The Dance of Death Read Free Page A

France.’
    â€˜No.’
    My companion, taken aback by this flat denial, looked his astonishment. ‘You must do,’ he protested.
    â€˜I’ve been otherwise occupied,’ I snapped. ‘Toiling up to Scotland, for example, and then nearly being murdered. Or had you forgotten?’
    â€˜But . . . Oh, well, never mind. Just accept my assurances that this is so. There’s been a flurry of diplomatic activity between London and Plessis-les-Tours for months. Ever since February, in fact.’
    â€˜Plessis-les-Tours?’
    â€˜It’s where King Louis mainly resides these days. A château on the Loire. In fact, the rumour is that he has withdrawn there permanently with the French court. He has never liked Paris.’
    â€˜So? Princess Elizabeth is going to marry the Dauphin. That seems simple enough. English princesses have married French princes before now, and vice versa.’
    Timothy shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, rumours have been reaching us of late of a change of heart by Louis. There’s talk – nothing substantiated as yet, but the information is from trusted sources – that he is ready to repudiate the English alliance and marry his son to Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret. Worse still, it’s said that Burgundy is ready to make peace with France and that this marriage will be a part of the peace terms.’
    I absorbed this information in silence. There was no need for Timothy to spell out exactly what this would mean for England. The Duchy of Burgundy had been our closest ally for many years now, and, equally important, if not more, the chief customer on mainland Europe for our wool exports. King Edward’s own sister, Margaret, had been the third wife of the late Duke Charles, but his death five and a half years ago had left only one child, Mary, the daughter of his first marriage, and she had married Maximilian of Austria. Immediately, Louis had moved to bring back the duchy – for many decades now a palatinate, owing little but lip-service to the French Crown – to a fiefdom under France’s control. Maximilian and the dowager duchess had appealed for England’s support in vain: King Edward refused point-blank to jeopardize the substantial annual pension paid to him by King Louis ever since the Treaty of Picquigny, seven years earlier. Even the disapproval of his own people, expressed in shouts and insults whenever he showed his face in public, had failed to change his mind. He had sown the wind: now, it seemed, he was about to reap the whirlwind.
    I shrugged. ‘What did His Highness expect when he left Burgundy to struggle on against France alone? It was surely inevitable that Maximilian would eventually be forced to make peace. And after the death of his wife, I imagine that what little remained of the will to fight went out of him.’ (Mary of Burgundy had died the preceding spring after a fall from her horse.)
    Timothy regarded me approvingly. ‘I’ll say this for you, Roger,’ he conceded generously, ‘you’re never such an ignorant fool as you look.’ I thanked him acidly, but he ignored me and continued, ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t argue with you on that score: nor would a lot of other people. But that’s not our business. Our business is to carry out the king’s commands, which are that you and the lady in question go to Paris and try to discover the truth of the matter. Separate rumour from fact.’
    Before I could reply, there was tap at the door of the room in which we were sitting and Timothy rose, pushing back his stool. ‘Ah! This must be the lady herself,’ he muttered, giving me an oddly apprehensive glance. He braced his shoulders and went to let her in.

Two
    I did not recognize her immediately. She was wearing a long blue cloak with the hood pulled up, and for a brief moment I wondered if she was the woman I had noticed earlier, at the top of the water-stairs.