The Jester Read online

  A servant stepped in, carrying a bowl of fruit. He placed it on the bench and then, feeling the stiffness in the air, hurried out.

  “I have seen your new interests,” Anne said derisively. “The dark troops you have sent from the Holy Land. Your noble men of the black cross who kill and slaughter women and children like curs, innocents and nobles alike. Your governing has reached a new low, Stephen.”

  He got up, slowly sauntered over to her. Her skin felt like an insect was crawling up her back. He walked around her as if he were inspecting a steed. She did not look at him.

  Then Anne felt his hands caress her neck, icy and loveless. She felt his lips close to her.

  “I may be your wife,” she said, turning away, “and for that, Stephen, I will tend to your health and welfare, for the sake of my son. I will stand for you, as is my duty, in our court. But know, husband, you will not touch me, ever again. Not in my weakest moment or in your most urgent need. Your hands shall never soil me again.”

  Stephen grinned and nodded, as if impressed. He stroked her cheek and she pulled away, trembling. “How long, lovely Anne, have you been working on that little speech?”

  Before she even knew it was happening, he tightened his caressing grip on the nape of her neck. Pain flashed through her. Slowly, he increased the pressure, all the while fondly smiling at her.

  The air shot out of her lungs. She tried to cry out, but to no avail. No one would come. Her cries would be misunderstood as pleasure. Her pulse echoed like a drum in her ears.

  Stephen pushed her down to the ground. He followed, all the while pinning his thumb and forefinger into her neck and forcing her thighs apart with just the power of his legs.

  He tried to kiss her, but Anne twisted her head in the other direction, leaving his vile slobber all over her neck.

  [236] Then he pressed himself against her rump. She felt him erect and hideous, the detestable hardness she had grown to loathe. “Come,” he whispered, “my bold, headstrong Anne… After all this time, would you deny me what I want?”

  She tried to pull herself away, but his grip was too strong. He slithered up the length of her spine and yanked her underdress down, about to force himself in.

  Anne swallowed back an urge to vomit. No, this cannot be happening. Her heart beat in panic. I swore, not again …

  But just as quickly, he pulled off of her, grunting back a laugh, leaving her trembling. He pushed his wet mouth close to her face.

  “Do not misunderstand me, wife,” he hissed in her ear. “I did not mean I desire your cunt… I meant the relic.”

  Part Four . TREASURE

  Chapter 79

  THE HULKING MAN in the sheepskin overvest pounded in the fence post with well-timed strokes of his heavy mallet.

  I crept from the woods, still in the torn remnants of my jester’s garb, carrying Emilie’s cloak. I had clung to the forest for a week now. Hungry, avoiding pursuit. I had nothing. Not a denier or a possession.

  “You’ll never mend a fence by lazing away like a fat cow,” I said boldly.

  The burly man put down his mallet and arched his thick, bushy eyebrows. He stepped forward to the challenge. “Look what’s crawled out of the woods… some scrawny squirrel in a fairy’s costume. You look like you wouldn’t know a day’s work if it jumped up and strummed your dick.”

  “I could say the same for you, Odo, if it wasn’t always in your hand.”

  The big smith eyed me closely. “Do I know you, malt-worm?”

  “Aye,” I answered. “Unless, since I’ve seen you last, your brains have grown as soft as your gut.”

  “Hugh…?” the smith exclaimed.

  We embraced, Odo lifting me high off the ground. He shook his head in astonishment.

  [240] “We heard you were dead, Hugh. Then in Treille, wearing the costume of a fool. Then word that you were in Borée. That you killed that prick Norcross. Which of these are true?”

  “All true, Odo. Except for rumors of my demise.”

  “Look at me, old friend. You killed the duke’s chatelain?”

  I took a breath and smiled, like a little brother embarrassed by praise. “I did.”

  “Ha, I knew you’d outfox them.” The smith laughed.

  “I have much to tell, Odo. And much to regret, I feel.”

  “We too, Hugh. Come, sit down. All I can offer you is this rickety fence. Not as fine as Baldwin ’s cushions…” We leaned against it. Odo shook his head. “Last we saw you, you ran into the woods like a devil, chasing the ghost of your wife.”

  “She was no ghost, Odo. I knew that she lived, and she did.”

  Odo’s eyes widened. “Sophie lives?”

  “I found her. In a cell in Borée.”

  “Sonofabitch!” the smith grunted. His eyes lit up, delighted. Then he searched mine, serious. “Yet I see you’ve crawled back out of the woods alone.”

  I bowed my head. “I found her, Odo, but only long enough for her to die in my arms. They held her as a hostage, thinking that we had something of theirs, something of great value. I’ve come back to tell her brother, Matthew, of her fate.”

  Odo shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hugh. That won’t be possible.”

  “Why? What’s happened, Odo?”

  “ Baldwin ’s men were here again. For you… They said you were a murderer and a coward. They said you ran from the Crusade and killed the lord’s chatelain. Then they ransacked the village. They said any who harbored you would be tried on pain of death. A few of us stood up…”

  A grim, ugly stench sent a panic through my stomach. “What is that stench, Odo?”

  “Matthew was one who stood up for you,” the smith went on. “He said you had been wronged. That the chatelain had [241] burned your house and child, and taken your wife, and if Norcross was dead, it was justly deserved for what he had done. He showed them the inn, which he was starting to rebuild. These men were horrible, Hugh. They hung Matthew up. Then they stretched him. His neck in a noose and his legs tied to their mounts. They whipped the horses… until his body split in two.”

  “No!” A pain shot through my chest. Another weight seemed to crush my heart. Poor Matthew. Why him? Now another was dead… because of me. This nightmare had to end!

  I raised my head. A terrible fear pulsed up in my gut. “You did not answer me… What is that smell?”

  Odo shook his head. “They burned the town, Hugh.”

  Chapter 80

  I WALKED WITH ODO into the desolate village, the place that only two years before I had called my home.

  All around, fields, cottages, and grain holds were no more than mounds of cinder and stone. Dwellings were either caved in and reduced to rubble, or in some beginning stage of being rebuilt. We passed the mill, once the finest structure in town, it’s majestic wheel now a heap of ruin in the stream.

  People put down their hammers, stopped chopping wood.

  A group of children shouted and pointed. “Look, it’s Hugh. He’s come back. It’s Hugh!”

  Everyone looked up in disbelief. People rushed up to me. “Is it you, Hugh? Have you truly come back?”

  A kind of procession picked up around me. What a sight I must have been, in my ragged checkered tunic, my torn green hose. I marched through the cluttered street directly to the square. My last time here, I had been in such a haze, having found out what had happened to my wife and son. Now everything was new, unreal, and so very sad.

  A clamor built up, some crying, “Glory to God, it’s Hugh. He’s back,” while others spat in my path. “Go away, Hugh. You’re the devil. Look what you’ve done.”

  By the time I reached the square, maybe seventy people, most everyone in town, had formed a ring around me.

  [243] I gazed at our inn. Two new walls of rough logs had been erected, supported by columns of stone. Matthew had been rebuilding it, better and sturdier than it was before. A flood of anger rushed through me. God damn them! I was the one who killed Norcross. I was the one who infiltrated the court. Wha
t right did they have to take vengeance out on this town?

  A rush of tears welled in my eyes. They streamed down my cheeks. I began to weep, weep in a way I hadn’t done since I was a small child.

  God damn you, Baldwin. And God damn me, for my stupid pride.

  I fell to my knees. My wife, my son… Matthew… Everything was ruined. So many had died.

  The ring of townspeople stood there and let me weep. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I choked back sobs and looked up. It was Father Leo. I had never paid much heed to him, with his little domed head, his sermons. Now I prayed he would not remove his hand, for it was all that kept me from keeling over in a ball of shame and grief.

  The priest lovingly squeezed my shoulder. “This is Baldwin ’s doing, Hugh, not yours.”

  “Aye, it is Baldwin ’s work,” someone shouted from the crowd. “Hugh meant us no harm. It is not his fault.”

  “We pay our shares, and this is how the bastard repays us,” a woman wailed.

  “Hugh must go,” another said. “He killed Norcross. He will cause us all to burn.”

  “Yes, he did kill Norcross,” echoed another. “God’s praise to him! Who among us has stood up like that?”

  Voices rose. The shouting built into a clamor-some for me, some against. A few, including Odo and the priest, begged for reason while others started throwing pebbles and stones at me.

  “Have pity on us, Hugh,” someone wailed. “Please, go, before the knights return!”

  [244] In the midst of the clamor, a woman’s voice shouted above the din. Everyone turned and grew quiet.

  It was Marie, the miller’s wife. I remembered her kind face. She and Sophie were best friends; they had been to the well together the day her son was drowned.

  “We’ve lost more than any of you.” She scanned the crowd. “Two sons. One to Baldwin. One to the war. Plus our mill… But Hugh has suffered more than we have! You point your scorn at him because we are all too frightened to point it toward the one who deserves it. It is Baldwin who deserves our rage, not Hugh.”

  “Marie’s right,” said her husband, Georges, the miller. “It is Hugh who killed Norcross and avenged my son.” He helped me to my feet and put out his hand. “I’m grateful you’re back, Hugh.”

  “And I,” said Odo, his voice booming. “I’m sick of quaking every time I hear horsemen come near town.”

  “You’re right.” Martin the tailor hung his head. “It is our own liege who is responsible, not Hugh. But what can we do? We are pledged to him.”

  It hit me there, in that moment, as I observed my neighbors’ helplessness and fear. I knew what we must do. “Then break the pledge,” I said.

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  “Break the pledge?” the tailor gasped.

  People turned to one another and shook their heads, as if my words were a sign that I was mad. “If we break the pledge, Baldwin will come back. This time it won’t be just our houses that he burns.”

  “Then next time, friends, we’ll be ready for him,” I said, turning to catch every eye.

  A wary silence filled the square. These people looked at me as if the words I uttered were heresy that damned us all.

  I knew that these words, and this idea, could set us free.

  I stared out at them and shouted, “Break the pledge!”

  Chapter 81

  EMILIE STORMED PAST the guards to Anne’s bedchamber. “Please, ma’am.” One guard went to restrain her. “The lady is resting.”

  Emilie’s blood was surging. The duke had returned the night before, yet it was not Stephen who was in her mind but Anne, her mistress, the person she served, who had lost touch with right.

  All morning, Emilie had prayed about what to do. She knew she had crossed a line with Hugh. My God, she had given aid to someone who’d killed a member of the duke’s guard. For that she could be imprisoned. She had asked herself over and over, If I cross this line, am I prepared to lose everything? My family’s blessing, my position in the court. My name… And each time the answer had come back clear and strong. How could I not?

  She pushed open the large wooden door to Anne’s chamber.

  William, Anne’s nine-year-old son, was about to leave, dressed in his hawking attire. Anne waved him off. “Go. Your father awaits you, son. Catch a prize for me.”

  “I will, Mother,” the boy said, running off. Anne was in bed at this late hour, still wrapped in bedclothes.

  “You are ill, madame?” Emilie asked.

  “You storm into my chambers,” Anne said, turning her face away, “as if concern were not the issue at all.”

  [246] “On the contrary, I have much to take issue with you,” Emilie said.

  “Take issue, child… No doubt this, as all things, concerns your protégé, the fool.”

  “You are right, madame, he is a fool. But only to have trusted you. As am I.”

  “So, this is no longer about him, I see. But you and me…”

  “You have wronged him in a great way, my lady, and by doing so, wronged me.”

  “Wronged you?” Anne laughed coldly. “Your Hugh is a wanted man now. A murderer, a deserter as well. He is sought in two duchies and will be caught. And once he is, he’ll be hanged in the square.”

  Emilie stared, aghast. “I am hearing your voice, lady,” she said, “but the words do not seem as if they could come from you. What has become of the woman who was like a mother to me? Where is the Anne who stood up against her husband? Who ruled in his absence with even temper and grace.”

  “Go away, child. Please go. Do not lecture me on things you do not know.”

  “I know this. Your men raided his village. They killed his son, stole and imprisoned his wife. She is dead now. In your prison. You knew.”

  “How would I know?” Anne shot back. “How would I know some worthless harlot thrown in our dungeon was in fact this man’s wife. I do not govern these Tafurs. They are my husband’s. I do not know whom they rouse and what insane deeds they do.”

  “These deeds, lady.” Emilie met her eyes. “They are now imprinted on you.”

  “Go.” Anne waved her away. “Do you think that if I knew the person we sought all along was here, at Borée, in our court, your jester would still be running around, pained and aggrieved, but alive? He’d be as dead as his wife.”

  [247] “You sought Hugh?” Emilie blinked. “For God’s sake-why?”

  “Because the fool holds the greatest prize in Christendom, and he does not know it.”

  “What prize? He has nothing. You have taken everything from him.”

  “Just go.” Anne sank back in bed. “And take with you your mighty sense of what is right and just. All that propelled you to run away from your father and your destiny. Go, Emilie!” In her anger, Anne turned to face Emilie, exposing for the first time what she had concealed.

  There was a large red welt. And much worse.

  “What is that?” Emilie moved forward.

  “Stay away,” Anne snapped, shrinking into her pillows.

  “Please, my lady, do not turn from me. What is the bruise on your face?”

  Anne took a sharp breath. She dropped her head. “It is my own prison, child. You want to see it-well, look!”

  Emilie let out a gasp. She rushed over and, against Anne’s efforts, gently stroked the wound. “Stephen did that to you?”

  “You should know it, child, for it is the very truth that you claim to know so well. A woman’s truth.”

  Emilie recoiled in horror. The side of Anne’s face was swollen to twice its normal size.

  Chapter 82

  THE FIRST THING I DID was go up to the hill overlooking town where my infant son, Phillipe, lay buried.

  I knelt by his grave and crossed myself. “Your mother spoke of you in her last breath.” There I sat, on the hard earth. “Dear, sweet Phillipe.”

  I still did not know what these sons of bitches wanted with me. What they thought I possessed, which clearly I didn’t. Why my
wife and son had to die.

  I dug up the objects I had brought back from the Crusade and spilled them onto the grass.

  The gilded perfume box I had bought for Sophie in Constantinople… How sure I had been that I would bring it back to her with pride. Just thinking of all that had happened-Nico, Robert, Sophie-I felt my eyes fill up.

  I looked at the inlaid scabbard with the writing I had found crossing the mountains. Then the gold cross I had taken from the church. Were these the treasures? The things that cursed me? If I gave them back, would they leave me, and the town, alone?

  A wave of anger swept over me, mixed with grief and tears. “Which are you?” I screamed at the pieces. “Which is the thing that caused my wife and son to die?”

  [249] I picked up the cross and went to hurl it into the trees. Trinkets! Baubles! None of it worth the lives of my wife and son!

  Then I held back, remembering Sophie’s last words: “Don’t give them what they want.”

  Don’t give them what, Sophie? Don’t give them what?

  I sat by my Phillipe’s grave and cried, my fingers digging into my scalp. “Don’t give them what?” I whispered over and over again.

  Finally, I pulled myself up, spent and exhausted. I gathered the things and laid them in the hole, replacing the displaced earth. I took a deep breath and said good-bye.

  Don’t give them what they want.

  All right, Sophie. I won’t.

  Because I don’t know what in God’s name it could be.

  Chapter 83

  SUMMER GAVE WAY to autumn, and bit by bit, I fell back into the life of the village.

  Rebuilding.

  I picked up the work Matthew had begun on the inn. All day, I lugged heavy logs, hoisted them into place, and notched them together in joints to form walls. At night I slept in Odo’s hut, his wife and two kids and I curled up by the hearth in a single room, until I had rebuilt my quarters behind the inn.

  Piece by piece, the town came back to life. Farmers prepared for the harvest. Crumbled homes were patched together with mortar and stone. Harvest time would bring travelers to market; travelers meant money. Money bought food and clothes. People began to laugh once more, and to look forward.