Jeanne called upon the besieged citizens to surrender.

‘Surrender to us quickly, for Jesus’s sake, and make your submission to King Charles!’

From the top of the ramparts they responded with a volley of oaths and a shower of missiles.

‘Whore of a cowgirl! If the Armagnacs were men, you’d talk less of your maidenhead!’

They crossed the first moat, which was dry. The second was enormous: fifty feet across filled with the high waters of the Seine. Jeanne was the first to reach its edge. She moved forward into the water, sounding the bottom with the staff of her standard to find the best place to cross. They would turn over the carriages if necessary. The pontoon-builders went about their business under a hail of arrows and tiles. Suddenly Jeanne’s standard-bearer had his foot pierced by an arrow from a cross-bow. He raised the visor of his helmet to examine his wound. He then received a second arrow on the forehead and fell forward. Dead. Jeanne picked up his standard, but she had also been touched above the knee. The Sire de Gaucourt led her away, despite her furious protestations.

‘We should have gone on and crossed the moats! Paris was ours!’

Gaucourt pointed out to her that Alençon and Clermont had been forced out of the pig market, from which they had dominated the situation. She herself had to have her wound dressed. The sun was going down. Tomorrow the fight would begin again.

Tomorrow, always tomorrow! I have been waiting for months for tomorrow. But I know that I must act quickly. My days are numbered. I shall last a year, hardly more.’

Lying on a camp bed in her tent, she paid no attention to her wounded leg, to the ugly wound from which the blood trickled over her knee. She was still complaining bitterly about the lost day.

‘Retreat when all was to be won! The city was taken.’

Apothecaries and surgeons invaded the tent to treat her. She brushed them aside angrily.

‘Go! Get out all of you! I don’t need unguents, marmot grease or theriaca to be cured. God and his saints will see to my wound.’

The doctors poured out of the tent. One man however remained, sitting on a tall drum. It was Gilles. He said nothing for a long time, then, in the end, he spoke.

‘You are still in the fever of combat,’ he said. ‘You can’t feel your wound. In an hour you’ll have recovered your sang-froid. Then it will begin to hurt. It will hurt all night.’

‘It will hurt if God so wills. There is no joy or pain that does not come from God. What are you doing here?’

Gilles looked at her, smiling vaguely.

‘Looking at you, warming my heart in your presence.’

‘Do you take me for a brazier?’

‘There is a fire inside you. I believe it to be from God, but it may be from hell.