‘Yes,’ I say. I hold out my hand for her card and she looks at it for a moment before she hands it back to me.

‘Honestly, it means nothing,’ I say again to her.

She smiles at me, her clear honest smile. ‘I know well enough what it means,’ she says.

‘Shall we play?’ I start to shuffle the cards and one turns over in my hand.

‘Now that’s a good card,’ Joan remarks. ‘La Roue de Fortune.’

I hold it out to show it to her. ‘It is the Wheel of Fortune that can throw you up very high, or bring you down very low. Its message is to be indifferent to victory and defeat, as they both come on the turn of the wheel.’

‘In my country the farmers make a sign for fortune’s wheel,’ Joan remarks. ‘They draw a circle in the air with their forefinger when something very good or something very bad happens. Someone inherits money, or someone loses a prize cow, they do this.’ She points her finger in the air and draws a circle. ‘And they say something.’

‘A spell?’

‘Not really a spell.’ She smiles mischievously.

‘What then?’

She giggles. ‘They say “merde”.’

I am so shocked that I rock back with laughter.

‘What? What?’ the younger maid demands.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ I say. Joan is still giggling. ‘Joan’s countrymen say rightly that everything comes to dust, and all that a man can do about it is to learn indifference.’

* * *

Joan’s future hangs in the balance; she is swinging like the Hanged Man. All of my family, my father, Pierre the Count of St Pol, my uncle, Louis of Luxembourg, and my favourite uncle, John of Luxembourg, are allied with the English. My father writes from our home at the chateau at St Pol to his brother John, and commands him, as the head of our family, to hand over Joan to the English. But my great-aunt the Demoiselle insists we keep her safe; and my uncle John hesitates.

The English demand his prisoner and, since the English command nearly all of France and their ally the Duke of Burgundy commands most of the rest, what they say usually happens. Their common soldiers went down on their knees on the battlefield to give thanks, and wept with joy when the Maid was captured. There is no doubt in their mind that without her the French army, their enemy, will collapse into the frightened rabble that they were before she came to them.

The Duke of Bedford, the English regent who rules the English lands in France, almost all of the north of the country, sends daily letters to my uncle invoking his loyalty to English rule, their long friendship, and promising money. I like to watch for the English messengers who come dressed in the fine livery of the royal duke, on beautiful horses. Everyone says that the duke is a great man and well loved, the greatest man in France, an ill man to cross; but so far, my uncle obeys his aunt, the Demoiselle, and does not hand over our prisoner.