Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
17 August 1020, L’École du Sorciers
My dearest cousin Armand,
His Royal Majesty Charles IX, Le Roi de Provençe, has taken to harassing me and mine like a pettish schoolboy.
I am once more confined to L’École (though not quite yet in my confinement) and so can only be gotten at indirectly, though Dr. Guisman has been turning away several requests for my attention each week. Unable to get at me, Le Roi‘s men have taken to following Maximilian whenever he leaves L’École, though they have not yet presumed to accost him.
I grow furious when I think of it. I asked him today why he is not enraged to be so treated.
“I am on Lord Ellesmere’s staff,” he said, “and so I share in his diplomatic immunity. They cannot touch me; at most, they can send me home to Cumbria.” And then he gave me a boyish smile. “And besides, I am enjoying taking them the rounds of all the shops that sell baby things.”
Normally I should procure all such needful things myself (and indeed I am spending much of my time in the chapel sewing baby clothes); but I dare not go out. Maximilian has found me a maid, Heloise, to help me as my time draws nearer; but I cannot send Heloise either, for this past week she was followed by several men, well dressed, who frightened her very much. I cannot be sure they were set upon her by Le Roi; but we think it likely as Maximilian believes he recognizes two of them from her descriptions.
How His Majesty the royal schoolboy expects to gain my willing aid by these sorts of tactics, I do not know.
Lord Ellesmere has learned that Charles was a compromise candidate; the two leading Royalist contenders found themselves equally matched, and so put Charles on the throne in the hopes that as his two most powerful advisors they might sway his decisions as king.
Alas for them, Charles ordered them to their estates shortly after he was crowned; and alas for Charles! As he has seldom come to the capitol before his coronation he has no notion of how to go on in the society of Toulouse, and still less how to govern a land. Though nobly born, he is, to be blunt, a bumpkin.
I can well understand that he is in fear for his life. He was crowned amid great rejoicing, but he has lost much of that good will by his manners and his suspicions. The royalists among the leadership of the Provençese army owe more to the erstwhile kingmakers than they do to him; the remainder regard him no more highly than they did the Parlement that preceded him. The kingmakers are plotting madly meanwhile, with and against each other, for Lord Ellesmere tells us that messengers are passing between their two chateaus almost daily.
But though I understand the king’s fear I do not feel the slightest need to preserve him from his precarious position. He should have considered the risks before he assumed the throne.
I do have one more cheerful moment to share. The king’s right-hand man, de Marigny, has ceased to trouble the Cumbrian Embassy. He came for the last time this past Tuesday, harping on the same old tune.
Lord Ellesmere let him have his say, and then told him drily, “You seem to believe that I have the power to coerce Madame Archer to do your bidding; and yet I have not. She is a free citizen of Cumbria. And what is more, His Royal Majesty the King of Cumbria is pleased to term her one of the great heroines of Cumbria for her role in putting down Le Maréchal’s final attempt to regain power. So far from coercing her, my instructions from the Crown are to aid her in any way that I can. And so you see, my dear Comte, my hands are tied.”
I can just picture him smiling blandly.
Your madly sewing cousin,
Amelia
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Photo by Dmitriy Serafin on Unsplash
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