Advent again. And it was cold. A bitter rain dripped down his neck and back as he rode and that did not improve Louis’s temper in the murk of descending night. Then he remembered what had been bothering him all day. He shot the words impatiently over his shoulder.
“Le Dain! What happened to the monk? I’ve heard nothing.”
The barber had been dreading this particular conversation. He kicked the flanks of his cold and miserable horse and rode up beside the king. “Your Majesty, there is bad news. I have only just received the dispatch.” He was lying, of course; he’d known the news for some days. “The monk, Brother Agonistes, has disappeared.”
The king reined his horse to a stop. “Disappeared? How? Where?”
“The events are cloudy, sire. The report I have says he attempted to remove the Lady Anne de Bohun from England and… er… has not been seen since.”
“But why should he do such a thing?”
Le Dain was confused. “Your instructions, sire? You requested information. Perhaps he felt that the lady knew things about the king that would be of advantage to your cause and that if he removed her to France, he would hurt the… the earl of March.”
Louis snorted. Lately the pain in his legs had returned and to lose the monk at such a time was an annoyance; distinctly an annoyance! “He’s always been unstable, my ‘brother-monk,’ but in this, he’s exceeded his authority. Abducting a woman from her own country? Idiot!” The king pouted at the thought of the monk’s stupidity. Le Dain licked his lips nervously. Pouting was always a bad sign.
“Le Dain?”
“Your Majesty?”
“I want another monk. A sane one. My legs hurt.”
“Immediately, Your Majesty. And see, there is the hunting lodge. We’re nearly home.”
“But I won’t eat goose tonight, do you hear me? Goose never agrees with me. It unbalances the humors. Go and tell them that. They know what happened to the last goose cook.”
Le Dain bowed reverently at the ominous words and galloped off ahead of the party toward the distant lights of the hunting lodge. Unbalanced humors? God preserve them all from Louis’s humors, unbalanced or not. And just where would he get another monk, or a leech who would pretend to be a monk, at this time of night?
Leeches? Now, there was the beginning of a good idea. Leeches and the king’s legs. That might work. Anything to distract Louis from asking the most frightening question of all.
The fate of the little monster, Louisa.
“What are you writing, wife?”
Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, turned at her writing table and smiled at her husband.
“I want to give my family in England the good news we share, Charles. My mother will be delighted. So will my brother, the king.”
Charles strolled over to his wife and bent to nuzzle her neck, kissing and nibbling. She squirmed; he knew just how to excite her.
“Stop that! I can’t concentrate.”
“But that is good. Perhaps we can make another little person tonight to share your womb with our son?”
Margaret blushed, but the bright eyes of her husband gave her such pleasure. “But Charles, we shouldn’t. It’s wrong. This is the gift of life, it’s not for pleasure—the Church says so. And now we have engendered a child. That is enough for the moment. Isn’t it? We would not want to hurt our baby.”
She turned in his embrace, looked at him pleadingly. Charles sighed; he could see she was serious. Sometimes it was a nuisance having a devout wife.
“My darling is right, certainly. But…” He could not resist caressing her neck, she had such beautiful skin. “Is it not a little early to be telling your family?”
Margaret turned back to her letter; she had never felt so confident, so certain. She patted his hand lovingly as she wrote. “It is certainly ten weeks or more.” She pulled one of his hands down to her belly. “This time, this time I have a good feeling.”
She leaned back against her husband’s chest, dreaming. “And if we have a son, we could call him Ed—” She flicked a glance at her husband. “No. I think he should bear his father’s name. Charles. In time, he will be the second king of Burgundy, now that Louis has no allies to speak of.”
Charles smiled and bent to kiss his wife. “Never underestimate a Valois, wife. Never underestimate the king of France. We have no kingdom yet.”
Margaret turned her glowing face to his. “Ah, but we will, husband. And I carry the heir. I’m certain of it. The heir to the kingdom of Burgundy.”
Charles prayed that she was right—about the child and about his kingdom. But they’d both been wrong before.