‘How were you so brave?’ one demands. ‘How did you learn to be so brave? In battle, I mean.’

Joan smiles at the question. There are four of us, seated on a grass bank beside the moat of the castle, as idle as children. The July sun is beating down and the pasture lands around the castle are shimmering in the haze of heat; even the bees are lazy, buzzing and then falling silent as if drunk on flowers. We have chosen to sit in the deep shadow of the highest tower; behind us, in the glassy water of the moat, we can hear the occasional bubble of a carp coming to the surface.

Joan is sprawled like a boy, one hand dabbling in the water, her cap over her eyes. In the basket beside me are half-sewn shirts that we are supposed to hem for the poor children of nearby Cambrai. But the maids avoid work of any sort, Joan has no skill, and I have my great-aunt’s precious pack of playing cards in my hands and I am shuffling and cutting them and idly looking at the pictures.

‘I knew I was called by God,’ Joan said simply. ‘And that He would protect me, so I had no fear. Not even in the worst of the battles. He warned me that I would be injured but that I would feel no pain, so I knew I could go on fighting. I even warned my men that I would be injured that day. I knew before we went into battle. I just knew.’

‘Do you really hear voices?’ I ask.

‘Do you?’

The question is so shocking that the girls whip round to stare at me and under their joint gaze I find I am blushing as if for something shameful. ‘No! No!’

‘Then what?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you hear?’ she asks, as reasonably as if everyone hears something.

‘Well, not voices exactly,’ I say.

‘What do you hear?’

I glance behind me as if the very fish might rise to eavesdrop. ‘When someone in my family is going to die, then I hear a noise,’ I say. ‘A special noise.’

‘What sort of noise?’ the girl, Elizabeth, asks. ‘I didn’t know this. Could I hear it?’

‘You are not of my house,’ I say irritably. ‘Of course you wouldn’t hear it. You would have to be a descendant of . . . and anyway, you must never speak of this. You shouldn’t really be listening. I shouldn’t be telling you.’

‘What sort of noise?’ Joan repeats.

‘Like singing,’ I say, and see her nod, as if she too has heard singing.

‘They say it is the voice of Melusina, the first lady of the House of Luxembourg,’ I whisper. ‘They say she was a water goddess who came out of the river to marry the first duke but she couldn’t be a mortal woman. She comes back to cry for the loss of her children.’