Page 1 of The Jester




  Copyright © 2003 by James Patterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Little Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  The Little Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: March-2003

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2783-6

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue: The find

  Part One: The origins of comedy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Two:Black cross

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Part Three: Among friends

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Part Four: Treasure

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Part Five: Part Five

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Part Six: Last rights

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Epilogue

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  The

  Jester

  Also by James Patterson

  The Thomas Berryman Number

  Season of the Machete

  See How They Run

  The Midnight Club

  Along Came a Spider

  Kiss the Girls

  Hide & Seek

  Jack & Jill

  Miracle on the 17th Green

  (with Peter de Jonge)

  Cat & Mouse

  When the Wind Blows

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  Black Friday

  Cradle and All

  Roses Are Red

  1st to Die

  Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas

  Violets Are Blue

  2nd Chance

  (with Andrew Gross)

  The Beach House

  (with Peter de Jonge)

  The Jester

  A NOVEL BY

  James Patterson

  AND

  Andrew Gross

  LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

  BOSTON NEW YORK LONDON

  Prologue

  THE FIND

  WEARING A BROWN TWEED SUIT and his customary dark tortoiseshell sunglasses, Dr. Alberto Mazzini pushed through the crowd of loud and agitated reporters blocking the steps of the Musée d’Histoire in Borée.

  “Can you tell us about the artifact? Is it real? Is that why you’re here?” a woman pressed, shoving a microphone marked CNN in his face. “Have tests been performed on the DNA?”

  Dr. Mazzini was already annoyed. How had the press jackals been alerted? Nothing had even been confirmed about the find. He waved off the reporters and camera operators. “This way, Docteur,” one of the museum aides instructed. “Please, come inside.”

  A tiny dark-haired woman in a black pantsuit was waiting for Mazzini inside. She looked to be in her mid-forties and appeared to almost curtsy in the presence of this prestigious guest.

  “Thank you for coming. I am Renée Lacaze, the director of the museum. I tried to control the press, but . . .” she shrugged. “They smell a big story. It is as if we’ve found an atom bomb.”

  “If the artifact you’ve found turns out to be authentic,” Mazzini replied flatly, “you will have found something far greater than a bomb.”

  As the national director of the Vatican Museum, Alberto Mazzini had lent the weight of his authority to every important find of religious significance that had been unearthed over the past thirty years. The etched tablets presumed to be from the disciple John dug up in western Syria. The first Vericot
te Bible. Both now rested among the Vatican treasures. He had also been involved in the investigation of every hoax, hundreds of them.

  Renée Lacaze led Mazzini along the narrow fifteenth-century hall inlaid with heraldic tile.

  “You say the relic was unearthed in a grave?” Mazzini asked.

  “A shopping mall . . .” Lacaze smiled. “Even in downtown Borée, the construction goes night and day. The bulldozers dug up what must have once been a crypt. We would have completely missed it had not a couple of the sarcophagi split open.”

  Ms. Lacaze escorted her important guest into a small elevator and then up to the third floor. “The grave belonged to some long-forgotten duke who died in 1098. We did acid and photoluminescence tests immediately. Its age looks right. At first we wondered, why would a precious relic from a thousand years earlier, and half the world away, be buried in an eleventh-century grave?”

  “And what did you find?” Mazzini asked.

  “It seems our duke actually went to fight in the Crusades. We know he sought after relics from the time of Christ.” They finally arrived at her office. “I advise you to take a breath. You are about to behold something truly extraordinary.”

  The artifact lay on a plain white sheet on an examiner’s table, as humble as such a precious thing could be.

  Mazzini finally removed his sunglasses. He didn’t have to hold his breath. It was completely taken away. My God, this is an atom bomb!

  “Look closely. There is an inscription on it.”

  The Vatican director bent over it. Yes, it could be. It had all the right markings. There was an inscription. In Latin. He squinted close to read. “Acre, Galilee . . .” He examined the artifact from end to end. The age fit. The markings. It also corresponded to descriptions in the Bible. Yet how did it come to be buried here? “All this, it does not really prove anything.”

  “That’s true, of course.” Renée Lacaze shrugged. “But Docteur . . . I am from here. My father is from the valley, my father’s father, and his. There have been stories here for hundreds of years, long before this grave tumbled open. Stories every schoolchild in Borée was raised on. That this holy relic was here, in Borée, nine hundred years ago.”

  Mazzini had seen a hundred purported relics like this, but the tremendous power of this one gripped and unnerved him. A reverent force gave him the urge to kneel on the stone floor.

  Finally, that’s what he did — as if he were in the presence of Jesus Christ.

  “I waited until your arrival to place a call to Cardinal Perrault in Paris,” said Lacaze.

  “Forget Perrault.” Mazzini looked up, moistening his dry lips. “We are going to call the Pope.”

  Alberto Mazzini couldn’t take his eyes off the incredible artifact on the plain white sheet. This was more than just the crowning moment of his career. It was a miracle.

  “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 lowborn man would come into such a prize? A priest? Perhaps a thief?”

  “No.” Renée Lacaze’s brown eyes widened. “Actually, a jester.”

  Part One

  THE ORIGINS OF COMEDY

  Chapter 1

  Veille du Père, 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 midday 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 Antoine, who farmed a plot by the river, galloped over the bridge aboard his mule, pointing back toward 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 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 PÈRE, 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 Avignon. And here they were . . . the army of Crusaders, marching through Veille du Père!

  But what an army! More of a rabble, like one of those multitudes prophesied in Isaiah 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 uniforms, 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, barefoot, bald, with a thatched crown, plopped atop a simple mule.

  “It is their awful singing the Turks will turn and run from,” I said, shaking 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, the town’s priest, went up to greet him. The singing stopped, weapons and packs were laid down. Everyone in our town was pressed around the tiny square. To listen.

  “I am called Peter the Hermit,” the monk said in a surprisingly strong voice, “urged by His Holiness Urban to lead an army of believers to the Holy Land to free the holy sepulchre from the heathen hordes. Are there any believers here?”

  He was pale and long nosed, resembling his mount, and his brown robes had holes in them, threadbare. Yet as he spoke, he seemed to grow, his voice rising in power and conviction.

  “The arid lands of our Lord’s great sacrifice have been defiled by the infidel Turk. Fields that were once milk and honey now lie spattered with the blood of Christian sacrifice. Churches have been burned and looted, sainted sites destroyed. The holiest treasures of our faith, the bones of saints, have been fed to dogs; cherished vials filled with drops of the Savior’s own blood, poured into heaps of dung like spoiled wine.”

  “Join us,” many from the ranks called out loudly. “Kill the pagans and sit with the Lord in Heaven.”

  “For those who come,” the monk named Peter went on, “for those who put aside their earthly possessio
ns and join our Crusade, His Holiness Urban promises unimaginable rewards. Riches, spoils, and honor in battle. His protection for your families who dutifully remain behind. An eternity in Heaven at the feet of our grateful Lord. And, most of all, freedom. Freedom from all servitude upon your return. Who will come, brave souls?” The monk reached out his arms, his invitation almost irresistible.

  Shouts of acclamation rose throughout the square. People I had known for years shouted, “I . . . I will come!”

  I saw Matt, the miller’s older son, just sixteen, throw up his hands and hug his mother. And Jean the smith, who could crush iron in his hands, kneel and take the Cross. Several other people, some of them just boys, ran to get their possessions, then merged with the ranks. Everyone was shouting, “Dei leveult!” God wills it!

  My own blood surged. What a glorious adventure awaited. Riches and spoils picked up along the way. A chance to change my destiny in a single stroke. I felt my soul spring alive. I thought of gaining our freedom, and the treasures I might find on the Crusade. For a moment I almost raised my hand and called out, “I will come! I will take the Cross.”

  But then I felt Sophie’s hand pressing on mine. I lost my tongue.

  Then the procession started up again. The ranks of farmers, masons, bakers, maids, whores, jongleurs, and outlaws hoisting their sacks and makeshift weapons, swelling in song. The monk Peter mounted his donkey, blessed the town with a wave, then pointed east.

  I watched them with a yearning I thought had long been put behind me. I had traveled in my youth. I’d been brought up by goliards, students and scholars who entertained from town to town. And there was something that I missed from those days. Something my life in Veille du Père had stilled but not completely put aside.

  I missed being free, and even more than that, I wanted freedom for Sophie and the children we would have one day.

  Chapter 3

  TWO DAYS LATER, other visitors came through our town.

  There was a ground-shaking rumble from the west, followed by a cloud of gravel and dust. Horsemen were coming in at a full gallop! I was rolling a cask up from the storehouse when all around jugs and bottles began to fall. Panic clutched at my heart. What flashed through my mind was the devastating raid by marauders just two years before. Every house in the village had been burned or sacked.

  There was a shriek, and then a shout. Children playing ball in the square dived out of the way. Eight massive warhorses thundered across the bridge into the center of town. On their huge mounts, I saw knights wearing the purple-and-white colors of Baldwin of Treille, our liege lord.