[Fools' Guild 08] - The Parisian Prodigal Read Free

met you, was she not?”
    “She was,” he said, refilling his goblet. He stared into it without drinking, swirling it gently as if hoping to conjure her up from its depths. “That was the first time I ever loved a woman. Truly loved—mind, body, and soul. Is that how you love your wife?”
    “In truth, she owes me money,” I said. “The moment I collect—but I’m interrupting.”
    “I’ve seen how you look at each other when you are performing together,” he said. “Unfeigned passion and joy. I envy you.”
    The count envies the fool, I thought. Lord knows I would not want to be a count. I have seen my share, a few kings and emperors, too. Those who lasted did so either through brute force or raw cunning, both of which took their toll. Those who lasted were never happy. Those who were happy were fools, and soon shoved out of their ignorant lives.
    I knew the answer to my next question, but I asked it because he wanted me to.
    “Why did you abandon Bourguigne when you loved her so?”
    “Because Richard the Lionheart laid claim to Toulouse,” he said. “I was the count at last, heir to my father’s years of playing all sides from the middle. I could cling to the woman I loved and condemn my subjects to war, or I could repudiate Bourguigne and marry Richard’s sister. I am my father’s son. I married Richard’s sister.”
    “Another widow.”
    “His favorite chess piece,” he said bitterly. “Dragged her everywhere, ready to marry anyone useful to him. Almost matched her with one of Saladin’s cousins if rumor was true, only the bastard turned her down. I married an infidel’s leavings.”
    “I understand that she was a lovely woman, for all that.”
    “There was nothing of her that displeased the eye,” he conceded. “And she did give me a son, died doing it, and I honor her for that. We had quite a few troubadours write songs in her memory. But I never loved her, Fool.”
    “Yet there was peace between Toulouse and England. Still is.”
    He nodded. I shrugged.
    “You like the new wife well enough,” I said.
    “My last chance,” he said. “They started dangling her in front of me when she was twelve. Damn those Aragonese for being better looking than the rest of us. At twelve, she was already a paragon among women. They insisted upon my waiting until she was of age, periodically allowing me visits to see how she was blossoming, like I was having a prize heifer raised on a farm. Agonizing, the wait. Every time I saw her, her beauty had increased. Thought ‘of age’ meant sixteen; turned out they meant eighteen. Six years! Craving her more and more until the merest thought of her drove me mad.”
    I refilled my goblet to cover my discomfort. “You kept celibate during your wait, of course,” I said.
    “I dipped my staff into anything that moved,” he said. “Wanting her every moment, and no mistress could satisfy me as much as the thought of this girl. We finally wed—by proxy, no less, so I had to wait even more for her to be in my bed. Finally, she had her first taste of lovemaking—dear God, Fool, I felt like Zeus incarnate. I wished I had the gift of poetry, to compose an erotic epic account of that first night.” He sighed.
    “And it never was that good again,” he said.
    “How could it possibly be?” I asked. “You have achieved such lofty heights of love that just the idea of scaling them again would exhaust most mortals. I’m exhausted listening to it.”
    “I set the bar too high,” he said ruefully. “She expects it to be like that every time. She doesn’t know any better.”
    “You’ve ruined her for life, this paragon from Aragon.”
    “Oh, God, what have I done?” he moaned, and I started to laugh. He looked at me outraged, then started to chuckle. In moments we were roaring with laughter. It eventually subsided, with him wiping the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve.
    “So, I didn’t hear any advice,” he said.
    “I didn’t hear you ask for any,”