Widow of Jerusalem: A Medieval Mystery (17 page)

“Rather good,” he said, taking me by the arm and guiding us to the keep. He had a small room in the cellar next to the stables. Not much in the way of sight or smell, but he had it to himself, which meant there was enough room for the three of us to cram in. He lit a small lamp and pulled out a wineskin and three cups.

“I’ve been saving this for a special occasion,” he said, pouring the wine and handing the cups around. “To the Guild.”

“To the Guild,” we echoed, and drank.

“It’s difficult being on an island and keeping contact,” he said. “Especially being inland. There was another fellow stationed down in Limassol for a while, but he died two years ago. Now, I have to depend on the sporadic visit.”

“Ever hear from Scarlet over in Acre?” I asked.

“Scarlet came over in “94 when King Henry dropped by,” he said. “Quite the coup for us. We finally got Henry and Amaury reconciled. There had been a lot of bad blood between them.”

“Why?”

“Henry kicked the Pisans out of Acre in “93. Amaury went over to try and patch things up, and Henry threw him into a dungeon. It took the Masters of both the Templars and the Hospitalers to get him released. Scarlet worked on Henry for months and finally got him to see that Cyprus was a useful ally and trading partner, especially after Guy died and Amaury took over.”

“So they’ve settled?”

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “Amaury’s three sons are now betrothed to Isabelle’s three daughters. We won’t be celebrating the weddings just yet, as none of them is more than ten, but it shows the good feelings.”

“Three daughters,” I said. “I didn’t know about them. So the first was Conrad’s?”

“Marie of Montferrat,” he said. “And two more with Henry, Alice and Philippa of Champagne. That’s why Isabelle stayed at Acre. She had to take care of the children. And she probably needed a break from the amorous attentions of her king. So, what brings you through here?”

“More Pisans,” I said. “They’re sending a fleet to Acre.”

“Oh, dear, that does sound like trouble,” he said. “Well, if they come looking to Amaury for support, they’ll find he’s allied with Henry now. Maybe that will discourage them.”

“Maybe Amaury could persuade them to ally with Henry as well,” I said. “Now that we’re all one big happy family.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I say, why don’t you come to dinner tonight? We can do some three-man work. Amaury’s boys will love it. They are always after me to give them juggling lessons. I’m trying to keep them away from the sharp objects.”

“But those are the most fun,” said Perrio.

“I want them to live until their weddings,” said Lepos. “And get married in full possession of all of their fingers.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s see what the graduate can do.”

We planned out the evening’s entertainment and walked upstairs. “One thing you should know,” said Lepos. “Amaury’s wife died a few months ago, so stay away from marriage and such topics.”

“We will,” I said.

Lepos entered the great hall first.

“Sire, or sire to be,” he announced grandly. “I bring you a company of fools—well, anyway, three!”

I launched myself into the room, performing a series of handsprings that ended with me in kneeling position before Amaury. Perrio burst in with a double somersault in midair that carried him a good twelve feet before he hit the ground. Lepos caught my eye and nodded approvingly.

Amaury was a stout fellow in his late forties with a face that looked accustomed to cheerfulness in better circumstances. He brightened when he saw us, and he beckoned to his three boys, who clambered up onto his lap and the arms of his chair and remained there for the performance.

We pulled out a number of chestnuts, most of them new to the room. Always a boon to a resident fool when colleagues come to visit— it gives him a chance to do the routines he cannot do by himself. Perrio turned out to be spectacularly good with the tumbling and more than capable with the music. When we shifted to the comic sketches, he went from the wide-eyed rustic to the befuddled virgin with ease, and we had the room roaring for over an hour.

We finished by each hauling one of the sons up onto our shoulders and dashing about the room while they squealed in terrified delight. Then we linked arms and did a silly song-and-dance bit, the boys bouncing gleefully along. Amaury stood and led the applause when we were done.

“Wonderful, Lepos,” he said. “Where did you find these fine fellows?”

“They found me, milord,” he said. “The older one is Droignon, a colleague from long ago. The newer one is Perrio. They were passing through, looked me up, and kindly consented to join me in performance.”

“Just passing through, eh?” said Amaury. “Our good fortune, then. Where are you off to, gentlemen?”

“To the Holy Land, milord,” I said. “A fools” pilgrimage. We are trading entertainment for lodging along the way.”

“Well, here’s your passage east,” said Amaury, tossing us some silver. We bowed. He motioned us close and pointed to the boys, who were running around, imitating our antics. “That’s the happiest I’ve seen them in months,” he said softly. “For that alone, you should be blessed.”

“I understand, milord,” I said. “If it be not too forward for a fool to offer condolences to a lord, let me express my sympathies.”

“If it not be too forward for a lord to accept them from a fool, let me thank you,” he said, holding out his hand. We each clasped it in turn.

“Will you be sailing from Limassol or Famegusta?” he asked.

“I thought we would go from Famegusta to Acre,” I said.

“Acre, eh?” he said. “I would ask you to give my regards to the King and Queen, but I don’t think Henry likes fools much.”

“So I hear,” I said. “Maybe we could improve his disposition. You could make our performance a gift to your future daughters-in-law. He could hardly refuse that.”

“Capital idea,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing him lighten up a bit, and surely the Queen would enjoy it. I wish her well. Not merely a beauty, but a woman of quiet strength and virtue.”

“Her worth is great in your eyes, then,” I said.

“I was married to a woman of higher worth than I deserved,” he said. “I did not treat her well when we were young, for I was headstrong and foolish. But as I grew older, I came to know the value of a good and loving wife. I tried to be a husband equal to such a wife.”

“hou succeeded, milord,” said Lepos. “All know that.”

“It is kind of you to say so,” said Amaury. “Would that she had lived long enough for me to fully make amends. All I can do now is raise my boys to be the kind of men I should have been from the start.”

“The best possible tribute to her,” I said.

He called for his secretary and instructed him to prepare our introduction to the court at Acre. The three of us ate quietly in a corner of the hall.

“Not bad, youngster,” said Lepos affably. “Let me suggest one thing.”

“Certainly,” replied Perrio.

“The double midair somersault is a wonderful trick,” said Lepos. “But too much to open with, unless you have something even better reserved for the finale.”

“I do,” said Perrio. “We just didn’t get to it. But I take your point, Master Lepos.”

“What a polite fool,” Lepos said to me. “Does he know how to be rude and insulting as well?”

“We spent two entire months on retorts,” said Perrio. “Brother Francis taught us.”

“Does he still live?” laughed Lepos. “Nastiest fellow I’ve ever met. He’s beaten vipers in contests of venom. Good, youngster, “”iou’ll do fine.”

Amaury’s secretary came over with the sealed scroll. We rose and bowed, and he waved to us.

“Safe journey, my foolish friends,” he said. “Come see us on your return, “”tou are welcome in Cyprus any time.”

“We will, milord,” I called, and we turned in for the night.

From Nicosia, it was two days” journey overland to the port of Famegusta on the eastern end of the island. This was a bustling trading town, with sizable Venetian and Genoese quarters, along with a smaller contingent from Pisa. The tiny Byzantine castle on the hill overlooking the city was abandoned, the guard garrisoned in a new, squarish tower of Frankish design. Other towers were going up around the city and the harbor.

We found a ship that was leaving for Acre the next day. We stowed our gear aboard, then decided to wander the city. There were plenty of taverns catering to both the visiting ships and the inland farmers who came to sell their crops at the market. We checked out all of them, performing at some, drinking at others. As we came to one at the end of a particularly dingy street, I heard music coming from inside.

“I’ve heard that before,” I said, reaching for my tambourine. “I never forget a tune once I’ve learned it.”

“Sounds like it comes from Outremer,” said Perrio.

“Let’s go see if it’s the same musicians I learned it from,” I said.

We stepped through the doors. The musicians, mosdy guitar players, were on a crude raised platform at one end of the tavern. The room was filled with men who were clapping along enthusiastically asa woman whirled and dipped gracefully among them, her face and arms decorated with henna designs.

I was right. It was the musicians I had played with in the tent city. And that was Mary dancing before us.

“
R
ecognize her
?” I muttered to Perrio.

“I do,” he replied. “And I heard what happened in Tyre after I left. What would you like me to do?”

“Stay by the door,” I said. “If she makes a break for it, grab her.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to sit in with the band.”

I worked around the outside of the room, keeping the spectators between the dancer and myself. When I got to the platform, I tapped one of the guitarists lightly on the shoulder. When he turned, I held up my tabor in question. He nodded, smiling, and I sat on the bench next to him.

I still remembered the rhythms. In fact, I had used them a few times at Denis’s court, trying to liven things up when we had dances, but it never really caught on. As I started playing, the other musicians glanced over for a moment to see the source of the percussion. Some of them recognized me, but they raised no warning.

Mary was whirling about at the other end of the tavern, bells at her ankles and a tiny pair of cymbals in one hand. As she danced back toward us, she glanced in my direction and nearly stumbled. She recovered and finished the dance as the drunken louts about us applauded and whistled. Then she walked quickly to a door at the rear of the tavern that I hadn’t noticed before.

The tavern was back in full riot when the performance ended, and it took me a precious minute to push through to the rear exit. There was another room in back and an open door leading out into an alleyway. Cursing under my breath, I pulled my knife and ran out.

She was there, writhing in Perrio’s grip. He had one hand clapped over her mouth and another around her waist, and he was bobbing and jerking his head back as she slashed at his eyes with her nails. Blood dripped from his chin.

“Enough,” I said to her as I held up my knife. “I only want to talk. Make a noise and I’ll see to it that the authorities will know everything.”

She looked at the knife, then back at me, and she nodded.

“Let her go,” I commanded Perrio.

He held onto her wrist and dabbed at the blood on his chin.

“Those cymbals are sharp,” he muttered.

“Where can we go to talk quietly?” I asked her.

“I have a room nearby,” she said. “You will pay me?”

“Depends on what I hear,” I said. “I can also make sure that you never work on this island again, so you had better make this worth my while.”

“And my chin,” added Perrio.

“Poor little boy,” she said teasingly, turning to stroke his face with her fingers. He slapped her hand away.

“You’ve drawn enough blood for one night,” he said.

We walked quickly to a boarding house and slipped in without drawing much attention, though I had the feeling that the sight of two men going in with such a woman was not uncommon for the area.

The room itself was surprisingly clean, with a straw bed in one corner.

“Sit down, keep your hands in view,” I said. “I’m interested in knowing more about your husband.”

“He’s dead,” she said.

“I know that,” I said. “The last thing Balthazar said to me before he was captured was to get you out of Tyre safely.”

Her eyes welled up with tears.

“Of course, when I got to your room, you were already gone,” I continued.

“””lou tried to help me?” she said in surprise.

“I did,” I said as Perrio suppressed a smirk. “You left a handkerchief behind. I’m afraid that I do not have it anymore.”

“But why were you trying to help me?” she asked.

“Because he asked me to,” I replied. “And I thought that you were innocent of his crimes. If I thought otherwise, I would be handing you over to the guard right now.”

“He was a good man,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“He was a murderer and a traitor,” I said, and her head snapped up as if I had struck her.

“He had no choice,” she said. “He did it to save me. That’s what he told me.”

“Start from the beginning,” I commanded her.

“We were burned out of our farm by Saladin’s army in the winter of 1190,” she said. “We had no money, just the clothes we fled in. We fell in with a group of traveling musicians. I knew how to dance; I knew I could make men look at me while I did it. So we joined them, and eventually ended up in the tents outside Tyre.”

“Where did you meet Leo?”

“Leo was from our village,” she said. “He and Balthazar were old friends. When I was out performing with the musicians at night, Leo would take my husband drinking. Balthazar told me that seeing men watch me like that made him depressed and angry, so he needed Leo to cheer him up.”

“Did either of them ever have any dealings with the Assassins?”

“Balthazar, never,” she said firmly. “Leo—I don’t know. There was a time when he left and was gone for a few years, but he never said where.”

“Tell us about your sister,” I said. “Tell us about her death.”

“She was a greedy, headstrong girl,” said Mary. “She ran away when she was younger, thinking she would find a wealthy husband in Tiberias. She ended up selling herself to men. One day, she showed up at the tent city, penniless. We took her in, made her promise to behave, but she was soon back to her old ways. She would disappear for days at a time and come back with some trinket she would show off to the women. She usually ended up selling it later.

“One night, she came back and pulled me aside. “I’m going to make some real money,” she said. “I’ve found something valuable, and I’m going to sell it back to the owner.”

“Found what?” I asked her. She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Did she tell you who the owner was?”

“No,” she said. “And I didn’t want her to. Somehow, I knew she was heading to a bad end, but she never listened to any of us, no matter how we begged her to change her ways.

“She didn’t come back that night, but that was nothing new. The next day, Leo came running in. He told us she was dead. We came out as the soldiers carried her body through. I wanted to go take care of her, but the men held me back. They were afraid that we would be thrown out of the camp if some connection was made to us.

“That night, Balthazar came back drunk, weeping. He kept muttering, “That damned Falconberg.” He wouldn’t tell me why.”

“Did you ever find out?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “He kept telling me never to mention it, that we were in danger.”

“From who?”

“He wouldn’t say. But he said that what happened to Rachel was a warning.”

“What happened when you got inside the city?”

“William Falconberg was constantly after me,” she said bitterly. “I tried to fend him off, but he persisted. My husband feared to confront him.

“When I became maid to the Queen, things became worse. Balthazar drank more than ever, and he would disappear with Leo late into the evening. He would come home some nights shaking with terror, but he would not speak to me.

“I was frightened, not knowing who had this hold on him, not knowing what lay in store for us. Finally, out of desperation, I approached Ralph Falconberg.”

“Why Ralph?”

“First, to see if he could intervene with William. Of the Falconbergs, Ralph was the smartest. I thought he might have the most influence over his brother’s behavior. He was quite courteous at first. He asked me a lot of questions about William and about my husband. I confided in him, thinking he was sympathetic.”

She sighed. “Only it turned out that he was the worst of all of them. He wanted from me what William wanted, and he threatened to have all of us expelled as spies if I did not consent. I had no choice. I consented.”

She started to cry.

“Balthazar came home one night. He looked even more terrified, but to my shock, was sober. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “What is it?” I asked him. “I am being forced to commit a great crime,” he said.

“I am doing it only so that you and I will be safe. I have been assured that we will be protected.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. He shook his head. “Let’s flee this place,” I said. “Surely there is somewhere we could go that is better than here.”

“There is nowhere,” he said. “Those who threaten us can find us anywhere on the coast, and the infidels control everything inland. This is the only way.”

“I was frantic. I didn’t know where to turn. I thought of coming to you.”

“I remember now. Y>u were waiting when I brought Magdalena back from the tents.”

“Yes,” she said. “But you were concerned only for her. There was no chance for me to talk to you, and after that I lost my nerve.”

“What about Ralph Falconberg? Did you tell him?”

She looked down, ashamed.

“Yes,” she said. “I did. He said to find out everything I could and to bring the information to him.”

“What about Leo’s wife? Did she know anything?”

“I never trusted her,” she said. “So I never talked to her about it.”

“What about the night Conrad was killed? Did Balthazar tell you that it was going to happen?”

“He and Leo came to us in the afternoon. They told us to pack up everything and to wait for them in the tents. They would leave word with a friend about what we would do next. We did as they commanded. Then word reached us about what happened.”

“What did you do?”

“We fled,” she said simply. “We split up. I eventually met up with my musician friends again, and we’ve been traveling ever since then. And that is all that I know.”

I reached into my pouch and tossed a coin onto the floor by her foot.

“For your time,” I said. “I would say for your troubles, but no payment could compensate for that.”

We left her there and walked back to our boat.

“How’s the chin?” I said.

“Sore, but I’ll live,” replied Perrio. “Tell me more about what happened in Tyre.”

I sketched in the parts of the story with which he was unfamiliar.

He yawned. It was well past midnight.

“Do you think she was telling us the truth?” he asked sleepily.

“Impossible to know,” I said. “But if she was, then Leo may be the one who killed her sister.”

“Really? What makes you say that?”

“When the soldiers came for her body, they covered it with a blanket before they carried it back to the tents. The only way Leo could have known that it was Rachel was if he knew she was dead in the first place.”

“Which means he killed her, or saw it happen,” said Perrio. “Too bad you can’t ask him about it. Still, her story puts you on the trail to one of the Falconbergs.”

“Yes,” I said. “Ralph always seemed a good candidate to me. We’ll bring this to Scarlet when we get to Acre.”

We docked in Acre on the fifth day of September. The city, while physically much the same as I had remembered, was completely different. The markets were busy, the ships in the harbor were jostling each other for room, and there was continuous traffic of cargo and pilgrims both coming and going. The air was filled with a dozen languages, and the people who spoke them appeared contented and, more importantly, fed.

It took us some time to find a room at a reasonable rate. Most of them preferred charging by the day at premium prices to transient dwellers. Since the time I had last ridden from Acre, in borrowed armor, a small neighborhood had sprouted north of the city wall, absorbing some of the overflow of the population, and it was here that we found a boarding house run by an amiable widow. The city walls were in good repair, and the rebuilt towers had been joined by outlying ones to the east. I pointed out to Perrio where the catapults had once flung their stones, where King Richard had built a portable fort overnight, and where the slaughter of the Saracen civilians had taken place.

He looked at this last spot for a while.

“Did they bury them?” he asked quietly.

“Burned them, I think,” I replied. “We were out of Acre by then.”

“It’s a wonder that anything grows there,” he said, looking at the farmers going about their harvesting. “One would think that the very ground would be cursed.”

“It may be,” I said. “But so much evil has taken place in the Holy Land that there may be no stone that is untouched by it. Yet things still grow.”

We sat down to a decent dinner for the first time since Nicosia, then slept in beds that did not sway for a change.

The next morning, we presented ourselves at the entrance to the castellum. I had told Perrio how Blondel, Scarlet, and I had borrowed King Richards seal, and he glanced up at the central tower with a bemused smile as I handed the letter from Amaury to the captain at the gate. He had us wait while he went inside.

“Think this will get us in?” asked Perrio, idly juggling three balls with his left hand.

“I think so,” I replied.

The captain came back a little while later.

“””rou are commanded to return on the morrow to entertain the princesses,” he said.

We bowed and thanked him. He beckoned us forward.

“The King’s varlet bids that you await him tonight in the usual tavern,” he said, winking at us.

“Even more thanks for that message,” I said. “If you care to join us, the first round’s on me.”

“Duty calls, alas,” he said regretfully.

Perrio and I passed the time performing in the fish market. Acre apparently had not seen any fools in a while, for we soon drew a good crowd. I was happy to see children back in the city again. So many had left or died during the last Crusade, but here was a fresh crop, giggling and singing along.

Of more interest to us was a band of German soldiers. Their captain approached us during a break and engaged us to entertain them the following Friday, when it was their custom to feast.

“As happy as I am to get paying work, I am surprised to see the likes of them in Tyre,” I remarked to Perrio as we packed up.

“Oh, I guess you hadn’t heard,” said Perrio. “A bunch of them were sent here by Barbarossa’s son. He’s never gotten over the poor showing the Germans made during the Crusade, so he’s trying to stir things up again. Fortunately, Henry doesn’t seem interested in renewing hostilities.