[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal

by Alan Gordon

  By the time I was done, the stew was bubbling away, and my wife and Helga were seated across from me, their chins resting on their hands.

  “Sancho is really taking you seriously now,” said Helga. “I wonder what he thinks you know?”

  “I wonder if you actually know something already,” said Claudia. “Only you don’t know that you know it.”

  “If only my elusive tail could follow the wanderings of my mind,” I said. “Maybe he could find it for me.”

  “There are still too many possibilities to narrow it down,” said Claudia.

  “Possibilities are a wise man’s playthings,” I said loftily. “Did you make that up just now?” asked Helga.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Right,” said Claudia skeptically. “But if they are a wise man’s playthings, they’ll be of no use to you.”

  “Oooh,” said Helga.

  “Ooooh,” echoed Portia.

  Pelardit grinned.

  Claudia ladled the stew onto slabs of bread and set them down before us.

  “Delicious,” I said. “Wonderful how you can make a stew out of anything you throw in.”

  “We could call it Anything Stew,” said Helga.

  “Or Possibility Stew,” said Claudia, winking at me. Then she suddenly looked thoughtful.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A glimmering of an idea,” she said. “You’ve been thinking about Raimon’s mother as the root of all of this.”

  “Raimon and Baudoin’s mother, if the latter tells true.”

  “Raimon’s father, the old Raimon, repudiates her after three children. Why?”

  “Something political. She was no longer of use to him, and he wanted to marry someone else. That’s usually how things work in Toulouse.”

  “And he was willing to repudiate all of France along with her,” she mused. “Risky maneuver. That could make someone angry for a very long time.”

  “Her, to pick the obvious example. She could have raised Baudoin to embark upon a long-term course of vengeance.”

  “I was thinking about someone local,” she said. “It must have been a huge scandal when it was happening. There is nothing about it in Balthazar’s notes?”

  “Predates his time here,” I said. “This was, what, forty years ago?”

  “Who would still be around who would have been aware of it at the time?” she asked. “Someone in the inner circle for over forty years, so in their sixties or more.”

  “Well, the viguier’s up there,” I said. “Only he hasn’t been the viguier the entire time.”

  “But he was an advisor to Raimon the Fifth,” she said. “True, but not that far back, from what I know.”

  “There may have been others who were in favor with the old Raimon, but fell out with the current one,” she said. “We need someone with a long memory. A gossip.”

  “We should ask Hugo,” I said. “If he doesn’t know himself, he will know someone who does.”

  “Then that will be our next task,” she declared.

  We looked at each other happily.

  “And his ale is good,” we said at the same time.

  * * *

  In bed later, as I was drifting off, Claudia sat up. “What is it?” I asked sleepily.

  “Where did she go when he threw her out?” she wondered.

  “Who?”

  “The Countess of Toulouse. Where did she go?”

  “Is that important?”

  “It’s another possibility,” she said. “Go to sleep. We can’t find that out now.”

  I settled back down and commenced the serious business of sleeping. Then I noticed that she was still sitting up.

  “What is it now?” I asked.

  “I just thought of the strangest possibility of them all,” she said. “One we have completely missed.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is so strange that I am not going to bother you with it,” she said, leaning down to kiss me. “Go to sleep.”

  Well, that was both intriguing and irritating. But I was too tired to pursue it. I fell asleep at last, with my wife sitting beside me, thinking into the night.

  Chapter 13

  Men. They always think everything is about them, because they have the wealth, the power, and the long, sharp, pointy metal things to keep the wealth and the power.

  Which is why they think that they are the only real source of trouble in the world. Oh, they can blame us for their lapses into imperfection, we daughters of Eve, but for a woman to actually wreak havoc on her own? Impossible. We do not have the will, the initiative, or the courage.

  So they think.

  I had let my husband rope me into this investigation because I love him, and because he believed in Baudoin’s innocence. But innocence of what? Killing La Rossa—very well, he may have been innocent of that. But of being a parasite, a spoiled brat even at forty years of age, a man who thought nothing of coming to a new place and expecting to be pampered like the lapdog he had been all his life, and then to go one day after his arrival to use and despoil a woman who had been driven to that life because … well, I did not know her reasons. No woman chooses that world easily. But if Baudoin was innocent, it was only of murder.

  Theo thought him the target of this attack, the pawn in the greater game, because of the larger piece he might become if he made it to the last rank. Exactly what a man would think of another man in this situation. And the poor woman, buried and forgotten, was just a means to that end. I had allowed myself to be carried along in this thinking, but it had gotten us nowhere. It was time to do some thinking of my own.

  I did not sleep more than an hour that night. When the cock crew, I was already up and in costume. Not in makeup and motley. Not today, not yet. I needed to disappear, to become someone that no man would watch or take seriously.

  To be a woman in a crowd of women.

  So, my face free of powder, chalk, and rouge, my body clothed normally, with a cloak over all and a basket on one arm, I did what a woman was expected to do, hoping to find another woman doing exactly the same.

  I went to market.

  I reached the Porte Villeneuve right as the guards were pulling the gates open for the morning. The farmers’ wains were lined up outside, bringing in vegetables, milk, and cheese for the hungry city. I watched them roll by, and waited for my quarry.

  There she was, the old woman in the house of the young, the hag amidst the beauties, the one who stayed in the back where she couldn’t frighten away the customers, sleeping alone, sweeping up the remnants of sin every morning.

  Sylvie entered Toulouse, carrying a basket like mine.

  She did not mark me. Most people live their lives without expecting someone to follow them, because most people live their lives without being followed. But I was not most people. I checked constantly to see if I was being tailed while I dogged Sylvie’s footsteps.

  Of course, if the man who followed Theo so successfully was now after me, then I doubted I would be able to lose him. Or even spot him. But as far as I could tell, no one was after me now.

  I made some minor purchases—a loaf of bread, two bunches of grapes—while watching her shop for her ladies, no doubt hungry after a hard night’s work. As she crossed the square to a wain filled with turnips and parsnips, I did the same, arriving at the same time.

  “Oh, Sylvie, is it not?” I said in surprise.

  She looked at me uncertainly.

  “Well, of course, you wouldn’t recognize me without the whiteface,” I laughed. “It’s Gile, the fool.”

  “Oc, now I know you,” she said shortly.

  “Are you feeling any better today?” I asked. “You seemed quite upset about Marquesia taking Julie’s room.”

  “All the ladies are allowed their feelings,” she said bitterly. “But not the servant.”

  “That isn’t fair at all,” I said sympathetically. “Don’t you have any friends there now that Julie is gone?

  She shook her
head sadly.

  “Have you no friends outside the household?”

  “The house is all we have left since the old master—,” she started, then stopped.

  “We?”

  “Julie and I,” she said. “All I had left was her. And now she is gone.”

  “Will it help to talk to me?” I asked. “I am a good listener.”

  “So you may tell her story in taverns?” she sneered. “No one cares about her story anymore.”

  “I do,” I said. “You do. And you have your own story. When you pass from this life, both will be lost.”

  “Then let them be lost,” she said. “Let us fade from the world without leaving a trace. Isn’t that what happens to most people?”

  “Most people leave families and friends,” I said.

  “Well, I have none, so let that be an end to it,” she said.

  “Did you ever have a family?”

  “I was born to servants, grew up a servant, and will die a servant,” she said. “I have never known anything but service.”

  “But you served another once,” I said. “A master in a great house, you said. Along with Julie.”

  “Oc,” she said.

  “Who was your master then?” I asked.

  She looked at me, suddenly afraid. “Why do you want to know that?” she asked, looking around.

  “I was wondering why she was killed,” I said.

  “She was killed by that man they locked up,” she spat. “The one who slept next to her after he did it.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think he killed her, and I am beginning to wonder if it ever had anything to do with him.”

  “Who then?” she stammered. “Who could have—? Why would any of them—?”

  “Any of who?”

  She was silent.

  “Who, Sylvie? The other women? The Abbess?”

  “They wouldn’t have,” she said slowly. “None of them. None had any reason.”

  “Are you certain about that, Sylvie? These are not nuns we are talking about. For that matter, I have known nuns who were more than capable of murder. There is not a woman in that bordel who could not stab someone in the heart. The question is, did any of them?”

  “How would I know?” she asked numbly. “I stay in back. I sleep next to the kitchen. I have long learned to ignore the sounds coming from the rooms upstairs.”

  “Who among the ladies hated her? Enough to kill her?”

  “None of them,” she insisted.

  “Who among them could have been working for someone on the outside?”

  “Could have been? Any of them, I suppose. What about me? You think me incapable of murdering her?”

  “I do, Sylvie,” I said softly. “I think you loved her like a daughter, and she broke your heart every day she was there. You raised her, didn’t you?”

  “I had to,” she said. “No one else would. Her mother died when she was young.”

  “And her father?”

  “He provided for her,” she said.

  “How? How did he do that? Who was her father, Sylvie?”

  “I won’t talk to you. I shouldn’t be talking to you. She’s dead and buried, and nothing can bring her back.”

  “And if the wrong man swings for her death, Sylvie, what then?” I asked..”Will her soul ever find peace? Will yours?”

  “I won’t talk to you,” she cried, and she turned and ran. People were staring. I don’t know how much they overheard. I walked after her. She was old, she couldn’t run fast or for very long. And she had only one place to run in the world.

  I caught up with her just before she reached the leper house.

  “Leave me alone,” she said tearfully.

  “What if Julie’s murderer still walks among us?” I asked her. “What if she lives in the house where you sleep every night? How safe will you be?”

  “It was that man who killed her,” she said. “That’s what everyone says.”

  “He had no reason to,” I said. “He came for the pleasures she could give him, and slept like a spent, drunken lecher afterwards.”

  “How could you know this?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” I said. “But I think I know one who does. If I can prove that Baudoin fell asleep while Julie still lived, will you tell me everything you know?”

  “How can you do that?”

  “I must ask you to be brave,” I said, nodding at the leper house.

  “No,” she whispered as she saw my intent. “Not in there.”

  “Just the front parlor,” I said. “We will not risk contagion.”

  “But they are cursed,” she said.

  “They are afflicted,” I replied. “But they are in God’s care.”

  “God is not in that house,” she said.

  “Will you not learn the truth?” I asked.

  “I know the truth,” she insisted.

  “I think not,” I said. “But let us find out who is right.”

  I held my hand out to her. She looked up at the leper house, took a deep breath, and placed her hand in mine, pressing a kerchief to her mouth and nose with the other.

  We walked to the door set in the high brick wall. I pulled the cord that snaked through a small hole to the side, and a bell rang somewhere. There was a wait; then a door opened and footsteps approached. A tiny slat slid back, and one blue eye peered at us through the peephole.

  “What do you want?” said a man.

  “To visit one of the unfortunates in your care,” I said. “Your name?”

  “I am Domina Gile, the jester,” I said. “This lady is Domina Sylvie.”

  “Whom do you wish to see?”

  “The curious thing is that I do not know his name,” I said. “But I have spoken to him several times. He lives on the upper floor in the back. The middle room.”

  “Senhor Montazin,” he said, his voice softening with affection. “He will be pleased to have visitors.”

  A bolt slid back, and the door opened.

  I braced myself for the sight, but the man who stood before us was not afflicted by anything but age. He was gaunt and gray, and his hands shook with a slight tremor.

  “I am Adhémars,” he said. “I am the caretaker for this house.”

  “You have earned your place in Heaven, senhor,” I said, making courtesy. “As well as my respect and admiration.”

  He nodded, then beckoned to us to enter. I went through immediately. Sylvie hesitated, then followed as I tugged at her hand. Adhémars closed the door securely behind us and slid the bolt back.

  “Not the sturdiest bolt,” I observed.

  “No one seeks to break in here,” he said wryly. “We have nothing to steal but disease. Come, I will seat you in the parlor. There are some preparations to be made.”

  The parlor was plain, especially compared with that of its neighbor to the rear, but it was pleasant. The windows were large, allowing both breeze and sun. He showed us to a bench by the front window, then unfolded a large screen and set it up in front of a chair by a door opposite us.

  “I do not fear to look upon him,” I said.

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “But Senhor Montazin does not wish to be looked upon.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  Sylvie was trembling beside me.

  Adhémars walked behind the screen. We heard his footsteps ascending stairs, then silence. Then he returned, poking his head around the screen.

  “He will be with you soon,” he said.

  He left, the footsteps receding into the rear of the house. Then came a soft shuffling step, followed by a long pause. Then another.

  He took an excruciatingly long time to come down, and we could hear him wheezing with the effort when he reached the ground floor. There were a few more tentative steps; then we heard him collapse into the chair behind the screen with a sigh of relief.

  “That’s my full daily regimen of exercise,” he said with a choked laugh. It was the voice that had hailed me from
that upper window so many times.

  “Senhor Montazin, it is a pleasure to learn your name at last,” I said.

  “It is gracious of you to see me, Domina Fool,” he said. “It has been an eternity since my last visit. Is that Domina Sylvie from the whorehouse with you?”

  “Oc, Senhor,” muttered Sylvie, not looking up.

  “I was wondering what was taking you so long at the market,” he said. “You are usually back before now. I should be smelling the cooking aromas. You must be a marvelous cook.”

  “I—I have been told so,” she said.

  “You observe a great deal,” I said.

  “My window is my only view of the world, but it is an active one,” he said. “Especially in the evenings.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Eleven years. Since my return from Beyond-the-Sea, my sins absolved and my body destroyed.”

  “You were on Crusade?”

  “Sailed away on a leaky vessel with two hundred Toulousans. Then, when the curse took me, I fought with the Order of Saint Lazare.”

  “The lepers’ order. Brave men.”

  “Easy to be brave when you know you are dying,” he said. “You wish for Death to relieve you of this world, and hope that you will be restored to your body come Judgment Day, as the prophets foretold.”

  “But you did not die.”

  “No,” he said. “Many is the day that I wish that I had. The pain—well, the pain and I have reached an accommodation of sorts. We keep each other company.”

  “Tell me more about the view from your window,” I said. “Is that why you are here? To hear of the salacious goings-on of my lovely neighbors?”

  “Of one in particular,” I said. “La Rossa.”

  “Ah, how I miss her,” he said sadly. “I would have gone to the funeral, only—you know.”

  “Tell me about her,” I said.

  “A loud, lusty woman,” he said. “Her cries filled the night air, and she never closed her shutters. Not like that peevish girl occupying her room now.”

  “You could hear her entertain her customers?”

  “Hear, see. Sometimes on a good night, I could swear that I caught her scent floating across the yard, a sweet, musky perfume.”