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I slowly raised my head. I looked about, a smile spreading on my face.
“Father!” Emilie gasped and pulled me to my feet. Then she ran to the King and without so much as a curtsy, threw her arms around him.
“I know, I know. Fools are everywhere, even those who wear the royal robe. But first, I need a word with your boy.”
He came to me, evaluating me. Then he placed an arm [448] around my shoulder and ushered me away. I felt some rebuke about to come.
“Not to seem ungrateful, son, for I know Emilie is in your debt… but in your letter you mentioned a lance.”
I took a breath, then spoke.
“It was destroyed, Your Highness. Hurled into flames in the fighting here. I’m afraid there is nothing left.”
The King sighed deeply. “It was the lance that pierced our Savior’s side? Such a relic was more valuable than my own crown. You are sure of it, lad?”
“Only sure that it has produced the most miraculous of outcomes. Look around you, Sire.”
He looked-at the ebullient men, at his daughter’s eyes wet with joy-then nodded wistfully. “What a treasure that would have made. But perhaps it is just as well… In my experience, such things are better left the stuff of legends and myths.”
Epilogue
“GRAND-PÈRE.”
My little grandson Jack came up to me in the gardens. It was a bright late-summer morning. I had just returned from the hill with a handful of sunflowers, as I did every morning in the summer. Though climbing to the spot was a little harder for me now.
Little Jack, my daughter Sophie’s son, who was five, threw himself into my arms and almost toppled me over. He pointed to the checkerboard crest that hung above the entrance to our i
“Mother told me you would tell me what our crest means. She said you were once a jester.”
“She said that?” I pretended to be surprised. “Well, if she said that, then it must be true.”
“Show me,” Jack insisted, his blue eyes twinkling.
“Show you?” I took his hand. “Then first you must hear the tale.”
I took him to the bench that overlooked the town where we had lived these forty years, near where Sophie and Phillipe were buried. Around us, the fields exploded with sunflowers galore.
I took Jack back to the time when all I had was a tiny i
My little blond-haired grandson listened without so much as a breath. “That was you, Grand-père? You did these things?”
“Me and Odo and Alphonse. When Uncle Odo was just a smith in town, and not our seneschal.”
“Let me see.” He screwed up an eye as if I were joking. “Show me what you learned.”
“What I learned?” I touched his tiny freckled nose. Then a thought flashed into my head. I got up off the bench and winked at him as if to say, “This is our secret. Whatever happens, don’t tell your grandmother.”
I sucked in my stomach and held my breath. I hadn’t done this in thirty years. I tucked myself into a deep crouch. I prayed to God I would not kill myself. “Watch this!”
And I sprang. Through the air into a forward flip. And in that fleeting instant, a thousand memories flashed through my mind: Sophie. Norbert. Nico and Robert. And the Turk. I sprang for all of them. One last time.
With a thump, I landed on my feet. Every bone in my body seemed to rattle. But I had nailed it! I was in one piece. Norbert would’ve been proud!
I looked at Jack. His eyes glistened bright as the summer sun. I saw my beautiful Emilie in those eyes. Then all at once he started to laugh. A true child’s laugh, like water rushing in a brook. It almost choked me as I watched him. Laughter, the most beautiful sound in all the world.
“That’s what I learned.” I tousled his long blond hair and smiled. “To make people laugh. That’s what this crest is all about. That is everything.”
I took my little grandson by the hand and led him back to the i
And I had sunflowers for her.
Sources
The following books on the Crusades and the Middle Ages have been sources of information and background for both setting and characters in this book:
Armstrong, Karen. Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World. New York: Anchor Books, 2001.
W. B. Bartlett. God Wills It! An Illustrated History of the Crusades. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000.
Bishop, Morris. The Middle Ages. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Cantor, Norman, E The Medieval Reader. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. Including original works of: Song of Roland, William of Tyre, Peter Abelard, the Magna Carta, Goliardic Verse, St. Ambrose, Gregory of Tours, Marie de France, Bernard Gui.
Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Mille
Co
Goetz, Hans-Werner. Life in the Middle Ages: From the Seventh to the Thirteenth Century. Translated by Albert Wimmer. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993.
Holmes, George. The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Keen, Maurice, editor. Medieval Warfare: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Konstram, Angus. Atlas of Medieval Europe. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.
Lacey, Robert, and Da
Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Read, Piers Paul. The Templars. New York: St. Martin ’s Press, 1999.
Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.
Villehardouin, Geoffroi de, et al. Memoirs of the Crusades. London: Penguin Books, 1963.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge that The Jester is, in all ways, a work of fiction, an entertainment, and while painstaking care has been paid to historical detail and times, now and then a fact has been stretched or a truth bent for the sake of the story.
Thanks to H. D. Miller of Yale University for his scholarly, yet always anecdotal, reading of the manuscript. And also to Mary Jordan, who kept this project on the right track at all times.
And most of all, thanks to Sue and Ly