The Aquitaine

[Lady Rosalind Avalle]

Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?
- Isaiah 13:14

"Aquitaine is ceded, the French are victorious! Aquitaine is ceded, long live Philip de Valois!"

Winter came howling into France and all campaigns ceased, but not before the bells began clanging and clattering across the countryside in advance of the bitter cold winds. It was a wondrous Yule gift in a year of tragedy for Philip de Valois, who had watched with a weather eye the changes to the north, the resettling of his court in the wake of Ghislain d'Armagnac's shameful departure, the shaking of the Continent as Rosalind de Beauquesne married and then abandoned her husband Aragon.

The woman used the strictures of the Church to her advantage, but was herself a tool of Satan. She had done precisely what Valois would have done, and in confidence with his wife, even Joan had expressed her love of the brazen woman in less polite terms. His wife, it was well known, ran the kingdom when he was at war. She knew all the profanities it was possible to utter, having heard them all in council, but was not so jaded that she did not smile when uttering them in her husband's presence. He had learned that the woman some wished to saint, as they had wished to saint her predecessor who bore a girl-child and not the king of France that would have supplanted Valois, swore at her favorites as a farmer swore at his trustiest plough horse. She adored what Aragon called his Princess of Corsica -- it being a land he had little claim to, but could afford to grant his former wife, of whom he held much more in esteem than the Corsicans. "We can have no stronger ally in Auvergne than if we ourselves annexed it. And we will not, if we wish to count upon Auvergne men in our campaign upon Brittany."

Philip huddled beneath his cloak as they moved along the roads and byways of his kingdom, nearly doubled since his latest victory. What was left of the English now slunk back to their doubly-defeated country, leaving this foothold the Gaelic Nations once had on the Continent utterly destroyed. France was nearly whole again. All French-speaking citizens were gathered under one crown and one king, with the glaring exception of Brittany. They would have her in the spring, when it was safe to move troops again. It would be wet, muddy, cold, and miserable, but he was already mentally in the trenches, where he felt most at home.

Ghislain had always been at his side in those cold days, and even colder nights. In winter camp, Ghislain had warmed them all with endless supplies of alcohol, dice games, and songs from his home province. His Occitan accent made bawdy songs that much cheerier, and as his reputation grew, became part of the hero myth of the man who swaggered down the streets of Paris and sent all the street rats rustling for cover. He'd had to wear his armor on later such jaunts, afraid coin pelting down from rooftops would take out an eye, or break a bone, and where would the hero of France ride, if he could not sit a horse to battle?

He recalled his dear friend that quiet morning in the south of France, all the world silenced in the wake of Aragon's wedding. They had not known then that Rosalind would ride on Paris, an escort of armed men clearing the roads for the fortnight it took to reach the city at a high gallop, leaving a ruined marriage to Europe's most promising young king and dust devils in her wake. Had he begun to forgive Ghislain then, or had he merely been surprised to encounter his most loyal servant in the yard, his heart already committed elsewhere. To this niece of his, whom he had rescued from anonymity in barbaric Scotland, and sent back into the wild -- as rumor would have it -- with her pirate lover. France had excused worse behavior. How she had managed to anul this union, preserve a title, and retain her dowry perplexed Valois, but Joan had come to terms with it. Joan was more acute than her husband, whose mind was perpetually on the battlefield, and his heart with his long time servant, Ghislain d'Armagnac.

It felt strange to be alone on this march homeward. As they stayed in a hunting chalet, there was no Ghislain to rouse a boar from her winter's foraging. There were no birds to track with the hounds, no brandy sipped before a roaring hearth. He felt adrift, as much as a king was permitted to feel adrift, his heart slow in his chest while he laughed along at other favorites' jokes and stories. There were more. There were always more. Men flocked to his side to win places in battle or the court, it mattered no more, but all were jovial this Yuletide, with Aquitaine surrendered by longtime foes, and resting peacefully under the watchful eye of its French captors.

Paris was even stranger. Ghislain was not here to rouse the peasants into storms of cheers and flying coin, flower petals rescued from drying beside smoky peat hearths and thrown under the mincing feet of trained destriers, who would not shy at battle but danced dangerously at clapping hands and shrieking infants, cheeks red with cold, held aloft by young mothers with rotting teeth, hoping to catch the eye or the favor of the king's men. Or the king himself, his appetite for women quite known to his public, though his wife was revered by all.

He discovered Ghislain's fate when Joan brought to him a missive battered and sea-stained and damned near illegible, for all the schoolbook fine hand it was written in. She signed it, perhaps ironically, "Auvergne." There was no need for Christian names from the Lady Rosalind, who so upset France with her appearance, and left it shaking on its foundations when she fled up the Seine still wearing the Crown of Aragon on her pretty brunette head.

He clasped the letter to his lips and bowed his head between his knees, sobbing loudly once. He inhaled deeply through his nose, as if he might smell Lady Rosalind, this kinswoman he had met only briefly, and through her, her dead uncle. Ghislain, who had vehemently protested every illegal move in a chess strategy, who had that certain look in dark eyes that made the king of France's knees turn to jelly, who had loved him unfailingly despite Philip shaming him before the court and stripping him of all honors. Loyal Ghislain.

His wife did not know of his proclivities, only that he rarely slept alone in his bed. Only Benoit's girl, Adelaide, knew. She knew everything there was to know of both men, but he did not know whether she still lived. He should. He should have the courage to seek her out, but he did not. Adelaide would have found him, had she known. She would have refilled his cup of mulled wine, taken the letter and laid it aside, and then perched at his feet. With her head resting against his leg, she would have listened as he spoke his heart, and said not a word as he emptied his cup over and over again, the ghost of Ghislain at once becoming more real and more distant as the alcohol took effect. She would not have left him to grieve alone. Her body would have burned warm against his under the covers of the royal bed, and lying spent after, he'd have slept peaceful in his victories, as a king should.

He had the Aquitaine. Come spring, he would have Brittany. But without Ghislain, and the woman's fate unknown, nothing gave him solace this night. Nothing at all, though he did search to the bottom of the crystal decanter, resurfacing with no answers, but a pounding head and a vicious, roiling stomach the next morning.

( I neglected to mention that this thread is semi-open! Please e-mail me for more information. )