She was, he said—watching her burn, black smoke rising into the evening—an emblem of death and folly. Only those things.

The Maiden kept praying to the god for as long as she could. Those closest, tending the pyre with fresh wood, could not help but hear her, until the roar of the flames grew too loud. She was silent by that point, in any case.

—

The smoke told him exactly where the Anglcyn were. And what they were doing, of course. Not far away, as it happened. De Vaux had his army set out immediately, and he kept them going as darkness fell. They were able to stay on a road for much of the way. It was muddy, but not nearly so bad as the meadows and fields were.

He also knew what he wanted to do when morning came. He felt rage—and guilt, already. He channelled his fury towards his lords and officers in the last evening meeting before battle. He was extremely precise, those present would remember. And not courteous at all.

“If any lord of Ferrieres rides forward with his cavalry before my order tomorrow,” the constable said, “my instructions will be that the archers with us are to shoot him dead, and those who follow him. I will defend myself before the king, if we survive. I may or may not succeed in that. But you will be dead if you disobey. Is this understood?”

He looked at each of the noblemen, one by one, these young, proud, arrogant lords of Ferrieres, chasing a dream of glory in their minds, ready to pursue it in battle in the morning, and he made each of them acknowledge what he’d just said.

At sunrise, smoke was still rising from the Maiden’s pyre. They picked their way through a stand of trees north of the road and then fanned out to be on two sides of the invading force, make Hardan deal with that.

Jeanette led them to the enemy, men and women would later say. A last service.

King Hardan had deliberately placed his forces in a wide meadow, clogged with muck that would clutch and grab at anyone trying to ride a horse across it. He knew the nobility of Ferrieres, and he knew his longbows: the strength of his army for decades now.

He didn’t know the new constable. Or the increasingly well-trained archers of the country they were here again to conquer.

The miracle, Robbin de Vaux would later think, and say to friends after, was that his nobility obeyed him. They outranked him, all of them, at court. Not here, however, not in the field. And he was, evidently, good at making people believe he meant what he’d said. No one wanted to be killed by an arrow from their own archers as they rode boldly forth to fame.