"They want me to what?"

Things are proceeding apace. The first segment draft is taking shape very slowly but I suddenly found today that I have a real, living, breathing person on my hands. Inspired by the wikipedia article on Margaret of York (yes, yes, I know...), which describes the first meeting of Maximilian and Mary, I managed to sneak in a few hours of writing this morning. Like most people, he had a few instances of acute and extreme embarrassment in his life. This is one of them. He has just completed his triumphal ride into Ghent and has been introduced to Mary and Margaret of York on the steps of the Church of Our Lady in the main Ghentish square.

Once the formalities had been repeated here, I stood back, at a loss for how to proceed until Mary took my hand. The Dowager Duchess stepped forward. “My lord,” she said, as the translator did his work.“We have a small problem. There is a carnation hidden somewhere on your wife and it would please us greatly if you could find it.” A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd behind us and I glanced with some panic at the translator.

“They want me to what?”

“Find it, my lord,” he said, staring impassively ahead. I turned back to Mary, who returned my frantic look with a small smile and a raised eyebrow.

“Nous faisons ces sortes de choses en Bourgogne, mari,” she said. “Ne le laissez pas vous inquiéter."* With an air of practicality, she turned to face me, took my hand and placed it on her shoulder.

“Is it here?” she asked in German.

“Uhhh,” I said.

“Here?” She moved my hand to her other shoulder, movements sublimely graceful. Willibald’s comment about the doe and the spear suddenly materialized in my mind again and I tried in vain to suppress it.

“Or here?” she said, now moving my hand so it rested on her bosom. By now, my face was utterly aflame and I glanced down at my expectant entourage, who were watching the scene with wolfish grins of anticipation.

“Do it, Max!” Willibald shouted up to me through cupped hands and they exploded into a cacophony of whistles and laughing shouts of approval. I turned back to Mary.

“I must apologize, my lady. As you can see, we don’t do these things at home. I… eh… well.” She only smiled that smile again. Her breasts were warm and very white against my hand; carefully, I pinched my first three fingers together and slid them down the crevice, unable to suppress a nervous grin. Somewhere in Germany, Father’s eyelid was twitching. My fingertips brushed something that felt like petals and with a rush of relief, I fished it out and recovered my wits enough to kneel and present it to her. By now, the shouts of approval were taken up by the entire square and they poured forth their jubilation wildly. She paused to survey them with her wonderful smile, head proud and erect, then she took the carnation from me and drew me to my feet. Beyond the heads of my escort, the citizens of Ghent filled the square completely, stretching out in a non-descript mass to the furthest reaches of the square and then hanging out from balconies or any other vantage point they could find. Though they had held their silence throughout most of the performance, they now poured forth a roaring cheer as they beheld us standing there, Mary’s hand in mine.

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*“We do these sorts of things in Burgundy, husband. Do not let it worry you.”

The historical record states that both Max and Mary were "white as death" at their first meeting but I chose to give Mary considerably more confidence than her husband-to-be, mostly because she's on her own turf and because I want her to be a fairly gutsy character to begin with.

To be honest, this sort of stuff is hard to write because they certainly had a standard set of procedures for these formal events. As far as I've seen thus far, court processes were very poorly documented so we're left to infer with events like this. The carnation bit is true; I'm inclined to think the 'white as death' bit is true too. But there's always other stuff to consider with this - Where are the other Burgundian nobles? What formal titles are used? How would the languages play out?

On the topic of languages, I have decided to write all French dialogue in French (with the temporary help of Babel Fish) unless there is a translator present and until Max begins to learn the language. Footnotes will be provided for the reader but I wanted to communicate how intimidating that initial language barrier may have been. According to Der Weisskunig, Mary taught her husband French and Flemish and he taught her German. They could almost certainly say some words in each other's tongues but the initial communication must have been tough. There was always Latin, too, and I might make that their interim language for the time being.

Research is interesting for this. Politics, at times, can get almost overpowering - I feel like I will never grasp the sweep and majesty of the time, nor the subtle little nuances of political dealings in this era. Thankfully, neither did Maximilian. I want this to be firmly grounded in history but at the same time, I want to write about emotions and not history. Hopefully this will have something of both.