“Let him come in!” I commanded, scrambling down from my stool.

“He’s dirty,” she replied. “He’s coming no closer than the step.”

He shuffled into the doorway, swinging a pack to the floor. “If you could spare some milk, little lady,” he whined. “And perhaps a crust of bread for a poor man, a soldier for his lord and his country-”

“What did you say about the Maid of Orléans?” I interrupted. “And miracles?”

The maid behind me muttered under her breath and raised her eyes, cut him a crust of dark rye bread and poured a rough earthenware mug of milk. He almost snatched it from her hand and poured it down his throat. He looked for more.

“Tell me,” I commanded.

The maid nodded to him that he must obey me, and he turned and bowed. “I was serving with the Duke of Bedford in France when we heard of a girl who was riding with the French,” he said. “Some thought her a witch; some thought her in league with the devil. But my doxy …” The maid snapped her fingers at him, and he choked down the word. “A young woman I happened to know, a French young woman, told me that this girl Joan from Domrémy had spoken to angels and promised to see the French prince crowned and on the throne of France. She was only a maid, a girl from the country, but she said that angels spoke to her and called her to save her country from us.”

I was entranced. “Angels spoke to her?”

He smiled ingratiatingly. “Yes, little lady. When she was a girl no older than you.”

“But how did she make people listen to her? How did she make them see she was special?”

“Oh, she rode a great white horse, and she wore men’s clothes, even armor. She had a banner of lilies and angels, and when they brought her to the French prince, she knew him among all his court.”

“She wore armor?” I whispered wonderingly, as if it was my life unfolding before me and not the story of a strange French girl. What could I be, if only people would realize that the angels spoke to me, just as they did to this Joan?

“She wore armor and she led her men in battle.” He nodded. “I saw her.”

I gestured to the dairymaid. “Get him some meat and small ale to drink.” She flounced off to the buttery, and the strange man and I stepped outside the dairy and he dropped to a stone seat beside the back door. I stood waiting, as she dumped a platter at his feet, and he crammed food into his mouth. He ate like a starving dog, without dignity, and when he was done and draining his mug, I returned to the inquiry. “Where did you first see her?”

“Ah,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “We were set for siege before a French town called Orléans, certain to win. We always won in those days, before her. We had the longbow, and they didn’t; we just used to slice them down, it was like aiming at the butts for us. I was a bowman.” Then he paused as if ashamed at stretching the truth too far. “I was a fletcher,” he corrected himself. “I made the arrows. But our bowmen won every battle for us.”

“Never mind that, what about Joan?”

“I am telling about her. But you have to understand that they had no chance of winning. Wiser and better men than she knew they were lost. They lost every battle.”

“But she?” I whispered.

“She claimed she heard voices, angels talking to her. They told her to go to the French prince-a simpleton, a nothing-to go to him and make him take his throne as king and then drive us from our lands in France. She found her way to the king and told him he must take up his throne and let her lead his army. He thought she might have the gift of prophecy, he didn’t know-but he had nothing to lose. Men believed in her. She was just a country girl, but she dressed as a man-at-arms, she had a banner embroidered with lilies and angels. She sent a messenger to a church, and there they found an old crusader sword exactly where she said it would be-it had been hidden for years.”

“She did?”

He laughed and then coughed and spat phlegm. “Who knows? Perhaps there was some truth in it. My dox … my woman friend thought that Joan was a holy maid, called by God to save France from us English. Thought she couldn’t be touched by a sword. Thought she was a little angel.”

“And what was she like?”

“A girl, just a girl like you. Small, bright-eyed, full of herself.”

My heart swelled. “Like me?”

“Very like you.”

“Did people tell her what to do all the time? Tell her she knew nothing?”

He shook his head. “No, no, she was the commander. She followed her own vision of herself. She led an army of more than four thousand and fell on us when we were camped outside Orléans. Our lords couldn’t get our men forwards to fight her; we were terrified of the very sight of her. Nobody would raise a sword against her. We all thought she was unbeatable. We went on to Jargeau and she chased after us, on the attack, always on the attack. We were all terrified of her. We swore she was a witch.”

“A witch or guided by angels?” I demanded.

He smiled. “I saw her at Paris. There was nothing evil about her. She looked like God Himself was holding her up on that big horse. My lord called her a flower of chivalry. Really.”

“Beautiful?” I whispered. I am not a pretty girl myself, which is a disappointment to my mother, but not to me, for I rise above vanity.

He shook his head and said exactly what I wanted to hear. “No, not pretty, not a pretty little thing, not girlish; but the light shone from her.”

I nodded. I felt that at that very moment, I understood … everything. “Is she fighting still?”

“God bless you for a little fool, no: she’s dead. Dead, what-about twenty years ago.”

“Dead?”

“The tide turned for her after Paris; we threw her back from the very walls of the city, but it was a close thing-think of it! She nearly took Paris! And then in the end a Burgundy soldier pulled her off her white horse in a battle,” the beggar said matter-of-factly. “Ransomed her to us, and we executed her. We burned her for heresy.”

I was horrified. “But you said she was guided by the angels!”

“She followed her voices to her death,” he said flatly. “But they examined her and said she was a virgin indeed. She was Joan the Maid in truth. And she saw true when she thought we would be defeated in France. I think we are lost now. She made a man of their king, and she made an army out of their soldiers. She was no ordinary girl. I don’t expect to see such a one again. She was burning up long before we put her on the pyre. She was ablaze with the Holy Spirit.”

I took a breath. “I am such a one as her,” I whispered to him.

He looked down at my rapt face and laughed. “No, these are old stories,” he said. “Nothing to a girl like you. She is dead and will be soon forgotten. They scattered her ashes so no one could make her a shrine.”

“But God spoke to her, a girl,” I whispered. “He did not speak to the king, nor to a boy. He spoke to a girl.”

The old soldier nodded. “I don’t doubt she was sure of it,” he said. “I don’t doubt she heard the voices of angels. She must have done. Otherwise, she couldn’t have done what she did.”

I heard my governess’s shrill call from the front door of the house, and I turned my head for a moment as the soldier picked up his pack and swung it round on his back.

“But is this true?” I demanded with sudden urgency as he started to walk in a long, loping stride towards the stable yard and the gate to the road.

“Soldiers’ tales,” he said indifferently. “You can forget them, and forget her, and God knows, nobody will remember me.”

I let him go, but I did not forget Joan, and I will never forget Joan. I pray to her by name for guidance, and I close my eyes and try to see her. Ever since that day, every soldier who comes to the door of Bletsoe begging for food is told to wait, for little Lady Margaret will want to see him. I always ask them if they were at Les Augustins, at Les Tourelles, at Orléans, at Jargeau, at Beaugency, at Patay, at Paris? I know her victories as well as I know the names of our neighboring villages in Bedfordshire. Some of the soldiers were at these battles; some of them even saw her. They all speak of a slight girl on a big horse, a banner over her head, glimpsed where the fighting was the fiercest, a girl like a prince, sworn to bring peace and victory to her country, giving herself to the service of God, nothing more than a girl, nothing more than a girl like me: but a heroine.

Next morning, at breakfast, I learn why I was banned from praying through the night. My mother tells me to prepare for a journey, a long journey. “We are going to London,” she says calmly. “To court.”

I am thrilled at the thought of a trip to London, but I take care not to exult like a vain, proud girl. I bow my head and whisper: “As you wish, Lady Mother.” This is the best thing that could happen. My home at Bletsoe, in the heart of the county of Bedfordshire, is so quiet and dull that there is no chance for me to resist the perils of the world. There are no temptations to overcome, and no one sees me but servants and my older half brothers and half sisters, and they all think of me as a little girl, of no importance. I try to think of Joan, herding her father’s sheep at Domrémy, who was buried like me, among miles of muddy fields. She did not complain of being bored in the country; she waited and listened for the voices to summon her to greatness. I must do the same.