by Alan Gordon
“Thank you,” she said. “Sieur Pierre, if you will?”
I offered her my arm, and she took it greedily. I caught a look of warning from Pantalan as I escorted her out of the room. She was tottering unsteadily despite her death grip on my arm, and when we reached the top of the stairs, she looked at them with trepidation.
“I must beg your indulgence, Fool,” she said. “Will you put your arm around me as we descend? I am so fearful of falling.”
“Of course, Domna,” I said.
She leaned into me heavily as we negotiated the steps, and did not immediately relinquish my hold as we reached the bottom. I gently dislodged her, and she pouted for a moment. “I must apologize for my husband’s behavior,” she said. “He was the baby of his family, and has never truly grown up. Sometimes, one must treat him as the child that he is.”
“There is no need for a noble lady such as yourself to apologize for anything,” I said.
“That’s true, isn’t it?” she replied, brightening. “I often think that the world owes me an apology or two. Laurent! Fetch me wine, and bring it to the garden!”
“Yes, Domna,” came a faint voice from somewhere in the château.
“The garden is lovely this time of year,” she said. “Would you care to see it?”
“Of course,” I said, and she latched on to my arm again and pulled me toward the interior courtyard.
The garden was not all that lovely. Whoever had planted it must have had a mind for the spring and summer only, but this late in the year, little was in bloom and much was dry and brown. An elderly gardener, also dry and brown, was trimming back some bushes, a pile of sackcloths by him to wrap them for the winter. The stoppered neck of a wineskin poked out from beneath the top cloth, no doubt having been shoved there just before our entrance.
“We’ll walk about the perimeter, shall we?” she said. “It’s my only exercise. It is precisely eighty-seven steps around if I go to the right, but only eighty-six if I go to the left. I’ve never understood why.”
“You know your garden well,” I said as we began walking.
“I know the exact dimensions of every place in this prison,” she said. “Château, I mean. I know over which point the sun will emerge on every day of the year, and which stars will pass over each night. I should become an astronomer.”
The seneschal emerged with two large cups of wine and a pitcher. She motioned to him impatiently, and he brought them to us. She snatched one from his hand, saluted us briefly, and downed it in one gulp. She held it out, and he refilled it, then placed the pitcher on a low table and left us. I sipped mine slowly.
“I know the life history of every servant here,” she continued. “And of every soldier that keeps us inside.”
“And that of your husband?”
“I know him, and I know him not,” she said, glancing up at me slyly. “You’re a tall fellow.”
“Only from the feet up,” I said, and she giggled girlishly.
“I like tall men,” she said. “I once was courted by a tall man.”
“What happened to him?”
“Oh, the family wanted to keep a foothold here,” she said. “I am that foot.”
“Of course, you’re of the royal family of Aragon,” I said. “That explains it.”
“Explains what, Fool?”
“The source of your beauty. The women of Aragon are legendary for it.”
Her mouth hung open for a second; then she quickly filled it with wine and swallowed.
“Now, that was wonderful!” she exclaimed. “That is how a compliment should be paid. Just try and find some courtly behavior in this giant market that passes for a city. None! And along comes a fool, and he’s got more manners than anyone here.”
I bowed.
“Have you ever been to Aragon?” she asked, her eyes misting.
“I’m afraid not, Domna,” I said. “The closest I have come was Barcelona. But had I known that you were in Aragon, I would have made the pilgrimage.”
“There, you see? That’s how it’s done!” she said, almost crying. “You must give my husband lessons. Do you speak Catalan?”
“I do, and I understand Aragonese. I know a few of your songs.”
“Oh, would you sing one? I haven’t heard my tongue sung in ages.”
I unslung my lute and sang an alba by Giraut de Bornelh. It was a favorite at the Guildhall, and when I was done, she sighed and dabbed at her eyes with her kerchief.
“I cannot remember the last time I heard anyone sing in this house,” she said.
“Your husband does not care for it?”
“He cares for nothing but God,” she said.
“A very pious man,” I said carefully.
“What good is a pious man to his wife?” she said, holding her cup out.
I refilled it, and some of it slopped over the lip onto a rosebush as she rushed it to her lips.
“A libation,” she said. “Let its sacrifice be not in vain.”
“To whom do you make sacrifice?”
“To the old gods,” she said. “To anyone listening. Am I truly beautiful?”
“The most beautiful flower in this garden,” I said.
She glanced about uncertainly, and I hoped that there was something nearby in bloom to which she could compare herself. Fortunately, some faded pansies lingered in a corner, and she nodded, satisfied.
“I was only beautiful enough to be bartered for this man,” she said. “He is the viscount of a great city, they told me. He’s been living in an abbey for years, they told me, and he’ll be on you like a thirsty man diving into a desert oasis. To seduce a monk, what could be simpler, I thought? But he prefers the desert, and I am the one left parched.”
She was thirsty, I observed as she spilled the dregs of the pitcher into her cup.
“What does he pray for?” I asked.
“Release,” she said. “Release from care, release from responsibility, release from duty. Release from this house, and from me.”
“He must be bitter indeed to wish to escape such a lovely warden.”
“Bitter doesn’t begin to describe him,” she whispered. “He cries out for punishment and for vengeance. He lashes himself.”
“My goodness!”
“I have offered to help him with that part,” she said, giggling again. “For charity’s sake.”
“You are indeed a virtuous lady, Domna,” I said. “You said that he prays for vengeance? Surely that is not a proper subject for prayer.”
“But our God is a wrathful god,” she argued. “If He has wreaked His vengeance on so many people so many times, then that must be something we can pray for, don’t you think?”
“I think that God’s vengeance is His alone,” I said. “But I am merely a fool. These philosophical debates I leave to great ones such as yourself. Do you know who your husband wishes God’s wrath to visit?”
“Just about everyone here,” she said.
“Have his prayers ever been answered?”
“Oh, every now and then some merchant or nobleman dies, and Roncelin starts dancing with glee, claiming his plan is working. But it always seems to be a death from old age, or illness, things that happen in the natural course of events. And it’s never someone I’ve heard him single out. I shouldn’t be saying all of this, but I do so enjoy talking to you. I haven’t had a good, old-fashioned gossip in such a long time.”
“I enjoy listening, Domna,” I said. “Did he ever mention a man named Folquet in his prayers?”
“Among others,” she said. “I remember him. Handsome man, voice like an angel.”
She yawned abruptly, her wine-stained teeth in full view back to the molars.
“I must have a little nap, I think,” she said. “This exercise has done me much good. If you like, you may join me.”
“Domna, I am flattered beyond comprehension,” I said. “Alas, I have duties elsewhere.”
“But you will come back,” she said urgently, clutching my ar
m.
“I will visit you again,” I promised, hoping that she had drunk enough that she would not remember my words enough to hold me to them.
“That’s good,” she mumbled, and she reached out for a stone bench that was in the middle of a tiny tiled square in the midst of some pear trees. There was a cushion that someone had thoughtfully left there, no doubt anticipating such spontaneous naps. I left her in her garden as she snored lustily away, and made my way back to the grand staircase to wait for my colleague.
After a while, I heard shouting from upstairs. Then a door opened, and Pantalan came running out at top speed. He grabbed the stair post and swung around it as a spear sailed through the doorway and struck the floor just behind him.
“Let’s go!” he shouted as he leapt down the steps.
We flew out the door.
“Stop!” he commanded. “Breathe. Stroll until we are past the guards.”
We ambled by them as if we hadn’t a care in the world.
“How did it go?” asked one of them.
“Splendidly,” said Pantalan. “Don’t forget the Green Pilgrim tonight.”
We walked quickly until we were out of sight of the château.
“Time for a drink,” he said, pulling me into a tavern where he was greeted by the barmaids with smiles and wine. He poured two cups and raised his.
“The Guild,” he said.
“The Guild,” I echoed, and we knocked cups and drank. “What was that all about?”
“He’s insane,” he said. “I was using my best material, and not a single laugh. I swear I will make him smile if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“It might have been if he was any good with that spear,” I said. “What prompted that?”
“I was saying that maybe if he started taking an interest in the world outside his chapel, he might find that the city would welcome him with open arms. He starts screaming that he wanted no part of anyone or anything that belonged to Marseille, and grabs this spear that must have been mounted on the wall since the Phoenicians founded the place. I took that as my cue to exit.”
“Pretty good throw for a man of the cloth.”
“I’ve been neglectful,” he said. “I should have looked in on him long before this. He may only be a figurehead, but he still has the potential to make trouble. And if he has this much anger—”
“Anything about Folquet?”
“No. And I couldn’t really steer the conversation that way without being obvious. But I don’t think it’s him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know how he could have gotten a man to Le Thoronet. He has no access to anyone.”
“Except the guards,” I pointed out. “What if he’s corrupted one of them?”
“But he has no money of his own,” said Pantalan. “Oh, hell, maybe there’s some stashed away in the château that nobody knew about. Well, if one of the Viguerie has gone on any long trips recently, I should be able to find out about it. How did you get on with the wife?”
“My virtue remained intact, but it was a near thing.”
“Poor Eudiarde. Can’t even have a decent affair in this house.”
“I leave her to you.”
“Oh, no,” he protested. “Roncelin may despise being married, but I don’t think he’ll take kindly to being cuckolded for all that.”
“Did Folquet ever throw a romantic song her way? Something to make Roncelin jealous?”
“Never. Folquet wasn’t like that at all. Devoted to his wife. He just wrote the romantic songs for show.”
“I give up,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let’s go back to your place and rehearse something for this performance you’ve roped me into at the Green Pilgrim.”
“All right,” he said.
As we walked back, he started humming that plaintive song again.
“There it is,” he said, shaking his head. “Can’t get rid of it. Tum tum ti tum, tum tum, tum ti tum.” He stopped, his eyes widening.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“‘Cold is the hand that crushes the lark,’” he sang to the tune; then he looked at me in triumph. “It’s from a song.”
FOUR
A mon amic Folco
Tramet lai ma chanso …
[To my friend Folc, send him my song…]
—PEIRE VIDAL, “AJOSTAR E LASSAR”
Salt.
That was what first met our eyes upon entering the shop of Julien Guiraud—barrel after barrel of gleaming white or yellowed salt, in fine and coarse powders, chunks, and large bricks stacked on thick wooden planks. Here we were next to the sea, and the most popular commodity was the flavoring of that vast soup. Sailors, pilgrims, and cooks thronged the store, buying it by the barrel to pack with dried fish and pork.
“Salt sales for salts who sail,” I muttered to Helga, who gave me a tolerant nod.
I cannot taste salt without thinking of an old saltpanner I once knew named Hector. He lived at the foot of the cliffs in Orsino, the town I came to call my own after marrying my first husband. Old Hector, everyone called him, for no one could remember when he was young, except for him, and even he was forgetting toward the end. He lived in a tiny shack surrounded by large pans of beaten tin or copper that he would laboriously drag down to the water’s edge, fill, and even more laboriously drag back out of the reach of the tide so that wind and sun could take away the water and leave him his living. He would walk up and down, staring at his pans, trying to will the process along, or just sit and mend fishnets that looked too widely spaced to catch small fish and too weak to hold large ones. Yet somehow he eked out his existence, earning enough to keep him in bread and wine while the cold, wet winds whipped through his world.
It was he who saw my husband plummet from those same cliffs, he who staggered drunkenly through waves and rocks to drag him back like one of his salt pans before the tides could take him from me forever, who covered him with his only good blanket so that the crabs and gulls wouldn’t get at him, then ran screaming into the town for help.
Which would bring my eventual second husband back into my life.
Old Hector died that spring. It turned out that he had once been a sailor who drifted along for years with different ships until he was too old to pull his weight. He had no people of his own. I arranged for his burial at the beach, high enough and far enough from the water to keep him dry until Judgment Day, but near enough so that he could still hear the surf. At the burial were the gravedigger, a priest, myself, and Theo, or Feste as he was called them. Nobody else.
Beyond the salt were baskets of spices, zealously guarded by Guiraud’s staff, who measured them scrupulously onto small scales. Peppercorns, gingerroots, cinnamon bark, all of which had traveled much farther in their short lives than I had in mine, come to Marseille to hook our nostrils and beg to be put into stews and puddings.
And there were tables of silks—plain, dyed, and patterned—drawing the appreciative gaze of my apprentice, who was in turn drawing the appreciative gazes of the young clerks in the shop. Or were they looking at me? Certainly, my whiteface alone causes its share of staring, but underneath it I am still capable of having an effect on men, I like to think. Older, less attractive men, to be sure, but an effect is an effect.
Not that this matters to me.
“Here,” I said to Helga, passing Portia to her. “Don’t let her eat anything. Especially things that aren’t meant to be food.”
A clerk directed me to the rear of the shop where there stood a pale doughy man stabbing his finger impatiently at a line in a large ledger book while an older man seated at a small desk slid his fingers back and forth on an abacus and took notes.
“… he’s shortchanged us by two barrels; don’t you see that?” said the doughy man. “I expect some losses during transit; everyone has their fingers ducking under the lid, but two entire barrels? I won’t have it!”
The abacist cleared his throat, and the other man looked up at me and jumped slight
ly. “Good day, Domna,” he said, stammering slightly. “Forgive me, I was startled by your makeup.”
“I do have that effect on men,” I said, smiling. “It is one of the tools of my trade. I am to perform later.”
“How may I help you, Domna Fool?” he said.
“I seek Sieur Julien,” I said.
“You have found him,” he said, bowing slightly.
He was pudgier than his sister, but the facial resemblance was strong, particularly around the eyes. If you had taken him, rolled him out and let him bake in the sun as she had all these years, you would have seen her clearly.
“Let me first convey the warm regard of your sister,” I said.
“Hélène? You saw Hélène? Is she all right?”
“She is well, Sieur, and content in doing God’s work. She bade me come to you for guidance in a peculiar matter of my own.”
“Then I shall be right with you. Martin, have Étienne look into it. Ask him to have a quiet talk with the sailing master. Domna, be so kind as to step into my office.”
He showed me into a small back room whose walls were covered with maps. Tiny, carved models of boats were pinned onto them at different locations.
“I carve them myself,” he said as he saw me look at them. “It seems childish, but it’s the easiest way for me to remember where everything is. When they don’t show up after a certain point, I have to assume that they have either sunk or been taken by pirates.”
“So much risk to bring us luxuries,” I said.
“More and more what were once considered luxuries have become the birthright of us all,” he said. “God gave us this great sea and the wit to cross it and uncover the treasures on the other side. We all benefit, so the risk is worth it. Where would fools like you be if no one had the money to throw at them?”
“We would still be fools,” I said. “We would just be amateurs.”
“How came you to visit my sister?” he asked.
“We actually were looking for information concerning her husband,” I said. “We thought that she might be able to enlighten us.”
