The Burgundian’s Tale

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It had not been a good year.

To begin with, I was neither as skilled nor as careful a lover as I had thought myself, with the result that, in the late summer of 1479, Adela found herself pregnant yet again. But although this proved a source of worry to us both, and the cause of constant reproaches from my former mother-in-law and Adela’s cousin, Margaret Walker, we were all three plunged into mourning when, the following April, the child died within four days of her birth.

Adela’s grief, however, went deeper than mine. She already had two sons: five-year-old Nicholas by her first husband, Owen Juett, and almost-two-year-old Adam by me. Our family’s only girl, Elizabeth, also five, was my child by my first wife, Lillis Walker. Adela would have liked a daughter of her own. So she unreservedly mourned the lost child, while my misery was secretly tempered by feelings of relief that, for the present at any rate, there was no sixth mouth to feed or back to clothe. But I was unable to hide my emotions well enough to deceive Adela, and as spring once more blossomed into early summer, the atmosphere between us grew increasingly strained.

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