Brother Agonistes was exhausted by the journey from Paris. On Louis’s instructions, he’d been given a litter for part of the distance—such a jolting ride, his very joints had shaken loose, not to mention the teeth in his head—but the remaining days had been a blur of cold and pain in muscles unaccustomed to such exercise as he and his escort rode north until they came to the walls of Brugge.
Lodged now at a Dominican priory near the Prinsenhof, Brother Agonistes had slept very little, for when Philippe de Commynes knocked at the outer door on the following morning, he was advised to seek the visitor in the order’s chapel. Entering the opulent little building quietly, de Commynes could not see the monk at first, but then what he had taken for a dark rug lying before the altar twitched.
Facedown upon the cold tiles, arms outstretched in imitation of Christ’s last suffering, Brother Agonistes heard nothing of worldly sounds and saw nothing. Privation, pain, and exhaustion had brought him to the emptiness and silence of perfect peace. He was preparing himself for the trial to come.
“Brother? Can you hear me?” A faint voice was calling. God, at last?
“Brother?” Philippe de Commynes shook the monk gently by the shoulder. “Brother Agonistes? We have very little time.”
The human world claimed him. In despair, Agonistes fell down, down from the Light, into candle-flickering, incense-woven dark. He returned convulsing, curling in on his own body like a fetus, for to reenter the world of men brought back the agony of locked muscles and lungs bruised by the freezing air of the recent journey.
Philippe de Commynes gazed at the writhing heap with distaste. If this fit killed the monk, what would he tell Louis? He nudged the man with his foot, unwilling to dirty his hands.
Agonistes opened his eyes; they were clouded as those of a newborn child. A moment later he coughed, hawked, and spat green phlegm onto the pristine tiles of the chapel floor. The contempt was deliberate. This was a worldly place, far too close to the court for Holiness to dwell here naturally.
“Brother?”
“I hear you, monsieur.” The monk was hoarse; it felt unnatural to speak and he was too weak to stand. He gave up the effort, closing his eyes once more.
“Brother, give me your hand. I will help you.”
Philippe de Commynes was sweating with anxiety as, overcoming revulsion for the man’s dirty flesh, he reached out his hand.
The monk ignored him as he recited a novena.
Time was passing. Already they were late. “Come, dear Brother. The duke will be most offended by our absence. King Louis expects you to obey him, also.”
Agonistes heard de Commynes, but unwillingly. He sighed. “Very well then, messire. But tell me again, what must I do? I am so fuddled…”
Turning his head away from the stench, Philippe leaned down to help the monk stand. “You must tell the duke and his court all that you know. Much depends on what you say today. More than you can possibly understand.”
As he hurried the weak and stumbling cleric from the chapel, Philippe de Commynes gloried in the mission bestowed on him by Louis de Valois, his true master under God. This stinking monk would today accomplish a noble purpose; his words would be a weapon in the hand of God. Like a stag in the forest, Edward Plantagenet would first be wounded in his most tender part—the heart—then he would weaken, falter, and fall as he was hunted, and then he would be torn to pieces by the dogs of his fate.
A deluded monk and a slut—fit tools indeed to serve his master’s ends. Between them today, these two would turn the key, the key that would unlock the greater destiny of France: dominance of all Europe.