The Watch and The Witch
February, 1429 – The King's Private Solar, Late Night
The cheers were gone. The miracle had been performed; the audience dismissed.
Now there was only rain against stone—soft, persistent, and honest.
The private solar felt more like a workshop than a royal chamber. Napoleon sat hunched over a dismantled iron clock. Gears, springs, screws—every piece laid neatly across a map of France. His hands moved with surgical precision, as if he were repairing not a mechanism, but time itself.[1]
Joan stood by the window, restless as a hawk confined indoors. She watched him work with the wary curiosity of a creature who understood danger on instinct.
"Sit," Napoleon said without looking up.
"I prefer to stand, Gentle Dauphin."
"Stop calling me a fish," he muttered, slotting a brass wheel into place. "Dauphin means 'dolphin'. It's a fish. I am not a fish. It's bad for morale."
A tiny smile flickered across her face—quickly gone.
"You doubt me," she said.
"I doubt everything," Napoleon replied, wiping grease onto a rag. "I doubt the weather reports. I doubt the loyalty of my cousins. I doubt the purity of the French saltpeter. Doubt is what keeps me from dying stupidly."
He nudged a chair toward her with his foot.
"Sit. We're discussing business, not theology."
Joan hesitated, then sat—rigid, alert, as if she expected the chair to attack her.
Napoleon slid a gear into place. Click.
"Your saints—do they give you actual tactical guidance? Ranges? Terrain? Reload intervals?"
"They tell me to be brave," Joan answered. "They tell me to fight."
"Ah," Napoleon nodded. "So: motivational speakers. Good. That's your department."
He stood, crossed the room, and opened a wooden chest. From it, he pulled a heavy object wrapped in oilcloth.
He unrolled the cloth on the table. A primitive hand cannon gleamed dully in the candlelight. Next to it, he laid out a parchment of improved schematics: a better trigger, a more stable ignition.
"You handle the faith," he said. "I handle the physics."
Joan stared at the weapon. She didn't understand the mechanics—yet she understood exactly what it meant.
"What is this?" she whispered.
"The future."
He moved closer, lowering his voice.
"God may make men brave, Joan. But physics makes them equal."
He watched her reaction. A flicker of awe—then doubt—then steel.
"I am giving you the vanguard," Napoleon said.
Joan inhaled sharply. "Me? Above La Hire? Above Dunois?"
"They are men of yesterday. Low energy," Napoleon dismissed them. "You..." he pointed at her, "...are momentum."
Her brows narrowed. "They will resent me."
"Good. Anger is energy. I can use it."
Napoleon placed both hands on the table, leaning over the map of Orléans.
"War isn't chess. It's pressure. It's impact. It's finding where the enemy breaks—and hitting them again."
He looked her full in the eye.
"You will not carry a sword."
Joan blinked. "Why?"
"Because a soldier with a sword is just another soldier. But a girl who walks through arrows with only a flag—"
He tapped her forehead.
"—becomes myth."
Joan lowered her eyes. She looked at the cold iron of the gun, then at the map covered in numbers.
"You make men into numbers, Gentle Dauphin," she said softly. "Strength into equations."
This time Napoleon actually looked offended.
"You think I want to? I count deaths because someone has to."
Joan rose. Her shadow fell across the map.
"And that is where you are blind."
Napoleon's eyebrows lifted. Finally, he thought. A spark.
Joan continued, her voice gaining strength:
"You rebuild clocks. You redraw maps. You measure men like grain in a merchant's sack."
She pressed two fingers against her chest.
"But you forget that armies do not march for gears. They march for fire."
Napoleon stared at her—a long, assessing look. He had met mathematicians, generals, emperors. None had spoken to him like this barefoot farm girl.
She is right, he realized. I have the machine. She is the spark.
"...All right," Napoleon said softly. "Then let's build a machine that burns."
He extended his hand.
"An Alliance of Convenience."
Joan didn't take it immediately. She studied him—truly studied him.
"You are iron," she said. "Cold, sharp, unbending."
Then she placed her calloused hand in his.
"And iron needs fire to shape it."
Napoleon's lips curved.
"Good. Very good."
He pulled his hand back.
"Get some rest, little one."
Joan stiffened. "I am not little."
"No," Napoleon said, a wicked glint in his eye. "But everyone else needs to think you are."
She paused. She didn't understand the full strategy yet—but she understood the challenge in his tone.
He turned back to the table and dipped his quill.
"The theologians at Poitiers want to test you. Purity, orthodoxy, the works."
"I fear no bishop."
"You shouldn't." Napoleon signed his name—starting with an enormous, defiant N, then squeezing it awkwardly into 'Charles'.
"If they delay my army by one day, I'll tax the Church until Christ Himself begs for a loan."
He rolled up the map with a sharp snap.
"Pack. We leave tomorrow."
"For Poitiers?" Joan asked.
"For the swamp," Napoleon said. "And after that—Orléans."
"To kill the English?"
Napoleon paused. A long, dangerous silence filled the room.
Then he aimed the primitive pistol at the map, right at the English-held bastions.
"Kill?" he echoed.
"No."
He pulled the trigger. Snap—the empty click echoed like a threat.
"To make them disappear."
[1] This is how you explain the universe without saying a word.