Reggie's father caught the boys and had them thrown into a bonfire as the village watched.
The room begins with dodging. Mikael may still be searching in clownish makeup, baggy trousers, an oversized cravat, emerald eyes, and a velvet suit. Alvina wants the story. Joan would rather keep this rare private moment away from case files, office gossip, and the endless work of inventing deaths. Memory gets its turn. She moves toward Leonardo, Florencing, and the sting of not thinking about a good friend for years. Then childhood pulls the story under. Her father leaves before sunrise to bake and comes home at sundown smelling of fresh bread. Reggie arrives from the side, older, trouble-literate, and connected to the farm that supplies flour, milk, and far too many eggs. The room reads him wrong at once. Joan corrects it with the dry patience of someone used to being misunderstood. Their families pictured a marriage. Farm and bakery arrangements meant more to the parents than whatever truth was forming between the children. Joan and Reggie had a different pact. They saw each other's hidden selves and planned a performance that might keep the families calm while letting their real desires survive at home. Then Matilda and Simon arrive. The twins turn whispered cricket-night theory into something that might actually happen. By the end, the story gets brutal and oddly practical: Joan of Arc survives with fireproofed garments, a pyre, and a narrator whose own fire story is too strange for today.
