The Jester

Chapter 91

I KNEW SUCH A SOUND was a call of warning.

My mind jolted back to reality. I frantically rose to my knees and looked down toward the village. I saw no riders. No sign of panic yet. We were not under attack.

But a crowd was forming in the square. Something had happened.

“Come.” I pulled Emilie up. “We have to get back.”

We ran down the hill as fast as we could. As soon as I came within earshot of town I heard my name shouted.

Georges ran up to me. “Hugh, they’re coming. Men from Borée are on the way.”

I looked at Emilie, then back at Georges. “How do you know this?”

“Someone is here to warn us. Come, quick, in the church. He looks for you.”

Georges ran with me into the main square. The town had assembled there, and voices rang out, panicked and afraid.

I pushed through the crowd around the church and came upon a young man resting on the steps. No more than sixteen, panting, clearly out of breath. When he saw me, he stood up and eyed me.

“You are Hugh,” the boy said. “I can tell by your red hair.”

[275] “I am,” I answered. He looked vaguely familiar. “You come from Borée?”

“Yes.” The boy nodded. “I have run the whole way. I am sent by your friend Norbert, the jester.”

“Norbert sent you?” I went up to him and stood close. “What news do you bring?”

“He said to tell you they are coming. For everyone to prepare.”

“I must try and go back,” Emilie said, clutching my arm. “I must tell them it’s a mistake.”

“You ca

Frantic cries rose in the crowd. A woman fainted. Martin the tailor pointed at me. “Now what? This is your work, Hugh. What are we to do?”

“Fight,” I shouted back. “This is what we expected.”

There was whimpering and worried faces. Wives sought out their husbands and clutched children to their bosoms.

“We are prepared,” I said. “These men come to take away what is ours. We will not bow down to them.”

Dread hung over the crowd. Then Odo stepped forward. He looked around, tapped the head of his hammer on the ground. “I’m with you. So is my hammer!”

“I-I’m with you too,” said Alphonse. “And my sharpened ax.”

“And I,” cried Apples.

They ran toward their positions as the rest of the crowd remained still. Then others followed, one by one.

I turned back to the messenger. “How do I know you are who you say? That you’ve come from Norbert? You say the lady Emilie was followed. This could be a trick.”

“You know my face, Hugh. I am Lucien, the baker’s boy. I sought to apprentice with Norbert.”

[276] “Apprentices can be bought,” I challenged him further.

“Norbert said you would press me. So he sent proof. Something of value to you that could come from no one other than him.”

He reached behind him on the church steps and unwound a woolen blanket.

A smile curled on my face. Norbert was right. What the boy had brought was of great value to me. I had not seen it since I left Borée in the middle of the night.

Lucien was holding my staff.

Chapter 92

IN THE NEXT FEW HOURS, the town bustled with a purpose I had not seen before.

Bales of sharpened stakes were dragged to positions just inside the stone bridge and driven into the ground. Sacks filled with rocks were readied in the trees. Those who could shoot sharpened their arrows and stocked their quivers; those who could not sat with hoes and mallets in their hands.

By the time night fell, everyone was nervous but prepared.

The plan was for old folk and some of the women and young children to flee to the woods before the first sign of trouble. I told Emilie she had to go too. But when the time came, no one would leave.

“I’m staying with you.” Emilie shook her head. She had torn her dress at the hem and sleeves to move about more easily. “I can stack arrows. I can distribute arms.”

“These men are killers,” I said, trying to reason with her. “They’ll make no distinction between noble and common. This is not your fight.”

“You are wrong. The distinction between noble and common is clear here today,” she replied with that same unbending resolve as when she rescued me at Borée. “And it has become my fight.”

[278] I left her stacking rocks and ran to the first defenses at the bridge. Alphonse and Apples were tightening the rope.

“How many will come?” Alphonse asked.

“I do not know,” I said. “Twelve, twenty, maybe more. Enough to do what it takes.”

I took my station on the second floor of the tailor’s house, near the entrance to town. From there I could oversee the defense. I had a sword, an old clunker sharpened to a tee.

My stomach was in knots. Now all that was left to do was wait.

Emilie met me toward evening. We sat against a wall, her head resting on my shoulder. I felt what I had always known about her. She gave me strength.

“Whatever happens,” she said, tightening against me, “I am glad to be here with you. I don’t know how to explain, but I feel you have a destiny in front of you.”

“When the Turk spared me, I thought it was just to make people laugh.” I chuckled.

“And you became a jester.”

“Yes. Thanks to you.”

“Not me.” Emilie pulled away and looked at me. “You. It is you who had the court at Borée eating out of your hand. But now I think God has found you a higher purpose. I think this is it.”

I pressed her tightly to my body, feeling her breasts against my ribs, the cadence of her heart. In my loins, I felt desire spark. We looked at each other, and something told me, unspoken, that this was right. She was where she belonged. And so was I.

“I do not want to die,” Emilie said, “and never know what it is like to be with you.”

“I won’t let you die.” I cupped her fist.

She lowered herself onto me and we kissed. Not as before, with the thrill of friendship turning into something more, but deeper, more forcefully. The tempo of Emilie’s breath began to quicken.

[279] I put my hands under her dress and felt the smoothness of her stomach. My skin jumped alive all over.

She raised herself on my lap. We looked in each other’s eyes and there was no hesitation. “I love you,” I told her. “From the first. There was no doubt.”

“There was doubt,” she whispered, “but I loved you too.”

She lowered herself on top of me and gasped as I came inside her. Soon she was calm and at ease. I held her by the hips and we rocked. Her eyes lit with pleasure, and my skin grew heated and damp as we increased the pace. We were eye to eye, rocking against time, a smile and a sheen of ardor on her face. “Oh, Hugh.” She squeezed her pelvis into me. “I do love you.”

At last she cried out, a body-tremoring moan. I held her close to me and squeezed her shoulders as if I would never let go. She tremored once more in my arms.

“Do not wake me,” she said with a sigh, “for I am in the midst of the most marvelous dream.”

She buried her face in my chest, and I could have stayed like that forever. I looked out at the moon and thought, What a miracle it is that I have found this woman. I wanted to hold her and protect her with all my heart, as she had risked everything to protect me.

Is this why I had been saved? I could ask no better purpose.

Then I heard a shout, and an alarmed cry. A chilling, far-off rumble came from the earth.

I ran to the window. A fiery arrow arced toward us across the sky. The lookout’s signal.

I looked at Emilie, the calm of a moment ago replaced by a stabbing dread. “They are here!”