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her cupped hands. “You’ll need it, Belami,” she whispered. “We’ve ten miles ahead of us till we reach Uncle’s house. It’ll be a cold journey. So eat up.” Belami did not have to be told. He devoured every last crumb before they set off.
    Joan tried not to look back at the house. The tears were welling in her eyes, but she knew shemust keep them from flowing, just in case she met someone. She did not look back, but she did meet someone. One of her friends, Mengette, was out collecting wood from the log pile outside her house. “Where are you off to, Joan?” she cried.
    “God bless,” was all Joan could reply, and she rode on.
    She passed Hauviette’s house on the edge of the village, her head down. The last thing she wanted to have to do was to say goodbye to Hauviette, for she knew even then she would never see her childhood friend again. Yet she so longed to see her just once more. She glanced up quickly at Hauviette’s window, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t sure if she was glad of that or sad.
    She crossed herself as she passed by the ruined church. Then they were beyond the village at last and on their way, Belami flying on ahead and dartingfrom tree to tree as they entered the forest – it was the only way to keep warm.
    “Are you sure about this, Joan?” Uncle Durand said. It was the first time he had spoken. “Are you sure you want to go?”
    “I do not want to go, Uncle,” she replied, “but I must. My voices tell me so all the time, and I must obey them. That first time we went to see Robert de Beaudricourt, we were just knocking on his door. This time, with Orléans besieged, he will listen to me, and he will send me to the Dauphin – my voices have promised me. Within a year, Uncle, you will see Orléans liberated, the siege lifted; and you can come to see the Dauphin crowned at Reims. It will happen, Uncle, because I shall make it happen, because my Lord in Heaven wishes me to make it happen. But first, I think, we shall have a baby to care for, won’twe? Aunt Joan will be waiting for us. Come on, Uncle, I’ll race you!”
    And she thundered away through the snow, leaving Uncle Durand looking after her, and shaking his head. “If anyone can do it, Joan can,” he said. The sparrow had flown back and was hovering over his head. He looked up at him. “Isn’t that right, Belami?” And Uncle Durand spurred his horse on through the snow, muttering as he went. “What the devil am I doing talking to a sparrow! Sparrows can’t understand. They can’t talk. They can’t even sing, not very well anyway.”
    Up to that moment, Belami had always liked Uncle Durand – he had been the first to trust Joan and to help her. But now he wasn’t so sure that he liked him that much after all.

  
    It was just as well they left when they did, for a raging blizzard closed in behind them and cut off the road for days. Just as well, for Aunt Joan too, that they reached her that evening, otherwise she could have found herself marooned in her house and with no help at all. She was already in labour when they arrived, and young Joan was at her side all the way through her pain. She knew what to do – it wasn’t the first time she had turned her hand to midwifery.
    All through that long night she had no thoughtof the English, nor of the Dauphin, nor of Orléans. Belami looked on from the flickering shadows, grateful for the shelter from the storm outside. The child came bawling into life at last just before dawn, a girl child with dark hair like Joan’s. They all huddled together in the warmth of the bed, the precious baby between them. When all the exhilaration, all the marvelling was over, and only fatigue was left, Joan’s thoughts turned inevitably to the future, to her mission. Lying beside them, she said: “I may not be here to see it; but I tell you, well before this child is my age there will be no English Godoms left in France. As soon as the snows clear, Uncle, we must go to