The Wolf and the Snake (English version)

Chapter 31

The wavering lights of fires guided me towards the tavern as much as coarse giggles and bawling of drinkers or prostitutes. I enter discreetly by a small door ajar and am immediately inconvenienced by the pungent smells of wine, sweat, and burning tallow. In search of Sordello, I scan the seated customers. Finally, I see the troubadour going upstairs at the room's far end. It's hard to know if this rascal is drunk or not.

But I immediately follow him.

A door slammed as he rushed into one of the rooms. I stand still for a moment, undecided about what to do. My fingers go back and forth nervously on my dagger's pommel.

What can I do against this rascal?

Attacking him head-on would be madness, so I have to be as effective as cunning. I take a deep breath to give myself courage, then strike two blows against the old worm-eaten wood.

"Damn it! You come too early," the troubadour grumbles from the other side of the door.

So the rascal waits for someone!

With a creaking sound, the door opens, and Sordello observes me, surprised. "Who are you? I did say I wanted "the Panther"!"

With a slow gesture, I release my face hidden under the whiteness of the ermine.

The man utters an expletive.

And nothing poetic about it!

"You! Here!" he finally exclaims. "What madness! Does the count know about this? If not, I must tell him at once!"

"You won't do anything, Master Sordello," I said, fluttering my lashes and eyes imploring.

"Why not?" he asks hesitantly.

I advance in the room as gracefully as possible, putting my bottom on the troubadour's bed, and he widens his eyes.

"I left Aix because I wanted to thank you and assure you of my eternal gratitude!" I confess innocently.

I smile warmly while Sordello's mouth becomes so round that he looks like a dried herring.

"Your gratitude?" he repeats, looking suspicious.

"Well, I know everything!"

The troubadour is suddenly as white as the sheets covering his bed, and I continue calmly, "Must I admit, Master Sordello, that I was married by force? And unfortunately, my husband took me to the depths of Egypt where I suffered the last outrages!"

The lustfulness attenuates the ghastly pallor of the troubadour in the narrative of some details. "I was offered naked and defenseless to the Mohammedans' pleasure and forced to satisfy their most vile, most repulsive desires!"

"Like a whore!" Sordello cuts in a hoarse voice.

He comes closer to me and shamelessly stares at me. "What exactly did you hear?" he whispers with disgusting familiarity and burning eyes.

"That you have been ordered to rid me of my husband! I'm so grateful to you!"

He stares at me with the fascination of a rutting male.

His crotch is visibly swollen, and he hardly hides it. "Then you didn't run to denounce me to the seductive seneschal! He's not enough to satisfy you anymore! Look at the state you have put me in, little bitch!"

Without warning, he lowers his hose, showing his penis proudly. I swallow with difficulty, and the memory of a similar scene in Champagne comes back to me. But today, in this dingy room of a disgusting tavern, it's not Reyn's sword that will save me.

"I'm the best of lovers, my dear! Your Mohammedans didn't get much compared to what you will offer me nicely! And against your husband's head on a plate," he ironizes.

He threw himself on me like a hungry dog on fresh meat, his fingers touching my body, his lips greedily seeking mine.

As well as possible, I try to disengage myself.

"Don't be shy!" he growls, grabbing my face with his ugly hands. "There's a party tonight at the communal palace, and I'm going to sing. That's where the seneschal will have his day! The prostitutes will be there, and "the panther" will pour a vial of poppy into your husband's wine. So he will sleep when I slit his throat. The count will be satisfied and pay me well! His Grace sentenced him to death! He tried to get the seneschal away by sending him to Italy, but the fool refused to leave his dear wife!"

While he's trying to remove my cloak with brutality, I ask him, "Who's "the Panther"?"

Sordello stops for a moment, the glance captivated by my cleavage that he tore to reveal my breasts. "She's a beautiful whore, like you! Her dance bewitches men," he says excitedly. "And she'll be here soon! So let's hurry, my dear!"

The troubadour is bare-assed, sprawled over me like a disgusting snail. The smell of his skin and his stinking breath make me nauseous.

I feel a furious desire to see the color of his guts. So my fingers move slowly towards my dagger and its short, very sharp blade. Then they tighten the leather straps covering the pommel.

Reyn spent a lot of money to give me this item. It's a real work of art carefully forged by a Ligurian master armorer. And when I stick it into Sordello's stomach, he hiccups with astonishment.

Blood mingled with drool at the corner of his mouth, and he collapsed with a groan.

I haven't time to take his pulse and check if he has given up the ghost. The famous "Panther" could show up at any moment. As a precaution, I feverishly look for the vial of poppy intended for Reyn and notice that the troubadour has placed it on a narrow table with wormholes in the wood. I open it and breathe an intense scent, awakening madly the lack from which my body still suffers since my disease.

In this horrible room with cold walls, I should have made sure that the dead man was one, that he wasn't crawling in the shadows armed with my splendid dagger, removed without noise from his stomach.

But it's too late when Sordello, alive and well, grabs my hair from behind to cut my throat. I dodge the worst and hit him with a candlestick. A dull crash of bones follows, then I feel a sharp pain. I understand that my dagger is deeply stuck between my shoulder and upper back.

A terrible pain torments my flesh. The wound is undoubtedly severe, but I cannot take the blade out. Simon used to say that one could offer respite to the moribunds if one didn't remove the filthy sword, arrow, or spear that had pierced them.

Otherwise, they would bleed to death in a few moments.

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