The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery (24 page)

I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. Grelho looked down at his feet.

“Folquet’s,” he said. “I thought that as soon as I heard the second verse.”

“Because of the Hawk?” asked Claudia.

“No,” he replied. “All of that business about the branch on the high tree, and how he was unable to climb it. That was one of his favorite metaphors when he was wooing a wealthy woman. Cheap flattery from a cheap climber, I thought, but it worked for him, so he used it often. Beat it to death, really.”

“Speaking of Death,” said Helga. “Isn’t that him coming right now?”

A gaunt old man in a black tunic was shambling toward us, carrying a scythe in his right hand. What kept his appearance from being completely spectral was the spade and hoe he carried in the other. He stopped upon seeing us, as puzzled by our manifestation as we were by his.

“Did some fool die that you’ve come to arrange the funeral?” he asked in a screechy voice.

“My friend here has some failed jokes he’d like you to bury,” said Grelho, pointing to me. “Are you the sexton?”

“Oc, that I am, going on fifty years now,” said the man. “You’re Grelho the Jester, aren’t you?”

“I am,” said Grelho. “Forgive me for not knowing your name. I don’t recall seeing you in town.”

“Don’t go there much,” said the sexton. “Got my tending to do, and my legs hurt from the walking, so I save the hurting for here. My name is Otz.”

“This is a lovely graveyard,” said Claudia politely. “You have kept it beautifully.”

“I thank you for that, Domna,” he said, bobbing his head. “It keeps me up, so I keep it up. Might as well be married to it these days.”

“You’re a lucky man, having such a quiet and well-behaved spouse,” I said.

“Oh, she’s not so quiet as all that,” he said. “I hear her speaking to me, especially at night.”

“You live here?” I asked.

“I sleep in the back of the church,” he said. “Father Aimerie’s got one room; I got the other.”

“At least you have someone living to talk to,” said Grelho.

“Oh, we don’t talk, the Father and me,” said Otz. “He’s new. He thinks he can save me because I’m around all the time, but he’s just the latest one to try. They all move on eventually, and I’m still here.”

“You hear her speak,” said Claudia, indicating the graveyard. “Have you ever heard her sing?”

“Sing?” repeated Otz, scratching his head idly with the tip of the scythe’s blade. “No, can’t say I have. Only singing I’ve heard is over the graves, not from inside them.”

“Ever hear anyone sing by this one?” I asked.

“By Lady Mathilde? That was a troublesome grave,” he said.

“How so?”

“I had to bury her twice, didn’t I?”

“Now, that sounds like an interesting story,” I said, pulling out the second wineskin from the previous evening. It was half-full. “I propose a fool’s trade: share your story, and we’ll share our wine.”

“But I’ve got my tending to do,” he protested feebly, eyeing the wineskin with interest.

“We can take care of that while you talk,” I said. “Helga, ever wanted to learn how to use a scythe?”

“Oh, ever so much,” said Helga. “Where shall I start?”

“Anything that looks too tall, cut it down,” said Otz.

She held out her hands, and he gave her the scythe. She took it and trudged past us. As she did, she glanced up at me. “You’re tall,” she muttered, hefting it speculatively.

“That patch there could use some of your loving care,” I said, pointing helpfully. She headed over to a clump of weeds and beheaded them, grumbling.

“Shall we sit here?” I asked. “It looks comfortable enough.”

“If I sit on the ground, I won’t be able to get up again,” said Otz. “There’s a bench yonder.”

We accompanied him to a weather-beaten wooden bench. He sat down slowly and beckoned for the wineskin, which he then upended for a good long time.

“That’s as good as I’ve had in many a year,” he said when he emerged, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “What were we talking about?”

“Burying Lady Mathilde twice,” I prompted.

“Oc, that was the one,” he said. “Well, I had to bury her twice.”

Then he sat there, blinking, while we waited.

“There is more to the story, isn’t there?” asked Claudia finally.

“Not really,” he said, and blinked some more.

“How was it that she came to be in need of a second burial?” she asked.

“Ah, well, someone dug her up,” he said. “Two nights after she was buried, so the ground was still loose.”

“Grave-robbers?” I said. “After her jewelry?”

“Don’t know that she was wearing any,” said Otz.

“Surely you could have seen if the body was disturbed in any way,” said Grelho.

“Oh, the body was disturbed all right,” said Otz. “They disturbed it right out of the graveyard.”

“They took her body?” shrieked Helga from across the graveyard.

“Good ears on that one,” said Grelho. “Not to mention lungs.”

“Why do you suppose she was taken?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe one of them schools where they pretend to teach medicine. Maybe a trick. Maybe, well, they say she was a pretty lass. Maybe they wanted her for something else.”

Claudia shuddered.

“Do you remember the condition of the body before she was buried?” I asked. “Were there any signs of violence?”

“I never saw the body,” he said. “I usually don’t. They bring it into the church and do their praying while I’m out here digging the hole. Then they bring the coffin out and drop it in, and I cover it up.”

“Who came to her burial? Do you remember?”

“Well, there was that Landrieux fellow,” he said, considering. “Two of his men, one named Berenguer, he’s the one who paid me, and the other was a big fellow, limped a bit—”

“Rocco?” guessed Grelho.

“Oc, that was him. And the priest, that was Father Firmin back then. Nice man. Him, I talked to.”

“And that was it?” I asked. “No one else came?”

“No,” he said. “The two men brought the coffin out on a cart, lowered it into the grave, Father Firmin said a few words, we got paid, and I buried her. Then I had to do it again, and I didn’t get paid for that one.”

“Where is Father Firmin these days?” I asked.

“Over there,” he said, pointing to a simple wooden cross marking a grave on the far side of the fence enclosing the cemetery.

“Why isn’t he buried inside the fence?” asked Claudia, crossing herself.

“Killed himself,” said Otz tersely.

“Why?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” he said. “He wasn’t the type, but one night I come back from the tavern, and there he was, swinging by the neck in the church. Surprised me.”

“I remember hearing about that,” said Grelho. “It surprised everyone.”

“Do you remember if anyone sang at her funeral?” I asked.

“Nah, no one did that,” he said.

“Well, that was a long shot,” I said as we rose.

“The singer came a week later,” he said.

We looked at each other, then sat down again. Helga gave up all pretense of working on the weeds and came over to join us.

Otz lifted the wineskin and contemplated it mournfully. “Not much left,” he said.

“Finish it,” I said.

He bobbed his head again, then drained the wineskin to the last drop. “Damned good wine,” he pronounced. “What were we talking about?”

“The singer at Lady Mathilde’s grave,” I said, trying very hard not to jump on him and shake the remainder of the story out.

“Right. Maybe two weeks later, I hear someone singing. I go out here to look, and there’s this young fellow, used to sing up in that place in town, you know the one I’m talking about?”

“Near the Blancaria,” said Grelho. “His name was Rafael.”

“That’s the one,” agreed Otz. “Singing his heart out. Don’t have an ear for music myself, but he sounded real good.”

“Was he with anyone else?” I asked.

“I didn’t see no one about,” said Otz. “None of my business what people want to do around here, except digging them up again. That’s just extra work for me.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone about the grave being robbed?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” said Otz. “People hear there’s grave-robbing going on, they won’t want to be buried here. Then I’m out of a job. This is all I know. Been here going on fifty years.”

“So we’ve heard,” said Claudia, picking up Portia from where she had been playing in the grass and putting her in her sling. “Thank you for your time.”

“All I got is time,” said Otz. “Where did you get that wine, anyway?”

“In town,” said Grelho. “At that place. You know the one.”

“Hmm,” said Otz wistfully. “I ought to go into town more.”

“Here’s your scythe,” said Helga, giving it back to him.

We left him sitting on his bench, starting to drift off.

“Possibility,” I said as we walked. “Folquet leaves; Mathilde dies. It takes a week for word to reach Folquet in Marseille. He comes back here and gets Rafael to sing ‘The Lark’s Lament’ as a final personal tribute to her.”

“Sounds romantic,” said Grelho.

“Possibility number two,” said Claudia. “Folquet is threatened, leaves town, but in a fit of jealous rage sneaks back and kills her. Then, in remorse, he composes his lament.”

“Sounds less romantic,” said Grelho. “And it shares the same problem. Why was the body stolen? And who did it?”

“It was stolen because he couldn’t bear to have her share eternity with her husband,” said Claudia. “He rescues her from the grave and buries her in a place only he knows.”

“Then he comes back to this grave to have Rafael sing the lament two weeks later, knowing that she isn’t there,” responded Grelho. “It still doesn’t make sense.”

“Do you think they killed the priest?” asked Helga.

“It crossed my mind,” I said. “I just don’t know how to fit that in with the little that we know. Grelho, whatever happened to the two men who came with Landrieux?”

“Berenguer and Rocco? They’re still in town, to the best of my knowledge. I think they latched on to other houses after the Landrieux family was dispossessed.”

“Who became guardian for Philippe Landrieux when his father died?”

“Guilhem himself,” said Grelho. “He let the boy live in the family house. He appointed Berenguer as the steward for the family finances until the boy became of age.”

“What happened to Philippe after he was disenfranchised?”

“I don’t know,” said Grelho. “But I can find out.”

“Theo,” said Claudia.

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t Folc tell you that he wrote ‘The Lark’s Lament’?”

“That’s the first question I am going to ask when I see him,” I said.

“Because if he did kill Mathilde, then it would be natural for him to deny it,” she said. “It would be even more natural for him to send us off on what he thought would be an impossible quest. And then he panicked and sent Brother Antime to Montpellier to find out if someone here knew what he had done, and to intercept us if we showed up.”

“Only someone intercepted Antime first,” I said. “Yes, that certainly seems plausible. But if Folc was covering up an adulterous affair from his past, he could have reacted the same way. I have no doubt that he has some dark secret to hide, but how dark it is, we have yet to learn. Grelho, let’s go find Berenguer and Rocco and see if they will be willing to talk to us. Berenguer first, I think. He was the steward.”

“Right,” said Grelho. “I think he lives up in the Saint-Mathieu parish. I remember seeing him come out of a house there once, and saying hello.”

“You were the master conversationalist even then,” I said.

“Oh, I want to solve all of this, if only to get rid of you people,” he said.

He led us back through town, once again taking us past the markets. We came to a square filled with flower-sellers, peddling mostly dried bouquets and a few late bloomers. We turned into the narrow twisty streets north of there, and Grelho stopped at a crossing, looking uncertain.

“It was somewhere around here,” he said. “He actually had his own place, as I recall.”

“Maybe it’s the one with all the Viguerie clustering about it,” said Claudia, pointing to the right.

We looked in that direction. Sure enough, a group of guards was gathered in front of a house, spears in barricade position, while others were fanning out and pounding on doors in a way that was becoming all too familiar.

“Unfortunately, you are correct,” sighed Grelho. “Let’s go ask. Nothing unusual about being curious in these circumstances.”

We walked up to the perimeter of the barricade.

“Ho, Jacques, since when are you working days?” called Grelho.

I recognized the guard who had rousted us two nights before. He nodded at us. “They woke us up for this one,” he said. “Remember Berenguer? Used to be the Landrieux steward?”

“Vaguely,” said Grelho. “What’s he done?”

“Done? He’s done nothing,” said Jacques grimly. “Someone’s done him. Stabbed in the chest.”

Gasping and crossing from us all.

“How horrible,” said Grelho. “Isn’t that what happened to that fellow you found near my place the other night?”

“It is,” said Jacques. “And we’re going to turn this town upside down and shake it until the rat who did this falls out. Until then, I would advise you to be careful. Don’t go walking anywhere on your own at night.”

“Good counsel, and we will abide by it, friend Jacques,” promised Grelho.

We watched for a few minutes as if we had nothing better to do, then moved on.

“I’ll have to ask around about Rocco,” said Grelho. “I don’t know where he lives.”

“We have to find him as soon as possible,” I said.

“You think he’s in danger,” said Claudia.

“Let me put it this way,” I said. “You know that man we thought was following us?”

“Yes?”

“I think he’s ahead of us now.”

ELEVEN

… me sui conogutz

del gran engan qu’Amors vas mi fazia;

[… I now know the terrible trick Love played on me;]

—FOLQUET DE MARSEILLE,
“SITOT ME SOI A TART APERCEUBUTZ”
[TRANS. N. M. SCHULMAN]

My first instinct when my husband said, “I think he’s ahead of us now,” was to go for my dagger and fling it at any man I saw in front of us. Luckily, my reason seized hold of my hand before I did so.