PERFECTION
Prologue
Jannequin knew he was going to die. There were fires breaking out all over the city, and his own people had set them.
The Occitan army had begun launching balls of Greek fire over Carcassona’s walls. The Franks were clinging stubbornly to the city, and Count Raimon must have decided to burn it down over their heads. Most of the wooden houses near the cathedral were already blazing. A woman emerged from one of them with her clothes and hair on fire. She staggered jerkily down the street, shrieking and beating at her clothes with her hands. One of them had already been scorched to a red-black claw. Jannequin started for her, thinking he might be able to knock her down and roll her in the dirt to put out the flames. But another fireball arced lazily over the wall. It burst at her feet, and the splash of burning pitch swallowed her up and cut off her screams. The great stone mass of the cathedral loomed out of the smoke, and he ran to it, sprinting up the wide steps to the narthex. The bishop and his priests had fled, and the door to the main portal was wide open. He heaved it shut behind him.
It was cooler in the nave, but smoke was thickening inside the vast building and it was already getting hard to breathe. He made his way to the crossing, where there was a trap door in the stone floor leading down to the crypt. He hauled up on its ring, ducked down to the stone stairs, and lowered the door over his head. In the pitch-blackness he missed his footing and fell the rest of the way down the stairs. He lay on his back for a moment, sucking wind – the air was breathable, if a little musty – and decided he hadn’t broken any bones. He rolled to his knees and took his tinder-box out of his belt-wallet, striking a spark with his flints and blowing the straw and wood-shavings to a small flame that was enough to show him there were still some stumps of votive candles in the alcove hollowed out of the crypt’s back wall. He took one of the longer ones and lit it, waiting for God to strike him dead for desecrating it. Nothing happened. He pinched out the smolder in the tinder-box, replaced its cover and put it back in his wallet. Raising the candle, he peered around the chamber.
There were two stone tombs against one wall, with the effigies of their occupants carved into their lids, one a bishop in full canonicals, the other some nobleman in armor with his broadsword piously clasped across his chest. He glanced down and saw he was standing on a plaque set into the floor, probably covering the bones of another defunct somebody, and there were similar plaques all around him. But the ghosts of the dead didn’t seem upset by his presence, any more than God was. He was reeling with exhaustion, so he pinched out the candle thriftily, lay down on the floor, and went to sleep.
Something woke him in the darkness, scrabbling up his leg. Jannequin yelped and swatted it away. He fumbled for the tinder-box and relit the candle. There were four or five big rats surrounding him. “I’m not dead yet!” he bellowed, and they squeaked and scattered. The air in the crypt was warmer, but still breathable, but Jannequin hadn’t eaten in the two days since the Occitan counter-attack had begun. He reconsidered the rats. He dripped some wax from the candle and fixed it on the floor next to him. Then he lay on his back, trying to keep as still as a fresh, fat, wealthy corpse the priests had laid out in the crypt while his tomb beneath the floor was being dug.
It took awhile before two of the rats decided he was dead meat, and walked up his body almost to his chin. Jannequin grabbed one of them and pinned it under his thigh as he swung the other by the tail and bashed its head in against the floor. The first struggled, squealing and trying to bite him, but he snapped its neck quickly and threw it down next to the first one. He was shaking with disgust and terror, and he lay back down for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Finally he sat up and took out his belt-knife. He’d never had to eat rat before, but meat was meat, and he knew how to skin and gut rabbits. He threw the rats’ greasy, stinking pelts and offal aside and considered gobbling the stringy meat raw. But his hunger wasn’t that desperate.
His candle was burning down, so he went to the alcove and took all the rest of them. God still withheld his vengeful hand. He used his knife to shave all but one of the candles down, and piled the wax curls on the chest of the dead bishop’s effigy. He added strips torn from the sleeves of his filthy tunic, and used the tinder-box again to get a little fire going. Then he took down the small crucifix on the wall at the back of the alcove, and with his heart in his mouth, he broke it several times over his knee and added the wood to his fire. No reaction from God. He lit his small fire with the last candle, roasted the rats a little past raw and ripped at them with his teeth and knife. The meat was rank, but he ate it down to the bone. He was horribly thirsty, and he shambled over to the holy-water font at the bottom of the steps. It was still half full and he lapped up the water like a dog.
God didn’t seem to care about that either, and he managed to fall back into a dead sleep, oblivious to the fire and the fighting raging above. The crypt was well underground, and he didn’t stir when the lead slates of the cathedral’s roof melted and set fire to its wooden interior beams and paneling. But when the timber supports of the bell above the choir burned through, it fell seventy feet and hit the floor with a vast, echoing bon-n-n-g that woke him bolt upright. The smoke had thickened in the crypt, and he stumbled for the trap door, coughing and retching. Scrambling out of the crypt was more painful, he thought later, than what Lazarus had endured when Jesù hoiked him out of the sleep of death. Lazarus hadn’t had to climb through a layer of still-burning embers to get out of his tomb.
Jannequin crawled into the light of day with what was left of his tunic charred, burns on his feet, hands and face, even his hair and eyebrows singed. He was half blind, blinking like an owl at noon, still almost starving, barely able to walk.
He had no idea how long he’d slept, but there were men-at-arms walking the littered streets speaking lilting lengua d’òc instead of the harsh langue d’oïl of the Franks, so the northerners must have surrendered after all. People were beginning to creep out of their shelters and hiding places, and the fires were mostly out.
The Turk’s Head Inn was intact, thank Jesù for small blessings. Guilhem, the innkeeper, was a fat, oily thief who had welcomed the Frankish occupiers and cheated them as cheerfully as he had always tried to cheat his fellow citizens. But he liked music, and maintained a large shed in the yard behind the inn, where minstrels and jongleurs could sleep on reasonably clean straw, in return for free performances in the tavern. And for a few copper deniers he provided a locked storeroom for their instruments. Guilhem would steal any money the musicians were careless enough to leave in his care, but he knew that if he took someone’s harp or viele and sold it, musicians would stop patronizing the Turk’s Head, and someone might write a biting, satirical sirventes about him which would mock him out of business. Music had power.
Jannequin stumbled into the tavern, under the painted board showing the scowling, turbaned head of a Saracen. Guilhem always told new customers that in his father’s day there had been an actual Turk’s head hung above the door, brought back by a man-at-arms who cut it off himself during the Two Kings’s Crusade in Oltremar. But Guilhem would lie to his right hand if it helped his left hand steal.
He was perched on his stool behind the trestle-counter next to the wine-butts, looking as sleek and self-satisfied as ever. The place was crowded with Occitan men-at-arms, and he was doing good business, drawing cups of wine steadily, whisking the deniers left on the counter into his coin-box, while maintaining a constant banter with his customers.
The innkeeper hadn’t noticed Jannequin’s entry, but some of the soldiers had, and the room went quiet. He walked to the counter.
“A cup of your watery cat-piss, Master Guilhem, and if you have anything to eat I wouldn’t turn it down.”
Guilhem turned and stared at him.
“Jannequin?”
“What’s left of him.”
“God’s teeth, man. What happened to you?” Guilhem hastily poured him out a cup of wine.
“I had a very bad dream,” Jannequin said. He eyed the soldier standing next to him. “I dreamed the Occitan army tried to burn me alive.” He drained the cup and shoved it back across the counter. “Another. And some bread and cheese and ham. I seem to be a bit hungry.”
“Ah, my friend, ham will come dear,” Guilhem said. “There’s been a siege, you know.”
“No! Really? Guilhem, you are a miraculous fount of information. The Pope ought to make you a holy shrine!”
Some of the soldiers laughed. Guilhem grumpily produced the end of a coarse loaf and a wedge of moldy-looking cheese from a box under the trestle-counter. “Can you pay?” he said.
“The siege hasn’t changed your nature, Saint Guilhem.” Jannequin said. He still had a few deniers left in his wallet and he began to rummage for them. But the nearest man-at-arms spoke up.
“He drinks and eats for free, innkeeper. And give him ham, too.”
Guilhem started to object, but the soldier was tapping a grimy finger on the handle of the long dagger sheathed to his belt. The innkeeper slopped more wine into Jannequin’s cup and fetched up an elderly butt-end of cured ham.
“Thanks, my friend,” Jannequin said to the man-at-arms. He drank half the wine and used his belt-knife to slice into the food.
“No thanks necesssary,” the soldier said. “I’m sorry for what we had to do, God knows. Goes against nature, killing your friends to save them from your enemies.” He rolled his r’s a bit.
“You’re from Narbona, right?” Jannequin said through his full mouth.
“How in hell did you know that?”
“I’m a musician,” Jannequin said. “I travel a lot. Played in Narbona quite a few times, back before the troubles.” He swallowed and knocked a knuckle on the rim of his cup. “More, Guilhem, if you please.”
Guilhem refilled his cup with a little more care. He pasted his huckster’s smile back on. “Soldier, this is my good friend Master Jannequin. The most renowed jongleur in Carcassona, maybe in all of Occitania.”
The soldier cocked an eyebrow at Jannequin. “I’ve heard you. Good harpist, and you always put together a fine consort of musicians. There was a shawm player, can’t recall his name, who didn’t just make the damn thing bray like a donkey with a burr up his ass. And a tambour player, God’s guts, he could get a nun dancing! I’m glad we didn’t kill you, Master Jannequin. Perhaps, later on, when you feel better, you could play?”
“Can you pay?” said Jannequin.
The soldier roared with laughter. “Oh, I’m sure Master Guilhem will be happy to make your time worthwhile,” he said.
Jannequin sipped his third cup slowly. The first two were already humming in his head and the food was settling comfortably in his stomach. He began to feel almost alive.
“The shawm player’s called Maroc. The drummer’s Heaulmier,” he told the soldier. “None better in all our land. I used to work with a viele player, a much better musician than I am, taught me a lot about the way of music. But he was caught in Besièr when…” He waved his hand vaguely toward the half-ruined city outside. “… all this started.” He turned back to Guilhem. “Any news of Heaulmier and Maroc?”
The innkeeper’s beam widened. “Alive and well, my friend, alive and well! Maroc’s with his lovely wife, thanks be to Jesù they both survived, and Heaulmier’s taking his rest in my dormitory, blessings light upon him. And the mad piper Gilles got through it all, too, last I heard, though I don’t know where he is. He goes his own way, but he always pops up sooner or later.”
Jannequin nodded. “Thanks for good news, Guilhem. My harp?”
Giulhem looked wounded. “Safe, of course! You paid me to keep it, and I honor my obligations! And your sack of clothes is also safe in my storeroom.”
“Only because you went through it and found nothing worth stealing.” But he grinned at the fat man. “More good news. I could pay for a bath, Guilhem.”
“Ah, water’s in terribly short supply, Master Jannequin.” The innkeeper made a sweeping gesture toward the soldiers. “Our noble troops almost emptied the city’s cisterns putting out the fires. We have enough to drink, of course, but a bath… well, that’ll come high.”
Another man-at-arms crowded closer to the counter.
“What are you talking about? Carcassona has its own spring, there are wells and pumps all over the place. The cisterns are already filling back up. There’s plenty of water!” He nodded to Jannequin. “I’m from Foix, in case you haven’t guessed by now. I remember you from the times you played for Count Raimon-Roger. Never been to Carcassona before, sorry I had to come in here this way for my first visit.” He was a heavy-shouldered man past his first youth, wearing a kettle-hat, and there was a long-handled war-axe tucked into his belt. He drew it out and laid it on the counter, keeping his hand on its haft.
“Give the master jongleur a bath, innkeeper. Give him anything he wants. And when he feels up to it, I hope he and his fellow musicians will play for us. And I know you’ll pay them well, out of gratitude to whatever god you follow that the famous Turk’s Head Tavern still stands, the city belongs to us again, and we still have our music.”
He turned to Jannequin. “There’s a new tenso going around, about how Wolf Simon got his head caved in by a rock at Tolosa. Funny as hell, I hear – an argument between the cat the Wolf was directing against the city wall, and the trabuquet that launched the rock. Maybe you know it.”
Jannequin didn’t, but Heaulmier and Maroc did, and a few days later they played and sang it at the Turk’s Head. Gilles the bagpiper materialized out of nowhere, as usual, in time to add his double pipes to the music. The tavern was full to bursting, the soldiers mixed with the surviving townspeople trying to pick up their lives where they had left them before the siege. Heaulmier put on a comic falsetto to sing Lady Cat’s high line, and Jannequin did Seigneur Trabuquet’s voice in a growling bass-baritone. It was a triumph to cap a grand celebration. For the Franks had not only abandoned Carcassona, they seemed to have left Occitania altogether, and there were rumors of a truce. Masons funded by Count Raimon were already at work restoring the cathedral, carpenters were rebuilding the wooden houses lost to the fires, and trade had resumed.
But although the Franks did indeed leave after the death of their commander, everyone knew the war wasn’t over. The Pope still wanted to wipe out all the heretics, and the Frankish nobles wanted to grab back the lands they’d seized in the first invasion. Jannequin had always tried to ignore the deadly religious dispute which had begun the troubles. He was a musician who played for hire, and all he wanted to do was follow the music wherever it led him. But he knew that sooner or later religion would catch up with him, one way or another, because there was no way of avoiding it.