by Alan Gordon
My wife.
It was sneaky, I confess, to saddle her with Portia like that, but sneakiness was part of the game. I had no doubt that the direction my investigation was taking was the correct one, but that wasn’t to say that she would not find her own way to the murderer.
For that matter, I wanted to find the murderer first because as smart as she was, and as capable as she was, I had a better chance of surviving the encounter than she had. She was good in a fight—quite deadly, in fact, as I had seen on more than one occasion, but she had been a fool for only a few years, and I had been one for—
My God, was it thirty years now?
Almost thirty-one, if I dated it from the beginning of my training with La Vache in Paris, perfecting my juggling technique instead of attending the university my father thought—
Not my father. The man I thought was my father, who instructed me through beatings and treachery because he knew that he wasn’t my father.
I often wonder at God’s plan for us. Why did He create a world where nobles ruled solely because of an accumulation of accidental births? Where nobles treated their families and children as commodities to be bought, sold, or traded to maintain their holds on power. No child could be born to that world and not become twisted in some way.
Unless he abandons it. Like me.
Like my wife.-Only she abandoned it as an adult, choosing to leave her children behind.
Her noble children, two beautiful, intelligent, goodhearted children, whose noble father had been murdered and whose noble mother had left them.
Left them to be twisted by the other noble members of their family.
I had to get her back to them. Perhaps I could stay somewhere safely out of town while she visited. I did not think that I would receive the warmest welcome there.
The house of Llora de Bretanha was in the Comminges quarter, not far from the Porte Narbonnaise. No doubt the old count wanted to keep her nearby so that a quick walk from the château would have him in her bed in a matter of minutes. She must have been an exceptional lover to winnow a house out of him. He was a notorious consumer of flesh in his life, whose appetites demanded constant variety. And yet, there was the one woman to whom he kept returning.
The house itself was modest, fit for entertaining on an intimate scale. Na Llora was not likely to be one throwing lavish dinner parties. The nobles of Toulouse may have had no compunction about betraying their spouses, but they would not offend society by attending the old count’s mistress in public.
It was nearing midday. I wondered what hours she kept at this stage of her life. The royal mistresses I have known kept pace with their patrons, rising early enough to make themselves desirable at a moment’s notice. As they grew older, the amount of artifice needed to sustain their desirability required them to rise at an hour more suited to a farmer’s life. However, this mistress was retired from the field of action with full honors. She could sleep all damn day if she wanted.
Then again, who is a jester to criticize someone for sleeping late?
I paused to examine the knocker on the door. It was a bronze butterfly, nearly the size of my head, with every detail exquisitely rendered down to the feelers, so thin and light that one would think they would wave in the breeze. I lifted it carefully and knocked three times.
The door was opened by a maid, who looked at me in surprise. “You are a jester?” she asked.
“I am,” I said. “Come to pay my respects to Na Llora.”
“She is not expecting your respects,” she said.
“As the master of the unexpected, I have no respect for the expectations of my respects,” I returned. “Give her my apologies for coming without warning, but tell her that I am camping on her doorstep until she grants me an audience.”
“Better men than you have been turned away from this house,” she informed me haughtily.
“Then there is no incentive for me to improve, is there?” I said. “Tell her that I am getting worse, and that only she can save me. I leave it to your sense of Christian charity.”
“What is your purpose is seeing her?” she asked.
I looked both ways, then beckoned for her to lean forward. I put my lips by her ear. “For the gossip,” I whispered.
“Oh,” she said, beginning to smile for the first time. “That might get you your audience. Wait here.”
She let me into the front hall, which was a start. I swung my lute around to the front while I was waiting and started plucking at it softly, letting the music be my ambassador. I heard the murmuring of women’s voices from the next room.
Then the maid returned. “She will see you,” she said. “Follow me.”
I bowed to her in thanks, then followed her into the front parlor, still playing.
A woman was reclining on a low couch, sipping from a goblet of wine. There was a pitcher and, to my great happiness, a second goblet. She wore a bliaut of the deepest blue, a thick leather belt with a fine silver mesh around it at her waist. She held out her hand as I came in, and I knelt before her, took it, and pressed my forehead against it.
“Is that the custom where you come from?” she asked.
“I follow no custom,” I said. “That was something I did at the spur of the moment. It seemed appropriate.”
“I will accept that,” she said, smiling. She waved me over to a low stool by the table. “Help yourself to some wine.”
“Thank you, Domina Llora,” I said, filling it. I lifted it in her direction. “To your magnificent life.”
She raised hers in ironic salute. “You’re the new fool in town,” she said. “The one with the foolish family.”
“Oc, Domina. My name is Tan Pierre.”
“I doubt that very much,” she said, looking at me over her goblet.
Her eyes were the color of her bliaut, still clear and appraising. I could see how a man would have wanted to swim in her gaze. Even now.
“Do you like my dress, Senhor Pierre?” she asked.
“Very much.”
“It’s Almeria silk. Very rich, very comfortable,” she said. “It suits you,” I said.
“Almeria silk is used for wrapping relics,” she added, raising an eyebrow. “You are right. It suits me very well.”
I grinned.
“I knew Balthazar,” she said. “A funny man and a good listener. Are you a good listener?”
“I am, Domina. Most jesters are.”
“Why is that, do you suppose?”
“We talk for a living, Domina. Silence for us is a vacation.”
“Although there is that one fool in town who never speaks,” she said. “I think that would kill me. Did you know Balthazar?”
“I met him once, years ago,” I said.
“Raimon liked him,” she said, a wistful smile on her face. “The old Raimon, my Raimon, of course. The current one liked him, too. He just doesn’t like me.”
“It is hard to imagine anyone not liking you,” I said. “Don’t flatter me, Fool,” she snapped. “That is not how you play this little game. I am too old to be flattered.”
There was something gallant I could have said in reply, but it was flattering, so I held my tongue.
“Better,” she said, her anger subsiding.
“Who was the fool when you first came to Toulouse?” I asked.
“His name was Jericho,” she said. “Not his real name, either. I don’t think I have ever seen a fool answer to a real name.
“Why did he call himself Jericho?” I asked.
“He played the trumpet, and he was a tumbler,” she said. “He did both at the same time, which was remarkable. Not the wittiest fool, however. More of a clown, but we all drank plenty, so he was funny enough at the time. Are you a witty fool?”
“No fool should ever sing his own praises,” I said. “I let others discover my worthiness for me.”
“That sounds like a fancy way of saying that you are not,” she said.
“Well, I confess to enough wit for me to make m
y living,” I said. “A fool will need his wits when he becomes too old to tumble.”
“Too old to tumble,” she echoed. “That could be a tragic epitaph for many a life.”
“I think that I understand the secret of your longevity, Domina.”
“Do you now? What is it?”
“Beauty comes and goes, but wit in a woman is as valuable as wit in a fool.”
“Well said, Senhor Pierre,” she said, smiling again. “Your wife is a fortunate fool to be married to a man with such foolish wit. I would like to meet her.”
“I shall bring her by,” I said.
“Now, why have you come to see me?” she asked, her glance shrewd. “I have fallen out of fashion in Toulouse.”
“I think it more likely that Toulouse has fallen out of fashion with you,” I said. “Which is its loss. However, truth be told, I have come in search of gossip.”
“My last stock in trade,” she said. “How shall I display my wares? And what will you do for me in exchange?”
“I offer new gossip for old,” I said. “I have the end of a tale, and I wonder if you possess the beginning.”
“Fools’ tales generally end with laughter,” she said.
“It all depends on whether you find humor in a hanging/‘ I said.
“Ah,” she said. “The Parisian Prodigal. Quite a homecoming for little brother Baudoin.”
“Do you think him legitimately the brother of the count?” I asked.
“I think him the brother of the count,” she said. “Legitimately? Perhaps.”
“But perhaps not?” I asked.
“Perhaps not,” she said.
“That’s a new wrinkle.”
“No,” she said. “It’s an old one. Forty years old.”
“Are you saying that Countess Constance was inconstant to the count?”
“Give me your payment first,” she said. “Tell me how Baudoin came here, and how he went from a dungeon to the bed of a dead whore and back again.”
I told her of Baudoin’s tumultuous two days, leaving out my suspicions and subsequent discoveries.
“Poor woman,” she said when I was done. “Do you know what the difference is between someone like her and someone like me?”
“Tell me, Domina.”
“The luck of a noble bloodline,” she said. “I came to Toulouse with my noble, wealthy parents when I was fifteen. It turned out that noble or not, the wealth had dwindled, although they kept me in the dark about it. I was presented to the court that afternoon, and to the count’s bedchamber that night. My father’s fortune was saved.”
“Yet you stayed on.”
She lifted her hand up for me to get a good look. It was heavily bejeweled, but the hand itself was lovely underneath, still supple and unlined.
“I immerse them in lotion every day for an hour while
Célie reads to me,” she said. “One of my secrets. Yes, I stayed on. I had a particular talent for being a mistress, I discovered. Much of it involved listening. So many pretty girls prattled in and prattled back out again, still believing that they were fascinating. They weren’t. A powerful man needs to think that he is the center of the known world, and an eternal source of interest. I simply opened my eyes wide and looked enthralled.”
She demonstrated, and suddenly I saw the young woman she once was, her attention solely on me.
I immediately wanted to do nothing more but to please her.
“Very powerful,” I said.
She blinked, and the young woman vanished into memory.
“But Constance was there at the time, wasn’t she?” I asked.
“Constance was rolled out for court occasions, impregnated periodically, and directed to write cheerful letters to her brother, the King of France,” said Llora scornfully. “She lacked the beauty to compete with the beautiful, and the wit to compete with the witty. She was an ordinary woman born into an extraordinary family. She served one purpose; I served another.”
“But she didn’t stay on,” I said.
“No, she didn’t,” said Llora. “That was the one thing she did that actually surprised people. Hell, with all that she had to put up with, it was a miracle she didn’t kill herself. Or him. Or me, for that matter. Raimon barely paid her any attention by that point. Barely left her any money to survive upon while he made his rounds of the Toulousain, with me and a dozen other women in tow. Constance was a wretched little milksop who kept praying things would get better while they kept getting worse, a martyr to her duty. But it turned out that she had a plan. There was a chief servant, Simon, who had the responsibility for watching over her and making sure she behaved. Then one day in ’65, he was called home on some family matter, and she slipped her last piece of jewelry to a sympathetic guard and fled the château. Only one problem—that was her last piece of jewelry, and the journey to Paris takes money.”
“A month’s journey, and a dangerous one for a woman alone,” I said. “Not to mention with the count’s men after her.”
“He didn’t care at that point,” she said. “He was quite pleased at the turn of events. She left him, so he was in the right. It freed him up for the next marriage and whatever properties it would bring.”
“You were never a candidate?”
“I had more power as his mistress than any mere wife could hope for,” she said, her voice flooded with contempt. “He wanted me. As long as I had the ability to leave him, I held him.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Tell me, how did Constance survive once she left?”
“She had an ally in Toulouse,” said Llora. “A man. A knight, in fact, who must have read his tales of chivalry and taken the idea seriously. He gave her sanctuary at his mansion and kept it a secret.”
“Yet you know about it.”
“Raimon knew about it,” she laughed. “From the beginning. As I said, he didn’t care, but he made a good show of looking like he did. He posted rewards, threatened banishment to any who would help her, then he would come to my bedchamber and howl with laughter over her cowering in some dank cellar.”
“How long did she stay with this chivalrous knight?”
“Long enough for a messenger to get to her brother, the king, with a plea for money. When he returned with it, she left. But in the interim, I suspect the knight became less chivalrous.”
“Why do you suspect that?”
“Please,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Lovelorn woman, chivalrous man, constant threat of death— could circumstances have been any more romantic? I doubt that they lasted more than a day before falling into each other’s arms. And here’s another thing—Baudoin was born in ’65, but what month? Constance left the château in February. If he was born in December, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. After all, marital relations between Constance and my Raimon had ceased long before.”
“You never know,” I said. “Maybe he cheated on you with his wife.”
“You are an insolent rogue,” she said, purring slightly. “I like that.”
“Did your Raimon know that she was with child when she left? Or that Baudoin was born after?”
“No,” she said. “If he thought there was another son on the way, he would have kept her here, then kicked her out the instant they cut the cord. A child of the nobility belongs to the father, so that it may be used as bait for diplomacy. Didn’t you know that?”
“I have seen it enough to be glad I am a fool.”
“A smart one, from what I observe,” she said. “You must definitely come back for another visit.”
“I will,” I promised. “With my wife. One last thing, Domina. What was the name of the knight who sheltered her?”
“De Planes,” she said. “Something with an F— Ferrer, that’s it. Ferrer de Planes. His house was on the street with the same name.”
“I know the street,” I said. “It’s near Montardy Square.
Something about that strikes a familiar chord. Domina, my thanks. May I be so bold as to say that you a
re as fascinating a woman when you speak as when you listen?”
“Women become more fascinating with age,” she said. “Remember that.”
“I will.”
“And Senhor Pierre?”
“Oc, Domina?”
“If there is still to be a hanging, do let me know,” she said. “I haven’t been to a good hanging in years.”
I bowed and took my leave.
I felt a buzz of excitement, like I was a bee discovering a hidden field of flowers. Family, I thought. It all comes back to family in the end. If Baudoin was truly the bastard child of Constance and this Ferrer fellow, then he would have little claim to either the affections or the powers of the current Raimon. And if someone besides Llora knew or was seeking the truth about his parentage, then that someone may very well have wanted to use La Rossa to worm the information out of Baudoin. Or to kill her to keep her from revealing it.
Which actually brought Baudoin right back into the picture.
What if he was guilty? What if he was merely using me to throw everyone off the scent?
But why me? What would cause him to ask a jester for help? There were people in town who knew the territory and the players better than I did. He would have been better off if Balthazar was still alive. But maybe he didn’t know about the old fool’s death, so he looked to the Chief Fool of Toulouse for help, whoever it was.
Did he know about the Fools’ Guild?
Possibilities. Once you start thinking about them, you cannot stop. They were a trap as well as a tool. I needed to winnow them down.
It was time to talk to Ferrer de Planes, if he still lived. And I was going to get to him first.
Then I turned on to the Rue de Planes to see Claudia and Helga, sans Portia, staring at a ruined maison. I froze in astonishment. Then my wife turned and saw me.
“How the hell did you get here before me?” I demanded.
“Small world,” she said, starting to smile.
Then came the second shock of the day as Sancho came up behind her with the two men I had ditched a day before.
“Getting smaller all the time,” he said.
Claudia turned around at his voice, then turned back to me. She started to laugh. “This seems like a perfect time to have a drink,” she said.
