Louis XI was not an athletic man, and he didn’t like riding because horses didn’t like him; a feeling that was mutual. This was not only an inconvenience, however; it was a scandal. The king of France, after all, was expected to be Le Grand Chevalier. Well, this king wasn’t. He preferred to travel by litter.
And so, on a freezing evening just after the second Sunday in Advent, Louis de Valois arrived at an obscure hunting lodge he favored, huddled behind the curtains of his shabby litter. He was accompanied by a small party of guards and a scant few annoyed and wet courtiers. He was grumpy, tired, and in pain from his belly—a not uncommon occurrence.
The king liked this place for its unfashionable anonymity. Cramped and uncomfortable as it might be, the lodge was close enough to Paris for intelligence to reach him if he required it, yet sufficiently hidden away to be discreet and therefore safe. Louis didn’t like his capital, Paris, for it contained many unhappy memories of the father he’d loathed and been frightened of. As a consequence, he was suspicious of the city’s loyalty and avoided it whenever he could. Paris was also where the nobles liked to congregate, especially now that Advent had begun, and too, the palace of the Louvre was Queen Charlotte’s most favored residence. If Louis went there, he would have to speak to her, even go to her bed, since it would be scandalous if he did not.
This last, and the fact that the magnates and lesser lords would even now be gathering to petition him for this thing and that as seasonal boons, made up his mind. They would all have to wait. He didn’t want the distraction of dealing with their plots and counterplots, for there was urgent work at hand. Tonight he’d received news that worried him; perversely, he blamed his functionaries in Paris for that. They should have told him sooner! It was their job to find him, to track his progress around the kingdom. He would have no excuses!
Edward Plantagenet and his men had disappeared from the Binnenhof. Sitting down to dinner, Louis called his advisor to go over the details once more.
“How many of them?”
“We are uncertain of their numbers, sire.” Olivier le Dain—called “the barber” due to his humble beginnings in the court as Louis’s valet—was extremely nervous but hoped he did not show it. Born under the sign of Saturn, le Dain lived up to the stereotype, being dark, quiet, cautious, and dangerous. But this king, to whom he had become a useful advisor, reduced him to a fearful, sweating jelly, much to the secret joy of his enemies. It was the specter of the “cage” that did it.
Two years ago le Dain had displeased the king—he still did not know in what way—and had spent an appalling winter hanging in a cage over the battlements of Nantes, exposed to the wind, the sleet, and the snow, wearing only what he’d had on when arrested. He’d nearly starved and both his little fingers had frozen black and fallen off, but eventually, praise be, he’d been forgiven his sin, whatever it had been. But what if he should offend again? How would he know?
Le Dain watched nervously as Louis turned his attention to the food. The king attempted to gnaw on a goose leg, but even at this distance the advisor could see it looked slimy—the sign of putrefaction. He blanched as, grimacing, the king threw the leg down on the silver charger. “Too much pepper. They’ve burned my mouth! The cooks are idiots, did they think I would not notice? This meat is putrid. Do they plot to poison me? Le Dain! I want answers. Now!”
Le Dain hurried forward to the table; he was sweating, giddy from fear. He would have to distract Louis, and quickly, or God alone knew how far the king’s paranoia might run.
Tonight, the king was dining in a small room at the back of the hunting lodge, completely alone except for five servants and the barber. Wiping greasy fingers on the sleeve of his gown, Louis waved the food away, scowling, and belched foul breath full into the face of his advisor. Then he winced. He’d been troubled by pain in his guts all day; it was getting worse.
Another scowl, this time at le Dain. “Why are you uncertain of the Englishmen’s number, Olivier? It is not useful to me if my servants know less than I expect them to.”
Le Dain resisted the urgent desire to piss himself as he ran through the best way to present what he knew. Plainly, this was a night when the king’s digestion would be a trial to both master and servant. The barber would accept any kind of reprimand for poor performance, just as long as it did not end with the cage.
“Sire, the facts are these. Edward the Usurper, earl of March, crossed from England nearly a month ago with a party of some twenty men. It included his younger brother, Richard, formerly duke of Gloucester; his Great Chamberlain, Lord William Hastings; the Lord Rivers, his brother-in-law; and a number of archers and—”
“I know all this! Why tell me again?”
Le Dain swallowed and sucked a deep breath into his lungs. Calm. Stay calm.
“It seemed useful to recap the names of the nobles, sire, because they too are missing. As are the earl’s Welsh archers. He had only a few, but they are formidable fighters.”
Louis grunted and signaled for le Dain to continue as he picked at the uneven stump of one black tooth with his knife. A morsel of gooseflesh had become trapped—he could feel it. The puffed and tender gum sat proud of the damaged tooth and prodding it disturbed a fragile balance within the king’s mouth; there was a sudden eruption of pus and blood. Louis yelped and spat the foul matter onto the floor rushes at his feet. The barber fell silent, unnerved. Irritated, the king signaled for him to continue as he mopped at his mouth with the edge of the tablecloth.
“It seems that the sieur de Gruuthuse did not approve of his guest’s departure. We know this because on the morning that the king… er, the earl that is… was found to be missing, several parties were sent out from the Binnenhof to find him.”
“And then?” Louis’s voice was muffled as he tried to staunch the blood and pus now oozing freely from his gum. The tooth had surrendered its tenuous hold under his ministrations and had left an inflamed and angry hole. The pain was eye-watering.
Le Dain glanced warily at his master. The king was moaning and snorting now, tears running freely from closed eyes. He hurried on, since those had been his instructions. “Alas, the earl could not be found. Louis de Gruuthuse has since sent urgent messages to Duke Charles at Brugge. We know this because we managed to fall in the way of one of the messengers.”
“Only one of them?” The king was inspecting the remains of his tooth as he spoke, holding it up to the light as if it were a gem, or a pearl of great price. He glowered as he turned it around and around. “This is the fault of the cooks. That goose was a disgrace!” Suddenly he threw the little black pebble into the heart of the fire. “I’ve only got six of my great teeth left now. And perhaps they will not survive to the spring. I shall have to live on gruel. Or have my food chewed before I eat it.” A repellent and gloomy thought, but Louis was not seeking pity; he was angry. He wanted someone to blame for growing old. There was a sudden pop from the fire as the tooth exploded and the foul smell of rotted, burning bone wafted into the room. That made the king even angrier. “Send me the man who cooked that goose!”
Le Dain backed out of the king’s presence at speed, bowing, blessing the rotten tooth as a diversion from the discomforting news of Edward Plantagenet’s disappearance. Not for all the estates he coveted in the Loire would Olivier le Dain go willingly into the king’s presence again while Louis was in this mood. Luckily for him, the hapless cook would most likely draw the king’s ire down upon his head, and he, Olivier, would have another night’s sleep in a bed, rather than on the freezing metal bottom of a cage. Tomorrow would be another day. And tomorrow, he felt sure, he would find out where Edward Plantagenet was hiding. But where would that be? Olivier le Dain stood in the hall of the hunting lodge and bellowed. It gave him pleasure to see how many of the king’s party came running to see what he required.
“The goose cook! I want the goose cook! And so does the king!”
The unlucky chef was ejected from the kitchens and into le Dain’s presence, where he fell on his knees, head bowed. And then it came to him. He, Olivier le Dain, would deliver the head of Edward Plantagenet to his master on a platter; just as this man, groveling before him, had served up the goose. Then he would be rewarded with the pretty estates he coveted in the valley of the Loire. Fearfully, the cook dared to raise his eyes, hoping against hope that he had earned the praise of the king for the meal that had just been served. But then all hope died. He saw his fate written in the eyes of Olivier le Dain and moaned.
The barber was pitiless. “My friend, you have just cooked your last goose.”