The Dance of Death Read Online Free PDF

a waste of time.’ I poured what remained of the wine into my mazer, tossed it off and felt slightly better. ‘However, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’d better resign myself to making the best of a bad job. At least it doesn’t seem as though it’ll take long, not if this cousin of yours really is going to be in Paris some time soon. Mind you,’ I added gloomily, ‘a dozen things could go wrong or he could simply change his mind.’
    â€˜A possibility,’ Eloise agreed, smiling. ‘Because it won’t, of course, be Olivier who changes his mind, but the king. And Louis is a great one for altering his plans at the last moment.’
    I regarded her curiously. ‘You speak of him – the king, that is – as if you were fond of him. I noticed it before.’
    She rose from her stool and smoothed down her skirt. ‘I’ve never set eyes on him, so I can hardly be fond of him, but I admire him greatly, as my parents did.’ She looked at me defiantly. ‘You appear to find that odd.’
    I shrugged. ‘Most people seem to dislike him. I’ve heard him described as devious, cunning, crafty. Someone compared him to a spider sitting in the middle of his web, spinning his schemes. I saw him once.’ She looked surprised. ‘From a distance, you understand. I was at Picquigny. A very unprepossessing man and not dressed at all like a king.’
    â€˜No.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘My mother said he had no interest in clothes and was always attired like one of his lowlier servants. But an extremely clever man. According to Maman, when he became king, France was a nation torn apart by a dozen rival factions, after the long years of war with the English. But when you were finally kicked out –’ she gave me a cheeky grin, tinged with malice – ‘Louis set about unifying the country again by any means at his command. And he has done so. If you’re right, Burgundy will be brought to heel very soon . . . Now, I must be off. As I mentioned, I’ve no need of your company. I can look after myself.’ She moved towards the door, then with her hand on the latch, glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Why does my lord of Gloucester want to see you?’ she asked.
    â€˜What?’ The question caught me off guard. ‘Oh . . . Didn’t you hear what Timothy said?’ What the devil had he said? Something about Duke Richard wanting to thank me. ‘He . . . er . . . he wishes to express his gratitude for my–my care of the Duke of Albany in Scotland.’
    I don’t suppose she believed the story for a moment, but the mention of Albany and Scotland made her take herself off in a hurry with the promise to see me in this same room the next morning, after dinner, if not before. I made no immediate move to follow her, but sat for a while longer, staring into space, thinking.
    At first, Eloise’s admiration for King Louis seemed to me to sort ill with her undertaking of the present mission, but after a very few minutes mulling it over, I considered it less strange. To begin with, she didn’t really have a choice but to comply with Timothy’s and his royal master’s wishes. Being convicted of sorcery and witchcraft meant being burned at the stake. She must know she was lucky to be alive and would throw no rub in the way of remaining so. Secondly, our mission was in no sort damaging or harmful to either the French king or his country.
    In fact, the more I thought about it, the more unnecessary it seemed and the more my anger increased. It appeared to me that I was being made a fool of. Well, perhaps not a fool precisely, but that I was being kept in London against my will for no very obvious reason. But in that case, I told myself, there must surely be a hidden motive. In spite of what I had said to Eloise Gray, I couldn’t really believe that either