A mild puzzlement settles on Quin's features, but if the doctor thought the fellow was so near death as to call in the brother tonsurer for more than bloodletting, there was little to be done up there save get in the way. His attention comes to sharp focus when it seems Emma will speak, but lags behind when her gaze drifts to something else, noting the hesitation and falter of her speech before the outlander's presence.

The expression does clear on seeing Johann, however, and he waves the knight over. "Von Fulda! Did you catch your man? We saw something similar on the way back off the North Bridge - Henri caught the fellow, but lost him, so I had Etienne knock the lad over. Wouldn't say why he'd done it. I suspect some devilment in the wheat."

Quin pauses on the brink of saying more, since he can hardly invite the man directly into his lady's house before her, nor suggest Henri should show him about, though that surely fell to the older man's station. "...we sent a man to have them haul the victim out down at the mill," he finishes awkwardly, though for all his social stumbling he seems genuinely curious as to Johann's progress, perhaps keyed-up by the prospect of a hunt.

Johann is extremely bewildered by this new information. "What?!" He thinks about it, tries to process it. "...What...?" He looks up. "The person who pushed the master builder from the wall was apparently a young girl, who does laundry for the workers. She ran away into the nearby trees... but... something like this has happened elsewhere...? With another young person as the... perpetrator...? Is... is the person pushed off the bridge dead?"

Quin raises his eyebrows at the sudden volume, but lets the other knight think, since aloud seems to be the way he does that. "Ah? She should be easy enough to round up at her parents' house...to question, at least. No-one had any idea why she did it?"

"Our fellow wasn't a child, but I doubt he'd have made much progress on a beard if he tried. As for the victim, I wasn't in a spot to see if he struck the bridge on the way down at all, but they say even suicides struggle by instinct when they start to drown, and the man neither moved nor cried out in the water." His brows twitch into a frown. "Not that there would be much I could do about it, being in full kit, but I would hope anyone lower down that saw him go in would have moved out to help if he was breathing. Henri, did you see anything more than I did?"

Looking back at the older man, Quin realises Johann is a stranger to him. "Oh -" he backs up a step from walled shade to sunshine, indicating one knight to the other, "Johann von Fulda, this is Henri de Lyon, lord-consort of Levanlet. Henri, Johann is a pilgrim knight from-" Quin's knowledge of geography falters and he grins sheepishly at his own ignorance, "-the west Roman lands. North somewhere?"

"They did not. They all seemed quite surprised."




"Far to the east in Austrasia. East of Cologne... south of Saxony. If that helps."

(Note: If I have my historic geography wrong, please forgive! Feel free to correct me, too, if I'm wrong!)

Johann turns to Henri de Lyon. "A pleasure to meet you," he says, bowing a bit.

With 'everything he needs' provided by the Manor, Michal continued at the bedside of the wounded Master Builder ... fighting for the man's live.

In reply to Johann von Fulda (msg # 8):

Henri bows to the other knight, offering a smile. "Good to meet you, sir. I'm Sir Henri of Lyon." He nods. "It's about... a half-day's ride to the east of here. However, I do have family in the area - one of my cousins."

Johann nods. "Ah," he says.

Pleased that Henri has stepped up to welcome their guest (if possibly to confuse him as to the location of Lavelanet in relation to Lyon), Quin smiles and affirms that he's mentally found Fulda: "Yes, working from Cologne...and below Saxony, I think I have a rough idea."

"Sérignac is three days or so to the north - we have a church about the size of my lady's hall," he remarks whilst they're on the topic, amused to lay his father's country fief alongside cities with holy Basilicas and the great work of constructing a cathedral.

The young knight looks between Henri and his lady, but returns to the concerning matter in hand: "Did you gather a name for this girl, or her parents?"

"Jehanne was the girl's name. No one said anything about her parents. Perhaps she has none?"

Quin gets that 'thinking' look. "I suppose 'Jehanne of the Laundry' might be enough to identify her, but it is a common name. If she had reason to try and kill the man or simply fled from an accident it would be well to know, and if it was this strange fractiousness that seems to be going about she might yet be dangerous to others."

The frown gets a little deeper. "...and if the fractiousness might wear off...well."

"I do have a habit of seeing patterns, to the point my mother had a tapestry nailed over my bed as a child to keep me from seeing 'lions' in the ceiling, but I overheard some workers in the marketplace complaining of an ill taste in their food, and I have heard that grain that seems sound yet has a subtly strange taste can be a mark of witchcraft. If the child did this thing under some fell influence and is now to feel herself a fugitive in the woods, I fear for her."

"My lady, might I excuse myself this afternoon, to determine where this Jehanne has got to and what her quarrel might be, or have you some other task?"

Emma nods thoughtfully and agrees to let Quin take the huntsman and some men to go look for the girl. She motions for the men to follow her into the manor. Greeting them in the hallway is a dark-haired maid that curtsies to Seigneuresse Trencavel with just a slight look at Quin out of the corner of her eyes. "I... that is, the builder, he... he died. The healer couldn't save him after all," she tells Emma somberly.

Quin gives the maid a warm smile when glanced at, though not without concern, since he was unsure if an opened man breathing but moments ago might be more upsetting to the kitchen staff than an open side of beef. Hopefully the monks would close the corpse again before giving it to the women to wash, but the result was to be expected, since although the Saracens were held to have spells and sorceries that defied the odds, a surgery killed as often as it cured, no matter the healer's skill.

The knight awaits his lady's response, looking along to the stairs to see if the healer would follow Catin to present himself, then to Johann to see what he makes of this news, having been at the site first. Should the devout von Fulda be giving Catin disapproving looks for having a line of hair visible from under her neatly-tied veil instead, Quin is quite resolved to run distraction, though surely a man confirmed dead was distraction enough.

The monks eventually arrrives, laden with healing supplies. When they learn of the passing of the master builder they divert their focus to preparing for the burial instead. The lady withdraws from the mens company to take care of current affairs and throughout the rest of the evening the mood of the house is muted. The loss of the architect is sure to be sore for the progress of the castle build.

Seigneuresse Trencavel asks Quin and Henri to see to what became of the man that was pushed from the bridge, his assailant and tend to the business with the cleaning girl that pushed the master builder, they have her resources at their disposal.

It is now early afternoon and recent events beside, it is a beautiful, crisp spring day.

Once he's less armoured for war, assassins, and impressing the peasantry, Quin rounds up some men and asks them to be ready to venture into local woodland with him should primary enquiries as to the murderous child's whereabouts lead to naught. With Henri not immediately in view, he asks Johann if he'd like to come along.

On seeing a rather frustrated stranger with a bag of unclear purpose, he asks Michal if the healer would care to investigate the condition of the youth they'd trapped, to determine if there might be anything but coincidence in these deaths from a height. He voices his suspicions about witched grain at the same time.

"I would. Ah-- to go on foot? Or mounted?"

In reply to Catarinon las Rocas (msg # 15):

Henri frowns as he hears of the builder's death, making the sign of the cross.  He glances over at the maid. "I will go look for the messenger from the market, if I would be granted leave, my lady." He looks over once more to the maid.

When he arrived in the Atrium, downstairs, Michal found somewhere out of the way, and polite, to await the House's attention.

In reply to Johann von Fulda (msg # 19):

[[hopefully Johann's been shown a guest room to settle a bit and have servants drop off his stuff by this point(?)]]

"I mean to go horsed, the swifter to be back here and rouse up a search if she's not at home," Quin replies. "Wolves are rarely anywhere near the town, but the boar are bold this time of year, to say nothing of simply freezing or setting too much alight if she hides out all night. If your steed needs to rest from your journeying I can see to getting you the loan of a sound animal without trouble."

(Not that I recall, but whatever, he's flexible. Maybe it happened off-camera?)



"Gunther should be good for the rest of today, I warrant. ...Ah, Gunther is my horse. And if there were a wolf or a bold boar, I would want to be on Gunther." Johann's want has just a tiny bit of vant. It's cute.

The young knight gives Johann a bright smile, rather delighted by the foreigner's accent and attachment to a beast that seemed just as unwieldy as Etienne. He leads off for the stables. "We've warming salve for his legs at the end of the day if he needs it," he says, "-but hopefully we'll be on the ground more often than paving. Do you hunt the boar, when not actively on pilgrimage?"

Clearly a high risk of death for the protection of ground crops and gamey bacon is one of Quin's delights in life. Hunting mysterious architect-attackers seems to intrigue him, too.

"I have done so before, but seldom."

"We have a great abundance of them down here - it's the oak scrub on the unterraced land, I believe: they get huge and fat on acorns," Quin tells their visitor, leading back across the courtyard to the stables and dropping an enquiry to the nearest groom as to where Gunther had been put. "Actually, the first boar I saw killed was a maneater - tall as me, even."

He threw a grin across. "-but then I was seven. At any rate, there's enough on them that they make a fair feast," he finished, passing out of the back of the stables to (eventually) call up Etienne from the small paddock.

"Shall we go over to the site of construction first, in case anyone there happens to know her family? We ought to tell them the injured party has died, I suppose," he added, sobering a little.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:43, Thu 13 Oct 2022.

"A fat boar can be good, if it makes it slower, or bad, if it's able to charge well, or both..."



Johann shudders a bit. "Fat is one thing, but how high at the shoulder are we talking about?"



"...Ah," says Johann, only slightly less concerned...



"Indeed, let us do just as you suggest."

The lady eventually makes her way to Michal, taking his report. After recieving the poor news and what happened at the site she thanks the healr and promises a reward for his effort.

She encourages him to join the knights in their efforts to find the cleaning girl, his skills will surely come in handy.

Michal bows, and leaves her Ladyship ... looking now to join with the knights.