The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery (23 page)

“Folquet was here then, or as frequently as his merchanting would bring him. He was riding the Marseille–Montpellier circuit, but I had the impression that he spent much more time here than there. I knew he had a wife back home, and maybe that was the reason, but he never talked about her.

“Eudoxie, the wife of the second-to-last Guilhem, liked having the troubadours about because they knew Greek songs, which made her feel less homesick. Guilhem, to his credit, tolerated their attentions. At first, anyway. As I told you, he himself was a decent harpist and loved to sing, so half the time Folquet was here, he was accompanying Guilhem, praising his voice, his exquisite taste in music, and so forth.”

He paused to sip from his cup.

“I never liked Folquet; I confess it,” he continued. “He was a toady and a climber. I know that his access to Guilhem benefited the Guild, but his naked ambition to be one with the nobility was repellent. He flattered, he posed, he laughed too loudly at Guilhem’s feeble jokes, and treated the rest of us like inferiors. And he was a handsome devil with a beautiful voice and knew it all too well. There were many women trapped in loveless arranged marriages, and he had an eye for trapped wives. He would strut amongst the ladies, preening and displaying like a peacock, playing the gallant so beautifully that they competed for his favors, the Countess included.”

“I thought you said he did not woo the Countess,” said Claudia.

“He did not allow himself to conquer her in bed,” said Grelho. “He knew that was a line never to be crossed. But he danced close to it endlessly, causing no end of scandal. There were also other ladies of lesser rank and looser morals to be won, and he would permit himself to win them. He would return to us from his little visits and never quite boast, but would casually mop his brow with a handkerchief that we had previously seen peeping from a lady’s sleeve. Then he would drop an unsubtle hint, and we would all laugh uncomfortably.”

“He must have made some enemies back then,” I said.

“Of a certainty,” said Grelho. “But he had Guilhem’s love and protection, at least for a few years.”

“But the song—”

“Patience! I am coming to it,” Grelho admonished me. “Now, when I was trying to remember families who fit the pattern you suggested, three came to mind. But when I heard de la Tour’s sister sing the second verse, I realized that there was one more candidate.”

“You remembered who the Lady Lark was?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “As I said, I have never heard of any lady called by that name. Not by Folquet, not by another troubadour, not by any rumor flitting about the back alleys of this town, and I have been collecting gossip for over twenty years here. How the Guilhems knew it is beyond me. But the Hawk—that was a name I recognized. Antoine Landrieux. A nobleman, from a family that went back as far in Montpellier as did the Guilhems. A tall, thin, cruel man, he lived for the hunt, and it didn’t matter what he hunted or how, so long as there was some beast or fowl to be tracked and slaughtered in the wild. He could spit a full-grown boar with a single thrust while riding at the gallop, then in the next breath shoot a dove down from the sky with a swiftly drawn bow. Or so they say. The things that amused him were not the sort of things a jester provides, so he never asked me to join him. Those that pretended to be his friends called him the Hawk. They called him that to his face, and he reveled in it.”

“Did Folquet ever ride with him?” asked Claudia.

“Folquet ride to hunt?” laughed Grelho. “Far too dangerous. He would watch the parade of virility trot off, serenading them as they passed the gate, and be waiting for their return with a flagon and a song at the ready. But in between, while the Hawk and his companions pursued their prey in the forests, Folquet pursued his prey in town. A hunt would last for an entire day, plenty of time for an assignation. Even two.”

“The Hawk had a wife,” I said.

“The Lady Mathilde,” he said. “A quiet woman, which made her stand out among the gabbling geese of the court back then. In the whole time that I saw her here, I don’t think that I heard her speak more than a dozen sentences. But when she did speak…”

His eyes grew dreamy and far away.

“She had a voice that would turn a man’s head toward her with such violence that he’d be lucky it didn’t snap off,” he said. “Melodious, mellifluous, melancholy Mathilde. She was not a woman whose beauty you would see at first, but hear her speak once, and Cleopatra would seem a shrill scold by comparison.”

“Where was she from?” asked Claudia.

“I never knew her history,” said Grelho. “She was already married to Landrieux when I came to Montpellier, and Landrieux, as I said, was not one to have a jester over to entertain.”

“How about a troubadour?” I asked. “Was she one of Folquet’s successes?”

“That’s the thing—I don’t know for sure,” he said. “I never heard of anything between the two of them. If Folquet did love her, then she was someone he kept quiet about. And that would have made her the only one.”

“Interesting,” said Claudia. “Could it have been true love? If such a thing was possible from such a philanderer.”

“She appeared in all respects to be a virtuous wife and mother,” said Grelho. “She did not participate in the contests of flirtation that were the principal hobby of the ladies of the court. And her husband, for all his brutish ways, was devoted to her.”

“When he was home,” said Claudia.

“When he was home,” said Grelho.

“You said she was a mother,” I said.

“Yes,” said Grelho. “A boy, Philippe, was born in ’85. Joy abounded at the Landrieux household. It lasted for two years. Then, one day, the house was draped with black cloths. Mathilde had died.”

“How?” asked Helga.

“A fall down a flight of stone steps,” said Grelho. “Tragic, for one to reach the end of her tale so young, leaving a grieving husband and a bewildered toddler behind.”

“In ’87,” I said. “That was the same year that Folquet left Montpellier for good.”

“If good was what he left it for,” added Claudia.

“As I said, I never knew for certain that there had been anything between the two,” said Grelho. “He left a few days before she died. I never thought to connect the two events until now.”

“He left before she died?” I repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “At the time, I just assumed that was part of his regular business. It wasn’t the leaving for Marseille that was strange. It was his failure to return.”

“What happened to his business here?” I asked.

“He sent a subordinate to take over as his agent. He confined his Guild duties to Marseille, claiming that the traveling had affected his health, and that he wanted to be with his wife and sons more. It was sudden and inconvenient, but not so startling a decision. After a period of scrambling, the Guild found another troubadour to take over that route, and we were back to normal.”

“If he left just before she died, then how—?” I shook my head. My thoughts were muddied, and the wine wasn’t helping. “Did you go to her funeral?”

“Why would I?” asked Grelho. “They never had me entertain them in life. The talk of her death lasted a few days, then some other topic moved in, and that was the last I thought of her until now.”

“Could her husband have killed her?” wondered Claudia. “Could the Hawk have threatened Folquet to find out the truth, and then kill his own wife after the rage became too much to bear?”

“It would not have been out of character,” said Grelho. “In fact, he would have taken her to the woods, given her a head start, then hunted her for sport. But I never heard anyone suggest that anything untoward had happened. He observed all of the proper mourning, and never said a word against her after.”

“His family was one of the ones dispossessed by Marie, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Grelho.

“Do you know where he is now?”

“I do,” said Grelho. “I will take you to see him in the morning. He isn’t far.”

“I wonder,” I started, then stopped.

“Wonder what?” asked my wife.

“I wonder if Folc killed her,” I said.

*   *   *

A stupid random thought that popped up unasked for, then refused to leave. Just like we had with our host, I thought. Served me right. But if this was some long-delayed vengeance for a death, then the Hawk might be our man. Or maybe his son—he would be nineteen. Nineteen is old enough to kill.

I was thirteen the first time I did it.

*   *   *

Claudia looked at me with concern when we emerged from Grelho’s house in midmorning.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly while Grelho put Portia up on his shoulders and chatted with Helga.

“I had trouble sleeping,” I said.

“That hasn’t happened in a while,” she said.

“Some old memories came up. You know.”

“I know,” she said, taking my hand and squeezing it for a moment.

“This way, fools,” called Grelho.

He led us south, to the gate that led to the Béziers road.

“Didn’t Landrieux keep his house in town?” I asked.

“He used to,” said Grelho. “But he resides in the faubourg de la Saunerie now. That’s this neighborhood. Not quite as fashionable as his old place, but things change.”

“This is where he settled after being dispossessed by Marie?”

“No, he settled here some time before that,” said Grelho. “His family was dispossessed more recently.”

“He left his family to come here? Why did he do that?”

“I don’t think he had much choice in the matter,” said Grelho. “Ah, here we are. Show proper deference, fools. We are about to see a great man.”

We were standing before a small church.

“Welcome to the parish of Saint-Barthélemy,” said Grelho.

“Another one for the priesthood,” groaned Claudia. “This is getting to be a veritable plague of religion.”

“No, he’s just as damned as he ever was,” said Grelho. “We don’t have to go inside the church if you don’t wish it. He’s around back.”

“I see,” I said, finally understanding the fool’s riddles. “Lead on.”

We walked around to the rear of the church. There was a graveyard there, filled mostly with simple headstones, but with a couple of large mausoleums. He brought us to one, built like a small Roman temple. On the lintel, the name
LANDRIEUX
appeared. On its roof perched a marble sculpture of a hawk, scanning for prey.

I had the eerie feeling that it was looking right at us.

“When did he die?” I asked.

“Take a look,” he said, pushing open the door.

There were three large sarcophagi in the center of the room, and lesser relatives were stacked against the sides, with shelf space available for future tenants. The sun shone through a circular window at the back, enough for us to read the name and dates on the central sarcophagus. The Hawk had ceased flying in 1195.

“Nine years ago,” I said.

“I guess he is no longer a suspect,” said Grelho. “Unless you think the dead walk among us. That might explain the lack of reaction to some of your jokes the other day. Or maybe they just weren’t funny.”

“If not the Hawk, then who?” I wondered aloud. “And why now? He dies in 1195.…”

I stopped.

“What?” asked Grelho.

“That’s the same year Folquet renounced the world and put his entire family into holy orders,” I said. “That cannot be a coincidence.”

“Yes, it can,” said Grelho. “Folquet has not been seen in this town since ’87. Why would the Hawk’s death have any effect on him whatsoever? Much less plunging him into monasticism.”

“Someone else,” I said. “Someone connected to the Hawk, to his family. His son? His son, in 1195…”

“Would have been nine or ten,” said Grelho. “Hardly a threat, even if he was a precociously violent person, which he wasn’t, by the way. Nice young man in all respects. Took after his mother.”

“Where is she?” asked Claudia, who had been looking at the other vaults.

“What do you mean, where is she?” asked Grelho. “She’s dead.”

“But she’s not here,” said Claudia. “Every one of these has a name, and I don’t see Mathilde Landrieux anywhere.”

“But I know she’s dead,” said Grelho. “Everyone knows she’s dead.”

“You didn’t go to her funeral,” said Claudia. “You didn’t see her body.”

“Well, no,” he replied. “But—”

“Then you can’t say for certain that she’s dead,” concluded Claudia triumphantly.

“Found her!” called Helga from outside.

Grelho and I looked at Claudia.

“So I got excited,” she said, shrugging.

We trooped out to the open air. Helga was standing by a grave about ten feet from the mausoleum, a simple stone at its head. The engraved words read,
MATHILDE LANDRIEUX
. 1163–1187.

“I told you she was dead,” said Grelho. “Now, back to the question of—”

“Why isn’t she in the family mausoleum?” asked Claudia.

“I don’t know,” said Grelho, exasperated. “Maybe wives didn’t get in because they were only related by marriage.”

“There were four Landrieux wives in there,” said Claudia. “And space for several more family members. The Hawk had her buried here, where that bird could watch her until Judgment Day. No loving sentiments on the marker, no biblical inscriptions. Not exactly the most affectionate interment I have ever seen. I thought you said that he showed nothing but tender affection during her life and proper mourning after her death.”

“To my eyes, yes,” said Grelho. “I admit, this puzzles me.”

Claudia slowly walked around the headstone, looking back and forth at the sculpture of the hawk and frowning. Then she squatted down and peered at the headstone more closely.

“Come here,” she said.

“What did you find?” I asked as we gathered around her.

She pointed to the back of the headstone. Someone had scratched a crude design into it.

“Looks like some kind of bird,” said Grelho.

“It’s a lark,” said Helga. “Isn’t it?”

“Could be,” I said.

“I think it is,” said Claudia. “Who do you think put it there?”

“Whoever wrote ‘The Lark’s Lament,’” I said. “Grelho, you know every troubadour who passed through this town. Consider this lament. Whose style is it most like?”