The Witch in the Well: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (11 page)

He let James climb up to his shoulders, warning him to duck as they went through the door to the kitchen. Edgar was Saxon-tall and most doors were designed for a shorter race. James always enjoyed the thrill of nearly being knocked unconscious by the approaching lintel.

They found Samonie, with a scarf over her mouth, bringing out baskets of torn grain sacks.

“I can pour some of this into new sacks,” she told Edgar. “But a lot of it was eaten into and then peed on. Martin and his friends are outside. Did you check with the neighbors? We could get into trouble starting a bonfire on a day like this.”

“They want to be rid of the bodies as much as we do,” Edgar assured her. “I’ll go out and see that it stays confined.”

Martin had built a ring of logs and brushwood near the stream at the bottom of the garden. Two other young men were helping him pile the rats next to it, ready to toss on to the flames.

“There’s going to be an awful stink,” one said, wiping his nose.

“It can’t be helped,” Martin said. “It would be worse if we let them rot. That would just draw more of them.”

For the thousandth time, Edgar wondered who Martin’s father was. Samonie had been a serving girl at a castle in Troyes and her children were apparently the product of extra service to visiting lords. But she never spoke of it and he never dared to ask.

The boy was close to seventeen now, with a mop of thick, wavy brown hair, light brown eyes, and a nose that seemed made to look down. At his own request, he had apprenticed to Edgar
and Solomon and was learning the difficulties of being a merchant firsthand. He had gone with them on the recent trip to Lombardy and acquitted himself well. He had the gift of saying less than he knew and noting when others said more than they intended. He had also shown himself to be completely loyal, something far more rare in Edgar’s experience.

Samonie had given him a bucket of charcoal to increase the heat of the fire. Edgar set one of the boys to spreading it and sent the other to the bake house for a shovel of live coals. While they were occupied, he took Martin aside to discuss matters.

“Did you find out what made the holes in the wall?” he asked first.

Martin shook his head slowly. “I thought someone had simply hammered through the plaster, but the cuts were too clean. It’s as if someone sliced triangles in the wall with a sword.”

“I can’t see that,” Edgar said. “A sword would be too long. Even lying on your stomach, you couldn’t do it. There’d be no way to put any force behind the thrust.”

“I know, Master,” Martin said. “But that is what it looks like. And there’s more. Come see.”

He led Edgar down to the stream.

“This is diabolical.” Edgar could hardly miss the meaning behind the length of flattened plants. The trail went halfway up to the house.

“There are still bits of bread going from here to the storeroom.” Martin knelt to show a few orts that the rats had missed.

James bent over Edgar’s head to see what they were looking at. He overbalanced and tumbled off. Edgar reached out his left arm to catch him, but missed. He could almost feel his phantom fingers move through the child’s body.

Martin twisted on the ground and broke James’s fall.

“I’m not hurt,” James told them.

“Thanks to Martin,” Edgar said. “If you can’t pay attention, you’ll have to stay on the ground.”

“I’ll be careful, I promise.” James grinned with confidence. He began to climb his father again.

Once his son was established on his shoulders, Edgar returned to the broken plants and the bread crumbs. He found the conclusion too ridiculous to believe. He looked at Martin.

“Are you telling me that these were
imported
rats?” he asked. “There weren’t enough in the parish?”

“It’s the only explanation I have, Master,” Martin said. “Of course, perhaps these are all false clues, left on purpose to deceive us.”

“Now you sound like Catherine.” Edgar sighed. “Let’s deal with what we can see and touch and work from that. Very well. James! Stop yanking on my ears and help us. What can you see from my shoulders?”

“I can see the whole world, Papa,” James answered calmly. “Over the wall and into the street. There’s a man going by with honey sticks. Can I have one?”

“Not today,” Edgar said, turning toward the stream. “Now what can you see?”

“Just the water, Papa.” James sounded bored. “There are too many trees in the way. Oh! There’s something at the top of the cherry tree! Do you see it? Like a gonfanon that soldiers carry.”

Edgar tried to look up without sending James down again.

“Yes, there is something fluttering,” he said. “Martin, can you climb up and get it?”

“I’m too heavy,” Martin decided. “Rodric,” he called to the boy shoveling rats. “Can you get that piece of cloth that’s caught up in the cherry tree?”

Rodric was more than willing to change jobs. He went up the tree with ease and soon reached the cloth. There he stayed.

“What’s wrong?” Edgar called.

“The
destrois
thing is tied to the branch,” Rodric called back.

“It’s a complicated knot. It’s going to take a while.”

“I know him,” Martin said. “Anything to avoid a nasty job.”

While Rodric was struggling in the tree, the other boy had returned with the coals. Edgar and Martin had the fire hot enough to start adding corpses by the time Rodric descended.

“I got it!” he shouted. “It took forever, but I figured you didn’t want me to cut anything this fine.”

Beaming with pride, he handed the length to Edgar, who held it up to examine.

It was a long piece of very thin linen, he thought, almost like the strip a priest wears around his neck. But there were no crosses or fish or alphas and omegas on this. Nor was there a border of flowers. Instead, there were embroidered pictures of a mermaid smiling and beckoning from the water. A bit farther on, a man lay beneath a tree.

“It looks like writing at the top here.” Rodric pointed. “Does it tell the story of the mermaid?”

“I don’t know,” Edgar said. “These words aren’t in a language I’ve ever seen.”

James looked down at it. “Let me see. I can read.”

Edgar set him on the ground. “Yes, you can, James, but Mama reads better. I want you to take this in to her and ask her to take good care of it. Is that clear?”

James took the folded strip. “Yes, Papa.”

Edgar watched him until he entered the house. Then he turned back to Rodric.

“Is there any chance that the cloth could have blown into the tree by accident?” he asked.

“No, my lord,” Rodric said. “It was tied up there on purpose, I’d take an oath on it. That knot was like the ones the boatmen make, only worse. Who’d do such a crazy thing?”

Edgar didn’t answer. He handed Rodric the shovel and set them back to work.

They were at it all afternoon. When the vermin had been de
stroyed, Edgar gave the young men a
denier
each and treated them to a visit to the bathhouse. It was nearly dusk when he returned to the house.

Catherine was waiting impatiently.

“James told me that this flew into a tree and he found it,” she greeted him, waving the cloth in his face. “You might have given me a little more information before going off to soak again.”

Edgar caught at the cloth. “I’m sorry. I had rats on my mind,” he said. “Martin’s friend says this thing was tied to a branch so tightly that a whirlwind couldn’t bring it down. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine answered. “I thought you would tell me. The handwork is incredible.”

“But the writing,” Edgar pushed. “What does it say?”

“I’ve been trying all afternoon,” she said. “But I can’t make sense of it. The letters are like French or Latin, but I don’t know the words. I thought maybe it was closer to English.”

Edgar examined it again. “There are no English letters here, no-
eth
or
thorn
. Nothing I recognize.”

Catherine sat on the steps as if too worn out to stand.

“What’s going on?” she wailed. “Who left this and why? Is it the same person who set the rats on us, or have an angel and a demon both been loosed on us, tearing from opposite sides?”

Edgar bent over and lifted her to her feet.

“The only answer I have is that everything seems to be leading us to Boisvert and it’s time we left, before something worse occurs. Tomorrow, if we can be ready.”

Catherine nodded.

“The day after that, at the latest. We had almost everything packed up before we were invaded this morning,” she said. “Samonie and I need to get more supplies for the journey and finish putting what we rescued back in the storeroom.”

“Good.” Edgar thought a moment. “And, Catherine, don’t forget to bring this embroidery strip to ask them about. It may be part of your family legend.”

“Definitely,” Catherine said. “And if this is some sort of monstrous joke, I may use it to strangle whoever is behind it.”

Despite their fear that they would be subjected to more threats and warnings, the family’s journey to Chartres was calm. They were able to travel part of the way by river and then by roads that were well maintained and patrolled. This meant an inordinate number of tolls, but Edgar paid cheerfully.

They arrived at Chartres well before the week was up and found an inn to stay at while they waited for Solomon.

“You know,” Edgar mentioned to Catherine once they were settled. “You might copy out the text from the cloth and take it to the cathedral school here. The best scholars left some time ago, but there may still be a master about who can decipher the language.”

“I’ll copy it,” she agreed. “But you had better take it. I don’t know anyone there. If I appear with some arcane words on a page, they might well think I want to use it for some dark potion.”

Edgar laughed. “They might think the same of me. Do we have a plausible story as to where we found the writing?”

“Not at the moment,” Catherine said. “Let me sleep on it. Don’t!” she added. “I know you were going to say something lewd.”

“No, you just hoped so,” Edgar teased.

Catherine had to admit he was right.

By the next morning, she had decided that they should tell the clerics that the words were from an inscription they had found on a stone dug up on their land. It happened often enough that a plow turned up some old bits of wall with Roman writing. They didn’t need to say that they already knew it wasn’t written in Latin.

Edgar set off to the cathedral in search of a scholar. Catherine stayed behind to sit with Samonie and tend to her sewing, like a proper wife.

“It’s been so calm the past few days,” Samonie commented.

“We must finally be doing whatever your sorceress wanted.”

“Samonie,” Catherine corrected her. “She wasn’t
my
anything. I don’t know what she was. And I never understood what she wanted.”

“Still, it’s nice to have a day or two without a disaster.” Samonie wanted the last word.

“Yes,” Catherine gave in. “I’ve enjoyed the peace, too.”

It lasted until the cathedral bells rang None.

As the tolling faded, Catherine noticed a party approaching the inn. The elegance of the horses and the sedan chair made it clear that this was someone of distinction. She moved her stool back to give them more room to pass.

However, at a wave from inside, the sedan chair was set down directly in front of her. As Catherine gaped, the curtains were pushed aside.

“Sitting like a common alewife by the side of the road! You haven’t changed at all,” a woman’s voice announced. “I can’t believe we ever shared the same womb.”

Catherine inhaled deeply. She wished Samonie hadn’t tempted the fates.

“Agnes.” She forced a smile as she held out her arms to her sister. “What a surprise! How wonderful to see you again.”

The town of Chartres, Sunday 5 kalends September (August 28) 1149. Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo, bishop, theologian, and autobiographer, who really has a lot to answer for. 15 Elul 4909.

. . . dont irai le messe oir

Si com mes ancestre fist

Et me grand guerre esbaudir

Encontre mes anemis
.

. . . And then I will go hear the mass

As my ancestors did

And then I’ll take up the war again

Against all my enemies.

—
Aucassin and Nicolette
, XXIX, II. 11–14

A
pparently, the messenger from Grandfather had no trouble reaching Agnes in Trier,” Catherine told Edgar sourly. “I’m rather sorry he did. She is, if anything, more annoying than I remember.”

They were sitting in the room they had taken for the family
at the inn. Samonie and Martin had gone with the children to the market so, for the moment, Catherine and Edgar were alone.

Edgar grinned. “Are you going to take this opportunity to practice patience and charity and forgive your sister for marrying well, never spilling on her clothes, and always pointing out deficiencies in your character?”

“You forgot being blond and taking most of Mother’s jewelry with her when she married,” Catherine pouted. “That’s a lot to forgive in one swallow.”