Sparrow by Michael Morpurgo

I know it’s wilful, but I’ve always loved it, and I’m keeping it,whatever my voices say. I’ve obeyed them in everything else, haven’t I?”
    But in the end she did not keep it, not as a skirt anyway. It was not her voices who persuaded her though, not directly anyway. It was Jean and Bertrand and Uncle Durand. They were all quite adamant. “Either you go disguised as one of us, as a soldier,” said Jean, “or you don’t go at all. For God’s sake, Joan, the whole country is talking of no one else. Do you want to end up in some ditch with your throat cut before you get to Orléans? Well, do you?”
    For once Joan had no answer. “Madame Le Royer has agreed to do the work,” Jean went on. “I’ve got a pair of my servant’s breeches that’ll fit. Your Uncle Durand will lend you his tunic, and Bertrand’s young cousin has a pair of boots your size. I have arranged it all.”
    “No you haven’t,” said Joan. “It is my voices that have arranged it, as they arrange everything in the end. I had thought to defy them in this, but I see I cannot.” They were mystified at this, as they were by so much of what she said. “Very well,” she went on, “but I shall still wear my skirt. It shall serve as a man’s cloak. I shall make it myself. My voices shall have their way. And you can have your way, Jean, only if I can have mine. Remember that and we shall always work well together.”
    Bertrand smiled. “That’s our Joan – victory out of defeat. We win the argument, but she wins the war.”
    There was an afternoon and evening of cutting and sewing before Joan’s suit of boy’s clothes was ready: a grey tunic over black breeches and boots, a scarlet cloak over her shoulders. She paraded for them round the room.
    “You will do,” said Jean de Metz. “You are a soldier now, Joan. You may have no beard, but you’re one of us.”
    “Then I am content,” Joan replied. “For I would be as my soldiers, eat what they eat, sleep where they sleep. But I am a soldier still without a sword.”
    Strangely it was Robert de Beaudricourt who provided the sword. When they left the next day all of Vaucouleurs was there to see them off. “Go carefully, Joan,” said Robert de Beaudricourt, suddenly fonder of her than he ever thought possible, and with that he unbuckled his own sword, and handed it to her. “Go, and do what must be done.”
    “You have been an obstinate old coot, Robert,” said Joan, mounting up. “But you have given me a start. God bless you for that, and for this sword, too. The rest is up to me now, and God.” Andblowing a farewell kiss to the Le Royers, to her uncle and aunt and the babe in arms, she rode away towards Chinon, never once looking back.
    They did not stop to rest once that first night, wanting to distance themselves as quickly as possible from Vaucouleurs. As it turned out no one followed them nor were they attacked. It was rather the rain that was to prove their worst enemy on the three-hundred-mile journey. Through Burgundian territory they travelled by night whenever they could. It was hazardous going, and not just because of the enemy, who were everywhere about them and bound to be looking for them. But every river they came to was in flood. To Joan, even rivers were no barrier. To her every precious hour wasted on a detour meant another dead Frenchman. She would ride up and down the bank surveying the river for the best crossing place.Then she would plunge her horse in. The others soon learnt that her judgment always proved safe, that every swollen river was fordable if they followed her, if they crossed exactly where she did.
    Belami flew above them, beating his path through the torrential rain. It was no weather for sparrows either, but Belami did not mind. Now she was on her way, Joan was happier than he had ever seen her. And if Joan was happy, then so was he, no matter what the weather.
    There were friendly houses, and abbeys, like the one in St Urbain, where they