The Last Troubadour
First Book of the Song of Montségur Cycle
A Historical Thriller by Derek Armstrong
LOGLINE
In this historical thriller set against the rich background of the 13th century Inquisition, the last living troubadour, condemned by the church as a heretic, must rescue a holy Christian relic from a crusading king. Seamlessly weaving the history of the Cathar Crusade with the historical origins of the Tarot deck, this fascinating, genre-bending epic brings symbols of the Tarot to life.
Review Snippet
"More than a few moments of near-brilliance in which Armstrong blends comedy, parody, and adventure in genuinely innovative ways. A writer of abundant talent." Booklist, David Pitt
"Derek Armstrong is good." Michael Korda, editor in chief emeritus, Simon & Schuster, and author, Charmed Lives and Another Life
Copyright Derek Armstrong, All Rights Reserved. May not be reproduced.
Chapter 1 Excerpt
Song of the Fool
Carcassonne 1241
THE APPROACHING MAYDAY festival drew larger than normal crowds to the unholy city of Carcassonne. A driving rain and threats from the Inquisition did nothing to dampen the spirit of the pagan festival.
From the top of a centuries-old olive tree, downslope from the twin towers of the south gate, Ramon Troubadour watched the steady stream of minstrels, mummers, acrobats, bear-wrestlers, costumed visitors, and traveling merchants with their carts of wares. Mayday was the day when the church lost her grip on ancient pagan traditions. Springfest brought the city alive with memories of an enlightened age of tolerance, of the time before the crusading land-hungry knights occupied the Occitan. There could be no better time for a heretic, a pagan and an atheist to get past the scowling Inquisitor at the gate.
Torrential rain and two days of lightning could not keep away the spring celebrants. After a long winter huddled around never-quite-warm-enough fires, the entire county was ready to play. The sweetness of cherry and olive blossoms invigorated young and old, conquered and conqueror, serf and lord in a floral festival of new life as intense as a celibate monk’s first orgasm.
“Colorful birdy hanging in a tree,” called up his friend Nevara, her voice thickly accented.
Ramon Troubadour smiled down at his friends. Ramon’s bright troubadour garb would be conspicuous in the gray-green foliage of the ancient tree.
“A gangly cock rooster,” shouted his grumpy friend Arnot. Ramon’s little dog Mauri barked up at him, circling the great tree with tail wagging.
A cock rooster in the hoary olive tree he must seem, a splash of color surrounded by fragrant white olive blossoms and busy hummingbirds, with his high green-feathered cap, knee-high blue boots and the bright scarlet of the sash at his waist. His too-long legs splayed on either side of crook of the old tree. Flowing golden hair, as fine as a woman’s, trailed to his waist, pulled back in a long mane behind a feathered cap. An unbuttoned, over-sized surcoat, a green tunic embroidered with intricate vines and grape motifs, completed the persona of the fool. Everything about Ramon spoke of spring, from his smile to his festive green clothes.
“Much use I’ll be in your daring venture,” shouted up Arnot. “My armor is soaked through and rusting. I’ll be sneezing soon!”
“Blame Nevara,” Ramon called back. “She claims she conjured this storm.”
“We asked for fog!”
Only Nevara didn’t laugh. Her magic was at the best of times erratic. “I calling up some lightning to zapping your armor,” she said, sounding sulky.
“We could have been dry inside the city by now,” complained Arnot.
Ramon smiled, but didn’t answer. He was soaked through as well, chilled yet oddly comfortable in the sprawling tree, nestled in the shelter of his own nostalgia. This had been the very tree he had escaped to as a child when his father’s belt came out. Even as a toddler Ramon had already been a rebel, running from Papa’s stinging strap, most often seeking refuge in this olive grove. His mother told him the sacred olives had been planted by the city’s namesake Dame Carcas in honor of her victory over the Franks in 760, nearly five centuries ago.
It comforted Ramon, those old trees, reminding him that once the Occitan had fought back and won against the northern invaders. Most of the trees had been cut down by the the besiegers thirty-two years ago, and the years of neglect since then meant the old trees bore less and less fruit, yet they remained a symbolic of Ramon’s conquered people. Survivors, even if they weren’t bountiful.
Ramon raised his hand to shield his eyes from the rain and studied the scowling monk at the gate, who crossed himself over and over as he questioned the line of visitors. Ramon couldn’t hear the monk’s words, but no doubt he mumbled about “witches and devilry” as the guards waved through tellers-of-fortunes, wishboat vendors, pagans, heretics, witches, Muslims and Jews. Even in the Lord’s year 1241, Springfest and Mayday meant everyone was permitted to wander the glorious walled city of Carcassonne except enemies and rebels, yet even so, Ramon had seen the Inquisitor arrest dozens.
There could be no better time for Ramon’s wild plan, and for their return to home city. Any other week, they would come under scrutiny. Today, God willing, a joke, a bluff and a bribe would get them into the city. Only the Devil’s own luck would get them back out. Fifty-six towers, two great walls, curfews, rebels, thousands of soldiers and the new Dominican Inquisition made Carcassonne the most dangerous city between Castille and Constantinople.
Not every visitor bribed the gate guards. The steady stream of Dominican monks and Christian knights with their retinues bypassed the line of merchant carts and celebrants and entered without a toll.
Ramon knew these throngs only presaged the spectacle-seeking audiences who would arrive over the next few days. Though the guards questioned each muddy visitor, watchful for rebels and searching every wagon, they detained only a few dozen out of hundreds, and Ramon could see that the sentry’s purses grew heavy.
As Ramon expected, at sunset the scowling Dominican Inquisitor left the gate for his vigils. It was time.
The swollen sun broke through the storm clouds, sending God’s own holy light beaming through demon cloud. The shafts of gold illuminated the twin western mountains the pagans called Epona, the Earth Mother’s Tits, a spectacular backdrop to the towers of Carcassonne.
The last of the rain stopped almost miraculously as the Dominican disappeared into the shadows under the gateway. Ramon took it as a good omen.
Cold fingers of rain penetrated his floral tunic, making him shiver. Either Nevara’s mists would come. Or not. Her “magic” was as predictable as her temper.
Ramon delighted in startling big old Arnot. He swung down out of the tree in an elaborate acrobatic tumble and landed in front of the scowling knight. Startled, the grizzly warrior’s hand snatched at the haft of his old Templar mace.
“Christ’s bloody tears, you fool!” Arnot growled. He plucked at his mail shirt. “Are we going to loiter here all day? My armor is seizing.”
Ramon’s tiny white dog Mauri barked and jumped up into his arms. “We go, fog or not. Where’s Nevara?”
Arnot shrugged. “Conjuring fog, I guess. Her magic’s as powerful as your sense of humor.”
“I hearing that!” said Nevara, her Novgorodian accent thick, and she stepped around a tree, her face as stormy as the sky. “Coming now, it is.”
Ramon smiled, set down his dog and picked up his lute and spear. “Then we go.”
“I hope the Jewel is worth our lives,” said Arnot, still scowling.
“It is worth the lives of every man, woman and child in the south. It is our hope.” Ramon rubbed numb fingers. It would have been simpler to steal into the city with the Baug Balar performers, his adopted family. The famous troop of entertainers had made their festive entrance hours ago, led by tumbling acrobats and their famous dancing ponies. Thirty-eight men and women, dozens of children, forty-two horses, a leashed bear, sundry knife-throwers, acrobats and performers had filed through the narrow gates with eighteen colorful wagons.
Ramon didn’t regret his plan to make a separate “grand” entrance, even if it was risky. If things went terribly wrong—as they often did with Ramon’s complicated plans—his adopted family would remain safe from prosecution.
Nothing was more important than rescuing the Jewel of the South, not even the Baug, his family. Thousands would die if Ramon and his friends failed. Loup de Foix, the leader of the Caspins would march on the city to rescue the Jewel, and he and his soldiers would certainly die. The landless, oppressed and conquered would rise up against the invaders once more—and perish. The king of Castille would send his armies. From Armagnac to Provence, rivers of blood would run again.
Ramon Troubadour stared up at the old stone walls of Carcassonne, now touched with the blood of the dying sun. Mist or not, they must be inside the walls before curfew. A hundred wall guards, the Inquisition, not even the Devil himself would stop Ramon from returning to Carcassonne after twelve years away. All that was precious to him had died here. He might die as well.
But he was home.
* * *
THE MUDDY WASH of storm runoff slowed to a brown trickle that sluiced across the green grass. The lineups at the city gate became a dribble of latecomers. With the growing night chill came eerie coils of mist snaking along the hilltop road like a biblical curse, willowing across the stagnant moat water.
“There’ll be no space in the wayrooms.” Jaspre the gate guard said. He drank deep from their flask of apple bitters, grateful the watch was over.
“Still more, Jaspre.” Henri, his fellow sentry, pointed with his spear.
“A fool to come at curfew.” A fool in appearance, too, Jaspre thought. The prancing man with the green-feathered cap crossed the drawbridge, followed by some kind of dwarf horse. The colorful specter danced through the growing fog. Already the miasma, reeking like marsh gas and tinged hell-red by the sunset, churned and swallowed the high walls of Carcassonne.
“What is this creature?” Jaspre said, shivering as fingers of vapors explored his already damp cloak. He sneezed into his sleeve.
“Another jester?”
“But is it a boy or girl?”
“An unmentionable?”
Jaspre was thankful the Inquisitor had left them for prayers. The church frowned on the unmentionables, the men who kept company with men, one of a long list of heresies. The visitor was “pretty” and effeminate, not in the way of Jaspre’s wife, a solid beast of burden, but in the useless manner of a lady in waiting at court. Jaspre’s laugh huffed out like a limp flag. Something about the intense green eyes of the straggler, luminous in the spooky haze, made Jaspre shiver.
Crickets chirruped and a fox yipped but the only other sound was the clop of the visitor’s booted feet and the hooves of his dwarfish horse.
“Is that a dog or a pony?” Jaspre asked.
“It’s like them circus ponies we saw before,” Henri answered.
Henri was right. The dancing horses of the spectacular Baug Balar had been just like this little pony. “Maybe he’s one of them?” Jaspre said.
The pony followed without a lead rope, like an obedient dog. It carried itself with a strange, fluid gait. As it resolved from the haze, Jaspre realized it was not one color but two. He had seen spotted horses before, but this one, with its big patches of black and white, reminded Jaspre more of a cow than a horse. The horse nudged up close to the fool and some sort of rat or dog ran alongside, weaving in and out of the hooves, a tiny white creature with a wagging tail.
“Should we call back Brother Scowling Face?” Henri asked.
Jaspre shook his head and stared at the stranger. A southerner almost certainly, judging by his fine hair and eyes. A boy of good birth or affluence, Jaspre guessed, because this womanish man had a full set of chompers. Jaspre himself had only three precious teeth left.
He walked with a staff, but he didn’t lean on it, instead twirling it like a baton. Then Jaspre realized it was not a staff at all, but a lance, tipped with a two-edged blade. He recognized it from the crusades, an obscure hasta, a Roman weapon, popular with the Occitan nobles of the south. Not as dainty a weapon as it looked, it could be wielded sword-like, or thrust like a Greek spear to penetrate armor. Jaspre weighed him. Unmentionable, girlish-boy or jester, but not harmless. This gangly insect had a sting.
“Qui va là?” Jaspre challenged, finally remembering his duty. “Who goes?”
“Who asks?” the boy said in a strong, melodic voice.
Jaspre glanced at Henri. His friend seemed equally startled. In all their years as sentries, no one had challenged them in such arrogant fashion. Even knights and lords deferred to gate guards.
“A simple enough question, fellow,” said the fool, grinning. “I asked your name.”
Flustered, Jaspre snapped. “I am the guard of the gate. Give me your name and business!”
“How do I know you are the sentry?” challenged the boyish-girl, still smiling. “I see by your fat purses you grow rich on the toll. Are you truly the guard?”
Jaspre, angry now, lowered his long spear. “Answer now, or go to the pit for questioning.”
“Then let us play a guessing game.” The girlish man nodded at Henri, Jaspre’s companion. “You, sir, your name, would it be Henri? Henri of Clairveaux?” The fool smiled a brilliant smile. “You have a chubby wife who bore you three sons and one daughter. Your friend here is Jaspre, who has both a wife and—”
“But this is sorcery!” snapped Jaspre, cutting off the fool before he could mention the—secret things. He felt abruptly certain this devil-boy knew of the two women who warmed his straw matt in the barracks on alternating nights. Jaspre felt a suffocating sense of terror and certainty. He suddenly wished that Brother Scowling Face was with them at the gate. Jaspre crossed himself then spat for good measure to ward off what could only be Satan’s own imp.
The fool laughed, a cheerful sound, and all the more brilliant for having all his teeth. “I am that good, am I not?”
Good enough to draw the wall guards on the outer wall. Many of the sentries on the southern curtain crowded the allures, peering down through the fog with toothless grins.
Jaspre ignored them. This boy would have to be arrested, not for arrogance, but for suspicion of devilry. The Inquisition would want this boy in their pit.
The fool snatched a strap that lay across his chest.
Jaspre came to attention, spear lowered, expecting a weapon or some witchery. Instead, in a deft movement, the boy-man spun a musical instrument into view. A lute. Few minstrels carried lutes anymore, not since the persecution of the southern troubadours. It was well known that troubadours were heretics and mockers of the church, perhaps even sorcerers and devil worshipers. Hundreds had been rounded up and now languished in Inquisitors’ pits. In the south, troubadours were almost always of noble birth, irreverent and heretic, and sang of pagan gods and the glory of women. A few troubadours had been burned as heretics, but most had renounced and given up their mystical trade to become simple minstrels or trouvères, forgoing the forbidden lute in favor of harps and flutes.
What bull’s balls this boy had! Demonstrating sorcery and a forbidden instrument in the very heart of the archbishop’s city! The boy strummed a few quick, magical notes.
“Minstrel, jester, trouvère, Ramon at your service, good Jaspre.” Ramon bowed. “What’s the difference between a black-haired archbishop and a red-headed lord?”
What by all the imps in hell did that mean?Jaspre wondered.
“One has black-haired children,” answered Ramon with another girlish smile.
For a moment, Jaspre heard only the snort of horses. Then a nervous cascade of laughter. The small crowd of guards on the wall leaned over the stone curtain. Their laughter drew the attention of more soldiers. Jaspre almost joined in. If their black-haired archbishop heard of this joke, he would have all the guards castrated. Their lord the viscount, with his flaming red hair, would probably laugh.
“A jokester!” Henri laughed.
The jester Ramon stared at Jaspre. “Good Jaspre, I must have your smile.”
“I be on duty,” Jaspre grumbled.
“Duty is no reason not to have fun.” Ramon bowed.
“What’s your business here, jester?”
“You won’t believe this, but Saint Mary appeared to me in a vision and told me I must seek out the hospitality of the archbishop.”
Several soldiers on the wall laughed.
“He’d like you, girlish boy,” said a faceless voice in the fog. “He likes anything young and pretty.”
“Didn’t you know?” asked the jester Ramon. “A cleric each day keeps the black plague at bay?”
The laughter rolled out of the thickening fog.
“The Inquisition will hear of this, fool,” Jaspre warned. In spite of himself, he liked this boy. If he would just be quiet, or stop insulting the archbishop, perhaps the boy would survive the night.
But the fool pirouetted in a deft acrobatic move, nearly falling off the edge of the drawbridge. “How do you think I got so tall?
“How?” Someone shouted from the wall.
“I was once a burly man like you good soldiers. Then, the Inquisition put me on the rack! Stretched me thin!”
This time even Jaspre laughed. He had rarely met a boy with such courage. That alone begged mercy. “On your way. But get to a wayroom, fool. The curfew is imminent!”
“Come see me perform for the viscount!” the boy said merrily, as he and his dog-like horse and rat-like dog passed by.
“I, for one, will seek out his performances,” Henri said.
Jaspre realized he was still laughing “A cleric a day! The viscount’s court has need of this merry boy.” But his laugh faded as a new shape resolved out of the early night mist. The flow of Mayday visitors was not complete.
Jaspre’s hand tightened on the ash haft of his spear. This was not some foolish boy, but a hulking shadow on a massive horse.
“A Templar knight, by the Almighty,” said Henri.
“Or a vagabond. His surplice is in shreds, and no beard.” Jaspre watched, wary. Where the boy-fool had surprised and delighted Jaspre, making him forget the chill, this new visitor put him back on high alert. Perspiration prickled through Jaspre’s crust of days-old sweat. Templars always brought trouble. This knight was something of a squat giant, not towering, but massive in nearly every other dimension. He reeked of death, the stench of moldy gore on his armor. His mail was dented and rust colored, except Jaspre felt certain the discoloration was blood, not corrosion. Similar stains decorated the fierce man’s over-tunic, discoloring the torn cloth browner than the red of the small Templar cross on his upper left shoulder.
He did not wear the traditional chapeau de fer but everything else about the monkish warrior was traditional Templar: the Turkish mace on his belt, the two-handed thrusting sword slung on his back, mailed boots and spurs jangling as he rode. The string of four horses was the only suggestion of affluence, each horse skirted in mail and slung with shields and lances. Jaspre distrusted Templar destriers, big snorting creatures that trampled foot soldiers—infantrymen like Jaspre—on the battlefield. The Templar was scraggy, his face marred by badly healed old wounds, his head shaven like a monks and his cleft chin equally naked.
"My Lord,” Jaspre managed to finally challenge the Templar. What had he done to deserve such evil portends? “May I have your name, messire?”
Hard eyes fixed on Jaspre, a killer’s gaze. Templars were not used to being challenged. Even the Inquisition had no authority over the mysterious knights of the Temple of Jerusalem, who answered only to His Holiness. Jaspre’s own blessed King Louis had once bowed to the master of the Templars. They always meant trouble, with their strange blend of savage chivalry and monkishness. Like any humble Christian, Jaspre remained in awe and fear of them. Death was their constant companion.
“Brother Arnot de Ridefort, companion knight to Master Marshall.” The knight’s voice sounded gravelly, as if he rarely spoke, but his words were enough. Jaspre bowed, and as he bent he spat to ward off evil. After the Master of the Temple, the Marshall was the most powerful man in the Templars, the leader of the army, the largest standing permanent army in Christendom, and feared from Jerusalem to Rome. No good could come of such a visitor.
It occurred to Jaspre that this was all some fabrication at his expense. The knight was far too grubby to be companion of the second most powerful man in the Temple, and where was his traditional beard? And knights of the Temple never traveled without their brother sergeants. But Jaspre could hardly chance it. Confrontations were best left to the archbishop, the viscount himself, or the Diableteur, who feared nothing on earth. Jaspre kept his eyes down.
“You are welcome, Lord,” he said. He had no choice but to let the Templar enter the city. He kept his head down as the scowling knight passed him, leading his four great horses.
“Another, Jaspre! This day must never end.” Henri gawked at a third stranger, an ethereal white specter in the growing fog.
Jaspre stared at the woman’s mountainous love-pillows, bulging out from a clinging white garment. If the Templar shocked Jaspre, this woman both terrified and aroused him.
“Look at the udders on that,” Henri said.
“Your wife will pluck out your eyes, Henri.” Jaspre scowled. This woman would almost certainly bring the Dominican monks, the Inquisitors, sniffing and whining like frustrated dogs. Which meant—a long night for Jaspre.
Sentries up on the open allures of the outer city wall whistled and called out to the brazen lady who approached the gates, leering at her as they hung over the wall between the stone merlons, their faces suspended in the fog like specters. Brazen was the only word that seemed to fit this “lady” with her thrusting breasts and low cut gown of pure white cloth, all mysterious and frightening in the fog.
But it was not her mouth-watering milk-makers that kept his attention. Jaspre’s mouth felt dry as he stared into her colorless eyes. Soulless eyes, it seemed, as if some manic portrait artist had not taken the time to color her pupils. And her hair was pure white, like her gown. An albino temptress, almost certainly the Devil’s own mistress. Her delicious love-bags spoke of youth, a strange contrast to the hag’s hair. The locks were shining and wavy, like the foamy white of a mountain waterfall, cascading around a magnificent face with high cheeks and no lines. And no color at all. Take away the elder-hair and the ghostly eyes, and she was quite the temptress. Even her horse was white, a short-legged pony with a flowing mane and a tail that trailed on the drawbridge planks. Another late Baug Balar troop member? A torque hung about her delicate throat, riding high on those magnificent mountains, thick braids of gold and silver, twisted in the manner of the ancients, and set with a glittering red stone. It reeked of pagan rites by moonlight, a symbol he had seen often enough in the tolerant south, but not since the crusade ended.
He had heard of such ladies, legends of the southern sorceresses. It was such as these that had enraged frowning bishops, stirring them to preach a crusade against the heretics of Albi, sending soldiers south from their thatch homes in France in quest of loot. This brazen temptress, with her pagan symbol—did she not know the Inquisition would have her in irons by daybreak? Since the Cathar crusade ended, and the Inquisition replaced it, Jaspre could not remember seeing such a lady parading on the streets, although he’d seen a few thrown to the fires to the cheering of the crusaders and the tears of the decimated southerners.
“She’s bewitched me, Henri,” Jaspre whispered. “I’m as stiff as a spear shaft down there.”
Henri crossed himself.
The part of Jaspre that unwillingly belonged to his piggy wife was less disapproving of the delightful witch. She would be in the Inquisitor’s cellar before dawn with her long foamy white hair and her wide, ridable hips that even now thrust side to side like a deadly battleaxe. Jaspre found himself momentarily plunging into a mad fantasy. He’d arrest the witch, take her aside for “questioning” and search her down to the warm harbors of her womanhood. Would she be white down there as well?
She had a satanic stink about her and Jaspre shivered, partially for fear of the witch, but mostly because it meant Inquisitors would soon interrogate Jaspre and his troop.
Over forty soldiers, nearly the entire south wall garrison, had left their watch posts and crowded over the gate looking down, pointing and leering. Such theatre was rare.
“And your name—Lady?” Henri asked, his sarcasm not disguised.
Before she could answer, Jaspre felt a blast of wind, a flurry of motion, and as if by magic a ghost of a creature appeared on the woman’s shoulder. It was large, perhaps as long as Jaspre’s arm, and white, with little black demon eyes that glittered even in the mist. An owl! But such an owl. It was pure white, with a long hooked beak that rested near the woman’s ear, and it extended its ghostly plumage to help it balance on her shoulder.
Devilry! A witch bird!
It made an unearthly barking sound, like a huffing.
Jaspre willed himself to breathe. A sorcerer’s bird! A white owl! He crossed himself again. He had seen owls, but never snowy white owls such as this. This witch stroked its hooked beak, and now the great bird seemed to pant like a dog, and it sidled up close to her hair, preening her in return. Jaspre shivered. A Devil’s familiar.
“I am being called Nevara,” said the white-haired witch, her accent thick. She sounded like Jaspre’s friend Smolensk, a crusader from Novgorod.
“Nevar? To snow?” Jaspre shivered. An appropriate name for this creature, whether nickname or real.
“Snowing storm,” she said, her pink eyes frosty. They froze his soul and he looked away, not willing to be cursed. He would rather face a dozen enemy spears than a witch’s gaze. He crossed himself and spat for good measure.
Henri grabbed his arm, steadying him. He leaned close. “Should we fetch Brother Scowling Face?” he whispered, but Jaspre felt panic and superstitious terror in the painful grip.
This witch looked fully capable of curses and devilry, with her unholy owl. The owl’s head swiveled, black, black eyes taking in everything. He wanted no part of it. “Let her be,” Jaspre said. Then louder, he snapped, “Go on your way.” And one more time, just for safety, he crossed himself.
After shift, he would rush to the basilica and splash his face with blessed water. But he would not detain her. To do so would be to risk her curses. She might curse him to lose his few remaining teeth and all his hair. Or make his skin rot like a leper. Or worse, curse him to impotence.
After she passed through the suicide-way between the two gates, he looked at Henri and said, “Henri. Go inform the Diableteur.”
“Not I,” Henri said. “I won’t go near that—my lord Diableteur.”
Jaspre shivered. If Henri would not report, it was left to him. But Jaspre was more afraid of the Diableteur, that foul witch-hunter, than the Devilish trio who had just entered the ancient city of Carcassonne.
To read more, and find out why critics highlight Armstrong's "unforgettable characters" .. please visit your favorite retailer.
US Price $ 24.95
Canadian Price $26.95
ISBN 9781601640109
Note: If your favorite bookseller is not on this list—or if you ARE a bookseller and would like to be on this list—please email us link information. If your favorite retailer doesn't have a copy of The Last Troubadour, please ask them to order! We support all booksellers. Thank you!
