“Fermin! Fermin Lessieur, give us a verse!”

A grumbling mutter from the man next to him at the bar and a quick laugh from the pretty woman beyond that one. Thierry was not alone in his view of Lessieur, it seemed.

Lessieur’s view of himself was otherwise. He came over with alacrity. Didn’t, as the tavern phrase went, need to be invited to bed twice. Thierry smiled at him. “You go first, my friend,” he said.

Lessieur offered a return smile. He had good teeth, give the man that. He placed his left foot forward, like a stage performer, and promptly launched his voice into the quiet of the room.

When drinking in a tavern I approve

I am not always seeking love!

But if a comely whore summons me upstairs

I’ll fuck her soundly and yield my cares!

Back down to the bar, another glass of wine…

I offer this as proof life can be fine!

Thierry was at pains not to wince. He put his own wine down and applauded politely with some of the other patrons.

“Save us, Thierry Villar!” someone cried—amusingly, if not courteously.

Thierry shook his head in self-deprecation. Stayed where he was, elbows casually on the bar. He stared for a moment at the three big guardsmen in black before he began. They had moved a little his way from the door. Because of that someone was able to enter. Someone he knew. Accordingly, he changed what he had planned to recite. Switched to something improvised. You needed to know how to do that in a tavern. React to the moment. He tucked new words into his well-known series of mock bestowals. Funerary bequests from a famously impoverished poet, offering his last, sardonic gifts.

He lifted a hand. He was watching the man he knew. A slight nod from there. He nodded back, immensely relieved, though not calm yet. Violence, he thought, was embedded in this moment.

He spoke: his recital voice, clear, not hurrying, but not any kind of formal declaiming, either. That didn’t work in a place like this.

For the black-clad guards of a nobleman

What can a poet offer from his meagre hoard

Of objects gathered in a tavern life

With only a tavern’s room and board?

These are trained men, armed, know how to kill.

Do they do it for pleasure, for the blood-soaked thrill,

Not just out of duty, ordered to use their skill?

If so, in Jad’s merciful name, I offer them a night

In the Châtelet for questioning, as is surely right.

And from there? A cart to bear them through Orane,

With fruits and stones hurled at will,

To meet their destiny on Gallows Hill!