[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal (7 page)

“Not my decision, and thank Christ for that,” said Sancho. “I don’t know if the count will make a quick public example of him or hush the whole thing up. That might depend on whether or not he’s really the count’s brother.”

“Will that help him or hurt him?” I wondered.

We entered the grounds of the château. The squad took the prisoner to the Palace of Justice, where the dungeons were. Hue paused outside the door, looked up at the blue sky as if he was memorizing the shape of every cloud in it, then took a deep breath and followed his master inside.

“Loyal man,” I observed.

“How can you be loyal to a murderous, whoring bastard?” asked Sancho.

“Which reminds me,” I said. “The count will be expecting us.”

We entered the Grand Tower and walked up the stairs to the count’s rooms. Two of the inner guards smirked at Sancho, no doubt thinking his strained looks were a product of trailing a night of debauchery by Baudoin. Which they were, come to think of it. Sancho took a deep breath and went in. The guards closed the doors behind him.

The doors muffled most of what followed, but a few choice words escaped into the hall, as did the occasional crash of things being flung. The guards’ expressions shifted from smirking curiosity to concern.

“Did something happen last night?” one of them asked me.

“Well, since you asked me so specifically, I will tell you,” I replied. “Yes. Something happened last night.”

“Thought so,” he said.

“You were handpicked by the count, too, weren’t you?” I asked.

“Certainly was,” he said, puffing up proudly.

“Thought so,” I said.

After one more particularly loud crash, there was a tap on the door. The guards opened it, and Sancho emerged, a fresh bruise below his left eye.

“How’s the ass?” I asked him.

“Soundly kicked, but still here,” he said. “He would like to speak with you now.”

“I will be blaming you for everything,” I informed him as I passed by.

“You won’t be the first,” he said, and the doors closed behind me.

The count sat behind his desk, looking at me moodily. The remnants of a vase and an assortment of flowers littered the floor, as did a steel helm that I had last seen hanging on the wall behind him.

“I must warn you that anything you throw at me will be caught,” I said.

“That certainly takes all the fun out of it,” he said. “What if I commanded you not to catch it?”

“Then where would the challenge be?”

He picked up a small bronze horse that had been made with great artistry and was now acting to weigh down a stack of documents. He hefted it experimentally, then heaved at me.

I caught it easily and put it back on the stack.

“You’re the worst language tutor ever,” he said.

“I resign my position,” I replied. “Will you give me a reference?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Then I must go back to my old job. Your fool awaits your bidding, Dominus.”

“Good. Tell me what you know.”

“Nothing, really. I left him at the bordel, romping with a redhead. When I returned in the morning, the redhead was dead in bed.”

“Providing you with an excuse for morbid extemporaneous doggerel.”

“I didn’t have time to compose anything more formal,” I apologized. “I will have a sestina ready by lunch, if you like.”

“Don’t strain yourself. Did you learn anything about my putative brother before he turned butcher?”

“He sounded like he was familiar with the Parisian courts,” I said. “He’s decent with a sword, likes to drink, and is a bit of a bawd. None of these exclude him as a relative of yours, in my opinion.”

“I should have kept him in the dungeon,” he sighed. “Every instinct screamed lock him away. But I chose to be reasonable and listened to more sensible people. And now, a woman is dead.”

Having been one of those who provided that ill-fated advice, I decided to not say anything in rejoinder.

“No one could have expected this,” he continued. “That he might be a spy from France, or an impostor, or an adventurer, none of these would have surprised me. A common lecher and killer—I’m disappointed, I have to say. There is no style in that.”

“What will you do with him now?” I asked.

“Hang him, I suppose,” he replied. “What else is there to do? I hear La Rossa was a force of nature in the bedchamber. I would value such over a dozen bastard brothers.”

“He did say full, not bastard.”

“Say he is. Would you let him go free?” asked the count.

“I? No, I would want justice done,” I said. “If you would hang a beggar for stealing a candlestick, then you should hang a nobleman for stealing a whore’s life.”

“Right,” he said, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Right. Only-“

“Only what?”

“I would like to know for certain who he is before we execute him,” he said. “I would like to sit down across a table and have one meal where we could talk about my mother.”

“Then you must await the viguier’s messenger,” I said.

“Toulouse will wonder at the delay,” he said.

“Remind them that he if he is indeed your brother, he is also then the cousin to the King of France,” I said. “That brings diplomacy into the matter. The delay will be understandable.”

“That would work,” he said. “Of course, he’s the King’s kin. Good. I’ll send another courier to Paris. Thank you.”

“Glad to be of service,” I said.

“Now, I want you to go out there like I’ve given you a drubbing,” he said. “Do you mind?”

In response, I thumped my fist on the table, yelped in pain, then smacked my fist against my palm several times, grunting with each one. Raimon watched the performance with interest.

“If only I had a puppet theater,” he mused. “We could make some money.”

“You do have a puppet theater,” I said. “Only the strings are invisible.”

My body jerked out of the chair as if yanked from above, and I danced like a marionette to the door and banged on it.

The two guards opened it, and I trudged out, rubbing my jaw.

“He went rough on you, did he?” asked one sympathetically.

“No more than I deserved,” I said. “Where did Sancho go?”

“He said he’d find you at your usual place,” he replied.

“I guess he would know,” I said.

As I came out of the Grand Tower, I saw Hue watching me by the Palace of Justice. He nodded toward the stables. I followed him inside.

“My master is despondent,” he said.

“La Rossa is dead,” I said. “That makes her day worse.”

He flinched as if I had slapped him, then looked around to make certain we were not being overheard.

“He wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Me? Why me?”

“He wants yotlr help,” he said.

“Forget it. I don’t arrange escapes.”

“He will not flee his predicament,” Hue said, swelling with pride. “He will face it like the noble man that he is. Please, will you speak with him?”

My curiosity got the better of me. “All right,” I agreed. “Take me to him.”

I had been to the dungeons before, but not to the lowest level. Much of it was taken up by storage rooms, but there were a handfull of cells that were shut off from the corridors by thick wooden doors with only a minuscule square opening hacked out at eye level. The guards nodded at Hue and looked at me in surprise, but I had the run of the château, thanks to my patron, so I passed by without challenge.

Hue led me to Baudoin’s cell, knocked twice on the door, then three more times. There was a rustling inside; then a pair of eyes peered out through the opening.

“Well?” I said.

“I am a fool,” he said in langue d’oc.

“Language lessons are suspended for the duration of the term,” I said. “At the end of the term, you may find yourself suspended. By the neck.”

“And if I had killed her, I would accept that fate,” he said.

“If you had killed her?”

“You sound as if you had no doubts in the matter,” he said.

“Not my call if I did,” I said. “But I don’t, so there’s an end to it.”

“What reason would I have?” he asked.

“Reason had nothing to do with it,” I said. “I have seen acts of depravity in my life, the very description of which would frighten reason right out of the room. To make love to a woman, then kill her, then sleep soundly the rest of the night next to her bleeding corpse—that takes a special kind of man, Senhor Baudoin. I don’t know what you were thinking, and I don’t care to know.”

“Do you really believe that I would do that?” he asked. “That I am that wicked?”

“I’ve known you for less than two days,” I said. “I cannot tell what manner of man you are, except by what I have seen.”

“You did not see me kill her,” he said.

“No, but..

“And, putting aside the depravity of the act, do I strike you as a man so stupid as to stay with the woman he killed so that he could be captured so easily?”

“You haven’t struck me as a smart man,” I said.

“But you are one,” he said.

“I am a fool,” I said.

“But fools, they know things,” he insisted. “They know people. They see through pretense and lies.”

“You overrate us,” I said. “I haven’t seen through you yet.”

“I am transparent,” he said. “I have been stripped of all rank, all hope, all dignity. There is nothing left but the truth.

I did not kill her.”

“That is not for me to decide,” I said.

“Someone is trying to set me up,” he said. “I arrive, I announce myself, and somehow become a threat. Or a pawn, a way of embarrassing my brother.”

“Oh, you’ve become much more than an embarrassment,”

I said.

“Please, Senhor Pierre,” he whispered. “I have no other recourse.”

“What about him?” I asked, nodding at Hue.

“I know no one here,” said Hue. “Nor will anyone speak with the companion of Baudoin while Baudoin is here.”

“I will pay you, if that would help,” said Baudoin.

“Get stuffed,” I said. “I am the count’s fool. Do you think my loyalty is so worthless?”

“I am prepared to be as loyal to him as any man alive,” he said. “Can a brother do more?”

“I’ve seen brothers gouge each other’s eyes out, and their blood was even more noble than yours pretends to be,” I said. “I’m not impressed.”

“Then I am doomed,” he whispered.

“That’s about the size of it,” I agreed. “I will come by for another visit, though. This is on my rounds.” I walked back toward the stairs.

“Fool,” he called after me.

“What?” I said without turning.

“If they hang me for this, an innocent man dies, and a murderer goes free,” he said. “Is that the justice you seek?”

“What I seek is a roof over my head,” I said. “I seek a full belly, a warm fire, a loving wife, and happy children. Most of all, I seek laughter that I have brought into existence. I am not in the justice game, senhor. But I certainly hope it finds you.”

I climbed back to daylight and sought out the gates. As I passed through them, Sancho fell into step beside me.

“What did he have to say?” he asked.

“I thought you were going to find me at my usual place,” I said.

“I was, but then I thought since I left you that message, you would probably go somewhere else, just out of spite.”

“You could have followed me.”

“In which case, you would have spotted me with your customary skill and lost me within two streets. So, I have dispensed with all my cleverness and cunning and have approached you directly.”

“Good plan.”

“What did he have to say?” he repeated.

“Who wants to know?”

“Me,” he said.

“But are you only you, or are you someone else right now? We are inside the walls, so you are no longer the count.”

“I am the man who is about to buy you a drink if you tell me what Baudoin said.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place? I’ve been looking for you.”

It was late morning, so the tavern he chose was relatively empty. He paid for a pitcher and a loaf of bread from his emergency purse, then poured two cups and slid one to me.

“Spill it,” he said.

“I wouldn’t dream of wasting wine like that,” I replied.

“I mean, tell me what he said.”

“He said he didn’t kill her.”

“Right,” he snorted. “Well, there’s a load off my mind. I was worried sick about that poor bastard being guilty. What else?”

“He wanted me to find who did it.”

Sancho stared at me. “That’s taking a bad joke too far, if you ask me,” he said slowly.

“I told him to leave the bad jokes to professionals like myself, but you know how those murderers are. No sense of proportion.”

“The gall of him,” said Sancho. “And what else did you tell him?”

“What else?”

“You’re not planning on investigating this, are you?”

It was my turn to stare. “Is that what you wanted to ask me?”

“It is now.”

“Good God, Sancho. I work for the count, for one thing. And for another, as the baby fox said to its mother when she told him to kill the tortoise, what’s in it for me?”

“Then why did you go talk to him in the first place?”

“Curiosity, my dear Sancho. Which has now been satisfied.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “I suggest you keep it suppressed. I have a hunch it will only lead you into trouble. Sorry. Not working on much sleep at the moment. I had to go back there and make sure everything was quiet.”

“Was it?”

“There were no other customers,” he said. “The Abbess has the girls in line. They’re going to bury La Rossa tomorrow, and that will be an end to it until the count hangs Baudoin.”

“Thus ends our mutual assignment.”

“Until the next pretender shows up,” he said. He knocked his cup against mine. “To bastards everywhere.”

“On their behalf, I thank you,” I said, returning the toast.