“There’s just one more thing,” said Ms. Lacaze.
“What?” Mazzini mumbled. “What one more thing?”
“The local lore, it always said a precious relic was here. Just never that it belonged to a duke. But to a man of far more humble origins.”
“What sort of low-born man would come into such a prize? A priest? Perhaps a thief?
“No,” Rene Lacaze’s brown eyes widened. “Actually, a jester.”
Part One
THE ORIGINS OF COMEDY
Chapter 1
VEILLE DU PERE, a village in southern France, 1096
The church bells were ringing.
Loud, quickening peals—echoing through town in the middle of the day.
Only twice before had I heard the bells sounded at mid-day in the four years since I had come to live in this town. Once, when word reached us that the King’s son had died. And the second, when a raiding party from our lord’s rival in Digne swept through town during the wars, leaving eight dead and burning almost every house to the ground.
What was going on?
I rushed to the second-floor window of the inn I looked after with my wife Sophie. People were running into the square, still carrying their tools. “What’s going on? Who needs help?” they shouted.
Then Arnaud, who farmed a plot by the river, galloped over the bridge aboard his mule, pointing back towards the road. “They’re coming! They’re almost here!”
From the east, I heard the loudest chorus of voices, seemingly raised as one. I squinted through the trees and felt my jaw drop. Jesus, I’m dreaming, I know I said to myself. A peddler with a cart was considered an event here! I blinked at the sight, not once, but twice.
It was the greatest multitude I had ever seen! Jammed along the narrow road into town, stretching out as far as the eye could see.
“Sophie, come quick, now,” I yelled. “You’re not going to believe this.”
My wife of three years hurried to the window, her yellow hair pinned up for the workday under a white cap. “Mother of God, Hugh….”
“It’s an army,” I muttered, barely able to believe my eyes. “The Army of the Crusade.”
Chapter 2
EVEN IN VEILLE DU PERE, word had reached us of the Pope’s call. We had heard that masses of men were leaving their families, taking the cross, as nearby as Digne. And here they were…. The army of Crusaders marching through Veille du Pere!
But what an army! More of a rabble, like one of those multitudes prophesized in Isiah or John. Men, women, children, carrying clubs and tools straight from home. And it was vast—thousands of them! Not fitted out with armor or uniform, but shabbily, with red crosses either painted or sewn onto plain tunics. And at the head of this assemblage… not some trumped-up duke or king in crested mail and armor sitting imperiously atop a massive charger. But a little man in a homespun monk’s robe, bare-foot, bald, with a thatched crown, plopped atop a simple mule.
“It is their awful voices the Turks will turn and run from.” I shook my head, “not their swords.”
Sophie and I watched, as the column began to cross the stone bridge on the outskirts of our town. Young and old, men and women; some carrying axes and mallets and old swords, some old knights parading in rusty armor. Carts, wagons, tired mules and plow-horses. Thousands of them.
Everyone in town stood and stared. Children ran out and danced around the approaching monk. No one had ever seen anything like it before. Nothing ever happened here!
I was struck with a kind of wonderment. “Sophie, tell me, what do you see?”
“What do I see? Either the holiest army I’ve ever seen, or the dumbest. In any case, it’s the worst equipped.”
“But look, not a noble anywhere. Just common men and women. Like us.”
Below us, the vast column wound into the main square and the queer monk at its head tugged his mule to a stop. A bearded knight helped him slide off. Father Leo went up to greet him. The singing stopped, weapons and packs were laid at ease. Everyone in our town was pressed around the tiny square. To listen.