The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery (9 page)

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 arm.

“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 slightly. “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.”

“Folquet?” he exclaimed. “You know Folquet?”

“I have met him,” I said. “My husband and he were once friends. The abbot asked us to look into this—”

“Abbot?”

“Your brother-in-law is the abbot of Le Thoronet.”

He started to laugh. “They made that pious old fraud an abbot,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I hadn’t heard. Still a climber, no matter what the setting.”

“Really?” I said. “He was like that here?”

“Well, he’s my brother-in-law; I shouldn’t be saying anything,” he said. “Especially to a friend of his.”

“I am not his friend,” I said. “I’m just running this petty little errand for my husband, thank you very much.” I leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “But there is one thing that I adore more than anything in the world, and that is gossip.”

“Do you?” he replied, his eyes brightening.

“Yes, I suppose that makes me a typical woman,” I said.

“You seem nothing like a typical woman,” he said, winking. “Would you like a cup of wine?”

Private office, closed door, a wink and wine—a bad combination for a married lady. But I had my Guild training for emergencies. I decided to chance it.

“I would love some,” I purred. He poured us each a cup, and I raised mine. “To your sister.”

“To Hélène,” he said, sipping it parsimoniously.

I tilted my head back for a good gulp, but let most of it trickle back into the cup. It was good wine, I must say.

“You must be the younger brother,” I said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Your appearance, Sieur,” I said. “I thought to myself when I saw you, how could such a young-looking man be in charge of such a vast enterprise?”

“I am older than I seem,” he confided. “In truth, Hélène and I are twins.”

“How remarkable!” I exclaimed. “I myself have a twin brother.”

“No!”

“It is God’s truth,” I replied, my hand to my bosom. His glance lingered there, and I desperately hoped that I wasn’t leaking any milk. That tends to spoil the effect. “Alas, it has been some time since we have seen each other.”

“Did you and he have a private language?” asked Guiraud.

“When we were little,” I said. “I still remember some of it.”

“As do I,” he said, leaning forward and patting my hand. “Well, fellow twin, what can I tell you about my brother-in-law?”

“Tell me everything,” I said.

“He was this greasy, charming little man from Genoan parents. His father was the representative of some wealthier family back in Genoa who nobody trusted. Little Folquet used to be picked on mercilessly by all the local children.”

“Including yourself?”

“Of course,” he declared proudly. “You know how children gang up on each other. Marseille children will fight anyone anywhere, especially Genoan children.”

“But wasn’t Folquet born here?”

“His father wasn’t, and that’s all we cared about. We listened to what our fathers said about Genoans, and acted accordingly.”

“He must have been miserable.”

“Oh, for certain. But then everyone found out he could sing.”

“Aha!”

“Well, a voice like that becomes much in demand. He starts in the taverns, the brothels, in the worst of places, making his pennies from drunken sailors. Then he crosses the street to the hostels, singing holy ballads and prying more coins from between pressed palms. He works his way up to private performances at merchants’ dinners. He’s growing up, dressing better, and giving him his due, turning into quite the handsome devil.”

I tried to visualize the walking corpse I had met as this charmer. I couldn’t see it.

“Didn’t he work for his father?” I asked.

“Reluctantly,” said Guiraud. “He would disappear for periods of time, come back with new songs and tales of adventures no one believed he had had, but everyone wanted to hear. Rumor was he went somewhere in Italy.”

The Guildhall, no doubt. Guiraud suddenly looked gloomy.