Jester Leaps In: A Medieval Mystery

by Alan Gordon

  He had received us without surprise, as though he had been cooking just for our arrival. We put our horses in back, then gratefully sank onto a pile of cushions that served as his only furniture. Viola remained in male garb. I was waiting to see how long she could sustain the illusion before another professional. She had fooled me on more than one occasion.

  “About eight or nine years ago,” I said. “Coming back from Beyond-the-Sea. Spent maybe six months there.”

  “All right, so you knew everyone except for Ignatius. He started working the troubadour route about four years ago. From here to there, entertaining along the way, then back again. I used to see him every two months or so. The last time was only six weeks after he had left, which meant that he had ridden straight back without stopping. His horse was practically dead from exhaustion, and Ignatius wasn’t far behind.”

  “When was this?”

  “Early December. ‘They’re all gone,’ he said. He couldn’t find a trace of any one of them. Their rooms were untouched, except there were signs of a struggle in Niko and Piko’s house.”

  “Any blood?”

  “If there was, it would have been two months dried when he was there. But he didn’t notice anything like that. That’s not to say it wasn’t there, but the dwarves weren’t the neatest of folk.”

  “Where was the message drop?”

  “At the Rooster. Ignatius found nothing. Then he did the smart thing. He panicked and fled.”

  Despite the stove and the near-summer weather, I felt cold. “But he went back,” I said.

  “Of course,” said Fat Basil, stirring his pot. “He had to. And I’ve heard nothing since. Not news, not gossip, not the vaguest hint of a rumor. Six of us vanished in a city of four hundred thousand. Nobody cares why.”

  “Except for the Guild.”

  “Yes,” he said. He ladled out an unidentifiable but delicious brown mess into three bowls and handed them around.

  “Why didn’t they send you?” asked Viola in Claudius’s voice. It was her first question.

  “Because, Apprentice, I’m needed here. Someone has to tell the Guild when the two of you don’t come back alive.”

  “If I don’t come back alive, I’ll come back to haunt you, just for the fun of it,” she retorted.

  He grimaced. “Join the crowd. There’s always room for another shade in Thessaloniki.” He gestured at her, looking at me. “Is this guy going to be of any use to you? He’s awfully green.”

  “He already has been of use,” I replied. “Is there anyone there that you know of who I can turn to in an emergency?”

  “Maybe the innkeeper at the Rooster. I don’t know of anyone else. No, wait. I don’t know for certain, but they say Zintziphitzes may still be around.”

  “No!” I exclaimed in astonishment, and we both started laughing. Claudius looked back and forth at the two of us.

  “Who was Zintzi . . . Zintzi what?” she asked.

  “Zintziphitzes was, or is, a fool,” I said.

  “But not like us,” said Fat Basil.

  “He’s a short man, with unusually long arms . . ..”

  “An ugly man, with hair all over . . .”

  “He’s been compared to an ape . . . .”

  “Unfavorably!” we finished together.

  “So, he was in the Guild,” she said.

  “For a while,” Fat Basil explained. “But he didn’t particularly like following orders, or doing anything for anyone else’s benefit.”

  “He was a mocker, pure and simple,” I continued. “He prowled the seats at the Hippodrome. No makeup, no costumes, no tricks or artifice of any kind. He would seize upon a target and spew venom in the form of rhymed couplets, improvised on the spot yet never less than hilarious and brilliant. As hideous and misshapen as he was, he could mimic anyone and make you forget who you were actually looking at.”

  “Which was a blessing when you consider who you were looking at,” added Fat Basil. “Once, someone insulted the Emperor’s son by saying he resembled Zintziphitzes. The Emperor considered it so grievous a slander that he had the man put to death.”

  “My goodness,” exclaimed Viola, impressed.

  “Ignatius mentioned a few visits back that he had heard he was still around, but we didn’t discuss it any further. Zintziphitzes may not have liked the Fools’ Guild, but he was friendly enough with the fools. He might know something.”

  “Where does he live?” I asked.

  “Last I heard, somewhere near the Hippodrome. He doesn’t perform there anymore, but he couldn’t tear himself away from it.”

  “All right, I’ll track him down.” I yawned. It had been a long ride, and we still had another two weeks’ journey ahead of us. Our host scattered some cushions about.

  “You can each have a corner,” he said. “I have my usual rounds to make tonight.”

  “We can share,” said Viola, pulling her wig off and shaking out her hair.

  Fat Basil stepped back and collapsed onto the cushions, laughing uproariously.

  “Well done, Apprentice,” he gasped. “You took me in completely. Who is she, Theo?”

  “Meet the Duchess Viola.”

  He sat up and nodded. “You’re the one who killed that Malvolio fellow while yonder hero was pinned to a wall.”

  “That was me,” she admitted.

  “Took his head clean off, I heard.”

  “Not entirely,” she said briefly. “And it was far from clean.”

  “You got the job done, in any case.”

  “It wasn’t a job back then. I killed him strictly as an amateur.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you two fools together. I suppose that I should be chaperoning, but I have prior commitments.” He gathered his gear, then leered at me. “I do hope you’re married.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He sighed. “I should have been a traveling fool,” he said, and he left.

  We lay side by side on the cushions as the sun set. I traced the curves of her eyebrows with my finger, and she smiled at me. It was worth everything good that I had ever done in my life to be on the receiving end of such a smile.

  “Tell me why he’s called Fat Basil,” she said. “Some inside joke of the Guild?”

  “No joke,” I said. “He was once the fattest fool in the Guild, yet a nimble man for all that. He came to Thessaloniki when he was still a young man. He was an immediate success, particularly with the children. He had a childlike nature himself, or so they said.”

  “I don’t see it,” she commented.

  “This was a long time ago. In 1185, the city was taken by Norman invaders, led by William the Good, who was only called that because he was a little less bad than William the Bad. It was a massacre. They violated the women, looted the houses, slew anyone who objected, and set fire to churches filled with people who had sought sanctuary inside. They seized all of the food and glutted themselves on it, while the Thessalonians watched and starved.”

  “And Fat Basil starved with them.”

  “They found him singing to a dying child and dragged him into a great house they had occupied. They forced him to perform, and threw him what scraps of food they deemed unworthy of finishing. He ate only what he could survive upon, and smuggled the rest out. By the time the invaders were driven out, he was a wraith of a man, wandering the city, looking for survivors to help. And he’s been here ever since, and we still call him Fat Basil. To honor him.”

  She sat up, the moonlight glinting off the tears on her cheeks. “I never knew,” she whispered. “These Normans—they were from Sicily, were they not?”

  “They were.”

  “You know that I am Sicilian.”

  “Yes, fair Messaline. I know.”

  “My people did this.”

  I shook my head. “Your people no longer, You’ve joined another tribe. The invisible nation of fools.”

  We embraced our host in the morning and rode off. The Via Egnatia stayed under our horses’ hooves for the n
ext two weeks as Thessaly gave way to Thrace and the Aegean called to us over and over from the south.

  I used the journey to tell Viola everything I knew about the great city that awaited us. Who was in it, who was allied to whom, and why that was a bad idea. Where the best meals were, when to draw the line in haggling, when to cross it.

  We spoke of the fools that prowled Constantinople, where they lived, where they worked, what predilections might have led them into traps.

  “And Thalia was a particular friend of yours, was she not?” she teased me at one point.

  “First anniversary for the next revelation, my dove,” I said.

  “That’s not a secret I need to know,” she replied. “From the way you’re reacting, I’d say it’s not even a secret. There’s no need to be coy with me, Feste. We are not blushing young virgins entering marriage.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But tell me more of the dwarf brothers. Were they dwarves who were also fools, or does the Guild go around recruiting dwarves just because they are dwarves?”

  It stung when she hit the mark so accurately.

  “It is an area of some controversy,” I admitted. “Even some shame. It is an old story, how the little people are seized from their villages, carried away from their homes and families, solely for the amusement of kings and their children. If the Guild hears of such persons, we try and enlist them before it happens, give them the training they need.”

  “The training they need to serve the Guild?”

  “That, and the training they need just to survive. They are treated cruelly, these small folk. They’re dressed up as monkeys, put on leashes, led around by toddlers, and thrust into iron collars that are never removed.”

  She rode in silence for a while. “It seems to me that you’re no better than anyone else, if all you seek to do is use dwarves to suit the Guild’s purposes.”

  “Perhaps. Yet we are different in one aspect. We treat them as human, as full-fledged members of the Guild. We are all used to suit the Guild’s purposes, milady, and the dwarves are used equally. And many of them flourish as a result. There once was a dwarf named Scarlett . . . well, that’s a long tale, and best left to another day. Niko and Piko were twins, recruited by us when they were still children. We were able to place them in Constantinople. They were a brilliant team, verbally, physically, and musically. They managed to survive the many sudden changes of emperor and still advance the Guild’s goals with each successor.”

  “I suppose they would have been less than adequate at defending themselves.”

  “You suppose wrong. Niko was a superb knife-thrower, and Piko an adept poisoner. If they were taken, it must have been at their house.”

  “They must have been quite successful to have a house of their own.”

  “You’ll understand when you see it.”

  We came over a rise, and she gasped, reining her horse to a walk.

  “Is that it?” she cried in wonder. “The walls of Constantinople.”

  “Not even close,” I said.

  “But those walls . . . they’re enormous.”

  “A mere trifle, a pile of children’s blocks compared to the city walls. These are the Anastasian walls. Impressive, but they’ve been breached many a time. We’re still two days’ ride from Constantinople.”

  The walls were guarded, of course, so our audience that evening was mainly soldiers. Claudius was part of the act by this time, playing the traditional apprentice role of dupe and stooge. She had affected an air of dignity to the point of caricature, and combined it with a taciturn style that led to a wonderful slow burn as I took increasing liberties, though I had to forgo my beard-pulling ways to help her maintain the disguise.

  And we played with her persona: this short, grumpy, hairy fellow would pick up a lute and suddenly sing in an exaggerated soprano, astonishing the rough fellows with its beauty. That such a high voice could emanate from such a masculine face—well, they had never seen anything like it, and we did quite well financially.

  We ate with a few of them afterward, a group of Cumans who all spoke Greek fluently.

  “It was lucky you came by today,” said one. “We just got paid yesterday. Back pay for half a year. If it hadn’t arrived and you came here next week, you might have found a deserted wall and no audience.”

  “It wouldn’t have been the worst crowd I’ve ever had,” I replied. “At least no one would have thrown anything at me. Has the pay been that irregular?”

  Some grumbled, some laughed. “We are out of the Emperor’s purview,” said a second.

  “And not being grapevines or whores, we rarely come to his attention,” added a third.

  “May I conclude that he only cares for things that cling?” I quipped, and they laughed. I stored that one away for further use in the city.

  Two days later, we rounded a low hill, and Viola gasped, reining her horse to a stop. She stared for a long time.

  “Now, that is truly a wall,” she pronounced finally. “Two walls, in fact.”

  “Welcome to Constantinople, Duchess,” I said. “Behold the walls of Theodosios, which were actually planned and built by his regent, Anthemios, but what good is being the emperor if you can’t take the credit? The walls that no enemy has ever breached. If you were to take the bones of every soldier who was ever killed at the base of these walls, and legions of them were, you still could not pile them so high as to surmount them. Arab armies were decimated here. The great river of Huns was dammed and diverted by them. The Visigoths broke camp just upon seeing them, and Krum the Bulgarian, who laid waste to the entire countryside, who had as his personal drinking cup the skull of the Emperor Nikephoros, took one look at them and wept, knowing that he had at last reached the limit of his conquests.”

  “When so many great kings and armies have been stopped by this mountain of stones, how are the likes of us supposed to get in?” complained Viola.

  I pointed to the left. “How about through one of those gates over there?”

  She looked, then pointed to the right. “What’s wrong with that one?”

  There was a stone arch set into the wall atop two giant pillars of polished marble. Where the rest of the wall was made up of layers of brick and limestone, this section was comprised entirely of marble blocks, including the towers, and was covered with friezes and statuary. The doorway could have admitted the Colossus of Rhodes had it been brought to life, with enough room left over for it to wear a plumed hat.

  “Once a duchess, always a duchess,” I sighed. “Your ambition rears its ugly head yet again. That’s the Golden Gate, my dear, and even you are not worthy of its passage.”

  “Really?” she sniffed. “Who would I have to kill or sleep with to change that?”

  “The Emperor, in both cases,” I replied. “And he can only use it for military triumphs or coronations. Theodosios himself entered on the back of an elephant without even ducking his head.”

  She leaned forward and patted the neck of her mare. “That’s all right, dear,” she said to it soothingly. “I like you just fine even if you’re not an elephant. Shall we take one of those gates to the left?”

  The land walls separated the peninsula from the mainland, running from the Sea of Marmara by the Imperial Landing to the Blachernae Palace on the southern bank of the Golden Horn. Someone once told me that a map of the city boundaries resembled a horse’s head facing the east. The land walls met up with the seawalls at both ends, built by some emperor named Theophilos, of all names. One of the smarter ones, as I recall, and that rare Byzantine emperor who came to the throne after his predecessor died of old age. He had a fool, according to Guild lore, a fellow named Dandery who kept him from killing too many people.

  The overall effect of the encircling stone to one viewing it from a distance was that some ancient god of pottery had manufactured a massive bowl, into which he had poured a city.

  We rode along the outside of the moat, while Viola glanced nervously at the fortifications t
o our right. The outer wall was some thirty feet high, the inner wall twice that, and towers—some square, some round—interrupted both of them, alternating between the inner and outer walls. The towers on the inner wall looked a hundred feet high or more.

  We couldn’t see much of the city from this angle, although the Xerolophon, the Seventh Hill, loomed beyond the inner wall, with the Pillar of Arkadios at its peak. If you had never seen a mountain, you might very well assume that the top of that pillar was the highest point in the world. It certainly tended to remove the element of surprise from any attacker, whether they approached by land or sea.

  We passed by military gates, by the Gate of Xylokerkou, by the Gate of Pege, by the road to Selivrias, and by the Holy Springs. By this time, Viola’s glances were directed toward me.

  “You know, it really is a pity that we’ve come all this way, and then decided not to visit,” she commented. “They’ll think us rude. Or were you planning to make the assault by sea after all?”

  “I want to go in by the Rhegium Gate.”

  “Oh. I see. Because that is a much nicer gate than all of these closer ones.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Why the Rhegium Gate?”

  “Because if someone is killing all the fools, then he may be expecting the Guild to send someone. Since the Guildhall is to the west, he’ll most likely be having the gates watched from that direction. So, we’ll go a few gates north.”

  We rode on while she thought about that. “You’re thinking that there’s more than one person involved.”

  “I’ll assume that for safety’s sake.”

  “But they’ll get word from the guard post at that Anastasian wall, won’t they?”

  “Possibly. But no messengers passed us on the way.”

  The ground rose a bit toward where the wooden bridge crossed the moat. I pulled up Zeus and looked at the gate, the twinned towers flanking it on both the outer and inner walls. Viola followed my gaze, then looked back at me.

  “Shall we?” she said.

  I kept looking.

  “You’re afraid,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve never encountered a task quite like this one. I have to find someone I don’t know in a city of four hundred thousand. And he, or they, will be looking for me. And they’ll have the advantage, because I do stand out in a crowd.”