she asked, pointing to one of the marks at random, a wavy line that looped around in circles that somehow seemed central to his explanation, though she couldn’t quite see why. She would have been better to keep her mouth shut. Pierre tossed his quill down on the table and looked at her in exasperation. “Have you not heard a word that I have been saying in the last hour?” She had heard every single word, but she had understood nothing. He might as well have been speaking in Spanish. “I was trained as a merchant, not a soldier,” she reminded him. “I look at a wavy line drawn on a piece of paper and I do not see masses of troops fighting a battle. I see naught but a wavy line.” He sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair. “I will go over it again one more time.” He picked up his quill pen and pointed to the area around the wavy lines. “These represent the lie of the land around the outskirts of Paris. Mostly flat, as you can see, but there are some hills over here,”
