The Moneylender of Toulouse (7 page)

“You're saying that we can count on you,” I guessed.

He nodded.

“Thank you, Brother Fool,” I said.

He bowed, then sauntered away.

“He does speak,” I observed as we resumed walking. “But only when he has something to say.”

“Which makes him unique among fools,” said Claudia. “Unique among men, for that matter.”

*   *   *

We arrived at the entrance to the courtyard in front of Milon Borsella's house and waited for Helga to emerge.

“We could pay our respects to the family, I suppose,” I said, watching the stream of the sympathetic, the curious and the freeloaders pouring through the main door. “There might be some food left.”

“We don't know her, so it would be rude,” said Claudia. “Besides, I am sure Helga saved us a few choice morsels.”

There was a sudden commotion at the door of the house, then the crowd scattered like chickens as two pairs of men bowled through them, shouting at each other.

“Isn't that the Bishop?” asked Claudia.

“Certainly looks like him,” I said.

The Bishop, with a priest flanking him, was backing fearfully away from a pair of men, one of whom was wearing the black cowl and robe of the Benedictine order. The other, who was older, was wearing a dark red coat trimmed with fur and had some kind of official looking chain dangling from his neck. Despite the tonsure on the monk, the two appeared like enough to be brothers, both in face and build. And the build in each case was impressive—for all the niceties of their costume, they had the burly mien of a pair of tavern brawlers, and the looks on their faces would have been equally at home in that setting.

“Have a care, sinners,” shouted the Bishop. “Show the respect due to my office.”

“Show the respect due to the house of the dead,” the older brother shouted back. “If I catch either of you in here again, miter or no miter, I will horsewhip you out of this courtyard and into the street.”

“And you, my good monk?” snarled the Bishop, looking at the monk. “Do you join in your brother's perfidy?”

“I won't bother with the horsewhip,” said the monk, pounding his fist into his palm. “Get out, and take your lackey with you.”

He took a step toward the Bishop, but the priest glided in between them, his hands up, palms outward.

“No need for this,” he said placatingly. “The embarrassment is sufficient for the day. Come, Your Holiness.”

With that, he took the Bishop by the elbow and escorted him from the courtyard. By the time they passed through the gate to the street, the Bishop had regained his composure and assembled his face into the proper expression of ecclesiastic dignity.

As they passed us, the priest glanced for a moment in our direction, then back to his master. He stayed a step behind the Bishop, his hands folded and covered by the voluminous sleeves of his black robes, the very picture of humble obedience. I wondered if he, like me, kept a dagger up his sleeve, just in case.

“If this sort of thing happens often, then we will have quite a lot of competition for entertainment,” observed Claudia.

“They didn't even collect from the crowd,” I noted. “Amateurs.”

The battling brothers watched their adversaries retreat with smug satisfaction, then turned and went back inside. As they did, Helga emerged from the house, bowing to them as she did.

“Helga, come play with us!” cried a girl with a group of children in the courtyard.

Helga look toward the gate, saw us, and shook her head.

“I can't,” she replied. “My parents are here.”

There were groans of disappointment from the children, and Helga trudged toward us, her head down.

“She can come back tomorrow,” I called, and the children cheered.

Helga grinned at us as she reached the gate.

“Did you see the fight?” she asked excitedly.

“We saw a great deal of masculine posturing,” said Claudia. “No actual blows.”

“That would have been so funny,” said Helga wistfully. “All those holy costumes getting torn and shredded while they rolled through the dirt.”

“What started it?” I asked as we walked back home.

“I was helping serve the guests,” said Helga. “They put me in an apron and handed me a pitcher of wine, so I walked around and filled every cup I could see. Béatrix, the new widow, was in the main parlor, and the two brothers were standing by her.”

“Those were Milon's brothers we saw?”

“Right, Vitalis and Bonet. Anyhow, the Bishop was announced, and that surprised the brothers. They actually whispered to each other for a minute before they let the Bishop come in.”

“Why would a condolence call from the Bishop be so surprising?” wondered Claudia.

“It's not his local parish,” I said. “Everything in the bourg is under the dominion of Saint Sernin. You would expect the parish priest from the Taur, even the abbot from Saint Sernin, but not the Bishop of Toulouse.”

“I think that's what surprised them,” said Helga. “So, in comes His Holiness, making a very grand benediction that took forever. I had to go refill my pitcher, so I slipped out. Then I saw that priest slip off into another room.”

“Had he come into the parlor with the Bishop?”

“No, and that made me suspicious,” said Helga. “I think he's the same priest we saw on Sunday when Milon had the argument with the Bishop.”

“Interesting,” I said. “What was this room?”

“I peeked through the door. It looked like it was an office where Milon conducted business. There were a lot of ledger books and papers stacked around. This priest was going through them like a burglar. I thought that since I was now a loyal servant of the household, I had better tell someone. So, I went and told the cook, and she ran and got Evrard, who's the keykeeper, and he went and told the Borsella brothers, and they came pounding into the office, screaming at the priest.”

“What was he looking for?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Bonet sees that there is a drawer open in the desk, and he looks in and starts yelling, ‘It's gone! What have you done with the book?' And the priest starts saying, ‘What book? What are you talking about?' And the two brothers grab him and flip him over so that his robe falls all around his head.”

She started giggling.

“He has the scrawniest legs,” she said. “Good thing he's a priest and you don't have to see them. So, he's hollering, and the two brothers are searching him and yelling, ‘Where is it?' and then the Bishop comes in and yells at them to stop, and they drop the priest on his head because they had finished searching him and whatever they were looking for, he didn't have it. So, the priest gets back up and dusts himself off, then he looks at the Bishop and shakes his head, and that sets the brothers off again, and they start shoving the priest around, and the Bishop is shouting at them to stop, and that's when things got out of hand and spilled out of the house.”

“So the Bishop was creating a diversion for his holy burglar,” I mused. “Nice plan, thwarted by a pesky little apprentice fool. Did you get a good look at the drawer where this mysterious book came from?”

“Of course,” she said proudly. “It was a small drawer, and it had a lock on it.”

“But it was open,” I said.

“Yes, and it didn't look forced,” she said.

“Either someone picked the lock, or someone had a key,” said Claudia. “Would Borsella's keykeeper have one?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But for a desk drawer in his private office? That sounds like something Borsella would keep to himself.”

“That could be what he was killed for,” said Claudia. “To get the key to get the book.”

“The key for the book, and the book is the key,” I agreed. “But the key to what? And why would the Bishop want to steal the book? If it contained a record of his debt to Borsella, then stealing the book wouldn't erase the debt. And most debts, while embarrassing, are not worth killing for.”

“Even for a bishop?” asked Helga.

“Especially for a bishop,” I said.

*   *   *

We got up at the unfoolish dawn so that we could get decent seats at the assizes. For all that, there was a good-sized crowd of the curious and the unoccupied waiting at the gates of the Château Narbonnais. A guard let them in in groups of ten, his lips moving as he counted.

The château was actually a group of connected buildings, holding the courts, the consulate, and the Count's residence. Three towers dominated the rest of the complex. The Tower of the Eagle and the Round Tower flanked the gate through which we passed, while the Grand Tower, presumably the bastion of last resort, was set back in the interior. Crenelated walls, maybe twenty-five feet in height, enclosed the rest.

“What's interesting about this place is that it seems intended more to withstand an attack from within the city than it is to defend it from without,” I observed. “That says something for the confidence of the counts over the years.”

“Some of those walls look ancient,” said Claudia.

“They say one section goes back to when Julius Caesar conquered Gaul,” I said.

“He should have stayed here,” said Claudia. “It's much nicer than Rome.”

The Palace of Justice contained both the courts of assizes and appeals. The benches in the courtroom were set up rectangularly so that everyone was faced toward the center of the room. A coffin holding the late Milon Borsella rested on a pair of trestles.

Jordan was already inside, and waved us over to a section of empty bench beside him. We squeezed in, Helga sitting on my lap.

“Thanks,” I said. “I didn't expect to see you here.”

“It's the major gossip in town,” he said. “I need to keep up. Besides, you've aroused my curiosity. Look, there's Calvet coming in. Ah, and there's the family. We should be starting soon.”

The Borsella brothers entered, the widow Béatrix between them. She was in black and veiled, leaning on Bonet for support. We all stood in respect until they sat down on a front bench directly by the coffin. Béatrix took a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to her mouth.

“By the door,” whispered Helga.

A priest was entering as the crowd settled back into their seats. He took a bench by the far wall, pulling his cowl down. It was the first time that I got a good look at his face, which was slightly reminiscent of a greyhound, but he was the one who had been with the Bishop.

“The priest by the door,” I murmured to Jordan. “Know him?”

“Father Mascaron,” replied Jordan. “The Bishop's right-hand man. Why?”

“He and the surviving Borsella brothers nearly came to blows in public yesterday.”

“No!” exclaimed Jordan, and people turned to shush him.

A pair of guards holding halberds took up position on either side of the coffin, then thumped the floor for silence.

“In the name of Raimon the Sixth, Count of Toulouse, I open these proceedings,” said Calvet, standing by the coffin. “An inquiry into the death of Milon Borsella. Who found him?”

“I did,” said a man wearing mail over a leather coat, an iron hat plopped atop a thick, round head.

“Approach and give your name,” said the baile.

“Stephen de Villanova,” said the man. “Member of the nightwatch.”

“Take the oath,” ordered the baile, and the soldier was sworn in. “Report.”

“I was making my rounds, walking along the canal, making sure no one had fallen in, which is what I usually have to do,” began de Villanova. “There are taverns near the Bazacle, and those coming home can't always tell the path from the water, or go off the path to relieve themselves, so I'm half the night hauling them out and pointing in the right direction.”

“Shouldn't you be locking them up?” asked the baile.

“Not enough jails in Toulouse for all the drunks out after gates close,” said the soldier, and there was a quiet, amused murmur of agreement from the room.

“Fair enough,” said the baile. “Continue.”

“Well, right around dawn breaking, I heard a splash off to my left, and I thought, here we go again,” said de Villanova. “Then I realized it wasn't from the canal, and I hurried, because I figured someone went into one of the tanning pits, and that could blind a man if he doesn't get help. But there were a lot of pits to check, and it wasn't until I got to the fourth one that I saw him.”

“How did he appear?” asked the baile.

“He was floating face down,” said the soldier. “I could see he was dead right away. The back of his head was caved in, you can see it right here.”

“And you didn't try and remove him?”

“Not if he was dead,” said the soldier. “I sounded my horn and waited for help. We kept everything as it was until we found you, Senhor.”

“When you first saw him, did you see blood?” asked the baile.

“Back of his head was covered in it,” said the soldier, and there was a brief sob from Béatrix. “Begging your pardon, Domina. The waters in the pit washed it away by the time he was pulled out.”

“And you heard no outcry?” asked the baile. “No blow being struck? No one fleeing into the night?”

“No, no, and no, Senhor,” said the soldier. “Whoever did it was a quiet one. Might have been watching me the whole time, for all I know.”

“If he was floating facedown, how did you know it was Milon Borsella?” asked the baile.

“That's what I wanted to know,” muttered my wife.

“I knew him,” said the soldier. “I recognized his clothes. And I saw him walking the other way early evening, when I was beginning my rounds.”

“Was it unusual for him to be out in your vicinity?”

“Oh, no, your honor,” said the soldier. “He lives in the bourg, not too far away, and, like I said, there are taverns out the other way. Begging your pardon again, Domina, but he liked his taverns.”