by Alan Gordon
“My blessings upon you. It’s that way,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the west. “Leave in the morning, and you’ll be there in a week or two.”
“Yes, well, we have one little task to take care of first,” I said. “Remember Folquet?”
“Of course,” he said. “We worked together for years, from when I came to when he left.”
“He may be in trouble,” I said, and I told him what we knew.
He whistled softly when I got to the murder. “Who was this Brother Pelfort?” he asked.
“Someone who got in the way,” I said. “The message was meant for Folquet. Any idea why someone would be looking for him?”
“A dozen years ago, I could give you a dozen reasons,” he said. “He was the Guild chief here, and things were very active then. How much were you aware of?”
“Very little,” I confessed. “I was just passing through.”
“And that was after things had settled down,” he said. “The real fun was when Barral died.”
“Who was he?” asked Helga.
“The Viscount of Marseille. The man in charge, if anyone could be said to be in charge then. Lovely fellow, and quite fond of entertainers, lucky for us. He got along equally well with the decaying gentry, the mercenaries, the merchants, and the common folk, and he was smart enough to leave the Church to its own devices, so they didn’t get in the way of anything. He had a wife, Adalaïs de Porcelet, who was considered the great beauty of the town.”
“I remember hearing about her. Folquet wrote about her in a couple of songs.”
“Yes, he called her Lady Pons. And Peire Vidal was another troubadour here back then—I’m sure you know his work. Absolutely besotted with the Viscountess, which got him in loads of trouble.”
“I never heard that story.”
“Oh, he was always mooning around, presenting her with one love song after another, sighing loudly whenever her name came up in conversation. God, it was embarrassing after a while. Anyhow, one day he waited for Barral to go off inspecting some vineyards somewhere, and slipped into her room while she was asleep. The word is, he started kissing and caressing her, and it was so dark that she mistook him for her husband.”
“At least, that’s what she told people after,” guessed Claudia.
“No, apparently she was quite upset when she realized who it was,” said Pantalan. “Screamed bloody murder, and went straight to her husband when he returned and demanded Vidal’s head on a platter. Barral was too fond of Vidal to do that, but our heroic colleague was too frightened to believe it and caught the next boat to Genoa.”
“Seems a prudent course to take.”
“Well, things went downhill after that,” continued Pantalan. “Adalaïs never forgave her husband for not smiting the troubadour, and he grew weary of her constant berating. So he divorces her and marries this younger woman, Marie de Montpellier.”
“Of course,” sighed Claudia.
“But he dies inside of a year, leaving her pregnant,” said Pantalan.
“Natural death?” I asked.
“As far as we could tell, and we looked into it,” said Pantalan. “Basically, he was no spring chicken, and he had a lusty new young wife, so we think that she just wore him out.”
“Served him right,” muttered Claudia.
“They say he died smiling,” said Pantalan.
She glared at him, and he chuckled.
“What did this have to do with Folquet?” I asked.
“Well, needless to say, with Barral dead, the succession was very much in question. No one wanted the young widow from Montpellier or her spawn to be running things, but that left everything up in the air. Marseille was ripe for taking over. Toulouse was always claiming it, Montpellier wanted to gain a toehold, and Aragon and Genoa were itching to send their navies in. The key to power was a cousin of Barral’s named Adalacie, who was the heiress to the family fortunes. This cad, Hughes de Baux, came on the gallop from Orange to woo and win her. After the wedding, it turns out that he was in league with King Alfonse of Aragon, who promptly shows up with his navy and asks everyone to bow down and give homage.”
He paused and looked at Portia, who had been listening to him raptly, straight in the eye.
“Only they didn’t,” he whispered to her, wagging his finger. “They wouldn’t let the big bad king and his nasty navy into the harbor. They raised the chain and barred him from sea and land.”
“And that was the Guild’s doing?” I asked.
“Folquet brought his fellow merchants together, and I raised the rabble,” he said proudly. “But Folquet realized that the town needed a leader to rally behind as they had with Barral. So, he came up with another Barral.”
“How did he do that?” asked Claudia.
“Because there was another Barral—his little brother, Roncelin. Only problem was he had gone monk years before and joined the Abbey of Saint-Victor. Folquet convinced his fellow merchants that Roncelin was the man for the job, and they got the mercenaries to join them. Unfortunately, the monks liked Roncelin at the abbey, liked him so much that when they saw the crowds coming across the harbor to storm the walls, they tried to make Roncelin their abbot so it would be harder for him to leave. But the Marseillese dragged him out and carried him in triumph to the Hôtel de Barral and installed him as the new viscount, with a wife thrown into the bargain. Barral’s widow was bought off, her pregnancy hushed up. Roncelin has been here ever since, and Aragon has stayed away.”
“So he’s now in charge?” I asked.
“Not in the least,” said Pantalan. “He’s a viscount who doesn’t count. Marseille is run by a consulat made up of merchants and gentry, backed up by the mercenaries, all for the great purpose of running the city profitably with as little outside interference as possible. Roncelin mopes in luxury. The Pope excommunicated him, and periodically threatens to impose an interdict on the entire city, but nobody cares as long as they can keep fleecing the pilgrims, coming and going.”
“Did this Roncelin know that Folquet was behind his being pulled out of his monastic life?” asked Claudia.
“Probably,” said Pantalan.
“And do you know why Folquet became a monk himself?”
“He never told me,” said Pantalan. “Just up and left without so much as a good-bye.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked Claudia.
“Roncelin is forced by Folquet to leave an abbey, then Folquet joins one,” she said. “It restores a balance, somehow.”
“I don’t see the connection,” said Pantalan. “Folquet didn’t join the Cistercians until three years after Roncelin was made Viscount.”
“I am thinking about the impact of being forced away from God to serve Mammon,” said Claudia. “To be deprived of His love and protection, to be excommunicated by the Pope himself, and to be held a prisoner in your own house. I could see Roncelin wishing to take revenge on the man who caused his sorrows.”
“But after all these years?” objected Pantalan.
“Resentments can grow over time,” said Claudia. “And revenges can take time to plan. God knows my husband and I have seen such in our own lives after years of quiet.”
“It’s a possibility,” I said. “Certainly a place to start. You have access to the Hôtel de Barral?”
“Of course,” he said huffily. “I have access to every house in Marseille.”
“Then you and I shall go there tomorrow,” I said.
“What about me?” exclaimed Claudia. “It was my idea.”
“It was,” I said. “But we have to split up. I need you to speak with Hélène’s brother to see what he knows.”
“Ah, the noble Julien,” said Pantalan. “He’s in the Ville-Basse near the Saint-Esprit hospital. He lives over his shop near the mercers’ wharf.”
“Why do you call him noble?” she asked.
“Because he’s a good man for a merchant,” replied Pantalan. “Visits his sister monthly ever since she was thrust into ho
ly orders. There are plenty who abandon their relatives once that happens.”
Portia suddenly nestled against the fool’s chest, her eyes half-closed. He looked down at her in astonishment.
“I’ve become boring,” he whispered. “My conversation usually doesn’t have this effect until after the fourth cup.”
“Looks like he’s got your job, Helga,” I said.
Pantalan rocked the baby expertly back and forth until her eyelids completed their downward journey; then he placed her gently in her cradle. He looked at her and sighed. “I enjoyed that,” he said softly. “Never thought about having children.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because then I would have to grow up,” he said, smiling. “Good night, fellow fools. I will see you in the morning.”
* * *
We were up and doing our stretches in the courtyard when our host emerged, yawning and blinking in the midmorning sun. He watched us for a while.
“I remember that one,” he said as Helga stood on one leg and put her other foot behind her head.
“Could you ever do it?” she asked.
“When I was thirteen, after four years at the Guildhall,” he said. “Two decades and many meals ago.”
He bent over, scraped the tips of his fingers against his toes one time, straightened, and rolled his head from side to side. Then he shrugged his shoulders until they cracked. “Ready,” he announced.
I collected my gear, planted kisses on various noses and lips, and joined him.
“The Hôtel de Barral is in the Ville Prévôtale,” he said as we emerged from the courtyard and headed west. “That’s the part of the city the nobles reserved for themselves in the partitioning. They have their own wharves and one fortified château after another. The Barrals have their place near the prison, appropriately enough.”
“And they are free to receive visitors?”
“They are free to do what they want and go where they want,” he said. “Just so long as guards from the Viguerie are with them at all times. If Roncelin takes one step toward his old abbey, they will gently escort him back to the château and remind him of his limitations.”
“What’s the wife like?”
“Her name’s Eudiarde. She’s from Aragon, related to the current king in some way. They threw her in as a sop to Alfonse, just so he thought he had some sway here, and they thought she was pretty enough to make a monk forswear his vows, as if that’s ever a problem.”
“So they make a happy couple?”
“About as far from it as I have ever seen,” he said. “And I’ve seen plenty of unhappy marriages. Present company emphatically excluded, of course. How do you two do so well?”
“We get to throw dangerous objects at each other daily,” I said. “It builds trust.”
He snorted, and we walked along. This part of the city was up high, giving us a good view of the harbor, which was busy. Ahead was the sea, dotted with fishing boats returning with their catch. It was a pleasant sight, and Pantalan was humming, which might normally have fit in with the day, but it was a sad melody.
“What is that tune?” I asked. “I’ve never heard it.”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It popped into my head this morning. I can’t remember all of it, and I don’t know the words, but I can’t shake it. Does that ever happen to you?”
A sudden memory of a man lying on the ground, my dagger in his throat.
“All the time,” I said, and I started humming something happier to clear my mind. Pantalan joined in with the counterpoint; then we started singing in earnest, bouncing the song off the walls, sending it around corners and up to Heaven, just in case God needed some cheering up.
The Hôtel de Barral was a three-story stone building, with an entrance gate set in a stone arch facing a large wharf. Beyond it, the Saint-Jean fort squatted at the entrance to the harbor, the great chain dangling from its windlass, its length resting peaceably at the harbor floor. The lowest level of the château doubled as a warehouse for whatever was coming in or going out, but there was no activity at the moment. There were large windows on the second story, smaller ones at the top, but all of them were shuttered tight. A pair of bored-looking guards stood in the shade of the entrance, their attentions directed toward the château rather than at the street.
“Greetings, Arnaut, Matieu,” said Pantalan, startling them.
“What’s going on?” said the guard nearer to us. “And who’s the other one?”
“Entertainment is going on,” replied Pantalan. “A colleague has come for a visit, so I thought I would introduce him to the Viscount, just so he could brag to his family about it. This is Tan Pierre.”
“Not much to brag about,” said the guard. “Welcome to Marseille, Fool, and good luck entertaining His Solemnity. It’s like a tomb in there.”
“Nothing like a pair of fools to rouse the dead,” said Pantalan cheerfully. “May we pass?”
“Sure, why not?” said the guard. “Wish we could watch the show.”
“We’ll be at the Green Pilgrim tonight,” said Pantalan. “It will be worth the visit just to see this fellow’s wife. Prettiest thing in whiteface you’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“But married,” I said hastily.
“More’s the pity,” said Pantalan.
“Green Pilgrim it is,” said the guard, and we went inside.
An underworked seneschal eyed us dubiously but nevertheless led us up a grand staircase to the second level, then through an immense set of oaken doors into a large empty room. Tapestries depicting various ancestors of the Viscount in chivalric settings hung around us, but the room was too dark for me to see them in detail.
“The parties this room would see when Barral was alive were something,” murmured Pantalan. “There would be hundreds of guests and as many servants, dozens of musicians and entertainers. Now, this.”
“Where is your lord?” I asked the seneschal, who was taking a cloth cover off an ancient pair of chairs carved from wood darker than the room.
“At prayer,” he replied. “He has a private chapel. It gets more use than any room here.”
“How long will he be?” asked Pantalan.
“Until his prayers are answered,” said the seneschal.
“I don’t know if we can wait that long,” said Pantalan.
“I don’t know if anyone can wait that long,” I said. “Could you tell him that a pair of fools have come to visit?”
“Yes, let him cease his prayers for a while,” said Pantalan. “God could probably use the break.”
The seneschal grimaced and shuffled off.
“There’s something missing here,” said Pantalan. He walked over to the large windows at the far end of the hall and threw the shutters open, one by one. “Let there be light!”
And there was light, which illuminated the dust that had collected on every surface in the room. The tapestries’ colors were dull and faded, and the wooden floor was pitted and stained.
“Servants’ day off has lasted a good twelve years, I’d say,” commented Pantalan.
“Which may have been the last time you set foot in this place,” said a man standing in the doorway opposite.
“Viscount Barral, a pleasure to see you,” said Pantalan as we both bowed.
“What brings you here?” said the Viscount, blinking rapidly as he stepped into the light.
“I would have come sooner, but I was waiting for you to throw a party,” said Pantalan. “I sat by my door, listening for the footsteps of your messenger bearing my invitation. People would come by, urging me to give up, to entertain elsewhere, at the very least to partake of some meager sustenance, but I never lost hope. ‘No, no!’ I would cry. ‘What if my lord sends for me and I am not here to rush to his side and lighten his heart with a song?’ Finally, I decided to come myself and find out when I could expect it.”
“When Hell freezes over,” said the Viscount.
“But that happened just this morning,” I sai
d. “We put on our skates and came immediately.”
He looked at me for the first time, and I looked back at him. I saw a man I would have taken for a monk, albeit a more affluent member of the order. His robes were white, but trimmed with ermine, and he was nervously fingering a large gold pendant that would have been out of place in an abbey. He was balding, which gave him the effect of being tonsured.
“Who is this?” he asked Pantalan.
“A fellow fool, come to visit Marseille,” said Pantalan. “His name is Tan Pierre, and he is of abundant talent.”
“Tell him to take it to someone who needs it,” said the Viscount. “Tell him to—”
“Roncelin, my lord, is this any way to behave to your guests?” scolded a woman coming into the room.
“They aren’t guests. They are fools,” he replied ungraciously.
“Even better,” she said, beaming at us. “Much more entertaining than your relatives.”
“Domna Eudiarde, how delightful to see you,” said Pantalan, winking at her as he bowed.
She simpered happily, then turned to me. “And who is this tall fellow?”
“Tan Pierre, at your service,” I said, bowing deeply. “A visitor to your fair city.”
She was a robust woman with black hair that was coiled into a pair of elaborate braids on either side of her head. She wore a gown of the vivid red cloth that was a specialty of this city. That, combined with her olive complexion, managed to make her husband look even more corpselike by comparison. She posed in a manner that was meant to be grand, but swayed like a boat in bad weather.
“Two fools, two of us,” she said. “I have an excellent fancy, my lord husband. Allow me to show this visitor the splendor of your house while you and Pantalan catch up on old times.”
“Take both of them and leave me in peace,” suggested the Viscount.
“Nonsense,” she scoffed. “He’s just what you need right now. Well, you need to have a cup of wine more than anything, but start with the fool. I would like to see you smile once this year.”
“But—”
“Husband, will you do me this small favor!” she shouted.
Her voice echoed faintly about the room, muffled quickly by the dust-ridden tapestries. He looked down at his feet and nodded.
