The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery

by Alan Gordon

  “I see,” she said.

  “Now, whatever there was about this Folquet that upsets you, I don’t know and I’m sure I don’t care,” I said as she bristled again. “But if you forbid the gossip, you’ll only encourage people in believing it’s all truth. They won’t talk about it in front of you, but it will spread like a weed behind your back. There is no power on earth that can stop a rumor.”

  “Then what can I do about it?” she asked.

  “Have me seated at your feet at some function,” I said. “Let me sing Folquet’s songs, and show no reaction.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “As simple as that.”

  She poured another cup of wine. “I am having the new ladies of the town to midday meal on Friday, two days hence,” she said. “Will you be so good as to provide the entertainment?”

  “I will, milady,” I said, smiling.

  “Sing anything you like,” she added.

  “With all my heart, milady,” I said, rising and bowing. “Now, it is time for me to rejoin my husband. I will see you on Friday.”

  * * *

  Our two men were in position with the guards when we emerged.

  “Company, salute!” bellowed Grelho, and the soldiers drew their swords and held them high, grinning as Theo and Grelho repeated their fake trumpet fanfares.

  “Good soldiers, you do us great honor,” I said, gesturing to them in exaggerated noblesse. “Were my husband not here, I would show you such favor as a lady of my worth may do for a soldier. But, alas, he is here.”

  “I could leave,” offered Theo.

  “Did you earn anything today?” I asked him.

  “A little,” he said.

  “Then I shall go with you,” I said. “Valiant men, we will see you Friday evening.”

  “Company, at ease!” commanded Grelho, and the guards returned to their duties, waving to us as we departed.

  “How was your search for our late monk?” I asked.

  “We found where he was staying,” said Grelho. “He arrived the day before you did, so you are absolved for not seeing him. But what he did in town after he arrived is unknown. So, we will leave it to the Viguerie to investigate, and go off to see de la Tour’s little sister.”

  “Where is she?” asked Theo as Grelho veered to the left.

  “North, and out of town,” replied Grelho. “Her name is Jacquette. She married a farmer about three miles past the river.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Must be about thirty,” he said.

  “So, she must have been about eleven or twelve when Rafael left Montpellier,” I said. “Are you certain she remembers the song?”

  “If she has any part of her brother’s gift, she’ll know it,” said Grelho. “Along with every other song she’s ever heard.”

  “How is it that you didn’t know about her before?” I asked.

  “From what I heard yesterday, her mother kept her talents quiet,” said Grelho. “Rafael was an embarrassment to the family, being an idiot and all, so when he left, she decided not to let Jacquette follow in his footsteps. The only place anyone ever heard her sing was in church.”

  “Pity,” I said. “Is she simple like her brother?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There was enough to her that someone was willing to marry her.”

  “Don’t say it!” I warned my husband immediately.

  He closed his mouth and looked disappointed.

  We crossed a footbridge upstream from the Cormorant and followed a heavily rutted road, passing one farm after another. It was past harvest time by now, and the fields were covered with drying stalks or mounds of hay. Flocks of linnets were hopping about, poking under the stalks and snatching seed from the ground.

  “What do they grow here?” I asked.

  “Flax, mostly,” replied Grelho. “Some barley, but flax is what keeps them going. They grow it all year, then spend the winter weaving linen and pressing linseed oil. You should see the fields in bloom. All blue flowers, and the linnets twittering away. It’s quite pretty.”

  He stopped to look at an old stone marker at a place where a road ran east from the main road.

  “Over there, if my directions are correct,” he said, pointing to a small wooden farmhouse with a thatched roof. There was a well-maintained stone wall running around the farm’s border, with a simple wooden gate nearby. We went through it and closed it carefully behind us, then walked to the farmhouse.

  “Ho, there, is anyone about?” called Grelho as we approached.

  There was a scurrying inside; then a thickset man appeared at the door, a spear in his hand. “Go away,” he said.

  “Are you Salh de Lez?” asked Grelho.

  “Who’s asking?” returned the man, raising the spear.

  “I could have sworn it was me,” said Grelho. “I didn’t realize the matter was open to debate. But I will repeat the question, just to clarify in my own mind that I have, in fact, asked it of you: Are you Salh de Lez?”

  The man looked at him slowly, then at the rest of us. Something resembling realization dawned on his face. “You’re that fool from town,” he said.

  “I am. Grelho by name. And these others are fools as well.”

  “We’ll be having no foolery here,” said the man. “Earn your keep in town and stop bothering us working folk.”

  He turned and started to close the door.

  “Actually, we might be able to help you earn your keep,” Theo said.

  He stopped and turned back to face us. “How’s that?” he asked.

  “We have heard that your wife has a talent that interests us,” Theo began, then held his hands up placating the farmer as he hoisted the spear into throwing position. “Not that kind of talent, I assure you, good friend. But if you are Salh de Lez, and if your wife is named Jacquette, born de la Tour, then that might be worth a little money to you both.”

  “How much money, and for what?” he asked suspiciously.

  “A penny for a song, if she knows it,” said Theo.

  “And a penny for your time, no matter what,” I added.

  “She doesn’t sing,” he said. “Singing is the Devil’s work. It led her brother into Perdition.”

  “Then we will add one more penny that she can give to the church to remove the sin,” I said.

  He wavered.

  “And one more that you may donate to remove the sin of allowing her sin,” said Theo. He held up four pennies. “I swear that our intentions are good and just.”

  The farmer nodded suddenly, then turned back to the house. “Jacquette, there are fools to see you,” he called.

  “I’ll bet those last two pennies never see the inside of a church,” murmured Grelho.

  A woman emerged, looking at us fearfully. She was brown, whether from the sun, from the dirt, or by blood, I could not say. She wiped her hands nervously on her apron; then her eyes lit up when she saw Grelho.

  “You’re that fool,” she said. “The one that taught Rafael those bawdy songs. I remember you.”

  “And I remember a pretty little girl with big brown eyes,” replied Grelho smoothly.

  He remembered nothing of the sort, but the lie pleased her inordinately. She looked at him dotingly while her husband looked back and forth between the two of them and smoldered.

  “They want a song out of you, Jacquette,” he said harshly.

  “A song,” she whispered. “I’m not supposed to sing. Maman and Rafael made me swear to it. Never sing anymore, they said, and I promised on the Virgin.”

  “When was this?” asked Theo.

  “Right before he left,” said Jacquette. “Told me the bad men might do things to me if I sang, and he had to run before the bad men found him. He couldn’t stop singing, so he had to run. He loved singing more than life, Maman used to say.”

  “He was a wondrous fine singer,” said Grelho. “We are looking for a song I heard him sing once or twice. If you know it, it is worth money to you. I
t was called, ‘The Lark’s Lament.’ Do you know it?”

  But her hands were pressed hard against her mouth, and she started to rock back and forth. “That’s the one he said most of all not to sing,” she said, a keening wail starting to emerge. “That’s the one they killed him for.”

  “Who killed him?” asked Theo.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she cried.

  “Stop that whining, woman,” shouted Salh. “Sing the fools the song, and we’ll eat well these next two months.”

  But that only set her wailing louder. The farmer stepped toward her, ready to clout her one.

  I ran to her and held my hand up. “Please,” I said to her. “I know you promised your brother. And you’ve kept his promise all these years, and that is doing him honor. But the bad men who killed him are back. They have killed someone else, and they may kill again if we cannot stop them. You’re the only one who knows the song. If you sing it to us, then we will be able to stop the bad men, and that would be the opposite of a sin, don’t you see?”

  She stopped crying and looked at me. “You’ll stop the ones who killed my brother?” she asked warily.

  “We will do everything in our power,” I said.

  She wiped her nose on her sleeve, then looked at her husband.

  “Wait,” he said.

  He held out his hand to Theo, who crossed it with the four pennies. He nodded at Jacquette. She stood with her feet apart, looking to the west, then drew a deep breath.

  The voice that came out was purer than a mountain stream and had all the songbirds of the world in it.

  Cold is the hand that crushes the lark.

  Cold is despair unending.

  Cold is the rain that douses the spark,

  And cold is the grave uncomprehending.

  Sweet Lady Lark, why will you not fly?

  Fie on a fate so unsparing!

  Where lies the voice that made lovers sigh?

  And where lies the grace beyond comparing?

  High flew the arrow, missing its mark.

  High was the tree unbending.

  High was the branch and smooth was the bark

  That kept this poor creature from ascending.

  Sweet Lady Lark, why flew you so high,

  Tempting the Hawk with your daring?

  Ta’en in his claws and pluck’d from the sky

  While all passed below and watched uncaring.

  She stopped. There was silence all around us. Even the birds seemed to have stopped their twittering to listen.

  Jacquette stood there, frozen, expressionless.

  “Was that all there was?” I asked.

  “That is all that I know,” she said bleakly.

  “Who wrote it?” asked Theo.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Who was it written for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “That’s enough,” said Grelho. “Thank you for singing for us. Your voice surpasses your brother’s. It was an honor to hear it.”

  “I must confess my sins,” she said. “Salh, take me to the church.”

  “But—,” began the farmer.

  “Now,” she said.

  “You lot,” said the farmer to the rest of us. “Leave here.”

  We left.

  “It’s a pretty verse,” commented Theo. “I still have no idea who it’s talking about.”

  “That’s all right,” said Grelho. “I do.”

  TEN

  Ab bel semblan que fals’Amors adutz

  s’atrai vas lieis fols amans, e s’atura …

  [With the fair appearance that false Love produces,

  it attracts the enamored fool and he sticks to it…]

  —FOLQUET DE MARSEILLE, “SITOT ME SOI A TART APERCEUBUTZ” [TRANS. N. M. SCHULMAN]

  “We’ll need more wine,” said Grelho. “Good wine, and lots of it. I know a decent wine-seller. We can make it back into town before sunset, stop there, then head back to my place.”

  “You can’t just tell us on the journey home?” asked Claudia.

  “The best part of a story is in the telling,” said Grelho. “We’ll do this my way.”

  “Shouldn’t we be looking for the Lady Lark?” I asked.

  “We cannot do anything more today,” said Grelho. “We have time enough, believe me.”

  The mountains to the west were poking at the sun by the time we crossed the river and reentered Montpellier. The wine-seller was closing up shop when we came in. He grumbled once to see there were late customers, and again when he saw Grelho, but the fool promptly slapped some coins in front of him.

  “That covers what I owe you,” he said, and the wine-seller brightened. “Two skins of the good Syrah, sirrah, and if I approve, I will make your reputation as the greatest of the grape purveyors.”

  The wine-seller returned from the back with two bulging wineskins. He opened one and handed it to Grelho to sample.

  Grelho took a swig from the skin and nodded. “The other one now,” he said.

  The wine-seller smiled coldly and gave it to him. “I hope these meet your exacting standards,” he said.

  “Not bad, not bad at all,” said Grelho after his second taste. “I shall spend the rest of the night composing a special encomium in your honor.”

  “Compose it before you start drinking, if you don’t mind,” said the wine-seller. “I have heard what songs you come up with when you’re drunk.”

  “Perhaps I should compose it in the morning,” agreed Grelho.

  “Late morning, after the hangover fades,” said the wine-seller.

  “Done,” said Grelho.

  He handed one skin to me, and we walked quickly back to his place before the sun had fully set.

  “This is a miracle,” I said as we went inside. “We have witnessed Grelho opening his purse on two consecutive days. They’ll never believe us back at the Guild.”

  Grelho went upstairs, then came back down with an actual lantern, which he lit and placed on the table.

  “Hail, Diogenes,” said Claudia. “The extravagance of this evening abounds. I wonder if your tale will be up to two wineskins and a lantern.”

  “It’s an old tale, and requires a libation to invoke it properly,” said Grelho, laying out plates of cheese and sausage. He filled four cups and passed them around, then raised his.

  “To Bacchus,” he said.

  “To the Maenads,” responded Claudia, and Grelho glanced at her nervously before drinking his.

  “The Lady Lark?” I prompted him.

  “I don’t know anyone by that name,” said Grelho.

  “But you said—”

  “Peace,” he said. “This is my tale, and I shall unfold it as I choose.”

  He stirred the wine around in his cup, sprinkling a little cinnamon into it from a clay jar. He watched the swirling patterns for a minute.

  “I came here in ’82,” he said. “Down from Cologne, where I did my apprenticeship. The fool who was here before me had died, and although there were a couple of troubadours who were regularly at the court, the Guild wanted a proper jester in town.

  “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 benefite
d 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.”