The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (32 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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“Even more,” Peter told her. “I have it. Father tried to scrape off the marks but I was able to retrace the lines.”
“Why would he do that?” Margaret breathed.
Peter hesitated. He hated not to have the answer.
“I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “The message had no words on it, only a drawing of a man and not a very good one, at that.”
“Did you ask your father about it?” Margaret said.
“No, I didn’t find it until after he died,” he answered sadly. “But I recognized the vellum and the place where the wax had been.”
“But you should tell someone, Peter,” Margaret insisted. “The same person who murdered the courier could have killed your father, too.”
She had mixed in French words where she didn’t know the German and it took a moment for Peter to understand.
“But how?” he wondered. “There were no strangers around before Father died.”
“Well, then,” Margaret said, “then they both must have been murdered by someone you know.”
She didn’t realize how much at that moment she sounded like Catherine.
Peter thought about that for a moment, trying to take it in.
“I never thought we were important or wicked enough for anyone to want to kill us,” he said at last. “All we have is a few hectares of vines and a proud name. Who among those around us could wish us dead?”
“Not you!” Margaret was alarmed. “Perhaps your father was part of the revolt against the archbishop and he had him killed.”
Peter shook his head. “Everyone knew what side my father was on. He paid tithes and service to the archbishop, but never made a secret of his dislike for the man’s arrogance. Anyway, I already told you that we aren’t worth the trouble. That’s why Uncle Hermann is afraid that your grandfather won’t let me marry you.”
“My grandfather?” Margaret missed the second part. “He’s a lay brother in Scotland. What has he to do with me?”
“But Walter said that your mother’s father was the count of Champagne!” Peter insisted.
“Where could he have gotten that idea?” Margaret asked.
Then she remembered the day she had been taken to meet the countess and the odd looks that had passed between her and Catherine. Margaret felt suddenly sick. She stood up and then fell as James knocked her over on his round.
“Are you all right?” Peter helped her up.
“Yes, quite well.” Margaret brushed off her skirts absently. “But I have to be going. James! Come with me! It’s time to go!”
“No!” James shouted back and ran away.
Peter ran after him and brought him back, the child kicking and wiggling in the crook of his arm.
“Shall I carry him for you?” he asked Margaret.
“James,” Margaret said, “do you want to be brought back like a baby or to walk as my escort?”
James kicked a few times more for effect then went limp.
“Walk,” he said.
“Thank you, Peter,” Margaret said as he set James down. “Let’s go, James.”
“If you come to the church in the village at the foot of the hill by the castle on Friday afternoon,” Peter called after her, “I can show you the message. You can take it to your brother and his wife. Maybe they’ll know what it means.”
“All right,” she called back. “After Tierce.”
She didn’t look back as she hurried James through the streets to their lodging. She was going to confront Catherine about this at once. Why had no one told her about her grandfather before? Did everyone know but her? Now that she considered it, her mother had spoken little about her family in France and nothing about her father.
It was a very odd feeling to learn that your mother was a bastard.
As they came out of a side street, they nearly collided with a man on horseback, leading another horse. Margaret and James looked up.
“Grandpapa!” James cried, lifting his arms.
Margaret hoisted him up into Hubert’s arms. She glanced at the other horse and gave a shout.
“Oh, you found Walter’s horse! How wonderful!”
She ran to the house and called for Catherine.
“Come quickly. Look! Your father is home and see what he brought!”
Catherine came to the door with Edana on her hip.
“Father! I’m so glad you’re back,” she said. “And Walter will be overjoyed when he sees the horse. Where did you find it?”
Hubert handed James down and then dismounted. He hadn’t spoken. Catherine looked into his eyes and her throat constricted. She had never thought of her father as truly old until that moment.
“Father,” she croaked. “What’s wrong? Something about Agnes? What did you find?”
“Agnes?” he said. “Oh that. Yes, I found something but I don’t understand it yet. Later. I’ll tell you when I get back.”
“Back? From where?” Catherine stood with a child in one arm and reins wrapped around the other, staring at her father as if they’d never met.
“Mina’s,” Hubert said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to still his faltering heart. “First, I must go to see Mina.”
He left the horses standing and Catherine staring after him in fear.
Trier. 7 Tuesday, 13 kalends September (August 20), 1146; 9 Elul, 4906. Commemoration of the Prophet Samuel, author of the Book of Ruth.
It is more praiseworthy to come and go to a house in mourning than to go to a house of feasting and rejoicing.
 
—Hai ben Sherira Gaon
 
 
H
ubert came back from his visit to Mina looking haggard and feeling shaken to the bone. Behind him the wailing rose as the news was carried from house to house. He longed to return to share in the communal grief, but feared he wouldn’t be welcomed.
Catherine asked no questions when he came in, only kissed him and made him sit and drink a cup of white wine in which she’d steeped mint and borage. The way his hands trembled frightened her and she begged him to lie down for a while.
“No, I don’t want to close my eyes,” Hubert: replied. “Every time I do I see him, so happy to be almost home and then … and then his poor tortured body!”
He dropped the cup and put his face in his hands, sobbing. Catherine knelt and wrapped her arms around him. He put his head on her shoulder and cried out his misery and guilt.
“I should have been with him,” he kept repeating.
“Who, Father?” Catherine asked softly.
“Simon! Poor martyred Simon!” he cried.
In fragments he told her what had happened. At first her only reaction was relief that he hadn’t been there to die with his friend. Then she remembered Mina and the children, including the one yet to be born. Hubert had asked her a few weeks ago if she knew of anything that could help Mina’s morning sickness, but all the remedies Catherine had were already known to the Jewish midwives. Such a shock at this time could cause the poor woman to miscarry.
“What will happen to them, Father?” she asked. “What can we do to help?”
“The community will care for them,” Hubert said. “And there is nothing you can do; it was your white monk’s preaching that lead
to this. And to think I wasn’t there to help Simon because I was returning a horse to a man who wears a cross on his chest!”
He clawed at his own chest as if to rip out the pain.
The moment he had seen Hubert’s face, Edgar had hurried the children upstairs out of the way. Then he went out hunting for information. As he passed the
judengasse
the keening poured out knife-sharp on his ears, made even sharper by the terror at its edge. How long before there would be others to mourn?
There were a number of people coming across the square toward the narrow street, men and women, all with set expressions. Edgar moved to block them, not certain of what he could do. He saw Egilbert, the man who spoke English, among them.
“Egilbert!” he called. “What’s happening? Has a plague come to town?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Egilbert answered. “Simon’s been murdered on his way home.”
“So where are all of you going?” Edgar wished that Walter were there to help him keep these people from doing anything violent.
“To see his family, of course,” Egilbert said. “They won’t eat our food so we couldn’t bring the funeral meal, but at least we can give them our consolation and money to help retrieve his body. Simon may have been a Jew but he was also of Trier. He was an honest man and my friend.”
Confused, Edgar let the people pass. He had heard that the parents of the townspeople of Trier had slaughtered several Jews and destroyed their holy books and objects in 1096. He wondered how only fifty years could have changed them. But all behavior in this regard was strange to Edgar, who had never seen a Jew until he came to Paris. He had never been able to associate the people he knew with the stories of the Bible, any more than he would confuse the pope today with Saint Peter or judge one on the behavior of the other.
Once he felt certain that the townspeople intended no violence, Edgar returned to the house. There he found that Catherine had given her father another cup, this with some valerian in it, and he was now resting.
“Father blames me, too,” Catherine told him. “He thinks I would rejoice at this man’s death. How could he? I tried to explain that I
would be glad only of a true conversion, but I don’t think he saw any difference. When I asked him not to spend so much time with the Jews, I was only thinking of his safety.”
“Catherine, it’s a chasm neither of us can cross.” Edgar smoothed her hair and drew her closer. “We know this from Solomon, no matter how much we care for each other.”
Catherine was motionless in his arms. At last she gave a long, shuddering breath.
“We’re losing him, aren’t we?” she said. “Not all the love we can give seems to be enough to make my father happy. I thought he would try to be a good Christian for the sake of his grandchildren, but I can feel him drifting farther from us every time news comes of another atrocity. What can I do?”
Edgar kissed her forehead. “I don’t know,
leoffest.
Only continue loving him, I suppose.”
Across the square, the lamentation went on.
 
Denise was, for the most part, happy with her new life in Köln. She felt that she was being allowed to live with angels. If their bishop should suddenly sprout wings and ascend to heaven, Denise would have felt it only to be expected. There was something about the house that made her feel purified. Slowly she was weaning herself from the weaknesses of the flesh and there was hope that one day she might become a
perfecta
herself. This was a true Christian society.
So the fact that she was doing the laundry at the moment didn’t upset her. What she was worrying about was that she, Astolfo and Lanval might have been responsible for bringing a wolf into this innocent fold.
She realized now that she’d been blinded by Andreas’s fervor and eagerness to join them. So many others had proven unable to endure the hardships. But since they had arrived in Köln she had grown more doubtful of his sincerity. He had spent more and more time away from the house. She had noticed him outside a tavern one day, drinking with some other men in a way that suggested they knew each other well. She was almost certain that he was eating meat. And now he’d vanished, leaving his second-best clothes behind.
Denise had left his tunic and
brais
until the last, and not just
because they stank. She had heard about the Jewish merchant who’d been murdered and that no one was hunting very hard for the men who’d been seen running from the place where it had happened. The incident had revolted her. Denise believed in dying for her faith. She absolutely refused to kill for it.
She held up the brais. As she had feared, they were stiff with the brown stains of spilled blood.
“Oh, Andreas,” she moaned. “What have you done? And where have you gone?”
 
Walter’s joy at the return of his horse was diminished by Hubert’s obvious sense of grief and guilt.
I’ll pay you back whatever it cost to buy him,” he told Hubert.
“No, thank you, Walter,” he answered dully. “Give it to Mina for the children. No, wait, not with that symbol on your clothes. It would be like slapping her. Take it to the
parnas
of the community. He’ll see that she gets it.”
Walter went into the back garden where the rest of the family had gone to escape the heat.
“I never thought I’d feel ashamed of wearing a cross,” he said. “How can this monk claim to be a follower of Abbot Bernard and preach such things? The abbot made it very clear that we go to fight the infidel because they have attacked the holy places with swords. What harm had Simon ever done anyone?”
“Something has to be done, before more people die,” Catherine said.
“From what I’ve seen in the past few days, I don’t think anything like that will happen in Trier, at least,” Edgar said. “Most of the people in town seem truly shocked by what happened.”
“I thought it couldn’t happen in Paris,” Catherine reminded him. “But we saw the mob there. It doesn’t take a whole town to do such things. Only a few people full of hate and many more who are cowards.”
Edgar heard the self-loathing in her voice.
“It’s hard to risk everything for a faith you don’t share,” he argued. “Would you stand between a mob and its victims if it meant leaving your children motherless?”
Edana had just run to her with a scraped knee. Catherine kissed
it and embraced her fiercely before sending her back to play. Edgar went on.
“Would you have wanted your father to choose to die defending Simon? Or for me to be killed along with him, if Solomon were attacked?”
“That’s not fair!” Catherine said. “We could never leave Solomon to the mercy of rabble!”
Edgar smiled. “Of course not. But could we be as brave for strangers?”
Catherine hated to say it but he was waiting for the answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wish I could be sure but I can’t. It’s true that in Paris my only thought was to save the children. It’s so much easier when there’s no one you love that needs protection.” She gave a rueful smile. “When I read about the Christian mothers who exhorted their children to face the lions bravely, I begin to think my faith isn’t what it should be. Yes, you’re right. I won’t judge others as cowards unless I can prove I would do better.”
There was a knock at the door. Edgar went to answer it.
Brother Berengar smiled at him.
“I have news,” he said. “I spoke with our infirmarian, Brother Zacharias, and he knows of several concoctions that could kill a man without his eating them.”
He was so cheerful about this that Edgar was forced to laugh.
“Come in,” he said. “Catherine will want to hear your information, too.”
Once Berengar was settled in the garden with a plate of grapes and cheese next to him, he resumed his explanation.
“Zacharias says that many medicines work by penetrating the body’s other orifaces and shouldn’t be eaten,” he said. “And if medicines will work in this way, there are caustic substances that can also be administered in the same way to cause death.”
“That’s logical,” Catherine said. “What sort of substance should we be looking for?”
“Well, he wasn’t sure about that,” Berengar said. “I almost believe that he was worried that I was planning to use one myself, the way he scrutinized me. But I finally got him to suggest that we look for something Gerhardt would use often and that was only his, such as Edgar’s idea about candles. If he had hemorrhoids, there’s a soft
white stone that one grinds to a powder and applies. It would be simple to adulterate it with a harmful powder.”
“But did he?” Catherine asked.
Berengar shrugged. “Not that I know of. That was only an example. There are things one inhales for a congestion of the nose and head also.”
“The point is that Gerhardt needn’t have eaten the poison that killed him,” Edgar finished. “Now we have more possibilities.”
Catherine wasn’t so elated by this. “That might only pointed the way back to Agnes. And even when we know how, it will still be hard to discover who. If the poison was in something like a medicine, he might have received it anywhere, at any time. It wouldn’t have to have been someone in the household who prepared it. In my opinion, we’ve only made the number of suspects greater and our likelihood of solving this that much less.”
The two men looked at her in disappointment.
“We can’t think that way, Catherine,” Edgar said.
“Maybe not, but it would be much more useful if we could find just one enemy for this man. No one has yet had a word against him. Autumn is coming soon and we’re no closer to saving Agnes than the day we arrived.” Catherine’s eyes filled. “I’m sorry, Edgar. Please excuse me.”
She ran back into the house. Berengar looked after her in sympathy.
“This must be a very difficult time for her,” he commented. “To have the life of a beloved sister hanging in the balance for so long and then to be living in a strange place, as well.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Edgar said absently. He suspected, despite Catherine’s earlier denial, that there was another child on the way. After almost seven years, three births and too many miscarriages, he thought he knew the signs.

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