by Alan Gordon
“Friend Hugo, you know that Calvet the baile thinks that Cathars killed Milon, don’t you?” I asked.
“Well, I doubt anyone in the community would do that,” he said. “He was liked among the Cathars.”
“Have you told Calvet about this?” I asked.
“Why bother?” he said. “I don’t really know what happened to Milon, and even though I’m Christian now, I’m not gonna rat out my friends even if they haven’t seen the light. I’m not like that. Oh, let me get you more ale.”
He picked up the empty pitcher and went in back.
“This is why you brought us here, isn’t it?” I asked Pelardit.
He nodded.
“I wonder if Milon’s brothers knew,” said Claudia. “Imagine Vitalis’s position, being a Benedictine monk and having a Cathar for a brother.”
“Could be embarrassing,” I said. “Frustrating.”
“Enough to make him want to kill his own brother?” asked Helga.
“I doubt it,” I said. “Besides, he allowed them to bury Milon in consecrated ground. Would a Benedictine monk do that knowing he was really a Cathar? Even for his own brother?”
“That might account for his behavior at the grave the other day,” said Claudia. “Well, this throws water on a pet theory of mine, I must say.”
“What’s that?”
“That Milon’s wife killed him out of jealousy over some lover. But there was no lover.”
“No, he only cheated on her church,” I said.
Hugo came back and refilled our cups.
“To Milon,” he said, raising his cup. “Too late to save, but a nice fellow for all that.”
We drank, and were silent as Pelardit for a while. He was the first to rise, signaling that he was heading out.
“Meet you in time for services,” I said.
He nodded, shouldered his stilts, and left.
“Did Balthazar die here?” I asked.
“Naw, he died a good jester death,” said Hugo. “He was juggling in Montaygon Square, and his heart just stopped, so they said. Fell on his back, with the clubs landing everywhere. People thought it was part of the act at first, and laughed and laughed.”
He chuckled at the memory.
“He got a laugh by dying, just think of that,” he said.
“Not a bad death at all,” I said. “Could you show me his room?”
“His room?” he said in surprise.
“If it’s not currently occupied, of course.”
“Well, as it happens, it’s available,” he said. “Let me take you.”
He stood. I tapped Claudia on the knee under the table. She nodded, and I rose to follow Hugo upstairs.
“Here it is,” he said, opening a door to an undecorated room, just a bed and a basin inside. “Bigger than a hermit’s cell, and I keep it clean. Never had any complaints.”
“He lived here alone all those years?” I asked, stepping in.
“Oh, I couldn’t say that he never had a woman up here,” he said. “Reckless wives, traveling pilgrims on their way to absolution, you know how it goes when there’s ale to be had. Why, there was this—”
“Hugo?” called my wife from downstairs. “Have you some rags? I’m afraid the baby has knocked over a cup of ale.”
“Oh, no worry,” he called to her. “You’d have no idea what I’ve had to clean up some nights. Be right there. You’ll excuse me, Senhor Fool? Take a look. Rates are reasonable if you have a mind to stay over some night. Sing a few songs, draw a crowd, and I’ll put you up cheap.”
He hurried down. I immediately moved the bed aside and began feeling along the floorboards until I felt one give slightly. I took my knife and slid it along the crack that was revealed and pried it up easily. There was a space underneath, large enough to conceal, say, a coffer or several stacks of gold. But it was empty, only a small scrap of parchment curled at the bottom. I picked it up, but it was blank.
I replaced the floorboard and went back down.
“Here’s for lunch and ale,” I said, handing him a few coins. “We will certainly be back. Once we get through the Twelve Days, we could arrange a regular evening here, if that suits you.”
“It would suit me fine,” he said. “A pleasure meeting you, and a happy Christmas to you all.”
We took our leave, and walked north.
“What did you find?” asked Claudia when we were out of earshot.
I handed her the scrap of parchment. She turned it over in her hands several times, then held it up to the sun.
“Nothing,” she pronounced. “That’s unfortunate. I was starting to feel comfortable here. Always a bad sign.”
“We’ll sort it out,” I said. “First, there’s the rest of the dormitorium to search. We should be back just in time for Nones.”
“The more you go back, the more likely it is someone will see you,” said Claudia. “All for a book that may not even be there. For all we know, Vitalis never had it, or moved it if he had.”
“If we could only get him to take us to it,” I mused.
“Why don’t we set the dormitorium on fire?” suggested Helga.
We looked at her sternly, and she flinched.
“You are an evil, despicable child, and you should be ashamed of yourself,” I said.
She hung her head.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” said Claudia.
“So do I,” I said. “We’ll do it tomorrow during Sext.”
* * *
Back across town and bourg to the square in front of Saint Sernin. Pelardit waved from atop his stilts.
“It’s off,” I muttered as we came to him. “The wife talked me out of it.”
He mopped his brow in exaggerated relief and hopped down to the ground.
“Some eight-handed juggling?” I suggested.
We worked the bourg for the better part of the afternoon, moving from square to square, finishing by the cluster of taverns near the Bazacle Gate.
“What is your schedule like, my dove?” I asked Claudia.
“Why, as it happens, I am free,” she said. “I had been asked to be a lookout for an ecclesiastical burglary, but that fell through at the last minute.”
“Then may I have the honor of escorting you to dinner?” I said, bowing.
“You may,” she said, curtseying back. “Do you have a place in mind?”
“It occurs to me that we have a standing invitation to entertain the Guilaberts at dinnertime.”
“Why, so we do,” she said. “It would be discourteous not to honor such a courteous invitation.”
“And we are the very souls of courtesy,” I said, offering her my arm.
She took it with grace. Pelardit looked at us, then offered his arm even more gallantly to Helga, who took it in an exaggerated copy of my wife’s movements.
The gates to the Château Bazacle were open when we arrived, and the guards waved us through without challenge.
We paused before the entrance to the tower.
“Instruments out,” I said. “And Helga and Claudia? Do not leave each other’s sight while you’re in here. I don’t want Guilabert to catch either of you alone.”
Pelardit produced a ram’s horn from his bag and stepped through the doors. He blew a loud note, and the three of us barged in after him, Helga cartwheeling in the lead.
“The fools are here!” exclaimed Guilabert from the dinner table. “How marvelous!”
The long tables from the previous Tuesday’s dinner had been removed, leaving only the family table. Guilabert and his wife, Gentille, were at the center, the sons and their families flanking them. An enormous roast pig, half carved, was on a large platter in front of them, and they were busy soaking up the drippings with bread.
“Where’s the fat man today?” one of the sons called.
“Eating somewhere,” I said. “Which means there’s not enough food for the rest of the world. That’s why we’re here.”
“There is food to be had,” said Guila
bert. “But first, my friends, you must earn it.”
We bowed, and launched into material we hadn’t used here before. We hadn’t rehearsed any of it with Pelardit, but he adapted to our style quickly. I called for each routine on the fly, extending them when bits of business or fortunate improvisations got laughs, cutting them short when they fell flat. The Guilabert grandchildren came out from their seats and let us pick them up and throw them into the air. The youngest one, who was two, sat on the stone floor with Portia, and the two of them became absorbed in rolling some colored balls around, completely oblivious to the mayhem we generated nearby.
After about an hour, Guilabert cried, “Enough, Fools! I am becoming too weak with laughter to eat anymore, and there is still dessert to come.”
“Senhor, you are taunting the starving,” I complained. “The only way to stop a fool’s mouth at a banquet is with food.”
“Bring them dinner,” he ordered. “And dessert for the rest of us.”
We pulled a couple of benches away from the walls and sat as servants dashed back and forth from the kitchen. The maid Audrica brought us some of the roast and some bread and vegetables, smiling as Pelardit made a show of leering at her again.
“I saw that, you rascal,” called Guilabert, and Perlardit affected a look of innocent surprise that fooled no one.
We were also given wine. It was good wine, and I had rather a lot of it. Finally, I poured myself another cup and rose unsteadily to my feet, ignoring my wife’s look of warning.
“A toast!” I shouted. “A toast to our host and hostess, long may they prosper. A toast to their children, and their children’s children, and all children everywhere!”
“To the children!” they chorused, raising their cups.
“And, most importantly,” I continued, “a toast to what sustains us, what turns the wheels that bring us flour and ale, what soaks the bark that gives us leather, what sinks to reveal our sins, then rises up to cleanse them again, what will never be as thick as blood, but will nevertheless wash it away when it is spilled. A toast, my friends—to water!”
I upended my cup. I heard no echoing of the toast as I did. When I finished, I looked across the room to see Guilabert watching me.
“You toast to that which you do not drink,” he said.
“I drink water all the time,” I said. “But I prefer it when it’s been transmuted to its ideal form.”
“Which is?”
“Beer, of course. Water is given to us by God, as is all of the earth and everything in it, to do with as we please. What can be more pleasing than a good beer on a hot day? What greater evidence of Man’s supremacy over his world?”
“I must apologize for giving you wine, Fool,” laughed Guilabert.
“I like wine, too,” I said.
“A little too much,” said Claudia in a loud stage whisper.
“What you say, Fool, strikes a chord with me,” said Guilabert.
“A man with no beer strikes a chord with a man with no lute,” I said. “Tell me how this came to be.”
“You speak of Man’s supremacy over the earth, which was first given to him in the Garden of Eden,” he said. “And you say beer is the best evidence of that. But I see a work of Man that is greater than beer.”
“Then we must have war,” I said. “I am beer’s champion. Since you have challenged me, I give you the first essay. What is this false pretender to beer’s crown?”
“The waterwheel,” he said. “The constant genius of Man, who has received the gift of Nature for his plaything, and has taken the very landscape and the course of rivers and altered them, bent them to his will to power this fantastic machine. You speak of beer—think of how much more beer there is in the world because of waterwheels. Everything man uses in life, everything he eats, he wears, he fights with, is improved and multiplied because we take the gifts of God and exploit them as He intended us to.”
“No, no, Senhor,” I said, shaking my head. “You will never persuade me of the superiority of the waterwheel when I almost got killed by one of the damn things last week.”
“How did you manage to do that?” he asked, chuckling in anticipation of whatever story he thought I was going to tell.
“By going in after that poor bastard Armand when he floated into the sluice,” I said. “Tried to be a good Christian, and nearly got myself sucked under and sliced up for my pains. Sliced in a sluice—there’s a poor epitaph for a jester.”
There was a shocked silence from the Guilabert family.
“I had heard that he had ended up there,” said Guilabert. “I had no idea you were the one who found him.”
“Me and Jordan,” I said. “Do you know what I thought when we found him? Here’s this poor fellow, who they say has never lived anywhere but Toulouse his entire life. Yet in death, he had one last chance to see the world, for he might have floated all the way to the sea had it not been for that accursed wheel.”
Claudia tugged on my sleeve.
“Sorry, Senhor,” I said, pulling myself together. “Not a proper topic for the dinner table. It was the twinned heats of the debate and the wine that carried me away. My apologies. But you understand why I regard waterwheels as dangerous things.”
“Yet less so than beer, wouldn’t you say?” he asked. “I’ve seen drink slay far more than any waterwheel ever has.”
“You have me on that point, Senhor,” I said. “Indeed, I have seen drink do in more than armies or plague. But at least, those who march bravely to their deaths by drink did so voluntarily.”
“My dear, this is fascinating,” said Gentille to her husband. “But you must forgive me. I find myself suddenly weary, and, by your leave, will retire for the evening.”
“Of course, my love,” he said, rising to help her from her seat.
We bowed as she left.
“I think that we have come to the end of our dinner,” announced Guilabert. “Fools, I see that you have not finished your meals. I pray that you take your time, but please remove yourselves to the kitchen. There are some matters I must take up before the night is over.”
“We thank you for your generosity, Senhor,” I said.
“Nonsense,” he replied. “I enjoy a good argument, even if it’s with a drunken fool. And may I add that it was very Christian of you to try and save poor Armand.”
We bowed, and carried our food and gear to the kitchen.
The servants cleaning up were glad of our company, and we took turns playing for them while we ate. After a suitable interval, I asked one of them to direct me to the privy and left.
I followed the hallway that led to the great hall. It was empty. I went to a door at the rear which I thought might lead to Guilabert’s office. I wanted to see if there was anything that might illuminate his dealings with any of the players who had come to see him. I was hoping the display of feigned drunkenness would give me a plausible excuse for wandering into the wrong room.
Except when I listened at the door, I realized the room was occupied. And that the occupants were occupied as well. The hoarse grunting was clearly coming from Guilabert. The woman was just as clearly not his wife, but I didn’t recognize her from the guttural moans she was making. I wondered if it was Béatrix. Could an affair with the master of Bazacle have been what led to her husband’s murder? It was my wife’s pet theory inverted, but certainly a reasonable possibility.
The sounds subsided, and I heard the rustling of clothing being slipped back on. I crept back to the gallery at the far end and concealed myself.
The door opened, and Guilabert strode out, a smirk on his face. Directly behind him, still tying on her apron, was Audrica, the maidservant. He swatted her playfully on the rump as she walked by him, and she giggled and skipped away.
“Same tomorrow,” he said.
She blew him a kiss, then vanished into the hallway. He turned and went back into his office.
Well, a tawdry enough matter, but of no interest to me that I could see. I gave her a head st
art, then left my hiding place and walked back down the hall to the kitchen.
“Did you find everything all right?” asked Claudia when she saw me.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s call it a night.”
It was past sunset as we left the château, but there was a decent amount of moonlight to keep us from walking into the river. We could hear the water coursing through the sluices of the dam and the wheels turning, their axles and gears creaking continuously, producing nothing at night.
“A mill for everything but justice,” said Claudia.
“Justice should still be handmade,” I said.
We walked through the bourg, then through the city. Pelardit left us at the bridge. We went home, Portia fast asleep in my arms.
“So, who was she?” asked Claudia when we were safe in our bed.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I saw Guilabert slip something into his wife’s drink,” said Claudia. “Then she became sleepy. I thought you had noticed that.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Obviously, he wanted his wife to go to bed early,” continued Claudia. “And it was easy enough to guess why, considering his character. So, who was the unlucky lady?”
“Audrica, the maid. And she didn’t look like she thought she was unlucky. She seemed like a cream-filled cat, and she gets another bowl tomorrow night.”
“So, it’s like that,” sighed Claudia. “Powerful man gets what he wants. Not that unusual. Why, I personally know a duchess who ended up with a jester.”
“Was it a happy match?” I asked her.
“So far,” she said, climbing on top of me.
CHAPTER 12
The trick was to start a fire without actually burning the place down.
We needed smoke more than we needed flame, but we still needed flame, enough to sow panic and confusion among two dozen monks. While arson was not a regular part of my arsenal, I have manufactured a conflagration or two in my time, and seen a few more started by others. And on a smaller scale, I’ve juggled torches more times than I can count. It was that particular expertise that came in handy here. The collective experiments of the Fools’ Guild over the centuries had led to the right proportions of oils, resins and pitch to create a flame that would burn steadily but not spread. Ideal for a juggling torch, because you still needed one end that was not on fire if you ever wanted to do that trick again.
