me to the shrine?” she asks in reply. The Virgin’s shrine is on top of a hill, and the weather is growing cool. But Catherine wants to make an offering. Joan just stops herself from saying, “Still?”

“We will go when it is dark and take Jacquemin with us,” Catherine says. She is ashamed.

“We will go when it is light,” Joan answers. “And we will walk the roads as if we own them.”