Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mylt from Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion is advised.

It was January of 1393, and the Queen of France, Queen Isabel, was throwing a ball.

Ostensibly, the ball was to celebrate the third marriage of a twice widowed lady in

waiting. But really, the party's purpose was a little broader. The Queen's husband, King

Charles VI, was often ill, prone to fits and bouts of insanity that would last months.

Queen Isabel liked to hold plenty of events at court to distract and entertain the king,

and hopefully keep him in his right mind.

The main event of this ball would be a chivalry featuring six senior knights. The knights

would dress up in costumes as wild men from the forest, and then delight the attendees

at the party by dancing and howling and screaming in their faces, gesticulating at them,

running around in a frenzy and inviting the party guests to guess their identities.

If you've never dressed as a wild man from the forest before, or if you're planning

on doing it next Halloween, the costumes involved covering the men from head to toe in

linen soaked in pitch, and then sticking on in a flex so they looked hairy and, well,

wild. Their faces were also covered in masks made of the same linen soaked in pitch covered

in dried flax. No one, not even the Queen, knew that one of the six mysterious dancing

wild men was actually King Charles VI. The raucous celebration began and women in the crowd

screamed as the half-dozen men leapt around them, and then late to the party came the Duke

of Orleans, the King's brother. The Duke of Orleans was drunk and holding a torch.

Part of the game of the chivalry was guessing which knights were hidden beneath the layers

of extremely flammable linen and pitch and dried flax. And so the Duke leaned in closer

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