A Jester’s Fortune

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Heu, quibus ingreditor fatis!

Qui gentibus horror pergit!

Alas, to what destinies doth he move forward!

His coming is the terror of nations!

Argonautica, Book I, 744-745

It was a chilly, blustery March morning, only just a little warmer than the winter days that had preceded it. Here, even near the ocean at Nice, springtime was only beginning to make its mark, and that-like the temperatures-was only a matter of degree. Icy mountain streams that the coaches had crossed on their madcap dash from Paris, roaring down the steep slopes of Provence days before, had begun to swell and churn with meltwater from the towering crags of the forbidding Maritime Alps.

Yet, it was a clear, cerulean blue morning, and the winds off the Mediterranean were now and then stronger than those that slumped off the snow-covered slopes far inland. Each sea-gust was as tantalisingly warm as the easy, unguarded waft of a sleeping lovers breath. By the end of the month-no later than the middle of the next, certainly-the rugged mountain roads, now nigh-impassable, would melt clear, then begin to dry. The passes that led east and south would be usable. And, God willing, the young general in the lead coach thought, there would be good campaign weather.

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