Read Online The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery by Alan Gordon - Free Book Online

her. Folquet wrote about her in a couple of songs.”
    “Yes, he called her Lady Pons. And Peire Vidal was another troubadour here back then—I’m sure you know his work. Absolutely besotted with the Viscountess, which got him in loads of trouble.”
    “I never heard that story.”
    “Oh, he was always mooning around, presenting her with one love song after another, sighing loudly whenever her name came up in conversation. God, it was embarrassing after a while. Anyhow, one day he waited for Barral to go off inspecting some vineyards somewhere, and slipped into her room while she was asleep. The word is, he started kissing and caressing her, and it was so dark that she mistook him for her husband.”
    “At least, that’s what she told people after,” guessed Claudia.
    “No, apparently she was quite upset when she realized who it was,” said Pantalan. “Screamed bloody murder, and went straight to her husband when he returned and demanded Vidal’s head on a platter. Barral was too fond of Vidal to do that, but our heroic colleague was too frightened to believe it and caught the next boat to Genoa.”
    “Seems a prudent course to take.”
    “Well, things went downhill after that,” continued Pantalan. “Adalaïs never forgave her husband for not smiting the troubadour, and he grew weary of her constant berating. So he divorces her and marries this younger woman, Marie de Montpellier.”
    “Of course,” sighed Claudia.
    “But he dies inside of a year, leaving her pregnant,” said Pantalan.
    “Natural death?” I asked.
    “As far as we could tell, and we looked into it,” said Pantalan. “Basically, he was no spring chicken, and he had a lusty new young wife, so we think that she just wore him out.”
    “Served him right,” muttered Claudia.
    “They say he died smiling,” said Pantalan.
    She glared at him, and he chuckled.
    “What did this have to do with Folquet?” I asked.
    “Well, needless to say, with Barral dead, the succession was very much in question. No one wanted the young widow from Montpellier or her spawn to be running things, but that left everything up in the air. Marseille was ripe for taking over. Toulouse was always claiming it, Montpellier wanted to gain a toehold, and Aragon and Genoa were itching to send their navies in. The key to power was a cousin of Barral’s named Adalacie, who was the heiress to the family fortunes. This cad, Hughes de Baux, came on the gallop from Orange to woo and win her. After the wedding, it turns out that he was in league with King Alfonse of Aragon, who promptly shows up with his navy and asks everyone to bow down and give homage.”
    He paused and looked at Portia, who had been listening to him raptly, straight in the eye.
    “Only they didn’t,” he whispered to her, wagging his finger. “They wouldn’t let the big bad king and his nasty navy into the harbor. They raised the chain and barred him from sea and land.”
    “And that was the Guild’s doing?” I asked.
    “Folquet brought his fellow merchants together, and I raised the rabble,” he said proudly. “But Folquet realized that the town needed a leader to rally behind as they had with Barral. So, he came up with another Barral.”
    “How did he do that?” asked Claudia.
    “Because there was another Barral—his little brother, Roncelin. Only problem was he had gone monk years before and joined the Abbey of Saint-Victor. Folquet convinced his fellow merchants that Roncelin was the man for the job, and they got the mercenaries to join them. Unfortunately, the monks liked Roncelin at the abbey, liked him so much that when they saw the crowds coming across the harbor to storm the walls, they tried to make Roncelin their abbot so it would be harder for him to leave. But the Marseillese dragged him out and carried him in triumph to the Hôtel de Barral and installed him as the new viscount, with a wife thrown into the bargain. Barral’s widow was bought off, her pregnancy hushed up.