“From two men named Brecht and Weill. Never met them myself, but I just love their songs.”
“Do you truly believe the folk there will think about the meanings of those ditties when you’re gone?”
“Oh, yes,” Matt assured him. “You bet they will-maybe even soon enough to prevent disaster. Brecht designed them that way.” He wasn’t sure that was the issue the playwright had wanted his audience to think about, though. “Have Latrurians always been so loose, Pascal?”
“Not from what I heard at the gathering last summer,” the young man answered. “The old folk were remembering how life had ground them down, with toil in the fields from sunrise till sunset, then laboring to keep the hut from falling down until well after dark.”
“Not enough leftover energy to philander.” Matt nodded. “Now that the taxes are down and the draft oxen aren’t being taken by the landlord, though, they can fill their bellies with only eight or ten hours of work a day.”
“There is time to think of games and songs,” Pascal agreed. “Ah, the miserable folk! To have had their lives so poor for so long!”
“Poor indeed,” Matt agreed, and assured himself that all he was really seeing was people adjusting to having some leisure time again. Now that they all had decent housing and clothing, they had become discontent, wanting something more, but not knowing what-so they fought boredom with affairs. “I’m surprised none of them seem to worry about their spouses finding out what they’re doing.”
“How,” Pascal asked, “when their spouses are a hundred miles away?”
Something about his tone bothered Matt. He gave the youth a sharp look and saw that Pascal had a faraway look in his eye. “You aren’t thinking about having an affair with Panegyra, are you?”
“If I cannot dissuade her from marrying that old fool-why not? She cannot truly wish to lie with him. I might have to make it seem like a kidnapping, but I do not think she would be loath.”
“Pascal,” Matt said carefully, “that could be very dangerous.”
“What could be wrong with it?” the boy challenged. “If everybody else is having sex without marriage, why not we, too?”
Well, it was natural to think that the peer group was always right. Matt had to try to counter the idea, though. “But the errant husbands will be back when they find that they’re not going to make their fortunes in the capital-and when they come home, some neighbor who has a grudge against the wife will tell on her.”
“If they truly thought that,” Pascal argued, “why would they take the risk?‘
“Because the danger of discovery adds some excitement to a very boring life, especially if you think you’re tied down to it because you were the one who got left with the kids. You heard Clothilde-part of her argument is revenge on her husband. How’s she going to have that revenge unless he comes home and finds out what she’s been doing while he’s gone? And what do you think is going to happen when he does?”
They found out at the next inn.
Chapter 11
Matt and Pascal were playing another inn-like the first, travelers stayed outside with take-away orders while the locals got together to commiserate inside, and Matt and Pascal had played their way in. Matt was just finishing “There Is a Tavern in the Town” with a sing-along chorus, when the Irate Husband came slamming in. “Where is he?” he bellowed. “Where is that cur Simnel? Where is the thief who has stolen my wife?”
A couple jumped up at the back of the room, the man turning to scrabble frantically at the window latch while the woman jumped in front of the him. “ ‘Stolen,’ forsooth! Taken up what you cast away, more likely! So now you have come back from your philandering, and think I shall be yours again, Perkin?“
“You are mine!” Perkin was in no mood for sweet reason. “And I shall beat you soundly to show it to you, Forla! What, do you think this puling coward will protect you?” He swept her aside with the back of his hand and lunged past her, grasping at the pair of heels that were just disappearing out the window. He bellowed in frustration and turned to charge back out the door. His wife was in no condition to interfere-a knot of sympathetic women were gathered around her, counseling her to lie still. Pascal stared at Perkin as he disappeared through the doorway. “He is bent on murder!”
“Some men take sexual jealousy to extremes,” Matt agreed. “After all, it’s the only honor they have.” For himself, he was rather shocked that none of the other adulterous husbands seemed, at all inclined to stop Perkin. “Come on, let’s go outside. I want to see how this ends.”
Pascal stared at him as if he were mad, but when Matt headed for the door, Pascal came along in his wake. As they rounded the corner of the inn, Matt handed his lute to Pascal and checked his dagger to make sure it was loose in its sheath. There Perkin was, charging after his rival! They were just in time to see him bring down the fleeing man with a tackle that would have done credit to an NFL halfback. Simnel kicked at his pursuer’s face in a panic-and connected. The attacker let go with a howl of rage, then leaped to his feet and swung a haymaker that grazed the fugitive just as he was regaining his feet, and sent him staggering. The Irate Husband followed up hard and fast, fists pumping like the pistons of an engine. The fugitive did his best to block, but most of the punches got through. He howled in anger and slugged back-and one of his blows clipped Perkin on the chin. Perkin rolled away and sank to his knees. Simnel shouted with satisfaction and followed up, punching and swinging a haymaker. Perkin’s head rolled aside with one punch, but he surged up inside the haymaker, a knife glinting in his hand. “That’s just a little bit too much,” Matt said, and stepped in to catch Perkin’s arm, twisting the knife out of his hand. “No steel!”
“What business is it of yours?” bellowed a voice behind him, and a rough hand yanked his shoulder, spinning him around just in time to see the fist that cracked into his jaw. Matt sank to his knees as the world went dark for several seconds, shot with sparks. He shook his head and staggered up, vision returning just in time to see his attacker pull a knife from his boot. The blade came in low. Matt dodged, and the thrust went short. Then Matt jumped in to try to catch the knife arm, but the attacker was too fast for him-he pulled the blade back, then slashed. Matt leaped back just enough to let it swing past him as he drew his own dagger. Crowd voices shouted with excitement, but he blocked them out and concentrated only on his antagonist. Matt saw the man’s eyes flick downward, to his own knife, and he slammed a kick at the elbow. The man shouted as he leaped back, then lunged with a speed that caught Matt off balance. Matt managed to twist enough so that the knife only grazed his side; he heard the cloth tear, and the searing pain made him suddenly realize that the thug was very, very serious. He wasn’t just out to even the odds in an entertaining fight over a woman-he was out to kill Matt! What had he ever done to him? They were total strangers! He brushed the thought aside-all that mattered now was staying alive. Could a peasant knife artist really bring down a belted knight? He could, Matt saw in the next two passes. The man’s skill was just too great; he had to be a pro. What was he doing here, at a roadside inn near a rural village? File the fact for later. For now, leap back from that blade, draw him into lunging, then lunging again, then again and again… Finally the attacker lunged just that much too far, off balance for just half a second, and Matt whirled in, catching the knife arm in an elbow lock and pushing down. The man howled with the sudden pain, and his knife dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. The crowd shouted with delight, but Matt just spun back in, set his blade against the man’s throat and growled, “Who paid you to kill me?”