The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery by Alan Gordon

Theo.”
    “Which troubadour?” demanded Theo. “It had to have been someone coming to Marseille after Folc left, or he would have known the song when he saw it.”
    “Not at all,” I said. “In fact, more likely before. Someone painted that message expecting him to get the reference. It’s a threat to a troubadour.”
    “Maybe from another,” said Theo. “Is there a troubadour based in Marseille?”
    “No,” said Pantalan quickly. A little too quickly, I thought.
    “Well, who is riding the circuit?”
    “It’s not a regular circuit at the moment,” said Pantalan. “Gui de Cavalhon pops up every now and then, but he mostly goes between Montpellier and Toulouse. He might be able to help you.”
    “Montpellier?”
    “That way, about four days’ journey,” said Pantalan, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “You’ll have to cross five rivers, I think it is.”
    Theo sat on the pile of pallets, then stretched out lazily, resting his head on his hands. “That’s a long journey just to see if he happens to be in town, and if he happens to know a song,” he said, his eyes closed.
    “Well, I don’t know what else you can do here,” said Pantalan.
    “I could find out why you are trying to get rid of us,” said Theo.
    “What?” squeaked Pantalan. “You insult me. I have given you my hospitality, forgone my extensive love life for an entire day just to play hosteler—”
    “Which is your job when Guildmembers come to town,” I reminded him.
    “There is a little mouse of information that is scurrying around in that tiny warren you call a brain,” said Theo. “I can play hide and seek with it all day, or I can take a shovel and start excavating.”
    “Helga, be a dear and go borrow a shovel from somebody, will you?” I asked.
    “Let me remind you again of the oath of loyalty that you swore to the Guild, my fat and prosperous colleague,” said Theo, swinging his legs around and sitting up. “I want to know what you are concealing from me. If it is anything that will help me trace this song, then I have to know. I don’t need to reveal anything to the Guild about the source.”
    Pantalan looked down at his feet, shamefaced. “Will you swear that?” he asked. “Will all of you swear that it will not get back to the Guild?”
    Theo looked at us. We nodded.
    “By the First Fool, Our Savior, I swear it,” he said.
    “By the First Fool,” Helga and I echoed.
    Pantalan started pacing back and forth, wringing his hands. “Very well,” he said. “I heard it from Vidal.”
    “Peire Vidal? He wrote the song?”
    “I don’t know,” said Pantalan unhappily. “I told you about him and the Viscountess.”
    “And he fled Marseille, yes,” said Theo.
    “But that wasn’t an end,” said Pantalan. “He came back. In secret.”
    “When?”
    “End of ’95? Maybe ’96, I can’t remember. Folquet was gone; I was the only Guildmember here. Vidal suddenly shows up at my door, drunk as a lord. He had come back for Adalaïs. He had been all over, Toulouse, Aragon, Montferrat, Hungary, trying to forget her. Then he heard, years too late, that Barral had divorced her and then died. So Peire Vidal came back. But he was too late again. Adalaïs, Lady Pons, had died a year before.”
    “Poor man,” I said softly.
    “He was insane with grief,” said Pantalan. “He screamed, he cried, he spouted blasphemies like a whole herd of heretics. But most of all, he sang. I stayed up with him for three days without sleep as he drank and sang, one lament after another. My God, I’ve never seen a performance like it. That voice, those melodies, each as sorrowful as the next. Planhs for great men and nonentities, bishops and shepherdesses, sailors lost at sea, mothers lost at childbirth. I wish I could remember every one of them, I truly do, but it was all mixed together in this drunken orgy of lamentation, and that song about the lark was somewhere in there. I couldn’t remember the rest if you tortured