Heresy: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (2 page)

Edgar kissed her. “I promise I’ll be home to hear our new baby’s first cry. Will that satisfy you?

“No,” Catherine said. “But it will have to do.”

After spending all winter in the forest, Cecile thought it was odd that not one of Eon’s followers had bothered to ask her where she had come from or why the men had been chasing her. Of course, everything about Eon and his people was odd. They seemed unaware of how bizarre they were, dressed in swaths of fine material they had stolen from local churches, pieced together with rough wool. They called themselves by strange names, like Prudence and Wisdom. She saw no sign of either in the rough encampment. But they were kind to her. They fed her and shared their shelter. Not one of the men, including Eon, ever suggested that she should repay this generosity with her body. In that, these mad peasants were more noble than the men she had fled. Cecile knew the horror that she would go back to if the count’s men ever found her. This place was strange, but it was safe.

There was only one man among the group who seemed unaffected by the universal adoration of Eon. He called himself Peter. It was some weeks before she gathered up enough courage to ask him how he had become one of Eon’s followers.

“The others are all people who have been damaged,” she said sadly. “Beaten, starved, driven from their homes. Anyone who took them in would be treated as their savior. But you are no more like them than I am.”

Peter smiled at her. “Eon knows why I’m here,” he said. “He knows I have no desire to harm him or his people, so he tolerates me.”

Cecile thought there would be many reasons for tolerating Peter. He was well built, tall and slender with a strong face and dark brown eyes. He had a hawklike nose that would have been overpowering in a lesser setting. If any man in this place could tempt her, it would be this one.

“Then you don’t believe Eon is the son of God?” she asked.

His eyebrows rose. “Do you?”

Cecile shook her head. “I think he is a dear deluded man who has been good to me, but nothing more. His speech isn’t that of a peasant. I don’t understand why his family hasn’t come to take him home where he can be cared for.”

“They have,” Peter explained. “But he refuses to leave, and his people threaten to kill anyone who tries to take him by force.”

“But they have no weapons!”

“That’s true, but Eon’s cousins don’t really want to hurt anyone,” Peter said. “They asked me to stay until spring to make sure he doesn’t do anything that would cause him to be taken by the authorities. His followers haven’t raided a village or hermitage since I joined them. They trap their meat and rely on donations for the rest. I had hoped that if things got bad enough I could convince him to come with me back to the monastery his family placed him in. But his madness is too entrenched and the local villagers too kind. They have little enough for themselves and still they give him bread. I worry about him. I can’t stay much longer and I don’t know what will happen if he’s left to his own devices.”

“You’re leaving?” Cecile looked up at him in hope. “When?”

“Within the week,” he said. “My mother expects to hear from me soon, and there’s been no way to get a message out all winter. I have family near Nantes who will send her word that I’m well.”

Cecile put both hands on his arm. “Please,” she begged, “take me with you! My family must believe me to be dead by now, or worse, still safe in the convent. No one knows what’s happening there. I shouldn’t have stayed here so long, but I was afraid.”

From her wide eyes and shaking hands, Peter deduced that Cecile was still afraid. He had watched her since she arrived. Her gentleness with the inhabitants of Eon’s village touched him. She was obviously a noblewoman, but he suspected that she had been abused as evilly as any of the serfs who had come to Eon for protection.

He had also suspected from her demeanor that she might have been in a convent. He had hoped it wasn’t true. She said her prayers in Latin but he had told himself that many noblewomen knew Latin. There were other clues, but Peter had ignored them all. Being with Cecile had given him dreams he had never hoped to have.

With a vicious wrench, he brought himself back to her story.

“What is happening in your convent?” he asked. “I thought that most monastic houses were visited regularly by the bishops. Surely any serious irregularities would be noticed and corrected.”

Cecile looked at him in amazement. “The bishop knows all about it, but he can do nothing, even if he wanted to. The count of Tréguier has thrown the canons out of the abbey of Sainte-Croix and installed his mistress and her friends there instead. They say that the former abbot, Moses, has left to take his complaint to the pope, but we had heard nothing from him when I escaped.”

“Then the matter will soon be resolved,” Peter told her soothingly. “Perhaps it has already. I still don’t see why you were there. You are a professed nun, aren’t you? Sainte-Croix is a male monastic house.”

“Oh, yes,” Cecile said. “I was at the convent of Saint-Georges-de-Rennes. That is until Count Henri decided to move some of us to his…his brothel. The abbess protested, of course, but we had no defense and so we had to go. At first we thought it was only to prove to anyone who asked that Sainte-Croix was really still a religious house. We assumed we would be allowed to continue our devotions as before. But then”—she swallowed—“we realized that his men had no respect for our vows or our persons.”

“I see.” Peter’s dark eyes softened with pity. “And so you fled.”

She nodded. “I have taken a heavenly bridegroom and will not submit willingly to any man. I told them that. They didn’t care. I prayed and pleaded, but Christ didn’t help me. I must have sinned greatly to be punished so.”

“That’s not true,” Peter said sharply. “Augustine said so himself when he wrote to the consecrated virgins who had been raped by the Goths. He said that in the eyes of Heaven, they were still virgins for their souls were pure.”

Cecile looked up at him, her mouth open as if breathing in hope.

“Saint Augustine said that?” she said. “He must have known.” She sighed. “I’m glad that this wasn’t brought upon me by my own actions, but I don’t understand why God let it happen to me at all.”

“Oh, Cecile,” Peter said. “I’m neither a saint nor a philosopher. I have no idea. But He did help you to escape, after all.”

That’s so.” Cecile was as comforted as she could be. “But not for long. I thought no one would notice I was gone until night. But someone betrayed me, and I hadn’t gone half a league when I heard the men coming after me. They hunted me as if I were a wild beast or a criminal.”

She shuddered. Peter laid his hand on her shoulder. He wanted to do more but understood now that there was no hope. He could only be her friend and protector.

“I promise to take you with me and see to it that you are restored to your convent or your family,” he said. “If Saint-Georges isn’t safe, I can take you to my mother. She is abbess at a convent in Champagne. It’s time that you returned to the monastic life. I promise, we’ll leave tomorrow.”

In the county of Champagne, miles away from Brittany, Heloise, abbess of the convent of the Paraclete, had been awake since the end of the night office. The other nuns had gone back to their warm beds to rest until dawn, but Heloise used this time to work, pray, and sometimes to remember.

She was drafting replies to the many letters she received, but for some reason her mind kept drifting to her son, Astrolabe. It had always pained her that she had given him into the keeping of his father’s family almost as soon as he had been born. But then it had seemed the only choice. Peter Abelard was a great philosopher and scholar. At the time Heloise had believed that it would have been wrong to burden him with a child. And she had loved Abelard too much to leave him. His sister, Denise, had raised Astrolabe with love and a stability that neither Heloise nor Abelard could give him. But Heloise loved him, too, even more now that Abelard was dead. Astrolabe was the tangible result not just of her sin but also of her passion. Of the errors she had committed in her youth, Astrolabe was not among them. She and Abelard had both agreed on that.

Astrolabe normally visited her a few times each year, but there had been no word from him since before the feast of the Nativity. His last letter had said he was going to visit a friend in northern Brittany who needed his help. What sort of help, Heloise wondered. And why was it taking so long to accomplish?

She tried to concentrate on the letter to Mahaut, Countess of Champagne, whose son had gone on the expedition with the king. The subject of the countess’s concern was a conflict over a donation made by one of her vassals to another convent. The children of the original donor claimed that they hadn’t been consulted before their land was given to the nuns, and they wanted it back. Heloise was used to being consulted in such matters, but worry over her own son made it hard for her to write naturally, even on a neutral matter, to Mahaut whose own child was in so much greater danger. Did Mahaut lie awake nights wondering if her eldest son would ever return?

She was deep into the letter when she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Startled, she turned quickly on her stool, nearly tipping it over.

“Mother! I’m so sorry!” The girl dropped her dark cloak, revealing that she was wearing only her shift and wooden sabots.

“Margaret!” Heloise hurried to wrap her again in the cloak. The room was cold. The abbess didn’t give herself any more creature comfort than she allowed the other nuns. “What are you doing up at this hour? Does Sister Emily know you’re not in your bed?”

“No, Mother. I didn’t want to wake anyone.” Margaret shivered, but Heloise felt that it was more from fear than the cold. “I had a horrible dream! I tried to put it out of my mind with prayer, but it wouldn’t go away. I got up to use the latrine and saw a light in your window, so…”

Heloise smiled. “Your sister-in-law was not above interrupting my work, either. You and Catherine may look nothing alike, but you do have some of the same traits.”

Margaret looked down. “I wish that were true, Mother. I’m not the scholar she was, nor am I as brave.”

Heloise stroked the white scar across Margaret’s cheek. “You have more reason to be cautious than she ever did, and a healthy fear is not a bad thing. And as for scholarship, it’s true you’re not as adept at rhetoric, but your diligence is marvelous. You’ve made great strides in your Hebrew studies. Soon you’ll be beyond me. We may have to send you to a teacher in Troyes.”

She had been trying to distract the girl from her dream, but something she had said caused Margaret to gasp and start trembling.

“Mother, can dreams be a prophecy?” she asked, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

“Only to prophets,” Heloise answered. “Do you suspect you’ve been granted such a gift?”

Margaret took a deep breath. “Of course not.” She tried to smile. “It’s only that it was so intense, the flames and the shouting.”

Heloise sat Margaret down on her bed. “Very well, tell me what you remember and I’ll do my best to explain it.”

“It was confusing,” Margaret admitted. “There was a huge crowd of people, ugly people, with faces twisted so that they seemed more to be beasts. They were screaming something; I couldn’t understand it. Then I saw a man being dragged through them. He was bound, and those he passed spat on him or kicked him. He was brought up to a platform and then the voices became clear. They shrieked ‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’ ”

“Perhaps it was a vision of the Passion of Our Lord,” Heloise suggested gently. “We are sometimes given such dreams to remind us of our faith.”

“No,” Margaret lowered her head and whispered. “At the end, as they tied him to the stake, I saw his face. That’s what frightened me into waking.”

She raised her face, tears streaming. “Mother Heloise, it was Solomon!”

Now Heloise understood. Catherine had confided to her that one of the reasons Margaret was at the Paraclete was that she had developed an unsuitable affection for Edgar’s partner in trade. Solomon felt an avuncular love for the girl, nothing more, Catherine had assured her. Even if he wished to marry Margaret, it was impossible. Firstly, Solomon was a Jew. But even if he converted, such a liaison would never be permitted. Margaret was too wellborn for a match with someone outside the nobility.

Margaret understood this. She had obeyed the decision to send her to the Paraclete with only mild protest, and she appeared to be adjusting well to the pattern of life in the convent, happy to spend her time in learning until her family settled her future. But Heloise knew from bitter experience how ungovernable the heart can be.

“My poor child,” she said as she smoothed Margaret’s hair. “It was a dreadful dream but nothing more. It was brought about solely through your concern for your friend added to all the talk of heresy and the resentment toward the Jews that King Louis’s pilgrimage has caused. I’m sure Solomon is fine.”

Margaret looked up at Heloise. The tears were ebbing but the grief remained. Heloise held her until a deep sigh and a hiccough indicated that Margaret had calmed down. The abbess stifled a sigh of her own. At fifteen, Margaret couldn’t know how many times the heart can break and mend only to break again. And had to. Just as well, she thought. Otherwise the convents would be so full that there would be no one left to propagate.

“Thank you, Mother.” Margaret got up. “I apologize for disturbing you. I’ll confess it in Chapter and take whatever penance you set.”

“That won’t be necessary, my dear.” Heloise kissed her and led her out. “You came to me with a spiritual crisis. It’s my duty to help you, even in the middle of the night. Now, try not to wake anyone else on your way back.”

Heloise returned to her letter to Mahaut. It was made even harder now. Margaret’s face kept interfering. The countess had taken an interest in Margaret, who was the count’s granddaughter, her mother having been the product of a youthful affair between Count Thibault and a noblewoman of Ponthieu. Countess Mahaut was tolerant of something that had happened well before her marriage to the count and had become fond of her husband’s granddaughter.