CHAPTER 15: SONS AND LOVERS

CHAPTER 15: SONS AND LOVERS

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh. October 2017

                                                                                            

During January 1450, the seven year old Harry de Burgogne scampered into Samuel Hart's apothecary shop on Pack and Saddle Street in central York in England, where he bought two jars of marmalade for himself and a pouch of liversnout for his sickly mother. He was a slender boy, turning sandy-haired, and assertive in nature.

A light-hearted conversation ensued.

“Prithee, dear Samuel,” asked Harry, in all innocence. “Why does my papa look so different from myself?”

My, he's beginning to look like his true father, realised Samuel. The thoroughly ill-matched Lord Sheridan and Lady Rosamund could well be feeling the discomforture already, and the issue could cause a dire rift.

“Because that is God's way, my son,” Samuel cautiously replied. “He moves in mysterious ways his strange tricks to perform.”

“But men do the tricks,” stammered Harry, much too wisely for his age,

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! concluded Samuel.

“I hear that you will be eating supper with my brother Jonathan and your dear sister Sylvia tonight.” Samuel blithered, in quick diversion. “I hope you beat Jonathan at chess.”

“I'll move my silly pawn forwards three squares,” boasted Harry, “and mate his dastardly king with my leaping knight where it sits.”

A few days later, Samuel had a chance to talk with Jonathan when he came in to collect a pouch of St. Jude's powder for his moods.

“Harry's the spitting image of our old friend Duncan Cotter,” said Samuel, “who fled to France in 1442 before deserting to the French. What should we tell Harry as he grows older?”

Jonathan, a successful advocate in the Archbishop of York's Chancery Court, stared at an ant on the wall, which he thought resembled a purple beetle, for several seconds.

“We don't know that Duncan Cotter was his real name,” he replied, most professionally. “The code Horatio P. was, as I remember, tattooed on his back. It is essential that Harry should never discover the possibility that his real father fights for the French.”

“In that case, we could, at some appropriate time in the future, advise Harry how he might try to decipher this code, but I don't think we should tell him anything about Duncan himself since this might well create a disagreeable situation.”

“Let's make a pact on that,” agreed Jonathan, tucking into his bread and marmalade, “but what's that huge red elephant doing waving its trunk outside the shop?”

Duncan returned slowly to Provence in a wagon, with Bagoas, and Meg Tuppen, though their faces seemed very similar to him in his dreaminess.

One evening they stopped for the night in a meadow by the riverbank near Maçon. Duncan slept on his blanket in the wagon while Bagoas and Meg slumbered on the lush turf.

During the wee small hours, Meg was awoken by the hoot of the tiny owl of Minerva, who told her to tend to Duncan's needs in the wagon. So Meg climbed into the large cart, followed by Bagoas who mopped Duncan's hot brow.

What happened next is between Meg, Bagoas, and the Goddess Athena. Not to forget the slumbering Duncan, who awoke, with a start, from his sleep and nodded off again in contented pleasure. Shame on you, Meg! And you too, wicked Bagoas!

When they arrived at the Château Carmel in Sephora, pretty Ruth was there waiting for Duncan and Bagoas with her newly born baby girl simpering in her arms.

Ruth was appalled by the state of Duncan's face and encouraged him to wear a leather executioner's mask which extended from below his eyes to his chin. However, she certainly didn't feel repulsed by the rest of her husband's fine body.

Ruth also welcomed Meg into the family. She fully appreciated that Bagoas and Meg would soon tie themselves in wedlock. A ménàge à quatre? she wondered, quite saucily. What an enlightened lady I am!

“Methinks I'll delay my sixth child for a few years,” said Ruth after a couple of weeks. “My midwife thinks that my daily dose of destrovium will take care of that.”

“That herbal remedy was tried in Scotland, though not fully tested,” replied Duncan. “The White Witches of Cramond set their stall by it.”

When Duncan came home late one afternoon, seven months later, after a relaxing walk along the crustacean smattered beach, he discovered the unusually plump Meg sitting with Ruth on the marital bed. In his confusion, he wondered whether it was a huge pink lobster.

“I'm re-arranging the bolster,” explained Meg, with a smirk.

“Fiddle faddle!” exclaimed Duncan, diving like a swordfish into the fluffy feather bed.

A month after Bagoas and Meg's quiet wedding in the Synagogue Beth Shalom, out popped Meg's handsome baby, one Simeon de Frêne. It was a difficult breach birth, as Simeon was a mite heavy, but Meg recovered quickly from her labours. Simeon was born with a fine head of bushy black hair.

Maybe he will be a knight of high consequence, wondered Duncan, still in a tizz and clucking like a hen.

Bagoas and Meg decided to live in Duncan's apartment in the Palace Augustus, and Duncan tried to visit the dilapidated mansion each week. The ever lonely Count René much appreciated this, and he kept Duncan up to date with all the news.

Duncan grew in confidence when he wore his leather face-mask. Although his facial injuries were as ever painful, people liked and admired him.

Following their grievous defeats in Normandy, the rash English had the temerity to send several thousand reinforcements across the Trough to Cherbourg, under the command of Sir Thomas Kyriell.

“Kyriell's a dead man walking,” said Count René, with a wink and a snigger, “The French artillery will blow him away.”

“That is verily true,” said Duncan, with a broad grin. “He's one of Jackanapes' walking dead.”

And during May 1450, the knowledgeable count advised Duncan that Kyriell's army had been butchered at Formigny.

“Does that mean that France's wars with England are finally over after fully 113 years?” asked Duncan, in glee.

“Unfortunately not,” replied Good King René. “We are still faced with several pockets of English resistance, most notably in Calais and in Gascony.”

“The English think that Gascony is their own country,” opined Duncan, with a grimace.

“They certainly do. At least the crass Marquess of Suffolk has met his sticky death.”

“How?” asked Duncan, totally intrigued

“The white-livered starve-lackey was trying to escape, in exile, from England to Calais,” explained the at times humorous count, with a chuckle, “when his ship was intercepted by The Nicholas of the Tower.”

“I trust Jackanapes was received with the trust he deserved,” commented Duncan, tongue in cheek.

“You're so astute! 'Welcome, Traitor' is how the Master of the royal Nicholas did greet the buffoon.”

“And they doubtlessly gave the crass leader of men the fair trial he merited.”

“You jest, methinks. The lewdest of the crew bade de la Pole lay down his head, and took a rusty sword, and smote off his head with half a dozen strokes.”

“A fitting reward for his treachery after the Treaty of Tours.”

“But we set him up, Duncan,” expostulated the Count, with a couple of shivers and a snort. “Jackanapes didn't really enter into a secret agreement with us to return Anjou and Maine to France. It was I who told the king that he had done so, during our cunning attempt to misguide the people of France.”

“Gad's zooks!” exclaimed Duncan. “I have much to answer for.”

Duncan fully appreciated that he'd helped put Jackanapes in the frame. He'd suggested that piece of deceit while he was conferring with Count René, in an intoxicated state, in the Clovis et Clotilde Inn in Tours. But Duncan Le Cottier didn't really feel an ounce of remorse.

Duncan's herb garden in Sephora grew and grew, and soon he was selling his gentle remedies all around the land. His cod-snout was useful for people who see visions, and his uratrium for those who suffer from the gout. Duncan also became fabled as a philosopher of note, and pilgrims to Rome, St. Michel, or wherever, visited his rose garden to hear him.

Duncan particularly enjoyed quoting from from Socrates and Plato.

“From the deepest desires often comes the deadliest hate,” Duncan like Socrates once said.

“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature,” answered a prosperous pilgrim from Avignon.

“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing,” asserted Duncan, with a wise smile.

Sometimes Duncan would say, in deference to Plato, “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

He would also defer to Catherine of Siena.

'If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire,' was one of his favourite epithets.

One of Duncan's admirer's set fire to a scarecrow, only to be sent straight to the stocks.

Another lady thought she was married to Jesus Christ.

“You are in all verity, like Sister Catherine of Siena, a Bride of Christ,” agreed Duncan.

“She was lost inside a cell within her mind,” replied the fat lady. “I have the world at my feet.”

During June 1453, Count René of Provence came rushing into Duncan's herb garden with some tumultuous news. “The Ottomans have taken Constantinople. They pillaged the great metropolis and abused the girls and boys over the Christian altars. Thereupon, Sultan Mehmed the Second marched in and proclaimed a new society where Moslems, Christians and Jews are equally acceptable to all. Maybe the whole of Europe will hear a similar call.”

“What a shame that the Catholic church had sent so many crusaders to loot and diminish Constantine's fine city,” opined Duncan, “under the pretext of seeking to liberate Jerusalem from the Moors.”

“Their follies will result in enormous political consequences,” replied Count René, clasping his hands. “The Venetian fleet will no longer be able to control the Aegean Sea, and our trade routes to the Levant and along the Silk road may become permanently blocked. Even my marketing arrangements along the Berber Coast could be affected.”

They're presumably giving the greedy count's ships short shrift in Tripoli already, thought Duncan, with a snigger. He sent the Bey's followers to work as galley slaves for the Ottoman pirates.

“We will need to seek new trade routes then,” said Duncan. “Perhaps the west coast of Africa could be better exploited.”

“There is also a large, fertile island beyond Greenland which the Viking Eric the Red discovered in AD 1003. Most of his brutish followers interbred with the more highly civilised natives never to be seen again.”

“That's right. My friend Aeneas P. has written to me about an ancient map in the Vatican. The island's almost as large as Europe. Aeneas calls it Nouveau Gaulle. It may have been first discovered by the Visigoths.”

“We should certainly explore these possibilities further,” replied the ubiquitous count, with a nonchalant swish of his riding crop.

“Indeed we should,” persisted Duncan, clenching his fists. “There it is only one city or named place on the east coast of Nouveau Gaulle. It's called Patowmeck and it's near a large bay and the mouth of a magical river.”

“How exciting,” concluded the Count, rubbing his chin. “Maybe we should send ships to trade with the Duke of Patowmeck.”

“The parchments in the Vatican record that visitors should bring no weapons of war or artifacts of any religious creed, lest the peaceful inhabitants of Patowmeck become frightened out of their wits by them.”

“How outrageous! That puts another complexion on the entire caboodle.”

During late 1453,the English army in Gascony was obliterated by the French, leaving only Calais in the possession of the grasping English. When sixteen year old Seth Liddell heard about that on Soutra Hill, he was more concerned about the prospect of getting whipped by the proscriptive Father Stephanus de Fleming for spilling vinegar all over the crass cleric's dirty laundry.

Then lo and behold! Seth heard from Kate Sprat's that Thomas de Lawedre had resigned his position as Master of the Hospital at the House of the Holy Trinity because of even more dirty laundry. Consequent to this momentous event, Father Le Fleming summoned Seth into his plush office in the Soutra friary. Seth slithered nervously through the door, but he managed to regain his more assertive composure when he encountered 'the demon of his life' face to face,

“In deference to my noble bearing and esteemed family ancestry,” announced the pompous, boss-eyed cleric, taking a swig of his Soutfast, “the Lords and Bishops of Scotland have appointed me to be Master of the Hospital on the Soutra, until such time that I, too, am consecrated as bishop,”

“How wondrous!” exclaimed Seth, rubbing his fresh, sandy hair. “That means you will need to wash your robes more often, and, perchance, your priestly face.”

“Enough of your confounded cheek! Your change in circumstance will be similarly delightful. You will move your possessions to Meusdenhead Hall this very evening, so that you may assist me further with my divinely inspired endeavours,”

“I'll clean up the shit after you, I suppose,” replied Seth, with a smirk, “but do I, in all verity, have to tend to your damned, bleeding horses?”

Brother Stephanus thumped the table with his grossly deformed hand.

“How dare you!” he exploded, like a fraught washer woman. “Any more idle chitter-chatter about horses and I'll take a lash to your bony legs and my fist to your loony head.”

“I understand perfectly,” replied Seth, shaking in mirth, “but will I still be permitted to work with Nurse Sprat in the asylum?”

“Only if you cook my breakfast first, scrub my smelly clothes in the tub, and read from Chaucer to me after Vespers.”

“Firkins!”

“You're as bad as your insolent father, rump-fed pig that you are!”

As well as helping Nurse Sprat, and on occasion the increasingly zany Hamish Douglas, in the asylum in the Bronze Age broch, Seth got to assisting the physician Henri Lustiger in the Soutra Abbey Hospital. The knowledgeable Seth thereby began acquiring his expertise in medicine and in surgery. Consequently, life became better for Duncan Cotter's teenage son, despite the Master's insidious attempts at Meusdenhead Hall to treat him worse than one of his grey stallions.

Bagoas de Frêne was promoted to the rank of Capitaine with a variety of extra duties in La Compagnie de Marseilles, However, since France was at peace for the moment, he spent much of his time lounging in his plush armchair twiddling his thumbs.

Duncan and Ruth Le Cottier bought Bagoas and Meg a pretty inn on the southern side of the harbour of Marseilles, which Meg renamed Le Soldat de L'Étain. Meg staffed it with dwarfs, both male and female, some from Italy, since she thought they'd appeal to the rich and curious.

Bagoas and Meg encouraged the Jewish people of Marseilles to eat and drink at their inn. Many Jews had left to live elsewhere in Provence following the repercussions of the Aragonese invasion of 1423. However, the thriving community that remained contributed to a 'town of learned men and scholars' and, in close co-operation with Count René, maintained excellent trade relations with other port cities in Spain and North Africa, and throughout the Mediterranean as far as the countries of the Levant.

Bagoas and Meg were also keen to welcome Jewish labourers, porters, tailors and stone-cutters into their inn, and employees of the highly successful Jewish soap industry. The de Frênes' hostelry quickly became a much-fêted meeting place for the Jewish people of Marseilles, and their benevolence did not go unnoticed.

During March 1455, Duncan met with Count René to discuss the dire political situation in England which they'd both helped to ferment.

“The English are threatening to tear themselves apart after their amusing débâcle in France,” explained Count René, in glee, “but nutty King Henry has recovered from his several mental collapses, and my headstrong daughter Margaret, Queen of England, has emerged as effective leader of the Lancastrians. I knew she'd stir shit around the pot!”

“Good for her! Your beautiful daughter always had the capacity to be both aggressive and powerful. Her new born son of Westminster is clearly giving her renewed inspiration,”

“She has made herself powerful enough to throw the upstart Richard, Duke of York, out of the Royal Court, and to build an alliance against him.”

“I know that cunning son of a bitch only too well. They should charge him with treason and lop off his head.”

“I'm sure they will in due course. In the meantime, I for the safety of my sweet daughter and brave grandson do live in fearsome dread.”

In May, the thirteen year old youth Harry de Burgogne attached himself to the baggage train, as Richard, Duke of York moved on London with 7000 men while threatening to cut Margaret of Anjou up into little pieces and eat her for supper,

Harry's older brother Sir Percival de Burgoyne was one of the rebellious duke's most faithful knights. While Harry's natural father was the thus named Chevalier Duncan Le Cottier of Marseilles, Harry had never an inkling of that potential inconvenience. He was sad that the evil Sir Percival was related to himself at all, but somehow felt, in tentative terms, that he had a duty to serve the duke 'in the cause of freedom'.

The duke's forces set up camp in Keyfield near St. Albans. However, the Duke of Buckingham's Lancastrian forces were only only 2000 strong. The elderly duke placed his meagre troops along the Tonman Ditch and at the bars of two adjacent lanes.

Harry de Bourgogne sidled up to the imperious Richard of York as the heralds began to move to and fro between the rival camps.

The duke tousled Harry' s sandy hair, smiled benignly, and howled, “All I want is the head and guts of blasted Somerset!”

When the Duke of York scrawled a message to King Henry on a piece of parchment, young Harry caught a snippet. It read: ...surrender to us such as we will accuse, and not to resist til we have him which deserves best.

A Yorkist herald, who Harry thought resembled an enormous newt, agreed, somewhat hesitantly, to deliver the message to King Henry Plantagenet himself. Richard gratefully nibbled one of Harry's oatcakes whilst they and the rebellious knights waited in eager anticipation of the reply from the king.

After a half hour, the King's Herald rode up waving the banner of St. George and wearing the Fleur-de-Lis.

“His Gracious Majesty, King Henry of England and France declines to further address the issue of the worthy Duke of Somerset”, announced the homely herald, loud and clear, “and he begs me to read you, Richard of York, the following message: by the faith that I owe it to St. Edward and the crown of England, I shall destroy every mother's son and they should be hanged, and drawn and quartered.”

“Gad's budlikins!” howled the enormous duke. “I'll burn the Lancastrian's hides off their ugly backs.”

Perhaps the worthy Duke is not as Christian as the king himself after all, wondered Harry. Maybe my brother Percy is not on the right side of this dynastic struggle, in God's eyes at least.

“After my successes as Viceroy of Ireland, King Henry should realise that I represent the poor and ordinary people of our lands!” raved Duke Richard. “I also support the popular grievances recorded in Jack Cade's manifesto The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent. The crown perverts justice to this very day, extorts money from innocent people, and rigs our elections to the legislature. But the impoverished peasants will overcome the privileged landowners. I am their representative before Christ Jesus himself.”

That's complete bullshit! realised Harry, an intelligent lad. Duke Richard is the richest landowner in England and Wales, and he's exploiting Ireland to the full. He can hardly lead himself against himself. Yes, that's the right word! Misleading 'propaganda' for the peasants and fighting soldiers. That's what it is!

The Yorkists wasted several hours waiting for a more favourable response from the king, while wondering whether loopy Henry was even receiving the letters of negotiation. Harry spent the time chatting with his much older brother Sir Percival de Burgogne, and playing cards with the Duke of York and two of his close companions. However, when Harry trumped the duke's Jack of Spades, Richard became exasperated at losing too many consecutive hands, threw his cards in the air, and ordered a sudden attack.

The King's men were still anticipating a peaceful conclusion, and they were totally taken aback by the onslaught from out of nowhere. There followed two Yorkist assaults down the narrow streets of St. Albans. These were, however, bravely resisted by the King's troopers behind the barricades near St. Peter's Church, with many Yorkist casualties, leaving Sir Percival de Burgogne reeling in shock.

When Sir Percival retreated in haste with ants in his pants, he ran into a Yorkist reserve force which was commanded by the testy Earl of Warwick. Sir Percival's stripling brother Harry was holding the smarmy earl's hand and chattering to him intently.

“But I've visited St. Alban's before,” insisted Harry. “Why don't you sneak down Pig Lane, cut across the Mulberry gardens, and hurtle down Fishpool Street? If my memory serves me correct, that will take you straight onto the market square.”

Despite Harry's lack of totally accurate recall, the Earl of Warwick and his reserve forces contrived to emerge onto the market square while bypassing the city's defences, with sprightly Harry following swiftly behind.

The main body of the King's troops were resting and chattering in the square, by and large helmet-less. The ruthless Warwick charged immediately with his knights and troopers, and routed the Lancastrians, whilst blood and shit bespoiled his countrymen's broken bones and much-torn flesh.

Thus started further unspeakable horror:

Edmund Beaufort was the second Duke of Somerset to wield a blade in anger; he was the erstwhile commander of the Lancastrians despite his self-slain, traitorous father's grudging alliance in France with Richard of York. Edmund had been sheltering in the Castle Inn, chatting and jesting with the king. Finally pulling his lazy finger out, Edmund emerged onto the main street brandishing his sword, charged over the dead bodies of his own troops, and slew several Yorkists in the same fit of anger.

At that, Sir Percival de Burgogne ran up wielding his sword Colada, and slit Beaufort's body wide open from his crutch to his chest, while young Harry gasped in gut-wrenching horror. Horror at both the effect of the foul deed and at the nemesis who perpetrated it.

The motley-minded Earl of Northumberland tried to achieve the safety of the Castle Inn, only to be hacked to death, without even receiving the chance to down a last beer. After chopping off Northumberland's drinking hand, Sir Percival de Burgogne chased the colourful Lord Clifford of Skipton around a tree while Clifford's saucy lads tried to protect their generous patron.

When the bold knight of York slit the Lord of Skipton's throat, the saucy lads jumped into the tree to avoid injury and death. Sir Percival leapt in the air, and chopped off the toe of an unfortunate boy from Manchester. A youth from Luton Hoo tried to stick a dagger into the Yorkist knight's squat nozzle. Sir Percival took a swing at the youth's crotch but only succeeded in cutting a branch clean off the tree.

The brutish, twenty-five year old Earl of Warwick hadn't drawn the curtain on his first day in the limelight yet. He ordered his archers to shoot at the men, outside and inside the Castle Inn, who were protecting the king. After several were killed, the Lancastrians manning the barricades realised that their game was up. They abandoned their positions and fled straight out of town.

During the lull that followed, the eagle-eyed Harry de Burgogne saw a hunched figure crawling on its hands and knees away from the Castle Inn and into a deserted tanner's shop. Feeling inquisitive, Harry crept stealthily over to the shop, and slithered in.

The noble King Henry Plantagenet of England, the half-French son of the victor at Agincourt and Queen Catherine of Valois, was lying on the ground with a flesh wound from a stray arrow in his side. Still in his early thirties, he bore the pockmarks of a troubled life, and Harry saw in his eyes the look of a disordered man whose ancestors had been disadvantaged for several generations before him.

“Why were you chosen to be the king?” asked Harry, pouring his liege a mug of tepid water.

“Because I am the son of a valiant king, whose errant father seized the crown from the rightful king, the dear, starving Richard of England,” groaned Henry, gulping his harmful water like an oaf, “and they treat me as badly as they did the majestically peaceful King Richard himself.”

“Won't your son, the noble Prince of Wales, be king?” asked Harry, with a courteous smile,

“If my valiant queen, Margaret of Anjou, protects the right,” moaned Henry, “I am too weak in body and head, but she will persuade the good lords to follow her to righteous victory to the Yorkists' dread.”

At that, the massive frame of Richard, Duke of York crashed through the door of the tanner's shop.

“I will escort you back to London, Your Royal Majesty,” snarled the treacherous duke, with a sardonic grin. “There, your queen will be reduced to tending to your wounds and your broken mind, while I rule the roost as Lord Protector of England. Margaret of Anjou will learn to hate me until the day she departs this land.”

King Henry stared into Duke Richard's eyes.

“They may let you be Lord Protector if they keep their heads in the mire,” he majestically replied, “but you'll ne'er make king, you apish fool. You're too sodden-witted for that.”

“And you'd ne'er make under-skinker!” howled the duke, slapping the king's golden-blooded face before giving him a back-hander across his imperious chin.

What a cruel man! agonized Harry de Burgogne.

“Go take a bath oiled in vitriol, foul Duke of York!” yelled the inquisitive lad, as he ran willy nilly out of the tanner's shop.

What an abrasive urchin! thought Duke Richard. Cecylle would adore him. I'll invite him to Ludlow Castle to be her page.

Duncan Le Cottier heard about the vindictive Yorkist massacre of the Lancastrians at St. Albans while he was relaxing in his rose garden in Sephora. His little baby girl was playing at his feet while her twin brothers fought over a ball of thread.

“That is, in all verity, dreadful news, mon capitaine,” agreed Duncan, with a tug on his leather face mask. “My heart is now with poor King Henry, bold Queen Margaret, and the honest people of England as they continue their struggle against the fiendish tyrant of Yorkshire. I hope that no son or lover of mine would e'er wear Duke Richard's white rose.”

“It seems that the wars in Europe flitter hither and thither,” opined Bagoas de Frêne. “If it's peace in one country then it's war in another. Does His Holiness the Pope cast a spell in the Vatican, I wonder?”

“Maybe the mass killing of uneducated soldiers and peasants is part of a divinely inspired plot to control hereditary talent and character,” replied Duncan, tilting his head.

“That's too far fetched for me. I think that it's the financial and economic pressures which cause wars.”

“Perhaps you're right. Oh, would that I could live in an Atlantis where there was no money, and everybody survived according to their needs rather than their acquisitions.”

“Perhaps that city of joy was really like that in ancient times.”

“Maybe that's why the gods destroyed our Nouveau Jerusalem, that wondrous city in time.”

“At least we live in peace in France after 116 years of intermittent war.”

Duncan began to nod off, but roused himself.

“But I have a son in Yorkshire,” he exclaimed, in fright. “His name is Harry de Burgogne. He's growing into a man and they'll soon be giving him his horse and his lance.”

“Perhaps you should write to him to express your grave concerns about the dastardly Duke of York,” suggested Bagoas, with a wise tilt of his head,

“He wouldn't know me from Adam, and maybe I'd prefer to leave it that way,”

“Do you have any other sons?” stumbled Bagoas. “Apart from our three darling boys here in Sephora, I mean.”

“Methinks I perchance do not,” replied Duncan, as Bagoas bit his tongue, “though I sometimes dream about mystical children called Seth and Sansa whilst they dance through the sheep on the Soutra.”

At that, Bagoas gave Duncan a quizzical look and a sweet kiss on his smooth forehead.

In July 1455, Lady Rosamund de Burgogne was delighted to receive a visit at Crécy House from none other than the Duchess Cecylle of York, the elegant wife of Duke Richard. The duchess was accompanied by her twelve year old son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, a handsome, athletic lad with dark brown hair.

“I've been spending more and more time in Ludlow Castle while Richard is in London,” purred the graceful Cecylle, “but I simply have to come to wonderful York for the shopping. Shropshire can be so horribly boring.”

“Do you visit Harlech?” asked Lady Rosamund, offering her guests warm mugs of mead.

“Yes, but the Welsh speak an immensely strange, melodic language. It's quite different from French.”

The two fine ladies continued to chatter on the verandah, whilst Edmund went off into the woods with young Harry de Burgogne. Edmund planned to return there frequently, since he cherished his friendship with wise Harry, even though the older youth was none too keen to leap o'er the streams or climb the trees. When they reached the witches' grove, they cut their wrists, exchanged blood, and kissed.

When Harry returned to the verandah, the Lady Cecylle was about to leave.

“My husband has taken a liking to you, assertive lad that you are,” she said, “and I was wondering whether you would like to be my page in Ludlow Castle and in fair London? You could run messages for me and cut my pretty toenails with silver scissors.”

Harry frowned and grimaced. “I must respectfully decline your kind and generous offer, Your Grace, since I wish to pursue my education in York and not to travel to the capital city of this nation's foul disgrace.”

“How could you, Harry!” howled Lady Rosamund, in a frantic tizz. “Go to the dark and dingy attic immediately. You're on bread and ale for a full fortnight! And what will your whipping boy have to say between his whines?”

But Earl Edmund held Harry's hand, and pulled him to his side.

“Nobly said, sweet brother. The wicked affairs of this nation should no man continue to tolerate until such time as the lords their vengeful behaviour do abate.”

“Well recited, dear son,” responded the Duchess Cecylle, in her piety. “I thank sweet Harry for his honesty, and will pray for his future fortitude.”

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