[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal

by Alan Gordon

  “What’s going on?” asked one of them.

  “Can’t talk about it,” I said softly. “But one of you has to get a squad back here immediately. The other come with me to Sancho.”

  “Why isn’t he telling us this himself?” asked the other one.

  “You’ll see when you get back. Now, hurry!”

  Despite my whiteface, they took me seriously. The first ran off, while the second drew his sword and followed me back inside.

  “A rare treat for me, coming in here,” he said, looking around appreciatively.

  “I’m about to spoil it,” I said, leading him upstairs.

  I knocked softly at the door. Sancho opened it. His fellow took one step in and stared.

  “Him?” he asked, looking at Baudoin, who was dressed now and sitting in a chair.

  “Oc, him,” said Sancho. “We have to keep this quiet until the others get here.”

  “Right,” said the other soldier. “Nothing like a whorehouse for quiet and secrecy.”

  He looked at La Rossa with an expression that somehow combined pity and lust.

  “Wouldn’t have minded spending my last night on earth doing her,” he said.

  “Did you find Hue?” asked Sancho.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I ran downstairs and did a quick look around. There was a kitchen in the rear, with a door leading to the gardens in back. It was barred from the inside, I noticed. There was a large table in the middle. Hue sat by it, resting his face on his folded arms. From the smell, he had been violently ill in the last few minutes. I couldn’t blame him.

  “You’re wanted upstairs,” I said softly.

  “They’re going to put us back in that dungeon, aren’t they?” he said without looking up.

  “Just your master, I would think,” I replied.

  “But I am his man,” he said. “I will have to go with him to serve him.”

  “You may have to do that from without,” I said.

  He sat up and shook his head. “I must go with him,” he said with determination.

  “Then come upstairs.”

  As we reached the red room, the Abbess suddenly appeared, her hair loose, a blue silk robe wrapped around her.

  “Senhors, why are you all up here?” she asked. “Does your Parisian still sleep on?”

  Sancho stepped into the hallway.

  “Domina, I regret to inform you that La Rossa has been murdered,” he said.

  She clapped her hands to her face, her eyes wide in horror; then she shoved him aside with surprising strength and rushed into the room.

  “Holy Mother save us,” she whispered, looking down at the dead woman.

  She turned to see Baudoin flinching in his seat, and a low, guttural sound escaped her.

  “You!” she shouted, and she flew at him, her nails aiming for his eyes.

  Sancho grabbed her and pinioned her against the wall.

  “Give him to us,” she cried.

  “He’s ours,” said Sancho.

  “I will make it worth your while,” she said. “Sancho need never worry how the dice roll in this house again.”

  “No, Domina Abbess,” he said.

  “If you take him, will he come to justice?” she asked.

  “I take him now, but after that, higher forces take over,” he said. “I cannot say if justice will be one of them.”

  “Then send for the bade,” she said. “I will not have mere mercenaries tell me what to do. I want the count’s man here.”

  “The baile’s jurisdiction ends at the town walls, Abbess,” said Sancho. “Outside the walls, I am the count.”

  He released her. The other soldier was still staring at the dead woman.

  The Abbess strode angrily to the bed and flung the coverlet back over her. La Rossa now looked as if she slept. The Abbess gently caressed her hair, then turned back to us. “I will have justice for her,” she said defiantly. “Even a whore is entitled to that.”

  “You get what you pay for,” said Sancho. “You, of all people, should know that. And we will start by paying for your silence.”

  “What?” she said, her color rising.

  Sancho removed a purse from his waist. It was heavier than I expected. He removed several silver coins and held them up.

  “This would be a year’s earnings for her,” he said. “Allowing for Sundays off. You do go to church on Sundays, do you not?”

  “You think that you can buy me?” she asked coldly.

  He sighed, tossed the coins onto the bed, then suddenly rushed at her, his sword in his hand. He shoved her against the wall, his forearm at her throat, and held the blade against her cheek. “Listen to me, Domina Abbess,” he said softly.

  “This stays quiet, and you play along. If you can’t play nicely, then I will take you out of this particular game for good. I will have regrets, but I have a large pile of them already. Do I make myself understood?”

  She was still for a moment, then nodded. He released her, then picked the coins up from the deathbed. He placed them in her unwilling hand and closed it around them.

  “The squad’s here,” said the other soldier, glancing out the window.

  “Good,” said Sancho. “Take him to the count’s dungeon. Same one he was in before. Not a word gets out.”

  “What about her?” asked the other soldier, nodding at La Rossa.

  “We bury her,” said the Abbess in a small voice. “We bury our own.”

  Sancho pulled one more coin out of his pouch and flipped it to her. “For the funeral,” he said. “I can’t get her to Heaven. Just make sure she gets to the church.” He grabbed Baudoin and hauled him to his feet. “Hands behind your back,” he ordered in langue d’oïl.

  The Parisian complied, and Sancho bound his wrists.

  “Let’s go,” said Sancho, and we followed him as he guided Baudoin down the steps.

  “Wait,” he commanded.

  He took a large cloth from his pack, threw it over Baudoin’s head, and secured it.

  “Rather not have people know who our prisoner is,” he said.

  “Thank you for that courtesy,” said Baudoin.

  “I’m not doing it for you,” said Sancho. “And shut up.”

  He took him outside, where the squad was waiting.

  “Half of you with me,” said Sancho. “We escort the prisoner to the dungeon, and not a peep out of you. Take him by the outside route. The fewer people see us, the better. The rest of you stay here. No one goes in or out of that bordel.” The soldiers assigned to the bordel looked at it like ravenous dogs at a pile of steaks.

  “And none of you goes inside,” added Sancho.

  The men gave a collective groan.

  “I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?” asked Sancho

  “Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-four, verse four,” I said. “Moses saw the promised land, but was not allowed to enter it.”

  “Poor Moses,” said Sancho. “You better come, too. We’ll have some explaining to do.”

  “I’m just a humble tutor of languages,” I said as the squad began marching Baudoin along the walls. “Something you apparently don’t need, my humble soldier.”

  “You noticed that, did you?” he asked, falling back to my side.

  “And your purse magically swelled to accommodate this emergency,” I continued. “Was it a gift from some grateful magical creature you once rescued?”

  “The purse is not technically mine,” he said. “I was merely given the use of it.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “You can stop seeing any time, by the way,” he said.

  “One last comment,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “I think I may have underestimated you all this while.” He snorted.

  “Underestimated by a fool,” he said. “That will cheer me up enormously when the count kicks my ass all the way back to Castile. Which he will do pe
rsonally.”

  “You are more than just one of his guards, in other words.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I am his personal guard,” he said. “Do you think he’d send any old idiot on this assignment? He chose me for a reason, just like he chose you.”

  “And you pretended you couldn’t speak langue d’oïl in the hope that they would let down their defenses around you.”

  “You finally caught up,” he said. “I take on special assignments for the count. I was the one he sent to tail you when you first showed up in town, as you may recall.”

  “I recall spotting you pretty easily.”

  “But not many would,” he said. “The fact that you did spot me so easily told me something about you back then, so I allowed you to continue to think I was good, old, inept Sancho. You think you’re the only one who plays dumb around here, you have another think coming.”

  “It came,” I said. “My apologies. You’re not just another soldier, and I’m not just another fool. I shall adjust our relationship accordingly.”

  “Which is not to say that we still can’t have a drink together,” he said. “I’m going to need one after this.”

  “You buy,” I said. “You can afford it.”

  “This purse is to be used only for emergencies,” he reminded me.

  “It will be an emergency drink,” I said.

  We rounded the curve by the Jewish cemetery. The château Narbonnais was just ahead of us. The squad picked up the pace, two of them dragging the prisoner between them. Hue trotted behind them.

  “Why do you suppose he did it?” I asked Sancho.

  “How the hell should I know?” he replied. “Maybe he was not the man he thought he was, or the gentleman he pretended to be. Maybe she pointed that out to him. He wouldn’t be the first drunken idiot to stab a whore in a bordel.”

  “True enough,” I said. “But I wonder why he would travel so far and aim so high, only to betray himself so easily.”

  “Maybe this is what he does,” said Sancho. “Maybe that’s why he left Paris. There might be a whole string of dead women in his wake. It will be interesting to hear what the viguier’s man learns.”

  “Will they wait that long before hanging Baudoin?”

  “Not my decision, and thank Christ for that,” said Sancho. “I don’t know if the count will make a quick public example of him or hush the whole thing up. That might depend on whether or not he’s really the count’s brother.”

  “Will that help him or hurt him?” I wondered.

  We entered the grounds of the château. The squad took the prisoner to the Palace of Justice, where the dungeons were. Hue paused outside the door, looked up at the blue sky as if he was memorizing the shape of every cloud in it, then took a deep breath and followed his master inside.

  “Loyal man,” I observed.

  “How can you be loyal to a murderous, whoring bastard?” asked Sancho.

  “Which reminds me,” I said. “The count will be expecting us.”

  We entered the Grand Tower and walked up the stairs to the count’s rooms. Two of the inner guards smirked at Sancho, no doubt thinking his strained looks were a product of trailing a night of debauchery by Baudoin. Which they were, come to think of it. Sancho took a deep breath and went in. The guards closed the doors behind him.

  The doors muffled most of what followed, but a few choice words escaped into the hall, as did the occasional crash of things being flung. The guards’ expressions shifted from smirking curiosity to concern.

  “Did something happen last night?” one of them asked me.

  “Well, since you asked me so specifically, I will tell you,” I replied. “Yes. Something happened last night.”

  “Thought so,” he said.

  “You were handpicked by the count, too, weren’t you?” I asked.

  “Certainly was,” he said, puffing up proudly.

  “Thought so,” I said.

  After one more particularly loud crash, there was a tap on the door. The guards opened it, and Sancho emerged, a fresh bruise below his left eye.

  “How’s the ass?” I asked him.

  “Soundly kicked, but still here,” he said. “He would like to speak with you now.”

  “I will be blaming you for everything,” I informed him as I passed by.

  “You won’t be the first,” he said, and the doors closed behind me.

  The count sat behind his desk, looking at me moodily. The remnants of a vase and an assortment of flowers littered the floor, as did a steel helm that I had last seen hanging on the wall behind him.

  “I must warn you that anything you throw at me will be caught,” I said.

  “That certainly takes all the fun out of it,” he said. “What if I commanded you not to catch it?”

  “Then where would the challenge be?”

  He picked up a small bronze horse that had been made with great artistry and was now acting to weigh down a stack of documents. He hefted it experimentally, then heaved at me.

  I caught it easily and put it back on the stack.

  “You’re the worst language tutor ever,” he said.

  “I resign my position,” I replied. “Will you give me a reference?”

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “Then I must go back to my old job. Your fool awaits your bidding, Dominus.”

  “Good. Tell me what you know.”

  “Nothing, really. I left him at the bordel, romping with a redhead. When I returned in the morning, the redhead was dead in bed.”

  “Providing you with an excuse for morbid extemporaneous doggerel.”

  “I didn’t have time to compose anything more formal,” I apologized. “I will have a sestina ready by lunch, if you like.”

  “Don’t strain yourself. Did you learn anything about my putative brother before he turned butcher?”

  “He sounded like he was familiar with the Parisian courts,” I said. “He’s decent with a sword, likes to drink, and is a bit of a bawd. None of these exclude him as a relative of yours, in my opinion.”

  “I should have kept him in the dungeon,” he sighed. “Every instinct screamed lock him away. But I chose to be reasonable and listened to more sensible people. And now, a woman is dead.”

  Having been one of those who provided that ill-fated advice, I decided to not say anything in rejoinder.

  “No one could have expected this,” he continued. “That he might be a spy from France, or an impostor, or an adventurer, none of these would have surprised me. A common lecher and killer—I’m disappointed, I have to say. There is no style in that.”

  “What will you do with him now?” I asked.

  “Hang him, I suppose,” he replied. “What else is there to do? I hear La Rossa was a force of nature in the bedchamber. I would value such over a dozen bastard brothers.”

  “He did say full, not bastard.”

  “Say he is. Would you let him go free?” asked the count.

  “I? No, I would want justice done,” I said. “If you would hang a beggar for stealing a candlestick, then you should hang a nobleman for stealing a whore’s life.”

  “Right,” he said, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Right. Only-“

  “Only what?”

  “I would like to know for certain who he is before we execute him,” he said. “I would like to sit down across a table and have one meal where we could talk about my mother.”

  “Then you must await the viguier’s messenger,” I said.

  “Toulouse will wonder at the delay,” he said.

  “Remind them that he if he is indeed your brother, he is also then the cousin to the King of France,” I said. “That brings diplomacy into the matter. The delay will be understandable.”

  “That would work,” he said. “Of course, he’s the King’s kin. Good. I’ll send another courier to Paris. Thank you.”

  “Glad to be of service,” I said.

  “Now, I want you to go out there like I’ve given you a dru
bbing,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  In response, I thumped my fist on the table, yelped in pain, then smacked my fist against my palm several times, grunting with each one. Raimon watched the performance with interest.

  “If only I had a puppet theater,” he mused. “We could make some money.”

  “You do have a puppet theater,” I said. “Only the strings are invisible.”

  My body jerked out of the chair as if yanked from above, and I danced like a marionette to the door and banged on it.

  The two guards opened it, and I trudged out, rubbing my jaw.

  “He went rough on you, did he?” asked one sympathetically.

  “No more than I deserved,” I said. “Where did Sancho go?”

  “He said he’d find you at your usual place,” he replied.

  “I guess he would know,” I said.

  As I came out of the Grand Tower, I saw Hue watching me by the Palace of Justice. He nodded toward the stables. I followed him inside.

  “My master is despondent,” he said.

  “La Rossa is dead,” I said. “That makes her day worse.”

  He flinched as if I had slapped him, then looked around to make certain we were not being overheard.

  “He wants to talk to you,” he said.

  “Me? Why me?”

  “He wants yotlr help,” he said.

  “Forget it. I don’t arrange escapes.”

  “He will not flee his predicament,” Hue said, swelling with pride. “He will face it like the noble man that he is. Please, will you speak with him?”

  My curiosity got the better of me. “All right,” I agreed. “Take me to him.”

  I had been to the dungeons before, but not to the lowest level. Much of it was taken up by storage rooms, but there were a handfull of cells that were shut off from the corridors by thick wooden doors with only a minuscule square opening hacked out at eye level. The guards nodded at Hue and looked at me in surprise, but I had the run of the château, thanks to my patron, so I passed by without challenge.

  Hue led me to Baudoin’s cell, knocked twice on the door, then three more times. There was a rustling inside; then a pair of eyes peered out through the opening.

  “Well?” I said.

  “I am a fool,” he said in langue d’oc.

  “Language lessons are suspended for the duration of the term,” I said. “At the end of the term, you may find yourself suspended. By the neck.”