[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal Page 14

  “No saddle, no carrots,” I reminded him once I was able to inhale again.

  Having made his point, he settled down, and I was able to get the saddle in place and cinch it firmly. I vaulted over the gate before he could bring his teeth into play, and gave him two more carrots.

  “As you can see, I am a man of my word,” I said. “Now, let’s put on a show for the stable boys.”

  I stuffed the rest of the carrots into my pouch and grabbed his reins. When I opened the gates, the stable boys, who had been watching from a safe distance, scattered. I led Zeus out to the field where a few other horses were being exercised. Even they stopped when they saw Zeus.

  “Any last words?” one of the riders called.

  I thumped my chest in salute, then climbed up.

  He had this nasty habit of lurching forward before I could get my other foot into the stirrup. I pulled back hard on the reins before he could launch into a full gallop, and managed to locate the stirrup with my free foot as it swung wildly. He reared, and I gripped hard with my knees until he came down again. I secured my foot, then leaned forward.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I whispered.

  The next thing I knew, we were at the other end of the field. I prepared myself for the inevitable leap over the fence, but he stopped abruptly, nearly catapulting me over his withers. I thudded into his neck instead, jarring my teeth together.

  “That was new,” I muttered. “Good one. Now, let’s see how fast—“

  He was off again, veering so perilously close to the fence that I feared for my leggings. And my leg. I urged him away, and he made the turn without colliding with anything and continued on. I got a brief glimpse of the grooms watching from the other side of the fence, coins changing hands. Then I was off to the races again.

  We made five more laps before he deigned to be reined in again. I wasn’t aware that I had been screaming until I ran out of the wind needed to sustain it. He was barely breathing hard. I had sweated through my motley, and didn’t even want to know the condition of my whiteface at this point. When I finally brought him to a halt by the stables, the collected group applauded. I dismounted and signaled to the stable boy who had first greeted me.

  “Enough entertainment for one day, I hope,” I said, handing him the reins. “Oh. Wait.”

  I took the rest of the carrots, gave one to Zeus and the rest to the boy.

  “Make sure he gets all of them, and a bucket of water to cool him down,” I said, tossing the boy a penny.

  “Would you like one for yourself?” he asked. “You smell worse than he does right now.”

  “Get on with you,” I growled.

  One of the exercise riders, a wiry young man with a nose that had been broken more than once, came up to me and shook my hand heartily. “Thank you,” he said.

  “For the entertainment?” I asked.

  “That, and for making me enough money to last a month,” he said. “I won the pool.”

  “And what was the subject of this wager?”

  “How long you would stay on,” he said. “I took the position that you would not be unhorsed at all.”

  “I am not sure I would have bet on that outcome myself,” I said.

  “I’ve seen you ride him before,” he said. “You’re quite the horseman.”

  “It helps that I had training as an acrobat,” I said. “When I was your age, I could have ridden him standing on his back, playing my lute, and singing a chivalrous song.”

  “We could set that up as a bet,” he said, brightening.

  “The key phrase in that brag was ‘when I was your age,’” I pointed out. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Then we should come up with a challenge more suitable to your declining years,” he declared.

  “My years and I decline your kind offer, thank you,” I said. “Do you often set up these strange betting opportunities?”

  “I have bet on horses, donkeys, ducks, turtles, and cockroaches,” he said. “I have bet on twigs floating down the Garonne, how many monks will fall asleep during a sermon, and whether or not a man will swing after Assizes. If I had been on the Ark with Noah, I would have made my fortune off his three sons betting on which day we would have found land.”

  “Surely that was God’s decision, not a random date,” I said.

  “I believe that God is a gambler,” he said. “What else can explain the randomness of our fates but the vicissitudes of chance?”

  “You have thought about this deeply,” I said. “You should teach.”

  “Anyone who bets with me will learn a lesson,” he said modestly. “Care to try?”

  “As a fool, I fear any man with greater knowledge, which is to say, all of them,” I said. “Besides, if I was to bet on anything, it would be on the roll of a pair of dice.”

  “I spent many happy years in unlit alleyways relieving drunks of their wages by means of those treacherous cubes,” he said. “I have never seen you participating.”

  “I came to town only six months ago,” I said. “I promised my wife for last year’s resolution that I would stay on God’s path. But it’s a new year, and I don’t see the harm of one little game. I heard there’s a fellow named Higini who runs one around here.”

  “Higini?” he said in surprise. “I thought you were interested in gambling.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “Higini’s game is not a gamble,” he said. “Higini’s game is a complex mechanism for taking away Paradise without any hope of redemption. It is a trap for the unwary and the simple-minded.”

  “You could not have described me any better if you had been my own mother,” I said. “Higini, it is. Take me to him, if you’d be of a mind.”

  “I bear no ill will toward you, good Fool,” he said. “May I not take you instead to a true game of chance?”

  “No, though I thank you for your charitable impulse,” I said. “I will have Higini, and no other. Guide me to him, if you are truly grateful for the money you have made wagering on my death and dismemberment today.”

  “My gratitude is to God, the Great Gambler,” he said piously. “He who kept you in the saddle and me in silver.”

  “Then it is God’s will that we meet, and that you lead me to my next station,” I said.

  “There may be something in that,” he conceded. “Very well. Fool. Follow me.”

  There were several stables in that section of Saint Cyprien, built with no particular regard for order. My new guide led me through them like a bee through a hive, shouting out greetings and friendly insults to ostlers, smiths, grooms, and stable boys without missing a step. I was treated to the sights and smells on this little tour. The sights were fine, if you have an eye for horses. The smells were those you get when you have an eye for horses: mounds of hay being piled into lofts, waiting to be gulped up by equine mouths; heaps of dung being piled into wagons, the end product of hay and horse; burning charcoal from the blacksmiths, a smell that never failed to remind me of a man I once encountered in— but I have told that story before.

  Many of the stable boys and grooms seemed to live here. I doubted that any of them had ever seen the inside of a church since baptism. Based on their appearances, that may have been the last time any of them had been bathed as well. There were sudden turns into narrow alleyways that then opened up into unexpected enclaves where women nursed infants or stirred bubbling pots over small fires. They looked at me in my motley and whiteface curiously, even fearfully. I made my usual funny expressions to the children to no avail.

  My guide took one last turn, and I was in an alley that led to a dead end. He turned to me and held out his arms in triumph. I became very aware of the sounds around me, wondering if I had been set up for an attack.

  “We have arrived,” he said.

  “And Higini?”

  “He is here.”

  I looked behind me at the alley, then up at the stable walls around me, then back at my guide, who was grinning like an idiot.

&nbs
p; “You are Higini?” I asked.

  “At your service,” he said, bowing low. As he did, a pair of white dice rolled into his hand from his sleeve.

  “Where is the rest of the game?”

  “The game is wherever I am, and it is up to those who wish to play to seek me out.”

  I looked at him more closely. His face was smooth, as though no hair had ever pushed up through its surface. His fingers were long and supple, and he rolled the two dice between his knuckles like a conjurer. His smile was guileless and welcoming. His eyes showed nothing.

  He may have been the most devious man I had ever met in my life, and I doubted that he was more than twenty-two.

  “Let me show you my arena, Fool,” he said, and he pointed to his feet.

  While the rest of the alleyway was dirt, there was a section of hard clay laid down there, about nine feet square and tamped smooth.

  “Even ground for an even match,” he said.

  “Which, according to you, cannot be possible.”

  “There are more honest games in town,” he said. “But those who come to Higini come thinking they can outfox the fox. What is your game, Fool?”

  “I came to help one who thought he could outfox you,” I said. “I want to pay off his debt.”

  “Noble,” he said. “Who is the man?”

  “Sancho, of the count’s guard.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “Why else would I be here?”

  “Because you like the challenge of facing the fox,” he said. “You are a fox yourself. Sancho was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Higini fleeced the sheep, then skinned the wolf.”

  “How much to redeem his two coats?”

  “It cannot be done,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Higini sold Sancho’s debts to another.”

  “Wonderful,” I sighed. “I thought myself on a simple errand of charity, and it has turned into a epic quest. Who now owns Sancho’s debts?”

  “Why should Higini tell you?” he asked. “What does Higini care for a soldier of misfortune?”

  “Would a coin or two help?”

  “Higini has already been paid by the master of debts. Higini’s discretion was part of the bargain.”

  “Commendable,” I said. “And I know where this ends. We roll for it.”

  “You truly are a fool,” he said.

  “I brought my own dice,” I said, producing them from my pouch.

  He laughed.

  “Higini has seen fools before,” he said. “Pelardit has come to the heart of the stables to perform for us. He is a master of sleight of hand, so fast and so adept that not even Higini can spot the pass. And Pelardit defers to you.”

  “Pelardit is the master in that respect,” I said. “But I am not without skills. Nor is Higini, I expect.”

  He sat cross-legged at one edge of the clay surface and placed his dice down at the edge. When he lifted his hand back up, there were two sets. He passed his other hand over, and there were now four pairs. He waved again, and they had changed from white to red.

  “All crooked in some fashion or other,” I said, applauding.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe yours are as well. Now, what can you offer Higini for your stake in this contest?”

  “If you will not take money, perhaps a performance?”

  “Higini can see you in any tavern he wishes, working hard for the price of a tankard of ale.”

  “That’s just the tavern routine. You haven’t seen the material I save for the lords.”

  “Do you fart in a richer, more noble tone when you play for them?”

  “Oh, you saw that routine. What else may I wager?”

  “Your motley,” he decided.

  “What? This is my only pair. And I need it to make my living.”

  “Your mission to save your friend is not worth so much as a suit of patches? For shame, Fool.”

  This was becoming serious. I couldn’t bet my motley against a cheat to gain a small piece of information for an investigation that may have been senseless from the beginning.

  Only a fool would do such a thing.

  “You’re on,” I said.

  “Well done,” he said. “Now, we shall roll.”

  “Wait a second. Using whose dice?”

  “I will use mine, you will use yours,” he proposed. “High number wins.”

  “But I don’t trust your dice.”

  “And I don’t trust yours. Are we at a standstill?”

  I thought for a moment, then sat opposite him and put my dice forward.

  “Select a pair of yours,” I said. “Then I shall take one from that pair, and you will take one from mine. We will each roll a mixed pair, and that will make it at least half a random outcome.”

  He lit up, the smile reaching his eyes for the first time. “You are a clever fool,” he said. “Higini accepts.”

  He looked at his dice, selected one pair, and placed them by mine.

  “And to keep things clear, place all those other dice in that corner where I can see them,” I said.

  “Done,” he said, moving them. “And you roll up the sleeves of your motley, soon to be Higini’s. I will do the same.” I complied. His eyes widened when he saw the two daggers strapped to my forearms. I shrugged.

  “I do a knife-throwing act as well,” I said. “Let us now hold out our hands, fingers spread, and turn them slowly.” We watched each other’s hands like hawks would a scurrying mouse, then placed them on the clay surface.

  “You are my guest,” said Higini. “You may choose first.”

  I took one of his dice. He took one of mine. Then we picked up our remaining cubes.

  “We throw together,” he said. “One, two …”

  * * *

  “You smell like a sweaty horse,” said my wife as we snuggled together later in bed.

  “I almost came home naked tonight,” I said.

  “Who was the wench?” she demanded immediately. “Give me my rival’s name, so that I may curse it properly as I strangle her.”

  “No wench,” I said. “Merely a talented young cheat whom I tempted with a rare moment of fairness.”

  “Explain?”

  I told her of Higini and the maze through which he led me.

  “But how did you beat him?” she asked.

  “I beat him when I gave him an opportunity to gamble for real stakes,” I said. “His discretion against my profession. I reminded him of the true thrill of the wager, the joy of the dice. The reason he became a gambler in the first place.”

  “And the dice came up favoring you?”

  “Fool’s luck.”

  “I see,” she said. “I suspect that he was not the only one in that alleyway who lives for the gamble.”

  “I am not like him.”

  “No. You gamble with your life. Which, I must remind you, is also mine. Please take better care of it.”

  “I haven’t risked our lives much lately.”

  “In the last few days, you’ve been off to a bordel, and when I deprived you of that, you turn around and go to a gambling den.”

  “Best investigation I’ve ever had,” I agreed.

  “Did you become this degenerate recently, or were you like this all the time, and I was too blinded by love to notice?”

  “I became degenerate only when I married you,” I said. “Likewise,” she purred. “Anyhow, you won. What did you find out? Who purchased Sancho’s debts?”

  “The Count of Foix,” I said.

  Chapter 9

  You go to sleep with a man who smells like a horse, you wake up smelling like a horse yourself,” I grumbled to Helga the next morning.

  “You said ‘horse’?” asked Helga uncertainly.

  Theo was still asleep upstairs, his snores shaking the rafters. I was attempting to feed Portia, who had decided that her oatmeal was some type of sculpting material.

  “Your lord and master decided to follow his nose yesterday,” I told her.<
br />
  “And he smelled horses?”

  “He was looking for the gambler who had ensnared Sancho,” I explained. “An infamous runner of moving games with fixed outcomes.”

  “Oh, Higini,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Are you truly a twelve-year-old girl?” I asked, glaring at her. “Or are you some ancient malevolent demon who prowls the dark corners of the human soul?”

  “You’ve already told me that there is no difference,” she said.

  “Apparently not,” I replied.

  “I’m going to be thirteen in June,” she said cheerfully. “The world trembles in fear,” I said. “How did you know about Higini?”

  “I go to the stables to visit Zeus,” she said.

  “And the stable boys?”

  She smiled dreamily, then shook herself. “Stable boys?” she asked innocently. “Anyhow, I heard all about Higini. I hope Theo isn’t going to match dice with him.”

  “He already has.”

  “Oh, no!” she cried, her face falling. “What have we lost?”

  “He won.”

  “He beat Higini at his own game?” she exclaimed.

  Her face was as awed as if she had seen a vision of the Virgin Mother appear in Portia’s oatmeal. As a matter of fact, the shape Portia had fashioned in it did bear a passing resemblance.

  “Did any of that actually get into your little belly?” I asked my daughter.

  Portia thought seriously for a moment, then nodded.

  “That is a lie,” I informed her, and she looked at me guiltily.

  I looked at the mess that my daughter had made, and the larger mess that was my daughter, and the largest mess that pretended to be my daughter.

  “I think that we are all due for a bath,” I said.

  “But it’s only Wednesday,” protested Helga.

  “Come on,” I said, scooping up the baby. “I smell like a horse, and Portia smells like oatmeal.”

  “What do I smell like?” asked Helga.

  “Fire and brimstone,” I said. “We must wash you clean and douse you in holy water before you may pass safely amongst the citizens of Toulouse.”

  There was a women’s bathhouse in the Comminges quarter, patronized, or rather matronized, by those who stayed nearby. This meant that one’s bathing partners were most likely to be pilgrims or prostitutes. Or both, occasionally—I had met many a fallen woman on her way to Compostela to gain absolution for her many sins, and not a few pilgrims who fell from grace in Toulouse after making a pragmatic if desperate choice to fund the rest of the journey.