AN: This story is set loosely during the Hundred Years War. There are some real events that I have rearranged to make sense in my story. I decided to write again because we are locked down and I wanted to do something other than worry.

Summary: In a kingdom torn by war, friendships and loyalties are challenged by love and responsibility.

For a Hundred Years

Part 1

Silence echoed, more deafening than cheers and applause, it seemed. Charles kept a short distance as he watched with hooded eyes. His heart was held in a viselike grip within his chest. He was alert, ever watchful of the movement of the few men surrounding them. Never had he felt so alien on this land. Never had power felt so powerless than where they were today.

Before him, Nathaniel glanced back and met his eyes. Charles nodded, a quiet show of support. He could see the warm breath Nathaniel expended as it met the cool air surrounding them. Had it only been months ago that they were boys, their stiff bodies marching from the group study rooms in the Chateau de Vincennes and then bursting into a run as they reached the courtyard? Just months ago, when they were ignorant children with bare understanding of the wars that felled the lords far wiser and better than they.

It was a mere hundred days ago that Charles looked up from the ground, his tunic grass stained from the brief match from which he had wrestled Nathaniel and pinned him down. Nathaniel had raised himself on his elbow, his golden hair tousled and his face red with mirth. At the sight of the queen, Nathaniel's mother, standing beneath the archway with his own father Bartholomew, their faces somber, Charles staggered to his feet. Nathaniel's face fell. Charles extended a hand to him and helped him up.

Charles kept a respectful distance, but watched closely as Queen Anne took Nathaniel's hand and clasped them inside hers.

"Mother, what is it?" Nathaniel asked.

He could hear pieces of the conversation, and Charles' eyes flew to meet his father's as he realized what had happened.

Poitiers had been a staggering loss, one of the many, one after the other, for the kingdom.

"Eleven thousand men, and still devastated," the queen said. With her voice breaking, she informed her son, "The king had been captured, taken back to London."

It was a show of strength that was new to Charles, when he heard Nathaniel assure his mother, "The Black Prince would not hurt him. The bastard English king will want ransom. My father will be returned, long as I can find the gold."

The queen nodded, and glanced at her adviser Bartholomew. Where Nathaniel could not see, she shook her head to him as a gesture of silence. Charles had overheard enough of his father's conversations to know that there was no gold, barely enough to continue running the kingdom as it was. The monarchy was a show, and the Valois did not have the full support and loyalty of the duchies.

Not at the state that France was in, not with hunger and plague, not when there is challenger whose bloodline was Capetian and an army that seemed more ruthless and more powerful.

The queen took Nathaniel's face in her hands and looked deep into her son's eyes. "You will be regent until the king is returned," she stated firmly. "Your father was clear. You need to hold us together, Nathaniel."

There was no reason to give an opening to other claimants. They must show unity, a clear succession.

And right then, Charles could see the change in the way that his friend bore himself, the quiet resolution that fell over Nathaniel.

From that day they swore to leave boyhood behind and face the challenge. France was in ruins; destroyed in battle after battle by the greed of the English kings. It was time to take their rightful places, to take control. To be the men they were born to be.

"Keep him strong," his father had told him. "This is my legacy," Bartholomew said. "To stand on the right side of a monarch, one must be a man—not a boy like you." At the words, Charles swallowed. "Kill the boy, Charles. Only when you kill the boy can you serve a king."

It was later that Charles would learn that his own uncle, his father's brother, had perished in the same battle. His father's face was inscrutable then, and Charles learned how it was to be a trusted counselor. There was no place for one's own grief, to one's own emotions. When the queen was in mourning, the right hand to the queen was to be stoic.

Just as women had done since time immemorial, the queen took to the task of building up her son. The dauphin no longer was a nobleman of a remote land, settled in Paris within the royal chateau. Nathaniel, still protected and isolated where many men his age had fought and been wounded in battle, now belonged to the people of France. Now is the difficult toil for Anne to ensure he would step outside and be seen a king.

Bartholomew, for his part, who would solve the larger problem. A kingdom with a figurehead would only survive so long without gold. Men would only follow until their families starved. For long, endless nights, Charles watched as his father scoured the noble families surrounding them. He could see his father at his library, guided only by lamplight, as he surveyed and send missives, coordinated with messengers and discussed with courtiers—all in secret lest unfriendly forces realize his mission.

It was the first time he had seen the curve on his father's lips when outside, as the queen watched Nathaniel fence with a partner in the courtyard, Batholomew broke the seal of a newly arrived letter. He leaned over to whisper to the queen, and the queen nodded, then motioned to the Lady van der Woodsen.

And the lady fell into a deep curtsy and left the courtyard.

Nathaniel walked up the steps, newly crowned regent of France at sixteen years, the dauphin of Viennois at the age of twelve. This young man, whom he had known since they were toddlers, raised together at the chateau as brothers, was expected to raise France from the ruins of a kingdom swept by a plague of disease and countless lost battles.

Nathaniel's voice, not yet deep enough to strike the fear of kings, held a slight tremor which he attempted to cover with volume. He took the hand of the Lady Serena, and recited the wedding vows as stated by the abott. The two looked like royal perfection before the cross, golden and beautiful, and could be sculpted like statues as they were. It was a wedding that could salvage the ruin. As it was, the fiefdom that Nathaniel already held as regent and dauphin strengthened his position on lands, but war took men and gold—resources that had been scant after three generations of fighting and a ravaging epidemic.

Nathaniel and the Lady Serena signed on the document, and then the lady curtsied before Nathaniel. The dauphin reached towards her to help her up, and the lady hurried down the platform and left.

Charles' father came up to him a few moments later. Bartholomew grasped his shoulder. "It is done. Now your part has come." He handed the document to Charles, still unfurled to ensure the ink would dry. "As the dauphin has wed by proxy, so must the widow of Burgundy." Charles look down at the document and noted the empty space that France needed urgently to be filled in. "And then we may submit the signed papers to the pope." By far the richest duchy in France, Burgundy's resources and gold far outweighed the combined wealth across France. "Eleanor of Bourbon is expecting Nathaniel's proxy any day now. Can I trust you?" was his challenge.

"For the dauphin and the kingdom," Charles swore.

~o~o~

She was a princess in Bourbon, duchess of Burgundy, married at two and widowed at the age of six. The Lady Blair needed no man, not even a king.

Yet this king needed her.

Her chin rose in pride as she stood at the ramparts of her castle, watching as the half dozen men thundered on their horses towards her.

"And so they come," she said. She turned sharp, dark eyes towards her mother. "I cannot believe you have done this to me again."

Lady Eleanor turned to her daughter and arched her eyebrows. "You are holding a kingdom's ransom in your purse, unmarried, Bourbon in your future and Burgundy today. How long do you think this world will let you alone without a man to protect you, Blair?"

Blair shrugged her shoulders under the heavy brocade cape. "It has been a decade, mother, since the duke of Burgundy died on battle. I am yet alive. I can survive on my own."

Eleanor let out a hearty laugh, which immediately irritated her daughter. "Oh Blair." The older duchess shook her head. "You have lived in Bourbon, far from Burgundy where you would have needed to defend your possessions by yourself. Do you think this place runs itself, that your father and his men have not run themselves ragged in your defense?" Eleanor pointed to the tower to the East, then to the West. For the first time, Blair recognized the men standing guard. "Count the cannons on the tower, Blair, and then when you take your mare out for your daily ride on the grounds open your eyes and observe around you how many men are installed for your protection, then come back to me and tell me that you can survive on your own."

Blair closed her eyes, knowing as she did she could only deny her mother's point for so long.

Very early in her life, Eleanor had married her off to Louis, her pretty husband, taken too early by the plague. She had never met Louis, only seen him in the small portrait she discovered with her marriage papers, but she knew her father had decided she would be married off to a family as rich or richer than her own, because Louis would have been able to protect her.

Good, darling Louis, who married her young and left her young. The protection her father Roman had chosen for her had left her even more vulnerable. If there was one thing good about it, her loyal tiring woman had told her, was that being a nobleman's widow gave her more independence than any other lady.

Silly Dorota, she muttered quietly, as the men on horseback came ever closer.

Louis and his ridiculously early passing had made her more of a prize, and whereas Dorota likely thought independence was being independently wealthy. In truth it was merely a wider cage, yet a prison still.

And here came her next jailer. At least she had a ten year reprieve.

"If I tell you that you and father will not need to protect me anymore, will you change your mind?" Blair asked again.

Eleanor's face softened, and Blair's heart skipped a beat. Her mother reached for her and cupped her cheek. "My darling, we have everything I ever thought we would need." Blair held her breath. Eleanor continued, "Except the crown of France. What kind of mother would I be if I let you walk away from the throne?" Eleanor's hand dropped to her side. "I want you to wear the purple kirtle, and silk—a lot of silk. Tell Dorota to take the white fillet from my chambers, the one with the frilled top and the silk crispinette with pearls. Today you are wedding the next king of France, and you will look the part."

Blair released the breath she held as her mother walked away.

~o~o~

When he and his men arrived in the castle, Charles removed his cape and straightened himself. With the royal document clutched securely in his hand, he went directly to the duke and duchess, with full anticipation of being able to do fulfill his part in ensuring that the kingdom would be salvaged. Charles bowed deeply before Eleanor of Bourbon and kissed the rings on her fingers.

At least the lady did not look ancient, which meant that the widow of Burgundy was not some crippled rich old woman.

He pushed the stray thought away. This marriage was for the alliance it would bring. Nathaniel had more than enough options at home if he wanted a pretty lover. In fact, with the dowry that the widow of Burgundy would bring, Nathaniel would have even more options.

"Welcome to our home, my lord," the duke greeted him.

"We have been looking forward to today, my lord," the duchess said.

Charles took in the impeccably appointed castle. It did not miss his noticed how well the Bourbon line had fortified the place. Even from afar he was grateful that France did not wage a war here, because the Bourbons were armed generously, and it seemed that their army was strong.

Nathaniel needed this.

"It is my honor to represent the dauphin in this marriage," he said, eager to lock the deal and take the wealthiest woman in Christendom back to his king. Surely the widow of Burgundy would have more than enough to satisfy the ransom of the French king and more. She would be a boon to empty coffers, an oasis in the desert. Nathaniel needed her. France needed her. "Will you lead us to the chapel?" He handed the marriage document to the duke.

"Of course," Eleanor said. She made her way to the heart of the castle complex, across a nicely maintained garden until Charles saw the heavy wooden doors of the white chapel.

There were candles lit around them. Even in his haste he recognized what an expense it was that they did not seem to mind. There must be many workers in the village, serfs and candlemakers, to have prepared to burn so much for the occasion. At the end of the isle, just by altar, he saw the prize.

He could have sworn that there was a huff of displeasure from the duchess.

Charles could not turn to her. The lone figure at the altar, drenched from head to toe in black silk, with her head and neck fully covered by the wispy wimple, held his attention.

Plain, stark, hidden but for the delicate features of her face.

The widow of Burgundy.

The widow was a fallen angel.

He stalled on his feet. His throat closed and he fought to clear it.

"My lord, if you will excuse her," Eleanor stammered. "My daughter has a stubborn streak in her. Will you be able to wait as I find something more appropriate for her to wear?"

"No," Charles choked out. "Let us get it done. We have not a lot of time."

And she was a glorious angel all in black, her skin pale in sharp contrast, her lips so bloody red.

He barely noticed as the priest took his place behind the altar. Chuck wondered if he had been dragged to stand before the widow of Burgundy, or if he floated there. Her eyes were so dark and deep—and they stared daggers at him.

"I do not wish to do this," she stated plainly. "I do not need a husband."

Charles found himself nodding his head. "I do not doubt it. But we need you," he breathed out. "The kingdom needs you, my lady. Will you marry for France?"

She gave a curt nod. "And then will I have my freedom?" When she turned her gaze to the priest, he recognized the tears that welled, making those orbs shiny pools.

He had blanked out, could not even remember the name on the document. The widow of Burgundy. The angel all in black. She could drag him to heaven or to hell, and he would not struggle free.

"And then you will have everything," he swore, and Charles vowed he would keep that promise.

tbc