“Care for your own!” another woman called, and the whole crowd broke into angry hooting and insults. Red-faced and trembling, the woman went back inside the inn. Matt put a coin in Pascal’s hand. ‘Two of those little meat pies and a flagon of ale, okay? I think I want to go inside and hear the rest of this.“
“Nay, then, I’ll come with you,” Pascal said “Suit yourself.”
“I cannot-I am no tailor.”
Matt gave him a doubtful look. “Maybe I could work you into the act, after all. Well, let’s venture.” He stepped up to the doorway. The landlord spun to block his way. “All full, I said. No entry!”
“Not even for a minstrel?” Matt brought the lute around and struck a chord. The landlord’s eye lit, but he said, “There is no seat.”
“I usually stand while I’m working, anyway.”
“I will not pay!”
“It’s okay-my partner will pass the hat.” Matt nodded to Pascal, who yanked off his cap. The landlord gave him a quick look that weighed him and found him harmless, then stepped inside and nodded. “Enter, then.”
Matt stepped in with Pascal right behind him. A few of the other travelers saw and surged toward the door with a yell of delight, but the landlord stoutly blocked their way. “Only the minstrel, so that he may entertain!”
The crowd grumbled and groused, but didn’t try to push their luck. Matt stepped into the comparative gloom of the common room, to hear the woman who had been standing in the doorway still running her stream of invective. “Poltroons and adulterers! Abandoners and jilters! They deserve no better than hanging, any of them!”
“They shall learn the error of their ways.” The man sitting across from her clasped her hand, gazing at her with concern. “They shall come straggling back in grief, I fear, Clothilde. They shall come straggling back, begging for alms to take them to their homes, where they shall pick up the traces they have kicked aside, sadder but wiser-all of them. As my Maud shall, and your Corin.”
“I shall not take him back, not if he comes crawling! Not after he has left us without so much as a word of parting!”
“We must forgive,” the man murmured. “We who remain must be steadfast.”
“Not too steadfast, I trust.” Clothilde raised her eyes to his, her bitterness transforming into a hot-eyed stare. The man goggled, then squirmed, taken aback. “We are both married, Clothilde!”
“Does your Maud care about her bond? Does my Corin care about his ring? Nay, call him mine no more!” Clothilde angrily pulled her ring off her finger. “If they will not keep faith, why should we?”
The argument hit the peasant hard, you could see it in his face, and for a moment his longing was written naked on his features. Matt glanced at Clothilde more closely, and could understand the man’s desire-she was still a fine figure of a woman, and he could imagine what she must have looked like twenty years before. At a guess, the man had burned for her when he was a teenager-but when she married someone else, he had fallen hard on the rebound, then settled for second best. Could that have had anything to do with why Maud had left? “If they do not feel bound to us, we should not feel bound to them!” Clothilde gripped his hand with both of hers, eyes burning into his. “Nay, this could be our revenge upon them! What harm could there be in it, Doblo?”
“What harm indeed!” he said deep down in his throat, and his hand trembled as he clasped hers and he rose. Together they turned away to mount the stairs. That brought Matt’s attention to the sounds he was hearing overhead. Now he knew what the stay-at-homes did in Latruria. Pascal was looking around and frowning. “Are there none here of my own age?”
“No,” Matt said. “All the young folks are out there, joining the crowd that’s heading south. Take off your hat and get ready to pass it, Pascal. I’m going to have them rolling with mirth in a few minutes. They won’t start thinking about the lyrics until after I’m gone.”
But then, they would start thinking. He knew that. An hour later, as they came out to join the other travelers, who were finishing up on lunch and preliminary encounters, Pascal shook the cloth bag they had bought from the innkeeper and shook his head, marveling. “Make them roll with mirth you did, and made them generous into the bargain! But where did you learn that song about man’s slavery to sex, or his lying when he sought to resist temptation, or the moon over the street by the docks?”
“From two men named Brecht and Weill. Never met them myself, but I just love their songs.”
“Do you truly believe the folk there will think about the meanings of those ditties when you’re gone?”
“Oh, yes,” Matt assured him. “You bet they will-maybe even soon enough to prevent disaster. Brecht designed them that way.” He wasn’t sure that was the issue the playwright had wanted his audience to think about, though. “Have Latrurians always been so loose, Pascal?”
“Not from what I heard at the gathering last summer,” the young man answered. “The old folk were remembering how life had ground them down, with toil in the fields from sunrise till sunset, then laboring to keep the hut from falling down until well after dark.”
“Not enough leftover energy to philander.” Matt nodded. “Now that the taxes are down and the draft oxen aren’t being taken by the landlord, though, they can fill their bellies with only eight or ten hours of work a day.”
“There is time to think of games and songs,” Pascal agreed. “Ah, the miserable folk! To have had their lives so poor for so long!”
“Poor indeed,” Matt agreed, and assured himself that all he was really seeing was people adjusting to having some leisure time again. Now that they all had decent housing and clothing, they had become discontent, wanting something more, but not knowing what-so they fought boredom with affairs. “I’m surprised none of them seem to worry about their spouses finding out what they’re doing.”
“How,” Pascal asked, “when their spouses are a hundred miles away?”
Something about his tone bothered Matt. He gave the youth a sharp look and saw that Pascal had a faraway look in his eye. “You aren’t thinking about having an affair with Panegyra, are you?”
“If I cannot dissuade her from marrying that old fool-why not? She cannot truly wish to lie with him. I might have to make it seem like a kidnapping, but I do not think she would be loath.”
“Pascal,” Matt said carefully, “that could be very dangerous.”
“What could be wrong with it?” the boy challenged. “If everybody else is having sex without marriage, why not we, too?”
Well, it was natural to think that the peer group was always right. Matt had to try to counter the idea, though. “But the errant husbands will be back when they find that they’re not going to make their fortunes in the capital-and when they come home, some neighbor who has a grudge against the wife will tell on her.”
“If they truly thought that,” Pascal argued, “why would they take the risk?‘
“Because the danger of discovery adds some excitement to a very boring life, especially if you think you’re tied down to it because you were the one who got left with the kids. You heard Clothilde-part of her argument is revenge on her husband. How’s she going to have that revenge unless he comes home and finds out what she’s been doing while he’s gone? And what do you think is going to happen when he does?”
They found out at the next inn.
Chapter 11
Matt and Pascal were playing another inn-like the first, travelers stayed outside with take-away orders while the locals got together to commiserate inside, and Matt and Pascal had played their way in. Matt was just finishing “There Is a Tavern in the Town” with a sing-along chorus, when the Irate Husband came slamming in. “Where is he?” he bellowed. “Where is that cur Simnel? Where is the thief who has stolen my wife?”
A couple jumped up at the back of the room, the man turning to scrabble frantically at the window latch while the woman jumped in front of the him. “ ‘Stolen,’
forsooth! Taken up what you cast
away, more likely! So now you have come back from your philandering, and think I shall be yours again, Perkin?“
“You are mine!” Perkin was in no mood for sweet reason. “And I shall beat you soundly to show it to you, Forla! What, do you think this puling coward will protect you?” He swept her aside with the back of his hand and lunged past her, grasping at the pair of heels that were just disappearing out the window. He bellowed in frustration and turned to charge back out the door. His wife was in no condition to interfere-a knot of sympathetic women were gathered around her, counseling her to lie still. Pascal stared at Perkin as he disappeared through the doorway. “He is bent on murder!”
“Some men take sexual jealousy to extremes,” Matt agreed. “After all, it’s the only honor they have.” For himself, he was rather shocked that none of the other adulterous husbands seemed, at all inclined to stop Perkin. “Come on, let’s go outside. I want to see how this ends.”
Pascal stared at him as if he were mad, but when Matt headed for the door, Pascal came along in his wake. As they rounded the corner of the inn, Matt handed his lute to Pascal and checked his dagger to make sure it was loose in its sheath. There Perkin was, charging after his rival! They were just in time to see him bring down the fleeing man with a tackle that would have done credit to an NFL halfback. Simnel kicked at his pursuer’s face in a panic-and connected. The attacker let go with a howl of rage, then leaped to his feet and swung a haymaker that grazed the fugitive just as he was regaining his feet, and sent him staggering. The Irate Husband followed up hard and fast, fists pumping like the pistons of an engine. The fugitive did his best to block, but most of the punches got through. He howled in anger and slugged back-and one of his blows clipped Perkin on the chin. Perkin rolled away and sank to his knees. Simnel shouted with satisfaction and followed up, punching and swinging a haymaker. Perkin’s head rolled aside with one punch, but he surged up inside the haymaker, a knife glinting in his hand. “That’s just a little bit too much,” Matt said, and stepped in to catch Perkin’s arm, twisting the knife out of his hand. “No steel!”
“What business is it of yours?” bellowed a voice behind him, and a rough hand yanked his shoulder, spinning him around just in time to see the fist that cracked into his jaw. Matt sank to his knees as the world went dark for several seconds, shot with sparks. He shook his head and staggered up, vision returning just in time to see his attacker pull a knife from his boot. The blade came in low. Matt dodged, and the thrust went short. Then Matt jumped in to try to catch the knife arm, but the attacker was too fast for him-he pulled the blade back, then slashed. Matt leaped back just enough to let it swing past him as he drew his own dagger. Crowd voices shouted with excitement, but he blocked them out and concentrated only on his antagonist. Matt saw the man’s eyes flick downward, to his own knife, and he slammed a kick at the elbow. The man shouted as he leaped back, then lunged with a speed that caught Matt off balance. Matt managed to twist enough so that the knife only grazed his side; he heard the cloth tear, and the searing pain made him suddenly realize that the thug was very, very serious. He wasn’t just out to even the odds in an entertaining fight over a woman-he was out to kill Matt! What had he ever done to him? They were total strangers! He brushed the thought aside-all that mattered now was staying alive. Could a peasant knife artist really bring down a belted knight? He could, Matt saw in the next two passes. The man’s skill was just too great; he had to be a pro. What was he doing here, at a roadside inn near a rural village? File the fact for later. For now, leap back from that blade, draw him into lunging, then lunging again, then again and again… Finally the attacker lunged just that much too far, off balance for just half a second, and Matt whirled in, catching the knife arm in an elbow lock and pushing down. The man howled with the sudden pain, and his knife dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. The crowd shouted with delight, but Matt just spun back in, set his blade against the man’s throat and growled, “Who paid you to kill me?”
“None!” the man blustered. “None needed to, when you butted into a fight that was none of your-” The sentence choked off in a rattle of pain as Matt hit a nerve center.“Nay, no more! I’ll tell! The man who paid me was-” Then, suddenly, his eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the ground. The crowd cheered, and half a dozen men surged in to lift Matt up on their shoulders. Matt held on, their clamor ringing in his ears while he let the sudden numbness within him fade. When they set him down inside the tavern and thrust a mug into his hand, he faked laughter and sipped a little, nodding thanks for their shouted compliments, then started a drinking song. In a few minutes the men were all swinging their tankards in time to the music and bawling the chorus, leaving Matt free to welter in morose remorse. Why? Well, the peasant who burst in the door said it best. “He is dead!”
The whole room went instantly silent. Matt froze. Then Forla asked, in a trembling voice, “Who?”
“Simnel,” the man cried, and Forla burst into tears, wailing, “Oh, my love! To have found you so late, and lost you so soon!”
“Be still, woman!” her husband snarled as he staggered in the door. His face was a mass of bruises, and blood trickled from a cut on one cheek, but he lurched toward her, lips drawing back in a snarl. She saw him coming and screamed. Then a man in a fur-collared velvet robe strode in the door. A gold chain held a medallion over his breast, and his gray hair and lined face made him look all the more stern as he pointed at Perkin and shouted, “Seize him!”
A dozen men leaped to obey with shouts of glee. “Who is this guy?” Matt muttered to Pascal. “The local reeve, by the look of him,” the youth answered. “Someone with more sense than blood lust must have gone to fetch him.”
The reeve stepped over to the biggest table in the room and sat himself down majestically. “The court is now convened! Who will serve as jury?”
There was an instant clamor of eager willingness, and hands waved to volunteer. “You, you, you…” The reeve picked his jury by pointing at them one by one, until he had twelve good men and true. Well, twelve men, anyway. Out of the corner of his eye Matt noticed Forla edging toward the door, then slipping out. The reeve may not have known how the case was going to come out, but she sure did. On the other hand, the reeve probably had made up his mind before the trial, to judge by the way he ran it. “Perkin, husband of Forla!” he snapped, pointing at the cuckolded husband. “You are charged with the killing of Simnel, of your own village!”
“He had cuckolded me!” Perkin cried. “He had bedded my wife!”
“Then you admit to killing him?”
“I had every right!”
“Did you kill him? Yes or no!”
“Yes!” Perkin shouted. “As I would kill any man who laid a hand upon her! Do you tell me I am wrong?”
“Do you tell him he is wrong?” the reeve demanded of the jury. The twelve men put their heads together for a quick, muttered conference, then turned back to the judge. The tallest said, “He was right to kill Simnel. It was adultery.”
“The killing was justified!” The reeve slapped his hand on the table. “Set him free!”
The men holding Perkin stepped back, letting go, and the cuckolded husband stood looking about him, rubbing his arms where they had gripped him, looking dazed. Then fire lit his eye and he demanded, “Where is she? Where is my faithless wife? Where is Forla?”
The whole room went silent. Then the men began to mutter to one another, concerned but excited, and the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Where is she?” Perkin shouted. “They can’t think it’s right to let him kill her, too!” Matt protested.
‘“I think not,” said Pascal, “but they shall not mind if he beats her sorely.” He was very pale. “Where is she?” Perkin bellowed at the women. “You know, do you not? Tell me where!”
They rocked in the blast of his rage, but the stoutest woman said, with determination, “We know not where she is fled-but fled she has, and the more fool she if she has not!”
Perkin snarled and raised
a hand, but the reeve thundered, “Nay! This one is not yours to abuse!”
Perkin cast an uneasy glance at him, then turned and bolted out into the night, bellowing, “Forla! Where are you, Forla? You may as well come forth, for I shall find you soon or late!”
“Come on,” Matt said urgently, and led Pascal toward the door. But a matron stopped him with a hand on his arm to say, “Do not fear for Forla, minstrel. You are a good man, and no doubt seek to save her, as you sought to save Simnel-but you need not. Where she has gone, no man can follow.”
Matt wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but it did reassure him. “Thanks. I need to be going anyway, though. Good night, goodwife.”
She flushed. “Good woman, rather! Though I was a good wife indeed, till my husband fled.” Then anxiety creased her face. “Do not follow Perkin-for he is maddened now and might strike you down without knowing what he did!”
“I’ll stay out of his way,” Matt promised. He patted her hand. “By the way, what do you think the jury would have decided if it had been the other way around-if Simnel had killed Perkin? If the adulterer had killed the husband?”
“Simnel would have been outlawed,” she said grimly, “with his life forfeit to anyone who wished to kill him, for revenge or for pleasure, or for any reason at all.”
Pascal blanched dead white. The woman noticed and scowled at him. “Are you an adulterer, too?”
“Not yet,” Pascal answered, “and I think not ever-now.”
As they slipped out the door, Matt said, “Wise decision, if running away with Panegyra, or even officially kidnapping her, would give her fiancé grounds to kill you out of hand, and the local reeve and jury would virtually ignore it.”
“It does seem the wisest course,” Pascal agreed. “Do you think they would do that to me even if we eloped before she married him?”
“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Matt assured him. “In fact, even without having done anything, I think we’d better go, and go fast!”
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