[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal Read Online Free PDF Page B

age? Tell me that, husband!”
    The soldiers, brave men all, carefully looked down at their trenchers. Hugo watched us from the safety of his place behind the counter.
    “Even for me, that was a remarkably stupid thing to say,” I said. “Forgive me.”
    Tears started streaking her makeup. She picked up Portia and stormed out of the tavern. Helga turned toward me with a stricken expression.
    “Stay with her,” I said. “She’ll calm down eventually, but stay with her.”
    Helga fled. Pelardit looked at me with concern.
    “She left two children behind when she joined the Guild and came with me to Constantinople,” I explained. “They had already been placed under the control of a regent, so she would not have been— Anyhow, she hasn’t seen her son in over a year, and her daughter in three. Sometimes, she— It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said that.”
    Hugo came over with a cloth to mop the ale from the tabletop.
    “You’ll be wanting some food, I think,” he said. “I’m guessing you’ll not be having dinner cooked tonight.”
    “Thank you, friend Hugo,” I said.
    He came back with a tray holding two slabs of brown bread and ladled some wonderfully aromatic lamb stew over them. Pelardit and I tasted it.
    “Delicious,” I said. “For a man who did not eat meat for so long, you certainly know how to bring forth its magic.”
    “Ah, all those years wasted as a Cathar,” he sighed. “If the Church would just open some taverns and serve good food, there would be no heresy. I heard a little of what you were talking about. The count’s long-lost brother showed up, did he?”
    “You know about him?”
    “Has to be a fraud,” said Hugo. “The countess would have been showing when she left town.”
    “You were around then?”
    “Helping my mother run this place,” he said. “Don’t know if Constance left the old count, or if he threw her out, but she didn’t go right away. Took the marriage part seriously, I suppose. And she didn’t have any money, was what I heard. Finally got some help from her brother and went back to Paris, and that’s the last anyone heard of her around here. But I knew someone who saw her leaving, and they said nothing about her being with child.”
    “Might have been early in the pregnancy,” I said.
    “Then how come no one knew anything back here?” he argued. “She whelps one more of the old count’s pups, you’d think he’d be galloping off to Paris to lay claim, especially if it was another boy.”
    “Maybe King Louis thought it would be like keeping a hostage,” I said.
    “Well, the maneuverings of the high and mighty are beyond me,” he said. “I still think he’s a fraud.”
    “Most likely,” I said. “All will be revealed in time.”
    “Or not,” he said.
    “Or not,” I agreed. “What do you think, Pelardit?”
    The fool shrugged without breaking the rhythm of his dining.
    I finished and trudged home. When I turned the key in the lock, Helga opened the door and beckoned me in.
    My wife was standing by the table, holding Portia. A kettle simmered over the fire.
    “I made dinner,” she said. “I hope you’re hungry.”
    “Starving,” I lied.
----

    A fter , when Helga had cleared the table, I fetched parchment, ink, and quill and laid them out. Then I sat, thinking.
    “What are you going to say to him?” asked Claudia.
    “It’s awkward,” I confessed. “I haven’t seen him for so long, nor written. I hear about him only occasionally, when the gossip drifts my way. I suppose it’s the same for him.”
    “If it makes it any easier, keep it to Guild business,” she said. “No point in letting personal feelings get in the way.”
    Something in her voice stung me, although her face was impassive. Helga sat on the stairs, watching us, Portia asleep in her arms.
    “What would you have me do?” I asked. “I told you that we could go back to Orsino once Mark comes of age.”
    “Could go?”
    “Will go. We will