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the church would love as well. You know all this, Jouglet— have you been carousing so heavily all month that you have forgot your own stock-in-trade? And where have you been, dammit?”
    “I regret to hear you so against matrimony, sire,” Jouglet deflected. “It would keep me in verse for months, your wedding.”
    Konrad made a face. “It will come soon enough. I’ll have to plant my staff in Burgundy”— (“so to speak,” said Jouglet)— “to insure security. All the minor aristocracy under Alphonse there are trying to turn that to their advantage— they all want to marry me off to their little nieces.”
    “Burgundy!” Jouglet said, as if the word had just registered. “I’ve just come from Burgundy!”
    “You better’ve brought back a new song or story, then, I don’t let you loose to go traipsing about just for your own health.” Konrad closed his eyes and stretched out on the leather chair, and took a deep breath. “All right, let’s hear it. Entertain me. Start with a riddle.”
    “Of course, sire.” A pause. Riddles were not Jouglet’s calling. “I discovered on my travels the bravest, boldest thing in the world. Do you know what it is?”
    Konrad did not.
    “It’s a miller’s tunic, for every day it grasps a thief by the neck.”
    Konrad made a face. “That is why you are not famous as a riddler.”
    “Nor as an acrobat, nor conjurer, nor juggler. My talents, alas, truly are quite limited.”
    Konrad gave Jouglet a knowing look. “No they’re not, my friend. You conjure and juggle more deftly than any of my enemies, thank God. Give me a song.”
    Jouglet grimaced apologetically. “I haven’t a song, Your Majesty. I was planning to perform for you a medley of selected works of the Provençal troubadours, but— ah, but, ” the minstrel intoned, musically, arms outstretched. “Then just the other day, the day before I headed this way, I was reunited with the most marvelous pair. They are old friends of mine, and would be a brilliant addition to your court if they weren’t so poor. But I have not put together a worthy song yet. Will you accept a prose description?”
    Konrad nodded, eyes still closed, enjoying his slouch. “Very well. As long as you don’t try to marry me off to their little niece.”
    “They have no niece of any size.”
    “Excellent! Then you may proceed.”
    “Well. They’re of Burgundy. He is a knight straight out of a troubadour’s romance, or a tale by Vogelweide. Quite the most astonishing young man I’ve ever met, sire— he grew up fatherless, and truly he seems to have taught himself how a man should be in the world from reading the Arthurian romances. He is a devout Christian without the taint of Rome. There is not a whit of politics in the fellow’s blood, he worships you from afar, although he’s never even glimpsed you, simply because you are his king and emperor.”
    Konrad looked up at the damp tree branches on the hillside above, pleasantly surprised. “A Burgundian who likes me? Have I heard of him?”
    “ Reveres you, sire. He goes by the name Willem of Dole, even though he isn’t exactly from Dole. Well, he sort of is, but…” Jouglet deliberately let it trail off, to catch Konrad’s interest.
    “He sort of is, but what?” He closed his eyes again.
    Jouglet coughed slightly, to suggest delicacy of subject matter. “I speak now as your gossip-monger, not your spy. What I am about to say is pieced together by conjecture and rumor only, and Willem himself will not quench my curiosity, although he considers me a confidant. From his father— it is whispered by former servants and local drunks— Willem was born to hold in fief, directly from the crown, both the town and the fortress of Dole.”
    Konrad opened his eyes abruptly. “But all of Dole has been in Alphonse’s hands as long as I’ve been emperor.”
    Jouglet shrugged. “I was told by an old man who might know the truth, or might simply be senile, that Count Alphonse