Jester Leaps In: A Medieval Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

horses.
    “Your family would have killed us, you know,” I said, getting onto Zeus.
    He nodded.
    “You’ve seen them kill others, haven’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “It would have been a simple thing to add your corpse to the rest of them. It might even have been a smart thing. But our quarrel ends now.”
    He sat, impassive. I leaned over and snatched his reins up.
    “Let’s go,” I said.
    “What about the other horses?” asked Viola.
    I shrugged. “There’s grass hereabouts. Someone else can claim them. I don’t deal in livestock.”
    The reaction hit her that night. She sat hugging her knees to her chest, shaking, saying, “Seven men dead,” over and over. I held her until she was too exhausted to continue. When she fell asleep, I covered her with a blanket, then looked up to see the boy, sitting against the tree to which he had been tied, wide awake. He had been watching the entire time.
     
    We rode on in the morning. Outside of Ochrid, overlooking the great lake, was a monastery. I banged on the gate. A disheveled monk eventually came out.
    “This boy is an orphan,” I said. “He speaks only Bulgarian. Take him, teach him Greek, give him a decent trade. You can have his horse.”
    He nodded. In this part of the world, there were no questions. I lifted the boy down and untied his hands. He turned to face me.
    “That one called you Feste,” he said.
    I shrugged. “That name will change.”
    “I will remember that name. I will remember your face. I will remember what you did. And someday, I will find you again and kill you.”
    “Maybe. Others have tried and failed. I suggest you devote your life to something a little more useful.”
    He turned and went inside. The monk made as if to follow. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and I gave him the money I had found on the boy’s family.
    Viola was looking at me as I remounted Zeus. “So, that was his inheritance,” she commented.
    “No,” I replied. “It was for the toll.”

T HREE
    [T]he instruction of fools is folly
.
    PROVERBS 61:22
    W hen were you last in Constantinople?” asked Fat Basil.
    We were sitting in his cottage, a small stone building near the river. He was a slender man, tending a small kettle of stew on a small stove by the window. He had been in Thessaloniki for over twenty years, which meant that he had seen more than his share of horrors. When he smiled, even in full makeup, there was something dead in his eyes. Perhaps it was just a reflection.
    He had received us without surprise, as though he had been cooking just for our arrival. We put our horses in back, then gratefully sank onto a pile of cushions that served as his only furniture. Viola remained in male garb. I was waiting to see how long she could sustain the illusion before another professional. She had fooled me on more than one occasion.
    “About eight or nine years ago,” I said. “Coming back from Beyond-the-Sea. Spent maybe six months there.”
    “All right, so you knew everyone except for Ignatius. He started working the troubadour route about four years ago. From here to there, entertaining along the way, then back again. I used to see him every two months or so. The last time was only sixweeks after he had left, which meant that he had ridden straight back without stopping. His horse was practically dead from exhaustion, and Ignatius wasn’t far behind.”
    “When was this?”
    “Early December. ‘They’re all gone,’ he said. He couldn’t find a trace of any one of them. Their rooms were untouched, except there were signs of a struggle in Niko and Piko’s house.”
    “Any blood?”
    “If there was, it would have been two months dried when he was there. But he didn’t notice anything like that. That’s not to say it wasn’t there, but the dwarves weren’t the neatest of folk.”
    “Where was the message drop?”
    “At the Rooster. Ignatius found nothing. Then he did the smart thing. He panicked and fled.”
    Despite the stove and the