Widow of Jerusalem: A Medieval Mystery Page 2

  She stuck her feet in my lap. I grasped her ankles tightly, and she began to crawl down the roof. Then she looked back at me.

  “Another question, husband?”

  “Yes?”

  “After you lower me from the roof, what is it that I am supposed to do?”

  ‘’Do you see the sign over the tavern door?”

  She glanced down.

  “I see it.”

  “Remove it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we go back to the hut.”

  She slithered back up toward me, her face a mask of anger and bewilderment.

  “Do you mean to say that you are risking both of our deaths, or at the very least imprisonment and separation from our daughter, to steal a sign?” she hissed.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  She smoldered for a moment, but thankfully did not catch fire.

  “All right, lower away,” she sighed, placing her feet back in my lap.

  We inched carefully down the roof until we were at its edge. Some martial drinking song was being bellowed out by the customers inside. I dangled my wife headfirst over the entrance and lowered her, bracing my feet against the edge.

  The sign was a broad, painted wooden plank suspended on a pair of hooks, which made it easy to remove. Claudia took it and tucked it under her arm. I was about to haul her back up when the door swung open and a particularly tall and extremely drunk soldier walked out and came face to face with her.

  Of course, the face he faced was upside down and painted white. He blinked. She blew him a kiss with one hand, and with the other whacked him on top of his head with the sign. He stumbled back into the tavern. I pulled her back up, and we scrambled over the roof to the rear of the tavern.

  We could hear a commotion inside, then the sound of the front door opening.

  “It was a ghost, I tell you,” shouted my wife’s victim. “Floating in air right here.”

  “A ghost, eh?” said someone else. “What did it look like?”

  “It was a woman,” said the soldier. “She was upside down. But I think she was pretty. She tried to kiss me.”

  There was a roar of laughter at this.

  “You see,” I said as we ran through the fields. “You’re in town only a couple of minutes, and already you’ve become a legend.”

  “You, on the other hand, may become a ghost if you don’t come up with a good reason why we did this,” she said. “I can’t even see what’s on the sign. There’s no moon tonight.”

  “Give it a night’s rest, my love,” I implored her. “I’ll tell you on the morrow.”

  We went over the fence and stumbled through the woods until we found the hut. Niccolo was inside, bouncing Portia on his knee. She looked at him with devotion.

  “Thank Christ,” he muttered when we came in. “This child does not want to sleep.”

  “Give her over,” commanded Claudia, and soon the baby was fed and out.

  “Did you get it?” asked Niccolo.

  I held up the sign.

  He shook his head. “You’re insane,” he muttered. “And she’s crazy. It’s a match made in heaven.”

  “You know why I can’t leave it behind,” I said.

  “I know, I know,” he replied. “I’m sorry we forgot about it. I should have known you would do something like this. But at least you got away with it. Now, get some sleep. You should be on the road at sunrise.”

  * * *

  The next morning, a merchant family emerged from the forest.

  “Which way do we go now?” asked Claudia, as Portia began babbling at everything in sight.

  “Back across the Adige river, then we follow the road north through the Alps until we reach Innsbruck.”

  “We’re going to Austria?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I suppose we’d better speak German to Portia.”

  “No, let’s stick with Tuscan. We’ll only use German when we need to. It’s such an ugly language. I’d hate to hear it coming out of a baby.” We rode on. When the sun was a little higher, Claudia picked the sign out of her saddlebag and held it in front of her for examination. Portia immediately tried to grab it, pointing excitedly at the painting on it. It was of a litde man, dressed in scarlet, juggling three tankards of beer and grinning merrily.

  “So that’s the Scarlet Dwarf,” she observed. “Why is it so important to you?”

  “It’s a long story,” I replied. “One with intrigue and ambition, love fulfilled and love unrequited, the ignominious deaths of the high and mighty as well as the low and forgotten, the reasons for which are known to but a few.”

  She put the sign back in her saddlebag.

  “Nothing like a long ride for a long story,” she said. “And you know how Portia loves to hear you talk.”

  “Very well then,” I said. “It was in the summer 1191, after the recapture of Acre by the Crusaders, that I first met a dwarf called Scarlet. It was a day filled with screams.”

  Two

  The reason that I’m here to-night No one here can help but know, Plain to all discerning sight: Didn ’t grow.

  WILL CARLETON, “THE FESTIVAL OF THE FREAKS: THE DWARF’S RESPONSE”

  There was a tavern.

  There’s always a tavern in your stories, remarked my wife.

  There is always a tavern, a place where fools gather after dark, after their patrons have passed out in their palaces, exhausted from an evening of carousing and arousal, fuelled by folly and doused by wine. When the normal people drift off, dreaming fitfully of the terrors that await them when they are once again sober, the fools slip away, pallid in the darkness, the moonlight reflecting off their white faces. Nodding familiarly at the night watch, they pad warily past the vagabonds settling down in the narrow alleys, seeking out the one tavern that never closes, with the tapster who welcomes any with a coin without asking how the coin was obtained, although not without assaying its true worth, inserting it between howsoever many teeth as are still available.

  A tavern where God and the Devil, walking the cold earth in disguise, may meet by chance, see through each other’s camouflage, and yet still sit down for a drink on neutral territory, eventually exchanging maudlin reminiscences about the old days before things all went so horribly wrong.

  The tavern in this oft-conquered hellhole called Acre didn’t even have a name. Tucked back in an unpromising dead end of an alleyway near the idle mill in the center of town, it had somehow kept going during the recent siege, running on a secret reserve of wine in the cellar while the populace slowly starved around it. The price of a drink there was at a fine balance between affordable and exorbitant, the tapster keenly attuned to the ever-shifting market. But on this mid-August day, I didn’t care what I had to pay as I staggered across the baked earth outside the city walls.

  I wanted a drink. I wanted one so badly that I would have paid with my own blood if that was the going rate.

  I passed through what was left of the gate at what was left of the Turris Maledicta, both having taken the brunt of the French catapults and the English sappers during the recent siege. The wreck of the massive war machine that the troops had nicknamed Bad Neighbor was still there, a monument to its owners and a testament to the greater accuracy of Bad Kinsman, the Turkish counterpart that did it in. I headed west into the city until I found the entrance to the alley. Out past the seawalls, the sun was setting. As I came up to the tavern door, I heard music—singing and lutes, the sounds that would normally have me reaching for my own instrument without a second thought.

  I entered the room and waited for my eyes to adjust. Only a single candle spat its light into the unreceptive gloom. The tapster, an ancient Syrian with a wine-stained beard down to his waist, stood in front of a shelf holding buckets of viscous liquid that he would ladle into earthenware cups that may have been washed once in their existence.

  Off in the darkest corner of the room, I glimpsed a pair of faces, eyes closed and mouths open. Perfect harmony emerged, so beautiful that the rest of the imbibers sat in absolute silence, not daring even to breathe loudly while it persisted. “The Lay of Charlemagne,” a song of noble warriors and conquest, sung by a troubadour and a jester.

  I should say a troubadour and a jongleur. Ambroise was from Evreux, and insisted that jongleur was the proper term. He was about my age, but had been a fool much longer, having started training as a child of six. He had black, greasy hair that he plaited unevenly in back, and he generally smelled of yesterday’s meal and last week’s drunk. Yet, for all that, he had a good voice and a nice touch on the lute.

  The troubadour was Blondel, a golden-haired youth so impressed with his beauty that he must have been surprised he didn’t illuminate the room by himself. He had ingratiated his way into the Lionhearted’s inner circle, perhaps even his bedchamber if rumors were to be believed. His conquests of both sexes were legendary for such a young life. Even now, he was turning his long lashes toward Ambroise so seductively that everyone in the room could not help but feel jealous of the greasy fool. But I knew it was part of the act, the twin poles of beauty and coarseness, the contrast making the harmony more miraculous as a result.

  They finished, and the room burst into applause, which they acknowledged with noble nods. Gradually, the clapping died down, except for one pair of hands that kept on, slowly, methodically, ever louder. They looked at me in surprise as I walked toward their table, continuing the clapping until I sat across from them.

  “Bravo, fellow fools,” I said. “A beautiful performance. A breath of fresh air in a room that needs one badly.”

  “Hello, Theo,” said Ambroise. “We were wondering when you would show up. Thought you’d be joining us for lunch.”

  “Something came u
p,” I said. “A distraction.”

  “Well, still time to join us,” said Blondel.

  “Did you bring that report?” asked Ambroise.

  I handed him a sheaf of papers from inside my tunic. He took it and squinted at it in the uncertain light.

  “I suppose it will have to do,” he muttered, “You could at least have put it into verse.”

  “Something for you to do on the voyage home,” I said. “If you ever leave this place.”

  “As for that, we’ll all be leaving soon, I should think,” said Ambroise.

  “Thanks to us,” added Blondel. “Now that you’re here, you can drink to our recent success.”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “What success are you talking about?”

  “The truce,” replied Ambroise. “Don’t be dense, Theo. You’ve been right in the thick of things. But we were the ones who prevailed upon Richard to make the deal with Saladin. It’s all worked out beautifully. Richard received the first installment on the money yesterday. Just a few more weeks, and everything will settle down and we can all go home again.”

  “And he gave some to us!” chortled Blondel. “So, you’ll be drinking on our coin tonight. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It certainly is,” I said. “Congratulations. I would be happy to drink to your success. There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?” asked Ambroise.

  “You haven’t had any,” I said.

  They looked at each other, amused.

  “Now, Theo,” Ambroise admonished me. “We know that you’ve been in the middle of everything working your lute off while we’ve been languishing in the royal retinue, but we have done our share for the Guild. There’s no need to be bitter.”

  “You’ve been in here all day, haven’t you?” I said.

  “Of course,” answered Blondel. “A well-earned respite. It’s work influencing a king as strong as the Lionhearted. Many long, hard nights.” He nudged Ambroise, who chuckled.

  “Listen,” I said, holding up my hand.

  They stopped, Ambroise tilting his head to the side.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he said after a few seconds.

  “Nor do I,” said Blondel.

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “There are too many walls around here to hear what’s happening outside the city. And the noise has stopped, anyway.”

  “Noise? What noise?” asked Blondel.

  “The screaming,” I said.

  “What screaming?” demanded Ambroise. “Was there an attack? I heard no alarum being raised.”

  “There was no alarum,” I said. “But this treaty wasn’t quite as solid as you said it was. The payment from Saladin wasn’t enough for the Lionhearted. He had asked for the return of that chunk of wood that everyone thinks is the True Cross. He didn’t get it. He was supposed to return the Saracen prisoners as part of this deal, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” answered Blondel. “What about them?”

  “That was the screaming,” I said. “The prisoners. The English took them outside the walls where the other army could see them. Then they took them, row by row, and slaughtered them. Axes, mostly, but some swords and spears. They just cut them down where they stood and brought the next line in. Didn’t waste any arrows. Good old English efficiency, but there were so many that it took the better part of the morning to kill all of the men.”

  “All of them?” gasped Blondel, turning pale.

  “Well, I think they kept the wealthiest ones alive, the ones who might still bring a ransom. Always better to be rich, isn’t it? So, they killed all the men first, broke for a quick meal, then started on the women. Same thing, only they raped a few of them first. The Turks attacked somewhere along all of this, but they were too few and were driven away. And then came the children. I couldn’t help thinking what it would be like to be a child, to watch your father hewed down in front of you while his hands are tied behind his back, then your mother the same way, then to be dragged over to their corpses and see the monster whose language you can’t understand raise his axe and even if you did try and plead for your life—“

  “Stop it!” shouted Ambroise. “This couldn’t be happening. Richard said—“

  “He says a lot of things,” I said. “He told his soldiers to kill them this morning. Sorry I wasn’t in the inner circle. If I was, I might have tried to stop him. But thank goodness you’re both part of it. How useful to the Guild you are! What were there, three thousand hostages?”

  “Twenty-seven hundred,” whispered Blondel.

  “My error,” I said. “Well, then I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Forgive me for interrupting your celebration. You didn’t hear it. The screaming, I mean. Probably drowned it out yourselves, with all of that beautiful noise you made. I heard it. Couldn’t do anything to stop it, of course. I’m just a fool. I think I might still hear it. There was this one high-pitched cry that—”

  They rushed out the door, heading back to their lord and master.

  Bad planning on my part, I thought. I should have at least waited for them to buy me a drink.

  “I’ll get some wine,” said a voice below my right elbow.

  I looked around uncertainly.

  “Odd,” I said to the air. “There’s a voice inside my head that often says that exact phrase. But this voice isn’t inside my head. And it’s a different voice.”

  “Down here,” said the voice. I looked, and saw a dwarf sitting on a three-legged stool by the table. I leaned down to peer at him but could not discern his features.

  “Stultorum numerus,” he muttered softly.

  “Infinitus est,” I responded, completing the password. I held out my hand. “Theophilos.”

  “Scarlet,” he replied, grasping it. “I’m the Chief Fool of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.”

  “Which makes you the Chief Fool of nothing at the moment,” I said.

  “Which makes me the man you report to,” he retorted. “Those two idiots think that with the Guild out of sight, they can do whatever they want. I’m hoping for better from you.”

  “You have it,” I said. “I was told at the Guildhall that Scarlet was the Chief Fool of Beyond-the-Sea. But I thought you were based in Tyre.”

  “I am,” he said. “But I have a particular mission to fulfill in Acre.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To get you as drunk as possible,” he said. “Sounds like you need that right now.”

  He hopped off the stool and went to the bar. “A pitcher and two cups,” he called up to the Syrian. He took a coin and tossed it high into the air. It landed in a cup by the barkeep’s hand.

  The Syrian handed him the pitcher, which made a comforting sloshing noise as the dwarf carried it back to the table. He placed a cup in front of me and poured, then sat back and waited.

  “Aren’t you going to have one?” I asked, pointing to his empty cup.

  “I’m going to get drunk along with you,” he said. “But I’m giving you a head start, ‘’tou’re a great, lumbering lummox of a man. It’s going to take a few to have any effect. But I’m just a dwarf. If I have more than two, then I’ll be dead to the world, and I’ll wake to find myself having a game of catch with drunken soldiers. With me as the ball. So, drink up, brother Fool. I’ll join you in oblivion soon.”

  I still couldn’t make out his features. All I could see were his eyes, the pupils reflecting the candle. No, they shone of their own accord, I’m sure of it. And I might have wondered about that, but there was a cup of wine to be drunk, and another, and yet another after that. On the fifth cup, Scarlet poured one for himself and held it aloft. “To forgetting,” he said softly, and he drank.

  And I can’t remember the rest of that evening.

  * * *

  I woke in a small room with the sun shining directly into my face. I was lying on a pile of old straw, a blanket tucked around me. It was only when I saw the dwarf sitting cross-legged on a cushion by the opposite wall that I remembered some of the previous day.

  Now that I could see him more clearly, I observed that he was clad from head to foot in no color but scarlet, down to his boots and up to his cap. He had a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, both black, and hair that was gathered in a single braid in back.

  His eyes were deep blue, like the sea on a calm day. The flicker of the previous night was a mere twinkle now.