The Jester Read online

Norcross began to turn the wheel. To Georges and Marie’s frantic shrieks, Alo went under. Norcross held it for a moment, then slowly raised the wheel. The child appeared, wildly gasping for air.

  The despicable knight laughed at our priest. “What do you say, Father? Is this what you expect from the Pope’s protection?” He lowered the wheel again and the small boy disappeared. Our entire town gasped in horror.

  I counted to thirty. “Please,” Marie begged on her knees. “He’s just a boy.”

  Norcross finally began to raise the wheel. Alo was gagging and coughing water out of his lungs. From behind the mill’s door came the sickening cries of Aimée. I could scarcely breathe myself. I had to do something-even if it sealed my own fate.

  “Sir.” I stepped forward, toward Norcross. “I will help the miller increase his tax by a third.”

  “And who are you, carrot-top?” The glowering knight turned, fixed on my shock of bright red hair.

  “Carrots too, if my lord wants.” I took another step. I was prepared to say anything, whatever gibberish might divert him. “We’ll throw in two bushels of carrots!”

  I was about to go on-a joke, nonsense, anything that came [19] into my head-when one of the henchmen rushed up to me. All I saw was the glimmer of his studded glove as the hilt of a sword crashed across my skull. In the next breath I was on the ground.

  “Hugh, Hugh,” I heard Sophie scream.

  “Carrot-top here must be keen on the miller,” Norcross jeered. “Or the miller’s wife. By a third more, you say. Well, in my lord’s name, I accept your offer. Consider your tax raised.”

  At the same time, he lowered the wheel again. I heard a struggling, choking Alo go under one more time.

  Norcross shouted, “If it’s a fight you want, then fight for the glory of your liege when called upon. If it’s riches, then attend harder to your work. But the laws of custom are the laws. You all understand the laws, do you not?”

  Norcross leaned against the wheel for the longest time. An anguished plea rose from the crowd, “Please … let the boy up. Let him up.” I clenched my fist, counting the beats that Alo remained under. Twenty … thirty … forty.

  Then Norcross’s face split into an amused smile. “Goodness… do I forget the time?”

  He slowly raised the wheel. When Alo broke the surface, the boy’s face was bloated and wide-eyed. His small jaw hung open, lifeless.

  Marie screamed and Georges began to sob.

  “What a shame.” Norcross sighed, leaving the wheel aloft and Alo’s lifeless body suspended high. “It seems he wasn’t cut out for the miller’s life after all.”

  A silence ensued, a terrible moment that was empty and gnawing. It was broken only by Aimée’s whimpers as she emerged weak-kneed from the mill.

  “Let us go.” Norcross gathered his knights. “I think the duke’s point is adequately driven home.”

  As he made his way back across the square, he stopped over me where I still lay and hovered. Then he pressed his heavy boot into my neck. “Do not forget your pledge, carrot-top. I will be looking especially for your tax payment.”

  Chapter 5

  THAT TERRIBLE AFTERNOON changed my life. That night, as Sophie and I lay in bed, I couldn’t hold back the truth from her. She and I had always shared everything, good and bad. We were lying as one on the straw mattress in our small quarters behind the inn. I gently stroked her long blond hair, which fell all the way down her back. Every time she moved, every twitch of her nose, reminded me how much I loved her, how I had since the first time I had set eyes on her.

  It was love at first sight for us. At ten!

  I had spent my youth traveling with a band of itinerant goliards, given to them at a young age when my mother died, the mistress of a cleric who could no longer hide my presence. They raised me as one of their own, taught me Latin, grammar, logic, how to read and write. But most of all, they taught me how to perform. We traveled the large cathedral towns, Nîmes, Cluny Le Puy reciting our irreverent songs, tumbling, and juggling for the crowds. Each summer, we passed through Veille du Père. I saw Sophie there at her father’s inn, her shy blue eyes unable to hide from mine. And later, I noticed her peeking at a rehearsal. I was sure, at me … I swiped a sunflower and went up to her. “What goes in all stiff and stout, but when it comes out it’s flopping about?”

  [21] She widened her eyes and blushed. “How could anyone but a devil have such bright red hair?” she said. Then she ran away.

  A cabbage, I was about to say.

  Each year when we returned, I came bearing a sunflower, until Sophie had grown from a gangly girl into the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had a song for me, a teasing rhyme:

  A maiden met a wandering man

  In the light of the moon’s pure cheer,

  And though they fell in love at that first sight,

  It was a love that was born for tears.

  I called her my princess, and she said that I probably had one in every town. But in truth, I did not. Each year I promised I would come back, and I always did. One year, I stayed.

  The three years we’d been married had been the happiest I had known. I felt connected for the first time in my life. And deeply in love.

  But as I held Sophie that night, something told me I could no longer live like this. The rage that burned in my heart from the day’s horror was killing me. There would always be another Norcross, another tax levied upon us. Or another Alo… One day, the boy strung up on that wheel could be our own.

  Until we were free.

  “Sophie, I have something important to talk to you about.” I snuggled into the smooth curve of her back.

  She had nearly drifted off to sleep. “Can’t it wait, Hugh? What could be more important than what we’ve just shared?”

  I swallowed. “Raymond of Toulouse is forming an army. Paul the carter told me. They leave for the Holy Land in a few days.”

  Sophie turned in my arms and faced me with a blank, unsure look.

  [22] “I have to go,” I said.

  Sophie sat up, almost dumbfounded. “You want to take the Cross?”

  “Not the Cross: I wouldn’t fight for that. But Raymond has promised freedom to anyone who joins. Freedom, Sophie… You saw what happened today.”

  She sat up straight. “I did see, Hugh. And I saw that Baldwin will never free you from your pledge. Or any of us.”

  “In this he has no choice,” I protested. “Raymond and Baldwin are aligned. He has to accept. Sophie, think of how our lives could change. Who knows what I might find there? There are tales of riches just for the taking. And holy relics worth more than a thousand inns like ours.”

  “You’re leaving,” she said, turning her eyes from me, “because I have not given you a child.”

  “I am not! You mustn’t think that, not even for a moment. I love you more than anything. When I see you each day, working around the inn, or even amid the grease and smoke of the kitchen, I thank God for how lucky I am. We were meant to be together. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  She nodded, unconvinced. “You are no soldier, Hugh. You could die.”

  “I’m strong. And agile. No one around can do the tricks I do.”

  “No one wants to hear your silly jokes, Hugh.” Sophie sniffed. “Except me.”

  “Then I’ll scare the infidels off with my bright red hair.”

  I saw the outline of a smile from her. I held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I will be back. I swear it. Just like when we were children. I always told you I’d return. I always did.”

  She nodded, a bit reluctantly. I could see that she was scared, but so was I. I held her and stroked her hair.

  Sophie lifted her head and kissed me, a mixture of ardor and tears.

  [23] A stirring rose in me. I couldn’t hold it down. I could see in Sophie’s eyes that she felt it too. I held her by the waist and she moved on top of me. Her legs parted and I gently eased myself inside. My body lit with her warmth.


  “My Sophie …” I whispered.

  She moved with me in perfect rhythm, softly moaning with pleasure and love. How could I leave her? How could I be such a fool?

  “You’ll come back, Hugh?” Her eyes locked on mine.

  “I swear.” I reached and wiped a glistening tear from her eye. “Who knows?” I smiled. “Maybe I’ll come back a knight. With untold treasure and fame.”

  “My knight,” she whispered. “And I, your queen…”

  Chapter 6

  THE MORNING OF THE DAY I was to leave was bright and clear. I rose early, even before the sun. The town had bid me godspeed with a festive roast the night before. All the toasts had been made and farewells said.

  All but one.

  In the doorway of the inn, Sophie handed me my pouch. In it was a change of clothes, bread to eat, a hazel twig to clean my teeth. “It may be cold,” she said. “You have to cross the mountains. Let me get your skin.”

  I stopped her. “Sophie, it’s summer. I’ll need it more when I come back.”

  “Then I should pack some more food for you.”

  “I’ll find food.” I pumped out my chest. “People will be eager to feed a Crusader.”

  She stopped and smiled at my plain flax tunic and calfskin vest. “You don’t look like much of a Crusader.”

  I stood before her, ready to leave, and smiled too.

  “There’s one more thing,” Sophie said with a start. She hurried to the table by the hearth. She came back a moment later with her treasured comb, a thin band of beech wood painted with flowers. It had belonged to her mother. Other than the inn, I knew she valued it more than anything in her life. “Take this with you, Hugh.”

  [25] “Thanks,” I tried to joke, “but where I’m headed a woman’s comb may be looked at strangely.”

  “Where you’re headed, my love, you will need it all the more.”

  To my surprise, she snapped her prized comb in two. She handed half to me. Then she held her half out and we touched the jagged edges together, neatly fitting it back into a whole.

  “I never thought I would ever say good-bye to you,” she whispered, doing her best not to cry. “I thought we would live out our lives together.”

  “We will,” I said. “See?” One more time, we fitted the comb’s halves together and made a whole.

  I drew Sophie close and kissed her. I felt her thin body tremble in my arms. I knew she was trying to be brave. There was nothing more to say.

  “So…” I took a breath and smiled.

  We looked at each other for a long while, then I remembered my own gift. From my vest pocket I took out a small sunflower. I had gone into the hills to pick it early that morning. “I’ll be back, Sophie, to pick sunflowers for you.”

  She took it. Her bright blue eyes were moist with tears.

  I threw my pouch over my shoulder and tried to drink in the last sight of her beautiful, glistening eyes. “I love you, Sophie.”

  “I love you too, Hugh. I can’t wait for my next sunflower.”

  I started toward the road. West, to Toulouse. At the stone bridge on the edge of town, I turned and took a long last look at the inn. It had been my home for the past three years. The happiest days of my life.

  I gave a last wave to Sophie. She stood there, holding the sunflower, and reached out the jagged edge of her comb one last time.

  Then I did a little hop, like a jig, to break the mood, and started to walk, spinning around a final time to catch her laugh.

  Her golden hair down to her waist. That brave smile. Her tinkling little-girl laugh.

  It was the image I carried for the next two years.

  Chapter 7

  A year later, somewhere in Macedonia

  The heavy-bearded knight reared his mount over us on the steep ridge. “March, you princesses, or the only Turkish blood you’ll see will be at the end of a mop.”

  March … We had been marching for months now. Months so long and grueling, so lacking in all provision, I could mark them only by the sores oozing on my feet, or the lice crawling in my beard.

  We had marched across Europe and through the Alps. At first in tight formation, cheered in every town we passed, our tunics clean, with bright red crosses, helmets gleaming in the sun.

  Then, into the craggy mountains of Serbia -each step slow and treacherous, every ridge ripe with ambush. I watched as many a loyal soul, eager to fight for the glory of God, was swept screaming into vast crevices or dropped in his tracks by Serb or Magyar arrows a thousand miles before the first sign of a Turk.

  All along we were told that Peter’s army was months ahead of us, slaughtering infidels and hoarding all the spoils, while our nobles fought and bickered among themselves, and the rest of us trudged like beaten livestock in the blistering heat and bargained for what little food there was.

  [27] I’ll be back in a y ear, I had promised Sophie. Now that was just a mocking refrain in my dreams. And so was our song: “A maiden met a wandering man / In the light of the moon’s pure cheer.”

  Along the way, I had made two lasting friends. One was Nicodemus, an old Greek, schooled in the sciences and languages, who managed to keep up his steady stride despite a satchel heavy with tracts of Aristotle, Euclid, and Boethius. Professor, we called him. Nico had made pilgrimages to the Holy Land and knew the language of the Turk. He spent many hours on the march teaching it to me. He had joined the quest as a translator, and because of his white beard and moth-eaten robe, he had the reputation of being a bit of a soothsayer too. But every time a soldier moaned, “Where the hell are we, Professor?” and the old Greek muttered only, “Near …,” his reputation as a seer suffered.

  And there was Robert with his goose, Hortense, who had sneaked into our ranks one day as we passed through Apt. Fresh-faced and chattering, Robert claimed to be sixteen, but it didn’t take a seer to divine that he was lying. “I’ve come to carve the Turks,” he boasted, brandishing a makeshift knife. I handed him a stick that would be good for walking. “Here, start with this.” I laughed. From that moment on, he and the goose were great companions to us.

  It was late summer when we finally came out of the mountains.

  “Where are we, Hugh?” Robert moaned, as another interminable valley loomed before our eyes.

  “By my calculations…” I tried to sound cheerful. “A left at the next ridge and we should see Rome . Isn’t that right, Nico? This was the pilgrimage to St. Peter’s we signed up for, wasn’t it? Or, shit, was it the Crusade?”

  A ripple of tired laughter snaked through the exhausted ranks.

  Nicodemus started to answer, but everyone shouted him [28] down. “We know, Professor, we’re near, right?” taunted Mouse, a diminutive Spaniard with a large hooked nose.

  Suddenly I heard shouting from up ahead. Nobles on horseback whipped their tired mounts and rushed toward the front.

  Robert bolted ahead. “If there’s fighting, Hugh, I’ll save you a spot.”

  All at once, my legs seemed ready to comply. I grabbed my shield and ran after the boy. Ahead of us was a wide gulf in the mountains. Hundreds of men were gathered there, knights and soldiers.

  For once, they were not defending themselves. They were shouting, slapping one another on the back, thrusting their swords toward Heaven and hurling their helmets into the air.

  Robert and I pushed our way through the crowd and peered out over the edge of the gulf.

  Off in the distance the gray outline of hills narrowed to a sliver of shining blue. “The Bosporus,” people shouted.

  The Bosporus … !

  “Son of Mary,” I muttered. We were here!

  A jubilant roar went up. Everyone pointed at a walled city nestled into the isthmus’s edge. Constantinople . It took my breath away, like nothing I had ever seen before. It seemed to stretch out forever, glinting through the haze.

  Many knights sank to their knees in prayer. Others, too exhausted to celebrate, simply bowed their heads and wept.

  “What’s going on
?” Robert looked around.

  “What’s going on …?” I repeated. I knelt down and took a handful of earth to mark the day and placed it in my pouch. Then I hoisted Robert into the air. “You see those hills over there?” I pointed across the channel.

  He nodded.

  “Sharpen your knife, boy… Those are Turk!”

  Chapter 8

  FOR TWO WEEKS we rested outside the gates of Constantinople.

  Such a city I had never seen before in all my life, with its huge glittering domes, hundreds of tall towers, Roman ruins and temples, and streets paved with polished stone. Ten of Paris could have fit within its walls.

  And the people… crowding the massive walls, roaring with cheers. Clad in colorful, lightweight cottons and silks, in hues of crimson and purple I had never seen. Every race was represented. European, black slaves from Africa, yellows from China. And people of no stench. Who bathed and smelled of perfume, dressed up in ornate robes.

  Even the men!

  I had traveled across Europe in my youth and had played most of the large cathedral towns, but never had I seen a place like this! Gold was like tin here. Stalls and markets were crammed with the most exotic goods. I traded for a gilded perfume box to take back home for Sophie. “A relic already!” Nico laughed. New aromas entranced me, cumin and ginger, and there were fruits I had never tasted before: oranges and figs.

  I savored every exotic image, thinking of how I would describe it all to Sophie. We were hailed as heroes and we had [30] fought almost no one. If this was how it would be, I would return both sweet smelling and free!

  Then the knights and nobles rallied us. “Crusaders, you are here for God’s work, not for silver and soap.” We said good-bye to Constantinople, crossing the Bosporus on wooden pontoons.

  At last we stood in the land of the dreaded Turk!

  The first fortresses we encountered were empty and abandoned, towns scorched and plundered dry.

  “The pagan is a coward,” the soldiers mocked. “He hides in his hole like a squirrel.”