It takes her a moment to understand why, until she pins down the source of her pain: her ear, her left ear, is inside her father’s fist. There’s the taste of grass in her mouth, along with everything else she has gulped down already. Fresh rushes are spread on the floor, and somehow she has chewed a bit of them, too. In her haste, she has swallowed a bit of the bowl itself, a hard and tiny crumb. Also, she is eating from the floor because, in spite of her grief or owing to it, she is starving. She is using her palm to ladle as much stew as she can into her mouth, so that she can’t be accused of wasting food. But that day ends like any other her father beats her, this time for dropping a bowl.
The singular, disturbing ending to that brief battle will stay in the girl’s memory forever. One summer day in 1422, ten-year-old Jeanne d’Arc gathers stones for a fight between the boys of her village, Domrémy, against their Burgundian neighbors.
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