by Alan Gordon
“Probably,” agreed Sancho. “But it makes for a good story. Once word of his prodigious skills in lovemaking got around, more of the town women took an interest. Made his pursuits more successful. And, of course, it brought word of the bordel to the men who came out of curiosity.”
“Which made things lucrative all around,” I said. “Whom did he buy it from?”
“Don’t know.”
“Might be worth finding out. That night we went there with the Parisians?”
“What about it?”
“You were working for Foix then.”
“I was with Baudoin on Raimon’s orders,” he said. “But because of Foix, I will steer anyone who’s interested to that bordel.”
“You get a commission?”
“It is the best one in town,” he said indignantly. “And, yes, I have debts, as you have said. It helps pay them down.”
“And that’s all that was going on,” I muttered. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. Sancho, I have thought you capable of great evil in the past few days, but all you turned out to be was a gambler and a panderer. Forgive me.”
“I suppose that counts as an apology,” he said.
“How about I buy the next drink?”
“That’s more like it,” he said, holding out his hand. “That’s two theories gone in a day,” I sighed, shaking it. “What was the other one?”
“I am not going to embarrass myself further by wild speculations,” I said.
“Turning over a new leaf, are we?” snorted Sancho. “The minute your speculations stop is when I check your heart to see if it still beats.”
“Sometimes I’m right,” I said petulantly as the tavern maid came with a new pitcher.
“You’re buying this round, so I agree with you,” said Sancho.
“How much would it take to buy your way out of the Count of Foix’s control?” I asked.
“More than a year’s wages,” he said.
“I could lend—“
“Shove your loan,” he said. “Then I would owe you.”
“I wouldn’t make you do anything for it,” I said.
“I’m just tired of shuffling from one master to another,” he said. “I am going to do what I have to do to pay it back, throw my dice in the Garonne, earn my pension, and buy one of the Abbess’s castoffs when she no longer has any use for her.”
“One of the better retirement plans I have ever heard,” I laughed, pouring us another round and raising my cup in salute. “To your future bride. May she still have some energy left.”
“I figure cutting back to one man a day will be like a vacation for her,” said Sancho.
“Which one do you have in mind?”
“La Navarra,” he confessed.
“Why her?”
“She frightens me the most.”
“Why is that your principal consideration?”
“I need to be kept on the straight and narrow,” he said.
“She is wide and curvaceous,” I pointed out.
“But with a short temper and long nails,” he said dreamily.
I poured another cup and held it up. “To your taloned, talented, temperamental temptress,” I said.
“You will perform at our wedding,” he said, knocking his cup against mine.”But not gratis,” I said. “I have done too many free performances lately.”
We drank and refilled our cups once more.
“To making our fortunes,” he said.
“Amen.”
We drank again.
“Our cups are empty,” I observed.
“And so is the pitcher,” he said, peering into it. “If the pitchers are empy, then we must be full. I have to get back to my post.”
He sagged to the floor. I put my hands under his arms and hauled him to his feet.
“How did you manage to outdrink me?” he mumbled as I helped him walk out the tavern.
“I’m taller,” I said.
“I should have Been taller,” he said, staring intently at something no one else could see.
I managed to get him back to his quarters. By the time we arrived, I was exhausted and he was comatose. He collapsed at the base of his cot. I looked at him, wondering if it was worth the effort getting him in. I decided that it was not.
I wandered over to the Grande Chambre, which was empty, then up to the count’s office. Raimon was not there. Peire Roger, the viguier, was sorting out some documents and making meticulous entries in a ledger book.
“Good morning, senhor,” I said.
“Good afternoon, Fool,” he replied.
I looked out the window. “Sure enough,” I said. “Is the count about?”
“Off riding with the countess,” he said.
“By which you mean riding horses,” I said.
“Oc, I do,” he said. “None of your smutty insinuations, thank you very much.”
“I am happy to hear that they are enjoying each other’s company in any way, shape, or form,” I said. “It’s a lovely day to ride. Do you ride, senhor?”
“I am at an age where things that once gave me pleasure now cause me pain,” he said, never taking his eyes from the ledger. “I used to sit a horse with the best of them, fully armored with a lance in one hand and a sword in the other.”
“I always felt sorry for the poor horses, carrying all that weight,” I said. “Bad enough wearing your own armor, but carrying another’s on top of it.”
“A motley fool like yourself could get by riding a donkey, I suppose.”
“I have had one on occasion,” I said. “An ass with his ass on an ass, I used to say. Always good for a laugh in the small towns.”
“Do you have any particular business here?”
“None here, none anywhere else,” I said cheerfully. “Do I detect within you a desire to have me leave?”
“I do not wish to offend,” said Peire Roger. “I do have work to do.”
“As do I,” I said. “I am doing it now. This is me working.”
“Work somewhere else, then,” he said.
“As you wish, senhor,” I said, bowing.
He had not looked up once during the conversation. Oh, well. I turned to leave; then a thought struck me.
“Senhor?”
“What is it, Fool?”
“You were on the last crusade, were you not? I mean, the real crusade, the one to Beyond-the-Sea, not the farce that is playing out in Constantinople.”
“I was there,” he said shortly. “I do not like to visit those memories.”
“I am not asking about them,” I said quickly. “I was just wondering, did you know the Count of Foix back then?”
“We served together the entire time,” he replied. “We have been friends ever since.”
“And did you know the French king?”
“I was not part of his inner circle,” he said. “I was not so well-established as you see me now. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was wondering if you ever heard about Count Raimon’s last brother back then. Did you know nothing of Baudoin?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Not by name, not by title, not by existence.”
“Yet you accepted the possibility of his legitimacy upon his arrival here without question.”
“Possibilities are a wise man’s playthings,” he said.
“I like that,” I said. “May I steal it?”
“Be my guest.”
“Do you actually think that Baudoin is the real brother?” He looked directly at me for the first time. “I think that he is a possibility,” he said. “No more, no less.”
“What happens if the possibility turns out to be a reality?”
“Why do you care?”
“I have been his tutor, his helper, his confidante,” I said. “If he takes his place at the count’s right hand, then my fortunes will increase with his.”
“You are already the count’s favorite. What more could you want?”
“To add to my own possibilities,” I said. “Sometimes
fools fall out of favor.”
“I cannot imagine why,” he said, turning back to his ledger. I watched him for a while.
“That was a cue for you to leave,” he said at last. “Ohhhh.”
I was stealing from Helga now, I thought. It had come to that.
I went back to the Palace of Justice and descended to the lower dungeons. Hue was gone. Baudoin, unsurprisingly, was right where I left him.
“Greetings, Fool,” he said. “How goes the sun?”
“Past its zenith, on its way to the western horizon,” I said. “Good,” he said. “I would fear to hear otherwise.”
“Tell me about your mother,” I said.
“My mother? What does she have to do with anything?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But, from all I can determine after several days of investigation, you pose no threat to anyone.”
“How disappointing,” he sighed. “One likes to think one is at least slightly dangerous.”
“But you are not. I am wondering if this could be some long-held grudge against your mother.”
“Her sins visited upon me? Sounds implausible.”
“I am running out of ideas,” I confessed. “Paris. Your mother. The King of France. How did he treat her when she came back from Toulouse?”
“I cannot say how she was first received,” he said. “My earliest memories are of playing in the palace courtyard.”
“Did she live with the king?”
“He was her brother. He provided for her.”
“Sumptuously?”
“We did not live extravagantly by royal standards,” he said. “She only had four servants to call her own. I had a nanny as well.”
“It must have been a struggle for her to get by on so little,” I said.
“That was meant to be sarcastic, wasn’t it?” he said cheerfully. “Good. Nothing a condemned man likes better than being told by a fool that he should have appreciated his good fortune at the time. Well, we did appreciate it. But we were treated as charity cases at the court, I will tell you that. My mother, the woman who could not keep a husband even after bearing four of his children, who could not do her duty to France by hanging on to the leash of Toulouse. We may have been in the lap of luxury, but we were outcasts in the palace.”
“Poor you. Did she have any contact with Toulouse after she came to Paris? Any conversation with embassies or casual visitors?”
“Not that I noticed,” he said, thinking. “She was bitter and angry about being discarded like that. She never wanted to have anything to do with Toulouse or its inhabitants ever again.”
“And you? What did she tell you?”
“That I was nephew to the King of France and might someday take the throne myself.”
“That must have raised your hopes,” I said.
“Well, she did mention that I was fourth in line at that point,” he said. “That I had two brothers and a sister in a mythical place in the south, who dwelled in a castle with an evil man whom she prayed every day would die a quick but painful death.”
“That would be the bitterness and anger you mentioned,” I said. “Understandable under the circumstances.”
“She took to spirituality more and more as I got older,” he said. “Brought in priests, nuns, mystics, not a few who claimed to be sorcerers who could speed up the death of her husband. But he lived on a good long time.”
“He was a bull, from what I observed,” I said. “I saw him once. It was toward the end of his life, but you could see—“ Baudoin was looking at me strangely, his eyes glistening.
“Please, go on,” he said. “You are the first person ever to tell me about my father other than my mother.”
“I never knew him to speak to, senhor,” I said. “It was only that one time while I was passing through with an earlier master.”
“Do I resemble him?” he asked eagerly.
“It’s difficult to say after so many years,” I said. “Maybe in the set of your mouth. You resemble your brother in that.”
“You called him my brother,” he said. “Thank you for accepting that.”
“I don’t know that I truly have,” I said. “It’s only that it’s easier to call him that rather than attach the string of adjectives I would need otherwise. Is that the end of your mother’s story of Toulouse? Did she tell nothing else?”
“She said that there might be one man here I could trust,” he said.
“Who?”
“She never told me his name,” he said. “And she died fifteen years ago, so I cannot say who it is now.”
I couldn’t say why, but I had the sudden thought that this was the first real lie he had told me.
“Well, I must go off and ponder,” I said.
“Ponder?”
“It’s a fancy word meaning drinking,” I said. “See you when I see you.”
“Thank you, Senhor Fool. For everything.”
I left the prison and walked out the gates. By the second turning, I knew that I was being followed again. I hadn’t thought Sancho was sufficiently recovered from our liquid luncheon to arrange for my new tail, but perhaps he had left standing orders.
This one, whoever he was, was more skilled at the job than the previous fellows. I could not get a good glimpse of him. I wondered if it would be worth the effort of ditching him.
I hadn’t been followed by anyone good in a while. I thought I could use the practice.
I quickened my pace slightly, reaching into my bag for my cloak. As I turned a corner, I whipped it out, threw it on, and ducked through an alley. I came out the other side into the flower market and slid through the crowd, staying slightly hunched over to conceal my height, always the thing that gives me away the most. I reached an alley at the other side and ran through it, ducking into a doorway when I turned the next corner.
I waited a few minutes, then glanced cautiously around. I saw no one.
I resumed my journey, feeling smug. The feeling vanished soon after as I realized that he was still on my path. This fellow really knew what he was about.
The game was getting tiresome. I wasn’t going anywhere that I truly needed to conceal, but I didn’t like someone being better than me on general principle. I decided to head toward the Yellow Dwarf to see if any of my colleagues were about.
Pelardit was there. I sat by him and muttered, “I’m being followed.”
He shrugged. He’d heard that before.
“It’s different this time,” I said. “I can’t see him, and I can’t shake him.”
That got his attention. He glanced toward the door.
“I doubt he’ll come inside,” I said. “But I would like to know who it is. I am going to have a drink, then I am leaving. Try to pick him up, but don’t let yourself be spotted.”
He nodded, his face serious now.
I had a drink to cover my visit there, then a second one for luck. I considered a third one for authenticity, but I was still feeling the effect of my time with Sancho, so I decided to let that be enough.
“Until tomorrow, Hugo!” I bellowed as I lurched out the door.
I wove back and forth on my way home, taking twice my usual time to get there. Maybe I could bore my pursuer from his objective.
Once at my front door, I sorted through my bag until I found my key, then went inside. Claudia and the girls were still somewhere else. I peered out the window, but saw no one.
After a while, the coded knock came. I opened the door and admitted Pelardit.
“Did you see him?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Did you see who it was?”
He shook his head, then pulled his cloak over it and hid his face with his hands.
“Show me,” I said.
He sat at the table, then walked two fingers across it, taking a stumbling, serpentine route.
“That’s me?” I asked.
He nodded, then indicated for me to continue the journey. I touched my fingers to the table and walked them
around. He then had the two on his right hand start following mine.
“That’s the tail,” I said.
He nodded. Then he brought the fingers of his left hand into play, tiptoeing them behind the right, stopping and diving for cover.
“And that’s you,” I said.
He nodded.
We continued until my fingers decided that they were home. His right hand stood and watched for a while, then proceeded away, his left still following. Then his right hand suddenly flew off the table, fluttering into nothing. He lifted his left pointer which looked around in frantic confusion. Then the hand collapsed.
“You lost him?”
He hung his head.
“I must pay Sancho my compliments,” I said. “He found a man good enough to follow me and to lose you. I didn’t know any such existed in the count’s forces.”
Another knock, and the ladies were home.
“Dee! Dee!” squealed Portia on seeing my colleague, and the fool swept her up and danced her around the room.
“We have earned dinner,” said Claudia, putting her basket down on the table. “A brace of rabbits, a loaf of bread, a skin of wine, and a bunch of carrots. Pelardit, as long as you can keep Portia entertained, you are welcome to join us.” Still holding her to his chest, he bowed low in response, which turned her upside down. She shrieked.
“Entertained, but not overstimulated,” I cautioned him. “So, ladies. How was your day?”
“Only profitable financially, I’m afraid,” said Claudia as she skinned the rabbits. “I tried to visit at our favorite bordel, but I was barred from entry.”
“They don’t want your tutelage anymore?”
“We arrived after noon, thanks to our late rising,” she said. “The ladies were already at work, so Carlos sent us packing. Then we tried the Countess of Foix, but were told that she was indisposed. I suggested that if she needed cheering, we were some of the best cheerers in town, but once again, we were asked to leave.”
“Politely, I hope.”
“Oh, we were kicked out with the very best of manners,” she said, chopping away. “So, we turned our efforts to the practical side of foolery. Hence, the rabbits. How about you?”
“I have drunk much, learned some things, unlearned several more, and now have a shadow worthy of the title.”
“Start with the last part,” she said, tossing some onions into the pot.
