“I have raised and raised you,” he continues. “I alone have elevated you to heights unheard of at court, defying tradition, and letting others laugh because I saw in you a worthy and true servant of God. You said my cousin Burgundy was hungry for power, yet how are you any different than him? You, too, have had a taste of power and find you want more. Your appetite for it will never be sated. I see now that La Trémoille was right.”

“It is not power I want,” she says. Her voice fills the room. “I have power. I have within me the power to end this war. So, let me. Why do you hold me back?”

The hour is Vespers. Outside, the crowd has begun to sing again—for her. Bad timing, she wants to tell them.

“I have overlooked your errors, your arrogance, and said nothing because I favored you.” He trails off, as his gaze moves to the window. “But now you must choose. Will you feed your ambition? Will you pursue this quest for control, believing you can indulge your folly without my protection as your king? Or is my favor, the loyalty you owe to me as a subject, and what remains of our friendship more important to you than your love of war and bloodshed? You must choose, Joan. Choose between them”—he points out the window—“and me.”

She only appears as if she is staring at the ground, head hung in defeat. But she doesn’t tell the King, When the Archbishop placed a crown on your head, in that sacred space where strength and holiness collect, I received a crown, too, and this crown came from the invisible hands of angels. The light of God shone on me and was absorbed by my armor, and I felt such power surge through my body. I feel this energy wherever I go—in the cries of the men and women who reach out to touch me, who ask me to deliver them from the war. When I see you now, it is as if a cloth of very fine material has fallen away from a painting, and I find the picture is a little dull, a little frayed around the edges, in need of some restoration work. I see a king but I also see a man. I see that oil, however holy, however ancient, is just oil. I see a person of the same height—yet somehow smaller than before.

A helmet is also a kind of crown, and she will bestow on every soldier of France such a crown. She will make every solder a king of the plot of ground he must defend: the land beneath his feet.