Jester Leaps In: A Medieval Mystery

by Alan Gordon

  We forded the stream that marked the southern boundary of Orsino’s domains.

  “Which way now?” she asked.

  “We’ll follow the coast to Durazzo, then cross along the Via Egnatia to Thessaloniki.”

  “Why not just cut west over the mountains? Wouldn’t that be quicker?”

  “Not necessarily, and certainly more dangerous. There’s all manner of bandits and rogue soldiers up in the mountains. If we stick to the main road, we’ll be able to go from town to town in daylight, and spend the night under a roof. With luck, we may fall in with a group making a pilgrimage.”

  She looked up through the canopy of leaves at the blue sky and breathed deeply. “I don’t need a roof, you know. I’m a fool’s apprentice. I practiced last night.”

  “How?”

  “I slept on the cold, hard floor.”

  “Completely incorrect, Apprentice. A fool never turns down the chance at a bed when one’s available. There will be all too many opportunities to sleep on the ground.”

  The first arose that night, as it turned out. The road down the coast was relatively deserted, so we found a comfortable spot in a stand of pine, hobbled the horses, and ate. We didn’t bother making a fire. The food we had was fresh from the town, but we had laid in enough dried meat and biscuit to tide us over should we find ourselves far from taverns and hostels.

  We spread out our bedrolls and settled down as the moon came up. Viola nestled into me. The nestling gave way to snuggling, which in turn led to an actual worrying. Finally, gasping, I gave in.

  “But please, I beg of you,” I panted. “Take off the damn beard.”

  Reality set in the next morning in the form of a rainstorm, but it failed to dampen our spirits in the least. I can’t say that the horses shared our happiness. Maybe we should have hobbled them closer together, but I took no responsibility for Zeus’s love life.

  It was a new sensation, this feeling of contentment. A jester’s life tends toward melancholy abetted by drunkenness, and I had been a prime example in my time. Yet here I traveled with a loving companion in the middle of spring, singing as we rode, and I could think of nothing in the world that I’d rather be doing, including the events of the previous night.

  The singing was by way of instruction, of course. While you can’t practice juggling on a horse—well, actually, I can, but nevertheless—it was ideal for teaching her songs and dialogues, switching languages at a moment’s notice. Viola dropped her singing voice down to the low end of its range. I thought in a pinch that we could pass her off as a castrato, although the beard might present problems.

  When we came to any decent-sized town, we set up in the market, and I entertained while she watched the horses and passed the hat. A short routine without tumbling, as I was still working my leg back into shape. After a few such performances, she picked up my lute and started accompanying me. I added improvisational composition to my growing list of her skills.

  “You don’t seem to be in a particular rush to reach our destination,” she observed after lunch one day as we practiced some four-handed juggling.

  “There’s no great urgency,” I replied. “Whatever happened to my colleagues happened six months before the Guild decided to send me. It will be eight months by the time we get there. I’m going there to find out what happened, not to save anybody in the nick of time.”

  She looked at me through the flurry of clubs between us. “You think they’re all dead.”

  “Most likely.”

  “What exactly are we supposed to do when we get there?”

  “Find out what happened. Make Constantinople a safe place for fools again.”

  “If someone’s out to kill fools, then he’ll try to kill you.”

  “Most likely. That’s one of the reasons the Guild is sending me.”

  “Because they don’t like you?”

  “No, Apprentice. Because I have a talent for survival. Besides, I’ll have you watching my back.”

  “Won’t they try to kill me as well?”

  “Perhaps. But you’ll have me watching your back.”

  “What if they go after both of us at the same time?”

  “Then we use Routine Eleven. Which we should practice some more.”

  It was mid-May, the year of our Lord 1202, when we left Orsino. A week’s ride brought us to Durazzo and the Via Egnatia, which was still a good road these many centuries after the Romans built it to carry their armies east to conquest. Many armies have used it since, not all of them heading east and not all of them Roman. The people who build roads sometimes forget that they run both ways.

  The ride east was almost without incident, but the incident that did take place was significant. We were riding through the most mountainous part of the journey to Ochrid when I motioned to Viola to rein her horse to a slow walk.

  Two men blocked the road ahead of us. They wore scraps of armor, leather and iron, pieced together by thongs and cords, gleaned from whatever battlefields they had fled. Each had a short sword and a long knife at his waist.

  “We’re in trouble,” I muttered.

  “There’s only two of them,” said Viola softly.

  “It’s not the two in front that I’m worried about,” I replied. “It’s the five coming up behind us.”

  “Oh,” she said, glancing behind her. “We’re in trouble. How do we get out of it? Fight our way through?”

  “A fool only fights when he can’t talk his way out of something. We’ll try that first.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “Routine Eleven. Follow my lead.”

  We trotted up to the two men in front, as the others, attired similarly, closed around us. I held up my hand in greeting.

  “Hail, noble sirs!” I called in Greek. “You look in need of entertainment. How fortunate for you that we came by!”

  Most of them looked at me blankly. One of the two in front muttered to the other in Bulgarian, then addressed me in heavily accented Greek.

  “What are you that dresses so strangely?”

  “A jester, good sir. A Christian who travels Christian lands to bring joy to Christian souls such as yourselves. Allow me to introduce myself: I am Feste, Lord of Misrule. Juggler, mimic, storyteller, and magician.”

  He gestured at Viola. “And this other one. He is no fool.”

  “My faithful servant, Claudius. A mute, alas, but a stout fellow. Are you gentlemen perhaps pilgrims?”

  He laughed, then translated my comment to the others who laughed in turn. Well, laughter is what we seek in my profession, but I wasn’t sure that this was the right kind. The leader said something, and our interpreter turned back to me.

  “It must be life of great wealth, being fool.”

  I shrugged. “I have lived in castles and slept in caves. At the moment, I am looking for work.”

  He translated, and the leader laughed and barked something.

  “He say, so are we,” explained the interpreter. “Until then, we collect toll for road.”

  “How much is the toll?”

  He smirked. “How much do you have?”

  “Alas, no money. We can share what little provision we have, if that would suit your needs.”

  Viola gave me an anxious glance.

  “Or,” I continued as the two in front grumbled to each other, “may I suggest some entertainment to brighten your dreary day?”

  The leader pointed at me and said something.

  “He say, if you are jester, why do you carry sword?”

  “This rusty old thing?” I exclaimed in surprise. “Merely a prop, my dear fellow. Allow me to demonstrate.” I slid to the ground and drew my sword. They all began to grab at their own, but I held my other hand out to quiet them and quickly placed the weapon, hilt down, on the bridge of my nose. I let go and balanced it there.

  They started laughing. I walked around them, faster and faster, skipping occasionally to and fro, the sword staying on my nose as if it had been soldered there. T
hey started clapping. I removed it and commenced twirling it in one hand, spinning it around my neck and waist, over my head and through my legs. Viola slipped carefully off her horse and stood by it, her hand resting on the hilt of her own weapon.

  Finally, I caught the sword, threw it high into the air, and stood under it confidently, one hand waiting to catch it. Then, at the last second, I ran screaming in terror as it plunged into the spot that I had just vacated. My audience laughed and clapped some more, chattering excitedly.

  “That was a small sample of what I have to offer,” I said cheerfully. “Would a full show be ample payment for our passage?”

  The interpreter said something to the leader. He thought for a moment, then nodded and said something back. The interpreter turned back to me.

  “He say, all right. You give show, we let you pass.”

  I bowed low, which amused them further, then beckoned to Viola.

  “Routine Eleven, Claudius,” I called, and she blinked, then bowed and pulled out three clubs from her bag. I took out three of my own, and we both started a simple pattern, walking casually toward each other. The men gathered around us. I caught her eye, nodded, and we started passing the clubs back and forth. One sequence, two . . .

  “Gentlemen, for your pleasure, we will attempt to break our record for passes without a single drop.”

  Three, four, five . . .

  “Gather around. The closer you get, the more fascinating it is.”

  Six, seven . . .

  “As you see, we are but traveling players, simpletons who quail before your mighty arms.”

  Eight, nine . . .

  “No need, with your numbers, to fear two small men such as ourselves.”

  Ten . . .

  “Besides, I rarely kill with a sword.”

  Eleven.

  The interpreter was momentarily too surprised by my last remark to translate it. Or maybe it was my dagger flying into his throat that prevented him.

  Routine Eleven requires two jesters and six clubs. At the eleventh sequence, the clubs go flying out at anyone nearby. With a little bit of luck, you distract them long enough so that you can start evening the odds. With more luck, you might even send one or two sprawling.

  Only one of the six went down, but in the second it took for the rest to duck, I plunged my knife into the side of the man to my right. I glimpsed Viola’s sword out and active, but I was too worried about the two men coming at me to watch her.

  There are plenty of ways to fight. There’s the way they teach you to fight in castles, and the better way in the army. These fellows had clearly been good enough soldiers to survive some battles, and sneaky enough to take on all comers in this mountain pass.

  But the Fools’ Guild teaches us ways to fight that even a rogue can’t anticipate. As the man nearest me came close, I ran at him, knife point-forward, then dove and tumbled by him as his sword passed over me. As I somersaulted past his leg, I opened up his thigh with a quick slash, then regained my feet as he fell to his knees. I slit his throat from behind.

  Which left the leader, advancing cautiously, a weapon in each hand. I charged at him. He started to crouch, anticipating that I was going to repeat my successful maneuver against his late friend. My plan, however, was to fake a low move and then go high, flipping over him with my knife slicing through his neck.

  That was my plan. It was a good plan, as plans go, and might even have worked, had not my knee chosen that moment to give way.

  I hit the ground hard, my knife flying out of my hand. The leader watched for a second, suspecting some trick, but I was fresh out. He started laughing as he walked toward me. Again, not at all the right kind of laugh. My leg throbbing, I scuttled backward toward where my sword still stuck in the ground. He took another step, reversing the knife in his hand to throw it.

  Then there was a faint twung from off to the right. He sat down heavily, an arrow piercing his neck. We looked at each other for a long time, sitting there a few feet apart. I shrugged. He shrugged back, then fell over, blood streaming from his mouth.

  Viola stood some twenty paces away, a bow in her hand, another arrow notched and ready. Three men lay dead around her.

  “Do you know,” she said conversationally, “I somehow made it through the first thirty-two years of my life without killing anyone. Then you reenter the picture, and that’s five dead men to my account since the New Year.”

  I forced myself upright, my leg on fire. “All justifiable, my love.”

  “As for that, why was Routine Eleven necessary? The nice man who spoke bad Greek said they would let us go.”

  “But what the leader actually said was, ‘Let them put on their little show, and then we’ll slit their throats and take their horses.’ ”

  She looked around for her sword. It was embedded in the chest of one of them. She pulled it out and wiped it off on the nearby grass.

  “What language were they speaking?” she asked.

  “Bulgarian.”

  “You speak Bulgarian?”

  “Fluently.”

  She sheathed her sword. “You must teach me. It sounds like a useful language to know.”

  I limped over to Zeus and pulled a rope from my pack. I looped one end around the feet of the nearest casualty and tied the other to the saddle.

  “We’re not going to bury them,” she said, taking a rope out of her bag and following my lead.

  “No. They may be missed soon. But I don’t want to leave them lying in the middle of the road.” I threw myself up onto the horse, then sat and waited for the pain to subside. “Remind me not to use that move next time.”

  “Sorry. I was a bit busy at that particular moment.”

  There was a whinny from off to the left of the road. I leaned over, snatched my sword from the ground, and rode in that direction, dragging the body behind me.

  Seven horses were tied there, shying away from their late master. Viola rode up behind me as I dismounted. I pulled the body into the bushes where it would be out of sight. There was a slight rustling, and Viola called, “Feste! Behind you!”

  I whirled, sword in hand, to see a boy of eight standing before me, a knife in his hand.

  “Put it down, boy,” I said in Bulgarian. “My quarrel is not with you.”

  “Mine is with you,” he replied. He charged, brave stupid soul that he was. I sidestepped, caught his knife-hand in my left, and thumped him solidly with the hilt of my sword on the side of his head. He dropped like a stone.

  We looked at him, lying on the forest floor, looking like any nonmurderous child lost in dreams.

  “I suppose we have to take him with us,” I said finally. She nodded, relieved. I tied his hands behind his back, then tied him to a tree. We hauled the remaining bodies off the road. Viola kept the bow she had picked up. I added another to my gear, and as many arrows as we could find. I then went through the pockets and saddlebags, collecting whatever coins and provisions I could find.

  Viola looked at me distastefully. “Doesn’t that make us as bad as them?”

  “Not yet, my love. Give me some time.”

  I slapped the boy a few times until he came to. He gave me a look of pure hatred.

  “These were your family?” I asked him.

  He nodded.

  “Father?”

  He nodded again. “And brother. And uncles and cousins.”

  “Are there any women you can go to?”

  He shook his head. “All gone.”

  “How far is home for you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where I am now.”

  I untied him from the tree, leaving his hands bound, then hoisted him onto one of the horses.

  “Your family would have killed us, you know,” I said, getting onto Zeus.

  He nodded.

  “You’ve seen them kill others, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It would have been a simple thing to add your corpse to the rest of them. It might even have been a smart
thing. But our quarrel ends now.”

  He sat, impassive. I leaned over and snatched his reins up.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “What about the other horses?” asked Viola.

  I shrugged. “There’s grass hereabouts. Someone else can claim them. I don’t deal in livestock.”

  The reaction hit her that night. She sat hugging her knees to her chest, shaking, saying, “Seven men dead,” over and over. I held her until she was too exhausted to continue. When she fell asleep, I covered her with a blanket, then looked up to see the boy, sitting against the tree to which he had been tied, wide awake. He had been watching the entire time.

  We rode on in the morning. Outside of Ochrid, overlooking the great lake, was a monastery. I banged on the gate. A disheveled monk eventually came out.

  “This boy is an orphan,” I said. “He speaks only Bulgarian. Take him, teach him Greek, give him a decent trade. You can have his horse.”

  He nodded. In this part of the world, there were no questions. I lifted the boy down and untied his hands. He turned to face me.

  “That one called you Feste,” he said.

  I shrugged. “That name will change.”

  “I will remember that name. I will remember your face. I will remember what you did. And someday, I will find you again and kill you.”

  “Maybe. Others have tried and failed. I suggest you devote your life to something a little more useful.”

  He turned and went inside. The monk made as if to follow. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and I gave him the money I had found on the boy’s family.

  Viola was looking at me as I remounted Zeus. “So, that was his inheritance,” she commented.

  “No,” I replied. “It was for the toll.”

  THREE

  [T]he instruction of fools is folly.

  PROVERBS 61:22

  When were you last in Constantinople?” asked Fat Basil.

  We were sitting in his cottage, a small stone building near the river. He was a slender man, tending a small kettle of stew on a small stove by the window. He had been in Thessaloniki for over twenty years, which meant that he had seen more than his share of horrors. When he smiled, even in full makeup, there was something dead in his eyes. Perhaps it was just a reflection.