The Jester Read online

“Do not worry for me.” His cold voice crept out from the drawn hood. “I make peace with God in my own way.”

  He came before her as a supplicant, yet he was possessed of the harshest cruelty. The tunic of a knight, but a disgraced one, dressed in rags. Still, she was forced to deal with him.

  “I do worry for you, Morgaine,” Anne said scornfully, “for I think you will burn in Hell. Your methods are evil. They pervert the goal you aim to achieve.”

  “I may burn, lady, but I will light the way for others to rest next to God. Perhaps even you …”

  “Do not flatter yourself that you are God’s agent.” Anne sneered. “You make my skin crawl that you do my husband’s work.”

  [207] He bowed, unoffended. “You need not bother with my work, madame. Just know that it goes well.”

  “I saw how well it goes, knight. I was there.”

  “There, madame?” The knight’s eyes narrowed.

  “St. Cécile… I saw what you did. Such cruelty even beasts from Hell would find shame in. I saw how you left that town.”

  “It was left a better place than when we arrived. Closer to God.”

  “Closer to God?” She stepped up to him, looked into his depthless eyes. “The knight, Arnaud. I saw him flayed apart.”

  “He would not bend, my lady.”

  “And the children… they would not bend as well? Tell me, Morgaine. For what precious prize did these innocents roast like cattle?”

  “Just this,” the hooded knight said plainly.

  He reached under his cloak. His hand emerged with a small wooden cross in it the size of his palm. He placed it gently in Anne’s hand.

  Though she wanted to spit on it and hurl it far into the bushes, Anne’s breath froze.

  “It has journeyed far, my lady, this simple trinket. From Rome to Byzantium. A thousand years. And now you hold it here. For three hundred of them it slept in a coffin, the coffin of Saint Paul himself, word of our Lord. Until it was unearthed by Emperor Constantius. This cross has changed the tide of history.” A smile crept across his face. “That’s why your prayers for me are not needed, good lady.”

  Anne’s hands trembled holding the relic. Her mouth went dry. “My husband will no doubt be honored,” she said. “Yet you know this is just the appetizer to what he hungers for. How does the real quest go?”

  “We are working.” The dark knight nodded.

  “You’d better work faster, knight. All the rest is just decoration. Even this piece is a bauble compared to the real prize. He [208] is in Nîmes, only days away. If Stephen finds you have failed him, it will be your head we’ll be looking at on a stake.”

  “Then I will be smiling, lady, knowing that I will have everlasting life.”

  “The smile will be mine, Morgaine, most assuredly.” Anne wrapped herself in her cloak and turned back to the castle. “Thinking of you rotting in Hell.”

  Chapter 68

  I FOUND NO TRACE of the unholy soldiers I was seeking, or anyone who knew of mysterious knights in dark robes. Nor was I able to gain access to the barracks. Time was growing short. Stephen was due back at the castle in days. Once he returned, it would be too dangerous to press my case.

  Two days later, Emilie took me aside as I was playing jack-straws with Anne’s son, William. She saw my demeanor was glum.

  “Do not be so sad, jester,” she said with a smile. “I have a job for you. And a new pretext.”

  There was to be a celebration that evening in the chatelain’s hall, she explained. A bachelor party. Gilles, the captain of the guard, was to be married in the next few days. There would be knights, soldiers, members of the guard. Lots of speeches and drink. Their guard would be down, so to speak.

  “I have arranged for you to be the entertainment,” Emilie announced.

  “You seem to have a skill at this sort of thing, my lady. Once again I owe you thanks.”

  “Thank me by finding what you seek,” she said, and touched my hand. “And, Hugh, be careful. Please.”

  That night there was lots of wine and awful singing. Gilles’s buddies stood and made bold and mocking speeches until they [210] slurred their words and fell back onto their benches. I was to be the last act before they dragged Gilles down to a brothel in town.

  I had to make them laugh, and yet my eyes kept searching for the rogue knights. I did sleight-of-hand tricks to warm them up, simple stuff Norbert had shown me, pulling objects out of tunics to their drunken awe.

  Then it was on to the jokes. “I know this man,” I announced, sliding to a stop on the tabletop in front of the groom to be, “whose cock was permanently engorged.”

  “You flatter me.” Gilles pretended to blush. “But, joker, must you betray my secret to all?”

  “Try as he could,” I went on, “he could not get the damn thing to go down. Finally he sought out his local apothecary. There, he encountered a stunning young woman. ‘I’d like to speak to your father,’ the man with the problem said.

  “ ‘My father is dead,’ she answered. ‘I run this apothecary with my sister. Anything you can tell a man, you can tell us.’ ‘All right,’ he agreed. In dire need, he pulled down his leggings. ‘Look, I have a permanent erection. Like a fucking horse. What can you give me for it?’

  “ ‘Hmmm,’ ” the lady apothecary replied. ‘Let me go and confer with my sister.’ After a minute she returned with a small pouch and said, ‘How is one hundred gold coins and half the business?’ ”

  The room roared with laughter. “Tell us more…”

  I had begun another-the one about the priest and the talking crow-when from outside the walls, a terrible shout pierced the celebration. There was the clop of horses drawn to a stop. Then once again a man’s scream. “Please, God help me. I am being killed!”

  The drunken laughter ceased. Several of the party rushed to a window overlooking the courtyard. I followed close behind. Through the narrow opening I saw two men dragging a third by the arms across the courtyard.

  [211] I recognized them instantly! They wore slitted helmets and carried war swords strapped to their belts. It was just as Emilie had described. They wore no armor but robes. On their feet were worn sandals.

  The prisoner hollered defiantly, his shouts for help echoing off the stone walls.

  Then I caught a look at his face. My own twisted in horror.

  It was the mayor of St. Cécile-who had stood up to Anne only a few days before.

  They dragged the poor mayor toward the keep. “Who are these men?” I asked one of the soldiers at my side.

  “These dogs? The duke’s new business partners. Les Retournés …”

  “Retournés …?” I muttered.

  My eyes followed the soldiers and the poor mayor until they dragged him through a heavy wooden door and into the keep. The dying shouts of the prisoner faded in the night.

  “Not our worry.” Bertrand, the chatelain, sighed. He stepped back from the window. “Come, Gilles, beauties await in town. How ’bout we get that blade of yours wiped one last time?”

  Meanwhile, my heart was beating at a gallop. I had to talk to the mayor of St. Cécile. He might know why knights were being murdered and villages burned. And these awful killers… Les Retournés … I thought that I had seen them before.

  But where?

  Chapter 69

  THE FOLLOWING NIGHT I waited until long after dark. Norbert lay snoring on his bed. I crept off my mat and tucked a knife under my leggings.

  I sneaked out of Norbert’s chamber, hurrying up the back stairs behind the kitchen to the main floor. I had to traverse the entire castle from the large rooms of the court to the military end. And talk my way past anyone who would stop me. Well, I was the jester after all.

  The halls were dark and drafty; shadows danced on the walls from waning candle flames. I hurried past the huge doors of the great hall. A few knights still lounged at tables there, drinking, conversing, while others, too far gone, snored curled up on their cloaks. Occasionally there was a guard. But no
one stopped me. I was their lady’s fool.

  The castle was a squared-off U shape, with a loggia of stone arches around the courtyard. Across from it were the duke’s garrison, the officers’ quarters, the barracks, and the keep. I successfully wound my way around the entire main floor. As I passed outside, I saw the tower above me where the mysterious knights had dragged their prisoner, lit up by the moon. I hurried that way, then slipped inside.

  I was in the tower, all right, but I didn’t know where to go or [213] who might try to stop me. My stomach churned; the breath clung tight in my chest.

  A draft followed me up the stairs. At each floor, the odor grew more foul. The smell of death I knew all too well.

  On the third landing, two guards slouched around an open archway. One was tall and lazy looking, the other short and squat with mean eyes. Not exactly the duke’s crack troops, I thought, just keeping an eye on a few cursed souls in the middle of the night.

  “Are you lost, strawberry?” the mean-looking one growled at me.

  “Never been up here before,” I said. “Mind if I take a quick peek?”

  “Tour’s over.” He stood up. “Go back the way you came.”

  I went up to him, my eyes wide. As if yanking something out of his ear, from my closed fist I produced a long silk scarf. “Come on… even a damned soul could use a last laugh.”

  To my delight, the oaf reached out and felt the scarf. Then he took it, my bribe for him. He looked down the hall and, finding the coast clear, stuffed it into his uniform. “One look,” he said. “There’s nothin’ in there anyway but the pox. Then juggle your ass back where you belong.”

  “Thank you, sire,” I clucked. “A lifetime of stiff manhood to you.”

  I darted through the archway behind him and up the stairs. A row of narrow stone cells stretched out before me. The putrid stench made me hold my breath. I hoped the man I was seeking was in here.

  I hoped the mayor of St. Cécile was still alive.

  Chapter 70

  I CREPT INSIDE the hellhole. The prison was dank and humid. A flickering torch spat its dim light on a row of narrow cells. They were barely four feet high, enclosed by rusted iron bars, tight as coffins. Prisoners curled on the floor like dogs.

  Driven by the awful smell and my worry that the guards would come, I hurried down the row of cells, searching for the man I had seen dragged in the night before. I prayed he was still here.

  In the first cell, a man with a long dark beard, naked, barely more than a skeleton, lay on his back amid his own waste. In the next, a large dark-skinned man-swarthy as a Turk-curled under a tattered white robe. Neither raised an eye. The cells reeked. A rat licked the inside of a bowl right in front of me.

  The third cell contained the person I was seeking: the mayor of St. Cécile. The poor man lay crumpled in a ball, with blotches of blood and bruises on his face and arms. To my alarm, I could not tell if he was alive or dead.

  “Sir…” I crept close. I had to know. What did these dark knights want? What had they razed his entire village to find? What treasure was worth so many lives?

  I crept up close to his cell. “Please…” I whispered again, almost begging. Would he recognize me? Would he speak or call out?

  [215] Suddenly a whimpering moan from the next cell caught my attention. I stepped over and saw a pathetic creature-a woman, her skin as white as a ghost, her hair dry as rotted hemp, muttering under her breath like a deranged witch. Her skin was spotted with oozing sores.

  I cringed. What a sight! What heresy had she done to be left to rot away like this?

  I turned back to the mayor. Time was short. “Do you remember me, sir? I saw you in St. Cécile,” I whispered.

  But the witch’s muttering grew louder. I shushed her to stop. Then a jolt froze my body.

  The words she moaned-at first softly, almost inaudibly into her bony hands. Then louder. My God! I could not believe what I was hearing:

  “A maiden met a wandering man in the light of the moon’s pure cheer.”

  Chapter 71

  MY HEART SLAMMED against my ribs. This could not be! Could not, could not.

  I ran to her cell and pressed against the bars, straining to distinguish her features amid the shadows.

  Nothing could ever have prepared me for what I saw… Not the sight of Nico plunging from my grasp. Or poor Robert gazing at his own body as it was hacked in two. Not even the Turk looming over me, his blade raised in the air.

  I was staring at my wife.

  “Sophie…?” I whispered, the word catching in my throat.

  She did not move or speak.

  “Sophie!” I called, feeling my heart start to crumble. Part of me prayed she would not turn.

  Then she tilted her face toward me.

  “Sophie, is that you?”

  She lay huddled in shadow and I still could not tell for certain if it was her. The scant light from a nearby torch traced her bony face. Her hair, which once had smelled like honey, hung wildly from her head, pulled out in spots, and white. Her sunken eyes, glazed and distant, were runny with yellow pus. Yet the nose… the soft line of her chin as it met her delicate neck… they were the same, unmistakably, though she cowered before me as a fevered wretch, pocked with sores.

  [217] It was her! I was sure of it.

  “Sophie?” I cried, my hands reaching desperately through the bars.

  She finally turned toward the sound, sallow light spreading across her face. I simply could not believe what I was seeing! How could she be here? How could she be alive after all this time?

  Grateful tears welled in my eyes. I reached for her, her emaciated bones covered with a filthy rag. I tried to speak, but I was too overcome. It was Sophie. She was not dead. At last I knew that much for sure.

  “Sophie… look … It’s me, Hugh.”

  Slowly she lifted her face fully into the light. She was like an artist’s disfigured re-creation of the beautiful image I held in my mind: gaunt, ghostly, covered in sores. Her eyes flickered at the sound of my voice. I could see that she was sick, that she barely clung to this rotting existence. I wasn’t sure she knew who I was.

  “We have to give it back to them,” she finally said. “Please, I beg you. Give them back what’s theirs.”

  “Sophie,” I was shouting now, “look. I am here… Hugh!” What had they done to her? Anger surged through me. I could see her suffering and I felt it too. “You are alive. Sweet God, you’re alive. …” Tears streamed down my face.

  “Hugh…?” She blinked. Then she almost seemed to smile. “Hugh’ll be back. He’s in the East, fighting… But I’ll see him again, my baby. He promised.”

  “No, I am here, Sophie.” My fingers grasped at air, trying to reach her face. “Please. Come close. Let me hold you.” Oh God, let me hold you, Sophie.

  “He’ll be sad about the inn,” she continued to mutter. “But he’ll forgive me; you’ll see. You’ll see.”

  “I’m going to get you out of here. I know about Phillipe, about the inn.” I was bursting with heartache. “Please, come here. Let me hold you.”

  [218] Sophie pulled herself toward the sound of my voice. Her cheeks were slick with fever, her eyes glassy. I could see she was terribly sick. I just wanted to hold her. God, I wanted to hold her.

  She blinked like a frightened doe, hugging the wall. “Hugh…?” she whispered.

  “Sophie, it’s me… It’s me, darling.” I whispered the words to our song: “A maiden once met a traveling man …”

  “You must give it back now,” she muttered again. “They say it is theirs. I tried to tell them, Hugh will return. He’ll find me. They said they’ll give Phillipe back to us, our little son. All we have to do is give them what is theirs.”

  I finally knelt and wrapped my hands around her, my dear wife. I touched her face, brushed the sweat off her hollow cheeks. She was so precious to me, even more so in this misery.

  “They want what belongs to God,” she said, and her body rattled with a coug
h. “Please. Give it to them.”

  “Give them what?” I cried. What did she think I had? I did not know if it was the fever or a deeper madness talking. Or even if Sophie still recognized she was talking to me.

  Suddenly she jerked out of my grasp and scampered back into shadow. It broke my heart. Her eyes bolted past me, wide with fear.

  I felt as if everything I loved had slipped through my fingers one last time.

  Then I saw what had driven her away. My heart nearly came to a stop.

  One of the duke’s rogue knights was standing over me.

  Chapter 72

  I RECOGNIZED HIM as one of the thugs who had dragged the mayor into the keep the previous night.

  His head was covered by a dark hood, and the eyes peering out were as dark as sunken caves. He wore his sword belted over a threadbare robe and stood, hands on hips, grinning down on the two of us.

  “Go ahead, have a poke.” He shrugged. “The whore won’t mind, fool. Anyway, she’ll be dead in a week. Just be careful you don’t get the pox all over your dick.”

  I stared at his mocking face, and the greatest rage I had ever known tightened inside me, a boiling, uncontrollable force.

  I reached for an iron poker lying next to me on the floor. In my mind, this grinning lizard represented every cruelty that had been heaped on my wife and child, all the suffering and loss I had witnessed since I first went away. My world had been hurled upside down.

  With a cry, I rushed at him, a wild exhalation escaping from my lungs. I swung the poker at his head before he could draw his sword. The startled knight threw up an arm to defend himself, and the rod smacked against it with a sickening crack.

  He yelped and staggered back in pain, one arm hanging at his side. I did not stop. I battered him again and again, like [220] some mad beast, every sinew of my body concentrated on driving this piece of metal into his skull.

  I shoved him against the bars of the cell. I drove my knee into his groin and felt him groan and buckle. I jammed the poker into his neck.