Louis XI, king of France, had courtiers who swore he was the most handsome man on earth. He knew they lied and sometimes, if he was feeling cheerful, it amused him to see how far their obsequiousness would extend when they wanted his favor. And as they all wanted his favor all the time, when he asked them to describe his appearance, they frothed that he was an Adonis, a veritable Apollo. Unfortunately, the game palled quickly, for while Louis delighted in human stupidity, since it conveyed advantage, eventually he became annoyed by their implied contempt. Did these fools not understand he knew exactly what he looked like? He did not enjoy the sight of his own face and, for that reason, avoided mirrors. It was the length and size of his nose that particularly offended him, but what could one do about such things? The nose he had been born with would accompany him to the grave—unless leprosy took it from him. He had a morbid fear of leprosy among many other such terrors. At the thought, the king crossed himself and touched the finger bone of St. Louis, his own ancestor, which hung around his neck in its little green malachite box bound in gold wire. Unlike others—Edward Plantagenet, for instance—Louis was not greatly troubled by lust, yet he was a man as others were. And as his wife did not greatly attract him, he, as most men did, risked disease from the occasional women he consorted with.
If any of his courtiers had been brave enough to point out to Louis that the source of his ever-present desire to crush his two chief enemies—Edward Plantagenet and Charles of Burgundy—might be caused more by envy of their famous good looks than by lust for their territory, well, the king would have laughed heartily, ironically, and changed the subject. But, of course, it was true. Louis—secretive, pious, clever Louis—was jealous of his rivals, of their looks, their famous, radiant charm; and, since he’d schooled himself to a cold heart and low expectations of the behavior of those around him, he had no problem convincing himself, his court, and his allies that Edward the Usurper and Charles, the traitorous duke, his cousin, both deserved to be utterly destroyed. It was simple: they opposed his will, the will of the sanctified king of France and of the French. And there had never been a better time than now to scoop up both of them in the one mighty net. Edward had been driven from his kingdom, and Charles was thus fatally weakened by the loss of his chief ally against the French. That was good. That was very good, yet Louis felt no real or lasting pleasure in these facts, though he’d personally worked hard, and his servants harder still, to bring them about. In truth, he had little pleasure in anything. Life remained wearisome and annoying, just as it always had been.
“This is intolerable! I have ash in my eye!”
November had arrived and with it dark winds from the far north. Louis angrily furled his robes more closely around his body and bellowed for men to fix the smoking fire. Famous for his restless year-round processionals through the kingdom of France, Louis was currently roosting in the primitive—at least by Parisian standards—castle of his provincial capital, Reyns. His bored and fractious courtiers were heartily sick of the lack of even basic comforts as winter settled over the land. They were desperate for distraction of any kind to break the endless monotony of their days.
At last it arrived. Rumor swept the drafty old castle: a messenger had just ridden in, was being ushered, exhausted, into Louis’s presence. Perhaps the news he brought would be a distraction to the king, lifting his petulant gloom. His courtiers certainly hoped so. If the news was good, entertainment might be ordered and that would cheer them all. But Louis was not thinking cheerful thoughts; pessimism was his native mood and nothing had happened to shake that so far today. He drew down his long upper lip and sniffed hard; smoke from the stubborn fire made his eyes stream tears and his vision blurred as he inspected the man before him.
“Enough!” he commanded the tribe of servants fussing with increasing panic over the fire. “I shall conduct this audience and then dine. By the time I return to this chamber, I expect the fire to be working. Properly. Now, go!”
It was miraculous, really. A certain tone in his voice and men scattered like leaves. Louis found the effect gratifying, even after a reign of nine years, but odd that his least word was taken so seriously. It would be far too easy to take it for granted, but one had only to think of the fate of others—Edward Plantagenet, for instance, or his own father—to remember that even the mighty, even a king, could fall. One must be on one’s guard for treachery all the time. Tedious, but necessary.
Louis turned to the slightly higher flames in the chimney breast and rubbed his hands together in their feeble warmth. “Well, man, speak. What do you have for me?”
The glassy-eyed messenger, Riccard of Polignac, was exhausted and dazed from his long and freezing ride. Now, ushered into the king’s presence, terror oozed down his back seeking his twitching sphincter, and turned his legs to boneless sacks of flesh. The sound of his heartbeat filled his ears and he yearned for the moment when he could exit the Presence and sink back into the obscurity of the guard command in Paris. That was, if he survived the news that he carried.
“Sire, the success of your campaign in Picardy and the Maconnais is glorious. Your troops mass on the borders of Burgundy itself even now and await your word to advance. But I have urgent news concerning the fate of the former king of England.”
As the man spoke, Louis breathed in too deeply, trying to mask his tension, and took a great freight of smoke into his lungs. For a moment, he could not speak but his face turned a deep brick red and sweat stood out on his forehead as he tried to catch clear air into his mouth.
Without thought, Riccard lunged forward and thumped the king heartily on the back. That was a shock to both of them and, for a moment, each man stared at the other in terror. The messenger had laid hands on the scared person of the monarch. He could be expected to die a nasty and protracted death for such effrontery.
Understanding instantly the graveness of his offense, Riccard slumped to his knees, hands covering his head, eyes wild. “Ah sire, your pardon! I beseech your pardon!” He knocked his forehead so energetically on the flags that a bloody smear was left on the limestone.
The king regained his breath and marveled at the absurdity of it all. Of course he’d flinched when the man rushed at him—he could have been an assassin—but as the lurching thump of his heart returned to normal, he was glad of the messenger’s service, for the fear had squeezed his chest, driving out the smoke.
“Get up. Get up, you fool!”
Riccard, still dazed, stumbled as he tried to stand and grasped at the edges of a tapestry on the wall for support. With a ripping groan, the rotted arras parted company with its hooks and soon the messenger was completely engulfed by Moses Parting the Red Sea, a heaving, twitching lump of foolishness at the feet of the king.
“What is the message?” shrieked Louis. “Tell me, or I swear you shall join your ancestors’ bones in the pigsty they reside in. Speak!”
Poor Riccard. If instant death would have eased his plight he would gladly have obliged the king, but it was not to be. Closing his mouth against the dust of years trapped in the cloth, he found a way toward a little patch of light and slithered out from beneath the arras on his belly. Heaving himself free, he saw the terrible eyes of the king upon his own. For a moment he had no voice but then it came in a rush and he blurted his message as fast as hail drumming on a roof.
“The English king, sire, or the earl of March as he is now—he is in the Ridderzaal with the Lord de Gruuthuse, governor of Holland. The earl is the governor’s prisoner, but does not know it.”
Louis was not without pity, though he rarely showed it. Therefore he kept his eyes trained like an arrow on the bowed head of Riccard of Polignac, ignoring the blood dripping onto the floor at the man’s feet. “And? There is more?”
The man’s voice trembled. “Yes, sire. But it is contained in this cipher which will need translating. I was entrusted only with the outline of the facts.”
Riccard held up a stoppered brass tube in one shaking hand. The king leaned down and snatched it. “And I can see why,” he snorted. “A greater fool I have rarely encountered. Out of my sight! Go!”
The king’s merciful release of him confused poor Riccard. He had heard that Louis was very cruel and that his favorite pastime was hanging prisoners in metal cages from the battlements of his castles. They were left there in all weathers, with no food, no water, until at last they died and their bones swung in the wind, sometimes for years and years. Riccard backed, hobbling, from the king’s presence before Louis could change his mind.
The king, watching the oaf depart at speed, permitted himself to smile briefly, naughtily, as he stroked the small canister containing the promised cipher. Perhaps, at last, he was beginning to corner his dear cousin Charles, but the fate of the erstwhile English king was very much in play. Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, Louis thought. A sound maxim for which he thanked another monarch, though a Roman one of ages past. What he needed now was for his Doctor of Divination to cast a chart, perhaps the chart of England itself, to see what the future held. Yes, that might help him decide what to do next.
Was it possible that the Fates, those three implacable sisters, had ordained that he, Louis de Valois, would be their instrument in the ultimate downfall of Edward Plantagenet?
He very much hoped so.