The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery (11 page)

“West of town,” said Pantalan. “A quiet place. There’s a family I trust who watch him. He’s … he’s tied to a bed, Theo. I’d hate for anyone else from the Guild to see him like this. That’s not how he would have wanted to be remembered.”

“Does he have lucid moments?”

“Sometimes, but you never know when they are coming. And he won’t talk to me. He only talks to the women, trying to seduce them with his songs. He keeps calling them Adalaïs. They don’t know who he means, of course.”

“With all his madness, he still sings,” mused Theo. Then he looked at me. “But only to women.”

“Oh, no,” I said, my heart sinking. “That would be cruel. Just to find a song?”

“I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “The song may be the key. What did this Adalaïs look like? More important, what did she sound like?”

“A low voice, often harsh in rebuke,” said Pantalan. “About four notes down from your speaking voice, Claudia.”

“Like this?” I asked, shifting my voice down.

“Around there. But not as sweet.”

“Do I look anything like her?”

“The height is right,” he said, regarding me critically. “She was of fairer complexion, and younger back then than you are now.”

“If the room is kept dark, then he might not notice,” suggested Theo. “He wants to see her. His madness will make up the difference. We’ll have to get you back into your old clothes, Duchess.”

“Let me not change until we get there,” I said. “I don’t want people here to see me like that.”

I opened my chest of costumes and dug through them. There, near the bottom, was a dark, green brocaded gown that I used for “The Duchess and Her Forward Fool,” a scene that Theo and I had played many times to great success in taverns and markets while secretly enjoying the truth that underlay it. I had worn similar gowns when I had been a duchess, but none of them survived the fires of Constantinople.

I rolled it up and stuffed it into my pack.

“Lead on,” I said.

We followed through the quarter until we came to its outer wall. Small mountains rose from the sea to our left and continued in a ring around the city. The road we were on cut through farmland, and after about thirty minutes’ walk, Pantalan turned to the right and led us to a small farmhouse and knocked on the door. A woman of perhaps sixty opened it and looked at him silently, then at the rest of us with suspicion. Pantalan nodded, and she jerked her head around to the left. We filed past her and walked to the rear of the house. There was a set of crude wooden steps descending into an earthen cellar. I washed my makeup off and changed.

I heard him before I saw him. Drifting up from the darkness were hoarse fragments of songs, muttered songs, shouted songs, songs of a dozen languages. All of them coarse, obscene, the things sailors sang of what they had done to women or what they would do, given the chance.

And I smelled him before I saw him, for the stench emanating from that hole was foul indeed. Pantalan shrugged as he saw me wrinkle my nose in disgust.

“He’s been tied to a bed,” he reminded me softly. “For several days.”

He took a candle from a shelf and lit it at the cooking fire.

“Put it on that table by the foot of the steps,” he said, handing it to me and pointing down. “There will be just enough light for you to see where he is, and for him to know that there is a woman there.”

“Take Portia out to see the goats,” I said to Helga. “I don’t want her to hear this.”

“But I want to hear—”

“Do as you are told, Apprentice,” said Theo.

She looked stricken, but obeyed.

“Good luck,” said Theo. “Be careful. Remember that sometimes he’s a wolf.”

“All men are wolves some of the time,” I said, and I stepped down into the cellar.

He started whimpering as the candlelight flickered into the gloom. The stench grew stronger and fouler with each step. I placed the candle carefully on the table and stood in front of it so that only my shape could be seen.

“Are you there?” I called softly.

As my eyes adjusted to the change in the light, I made out a man, dressed in what might once have been a splendid yellow-and-black tunic and breeches, now in tatters. He was bound to the bed by ropes around his chest, torso, and legs, his hands tied together and connected to the rope crossing his torso.

His face was slightly crumpled, like an old house that was starting to collapse, and his nose was swollen and red. He may have been handsome once.

“Who are you?” he whispered fearfully.

“Don’t you know me, Peire? It is I, Adalaïs.”

“Adalaïs? Have you come at last?”

“You called me. How could I not?”

Tears ran down the sides of his face to dampen the pallet.

“I have been calling you for so long,” he cried. “Where were you?”

“I have traveled far,” I said. “It was a long journey.”

“Tell me,” he begged. “Is this Hell?”

“If it was Hell, would I be here?” I said, laughing lightly. “Would I be asking you to sing for me again?”

“Sing? Oh, Adalaïs, my Lady Pons, there was a time I would have sung to you forever. But this poor excuse of a voice should not be allowed to pass anywhere near your hearing.”

“Is this how the greatest troubadour alive responds to the request of a lady?” I scolded him. “Do you not believe that I would prefer the slightest croak from you to all the costumed nightingales of the Court of Love?”

“You have shamed me, Domna,” he said, still snuffling. “Of course I will sing for you. But these filthy surroundings—”

“Will be ennobled by your voice,” I said. “What care we where we are, as long as there is music to fill the emptiness? Sing to me, Peire, as you sang to me long ago.”

“What shall I sing?” he muttered, his eyes flickering back in forth. “So many songs. I can hear them all in my head, all sounding at once, like a flock of starlings screeching in a tree by the window. I cannot find just one.”

“Let me name the song, then,” I said.

“Very well, Domna. What will you hear?”

I paused. I didn’t know its name, just the first two lines, and the second only because of Pantalan’s deficient memory.

“There was one I once heard you sing about a lark,” I said.

“I know seventeen different songs about larks,” he said. “I know three songs by actual larks. Shall I sing them all? Two of them are not fit for a lady’s ears.”

“There was one in particular,” I said. “It began, ‘Cold is the hand that crushes the lark.’ Do you remember that one?”

He started shaking his head violently back and forth, struggling against his bonds. “Not that one!” he screamed. “It is cursed. It was not meant for you!”

“Who was it meant for?” I asked.

“One that is dead,” he said.

“Who?”

“I never knew the name,” he said. “But the one who sang it died for it.”

“Who sang it?”

“Some other song, I beg of you, Domna, a million other songs!” he said hurriedly, flecks of spittle appearing on his lips. “I know them all; I know the songs of the animals; I have learned the whistles of the birds, the barking of the dogs, the yowls of the cats, the howls of the wolves. I have heard the stars at night singing to each other. No one but me knows those songs, and I will sing them for you, Domna!”

“I will have no other song but this one,” I said firmly. “If I had known that you would treat me in this ill-mannered fashion, I never would have come. And if you cannot grant me this simple wish, then I will leave you in this dark cave forever.”

“No!” he yelled in panic. “I will sing it. But I don’t know all of it. I heard it but the one time.”

“Who sang it to you?”

“His name was Rafael de la Tour, a street singer I knew from Montpellier, not even a trained voice, but a natural genius. I heard him sing it in a tavern in Saragossa, and I bought him wine and traded him songs.”

“Sing it for me, Peire.”

He closed his eyes, and something shifted behind them. He breathed deeply once, and his body relaxed, the tremors ceasing. Then he breathed again, and a voice like a god’s spread through the darkness and shivered my soul into a thousand shards.

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 the Fates unsparing!

Where lies the voice that made lovers sigh?

And where lies the grace beyond comparing?

He stopped. Time stopped, and I don’t know how long it was before I heard anything else, such was the power of that voice in the darkness. Then the candle spat behind me, the spell was broken, and his eyes fluttered open again.

“I am sorry, Domna,” he said hoarsely. “That is all that I can summon.”

“That was the voice that I remember,” I said softly. “Thank you, Peire. What happened to Rafael?”

“Stabbed in an alley a few days later,” he said. “I never knew who wrote the song, or for what unfortunate lady it was written. Domna?”

“Yes, Peire?”

“A troubadour is paid for his singing.”

“I have gold—”

“No!” he shouted. “No money between us. No payment so cheap as gold. I did wrong to you once, Domna.”

“That is long in the past,” I said.

“The past is never gone, never forgotten,” he said. “I did take from you something that was not mine to take, nor yours to give, and I have been haunted by that sin ever since.”

“Then let me forgive you for that transgression,” I said.

“It can only be forgiven if I return to you what was yours,” he said. “Will you allow me to do that? Will you grant this husk that last favor?”

Somewhere behind me were the men who sent me into this stench-filled darkness. Somewhere up where it was light, and the air was good. I had accomplished the task they had given me. All I had to do was turn away and walk back up the steps, and I would be done.

But I would never forgive myself if I did that.

“Yes, Peire,” I said, coming to him. I leaned down and kissed him on the mouth, and he responded hungrily, pressing hard against my lips.

Suddenly, he stiffened. “You are not her!” he screamed, and suddenly he was gnashing at me, trying to seize my flesh between his teeth. I stumbled backwards and he started howling like a wolf with an arrow through its leg, thrashing against the bonds.

“Who are you?” he shouted. “Some demon sent to torment me? To appear in the guise of she who I hold most dear in the world? What Hell is this?”

All I could think to do was to whistle in the darkness. The Guild password. He caught his breath and was silent. I repeated it.

“Who are you?” he asked again, albeit more calmly.

“Give the counter,” I commanded him.

He licked his lips, then whistled. It was scratchy and weak, but it was the countermelody to the password.

“My Guildname is Claudia,” I said. “Forgive me for this masquerade.”

“Why are you here?” he asked. “Why did you do this to me?”

“Because you are held by some madness,” I said. “Because you are dangerous to us, and to yourself.”

“I don’t, I don’t…,” he started, then he began shaking and gasping. “Where is she? Where is Adalaïs?”

“She died long ago, Peire Vidal,” I said. “And you know this.”

“No, no, she isn’t dead, she lives, you lie!”

“I am so sorry,” I said. “I will pray for your recovery.”

I turned to take the candle from the table.

“Wait,” he said. “Let me see your face. Let me see it in the light.”

I turned to face him from a safe distance, and brought the candle in front of my face. Over the flickering flame, I could see him looking at me intently.

“I don’t know you,” he said.

“No,” I replied.

“But I think,” he began, then he stopped.

“You think what?” I asked.

“I think that I could have fallen in love with you,” he said.

“It would have been an honor,” I said softly. “Good-bye, Peire.”

“The wolves,” he called after me. “The wolves do have their own songs. I know them all.”

I blew out the candle and climbed the stairs.

Theo and Pantalan were sitting against the wall opposite, not meeting my gaze.

“Theophilos,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Never ask me to do anything like that again.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“So. ‘Lady Lark,’ says the song,” I said. “The lark is not Folc, but a woman who died.”

“In Montpellier,” said Theo.

Pantalan raised his hand and pointed west. “That way,” he said. “Four days, five rivers.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Theo.

FIVE

No sai com ni de que chan,

mas quex demanda chanso …

[I do not know how, or about what, to sing,

but everyone demands a song…]

—FOLQUET DE MARSEILLE,
“CHANTARS MI TORN’AD AFAN”
[TRANS., N. M. SCHULMAN]

It was an unhappy band of fools trudging back from the farm. Pantalan was unhappy that we knew about Peire Vidal, Claudia was unhappy about the role that I made her play, I was unhappy that we now had to continue this strange journey to Montpellier, which at least was on the way to Toulouse, but that didn’t matter, because I would have to bring whatever I found there all the way back to Le Thoronet, and Helga was unhappy because she missed hearing everything.

Portia, on the other hand, was extremely happy, not being fool enough to know that she was supposed to be unhappy, and having just made the acquaintance of a very tolerant nanny goat and her very playful and curious kid. She babbled away, occasionally imitating the sounds she had learned from them and breaking immediately into fits of giggling. I supposed, in her way, that she was telling us jokes.

“Where is Montpellier, anyway?” asked Helga sulkily as we passed through the western gate back into Marseille proper.

“That way, four days, five rivers,” we chorused. That started Claudia chuckling, which set the rest of us off, and before we knew it, we were all roaring at the absurdity of our predicament. Portia looked pleased, no doubt believing that she was responsible for a successful punch line.