The Witch in the Well: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (8 page)

“Marie thinks that the villagers bribed the guards to steal her body so that she wouldn’t be buried in consecrated ground with their relatives.” Catherine was thinking aloud. “The townspeople say she went back to Hell where she came from. What if she wasn’t a sorceress or a witless old woman, but someone sent by Grandfather’s enemies to divert the messenger? Perhaps she fell under Guillaume’s horse and died before she could finish the task.”

“Then the man would have reached the castle,” Edgar pointed out. “And who would send an old woman to stop a man on horseback? Catherine, the two deaths are not connected. You act as if there’s some grand conspiracy at work here.”

Catherine rubbed her arms. She felt as if ants were crawling across her skin.

“Don’t you sense it, Edgar?” she asked. “It’s as if we’re living
on the point of a spear. Any moment, I expect us all to crash into something.”

Edgar stepped back and looked her up and down.

“Carissima,”
he asked quietly. “Are you pregnant again?”

“No!” she answered.

“Well then, is it about that time?” Edgar spoke with the timidity of a man who had endured too many ‘that times.’

“No, last week,” Catherine sighed. “Maybe it’s just the weather. There was a breeze this morning but it faded. It’s as hot as ever but the sky is such an odd yellow. I think we’ll have rain soon. Our prayers must finally have been granted.”

“I hope so.” Solomon had told Edgar about the rite in the meadow, and they agreed that Catherine would not approve. But it bothered him to keep anything from her.

“A good storm should bring cooler air,” he said. “We could safely return to Paris. Solomon thinks there might be danger if we go to your grandfather’s. You sound as though you agree with him.”

“And you don’t?” she asked. “This man’s death seems to prove it.”

Edgar sighed. He reached out to put his arms around her and felt a spark leap from her clothing. It stung his good hand.

“I think there’s danger everywhere,” he said. “But if someone, human or not, doesn’t want us to go to Boisvert, then that may be the safest place for us to be.”

Catherine took him in her arms and managed to hug him without repercussion.

“Thank you,
carissime
,” she whispered. “It’s foolish, I know, but I have this incredible longing to see the home of my forebears again and to show it to our children even though logic tells me to stay away.”

“I understand,” Edgar said, although he didn’t. He would have been happy to learn that his ancestral home in Scotland had been swallowed by the earth.

Hamelin and Osbert were not happy to be given another body to guard.

“At least there’s no doubt that this one’s dead,” Osbert said, wrinkling his nose. “Why don’t we just stick him straight in the ground? The hole’s already dug.”

“Father Anselm is just waiting on a coffin,” Hamelin told him sourly. “He asked if I could keep the corpse from running off for that long.”

“In this heat, we’ll need a vat,” Osbert replied. He stared at the canvas around the body as if expecting it to commence oozing.

Outside the clouds thickened, turning the daylight musty. A long roll of thunder crossed the sky. The sound of it echoed in the stone cellar. Hamelin shuddered.

“Do you think the saints are angry because we let the women make offerings to the river?” he asked.

Osbert rubbed his nose. “It’d be pretty mean of them,” he answered. “After the way they ignored us all summer.”

“It’s dry as tinder for miles around,” Hamelin continued.

“One spark from the sky and there’d be nothing left, not woods nor village nor keep. Only us in this pile of stone.”

“Saint Hubert’s yowling hound!” Osbert cried. “As if I’m not all over gooseflesh as it is! It’s just a storm brewing. I don’t care if it was saints or devils that sent it, if it rains enough to save my barley crop.”

He crossed himself with a muttered prayer and another crash resonated from above.

“That one was almost over our heads,” Hamelin said.

The world was silent for a moment. In the lantern light, Osbert was sure he saw the body shift under the shroud. He stood with a cry that was cut off by the clatter of footsteps outside. They were accompanied by shouted orders and cries of fear.

“Something’s wrong!” Hamelin grabbed the lantern and headed for the steps out.

“Wait!” Osbert hurried after him, grabbing the light. “What if it’s a trick, like last time? Do you want to be made a fool of again?”

Hamelin slowed. He glanced from the body to the door leading out to the bailey. The noise outside was growing.

“I’d rather be a fool than not come to the aid of my lord,” he decided. “Here, take the lantern. You stay.”

“Alone!” Osbert bumped against him in his haste. “Sit by myself and watch that thing rise to do God knows what to me?”

They emerged into a terror worse than that they had left. The air was full of smoke and people running about trying to save their belongings or themselves. Water fell, not from the sky, but from the cistern on the roof that had shattered when lightning hit the tower.

“Holy Mother!” Osbert exclaimed. “It was better with the corpse!”

There was no way to get water up to the keep in time. Everyone knew that if the rain didn’t begin soon, there would be nothing left on the hilltop but a smoking shell of blistered stone.

Solomon pushed his way through the people fleeing through the gate. He climbed onto a
perron
to see better, twisting to keep his balance until he saw Edgar’s blond head a hand’s breadth above all the others. He jumped down and made his way there.

“Is everyone accounted for?” he gasped in the acrid air.

“Yes!” Edgar shouted back. “The children were all outside, thank God. The nursery is nothing but flame. Catherine helped Father Anselm save the vessels for the Mass. Marie thought to grab the jewelry boxes and got the servants to bring out the wall hangings and silver dishes. No one is inside now, I hope. The fire is burning down through the wood, floor by floor.”

“Where’s Catherine?” Solomon coughed on the words. The wind was whipping around the outside of the keep as the fire
roared within. “There’s nothing to keep this from jumping to the village and then the forest.”

“She went with the others to the river,” Edgar said. “Go and watch out for them. I have to stay until the animals are all brought down or until Guillaume realizes that it’s too late to save them.”

“Just so you aren’t one of the roasts.” Solomon put his hand on Edgar’s shoulder. “I won’t bear the burden of supporting your family, understand?”

“Coward,” Edgar grinned. “Now go!”

As he made his way through the panicked village and down to the river, Solomon bumped into an elderly woman. He mumbled an apology, but as he moved on, she caught his arm, digging her nails into his flesh.

“I know you.” Her eyes narrowed. “You tried to pollute the ritual. If this is your doing, I’ll find you. Them at the castle can’t protect you forever and my knife is razor sharp.”

“Sorry, you must be thinking of someone else.” Solomon pried her hand loose and ran. It was bad enough being blamed for things because he was a Jew. Now it was as much of a crime to be a man.

He found Catherine clad only in her
chainse
, with baby Peter on her hip. Edana clung to her mother, but James was not to be seen.

“Where’s Edgar?” she greeted him.

“Herding pigs, I think,” he answered. “He’ll be down soon. Are you all right?”

“For now,” she answered. “James is with his cousins. They’re supposed to be wetting blankets for the men to wear to fight the fire, but I think they’re just splashing each other.”

She tore a piece of her dampened
bliaut
with her teeth and knotted it around Edana’s head and face and then made another
one for the baby, who squirmed in her arms, refusing to be muffled. Solomon held him while she tied it over his nose and mouth.

“Another day and we would have been gone,” she said.

“That’s so,” Solomon said.

He kept Peter in his arms and took Edana’s hand.

“You’re worn out, Catherine,” he said. “Come, sit down. You’re safe enough here; the wind is blowing away from the river.”

Catherine did as he bade. She set Edana in her lap and let Solomon take care of the baby. The little girl was frightened into stillness. She tried to burrow into Catherine’s breast, sucking her thumb and rubbing her cheek against the warm linen of the
chainse
.

“Home, Mama,” she whispered over and over.

Catherine held her tightly, kissing her forehead and cheeks. “It will be all right,
ma douz
,” she murmured. “We’ll be home soon.”

They were still sitting there when Edgar found them. With him was their maid, Samonie, and her son, Martin.

“Your brother is still up there,” Edgar told Catherine. “He can’t see that there’s nothing more to be saved.”

“I got what I could from the stores,” Samonie added. “Dried apples and some cheese is all but it will keep us on the road to Paris. What we need is a safe corner to stay the night.”

Catherine gave her a wan smile. “Thank you, Samonie. I’m glad you thought of our bodily needs. After my children, I only worried about the Gospel and patens.”

“I’d have expected nothing less of you, Mistress.” Samonie smiled. They had been through too much together for the division in their rank to matter much.

Catherine smiled back, then coughed as she inhaled the blowing ash. She looked around. The rest of the villagers were huddled near or even in the river. The water was low and the current sluggish. A few people were passing leather buckets up from the water to wet down the roofs of the houses, but most just watched with dazed resignation.

Marie herded her children over next to Catherine.

“Look,” she said. “The wind is pulling the flames upward, into the sky. If only the rain will begin, then the village might yet be saved. I don’t understand. Is it a judgment or a blessing?”

She was shivering in the heat. Catherine looked around for a dry blanket to wrap her in. Poor Marie! Everything she owned, the home she had ruled for twenty years, destroyed before her eyes. Catherine didn’t understand it, either.

Dusk was falling and the clouds still refused to open. Guillaume finally came down the hill to them. They could hear him shouting orders in a rasping voice, sending people back up to throw dirt over patches where the fire had jumped the motte.

“Everything inside is gone,” he told them. “But by some miracle the stone walls and the ditches were too much for the fire to escape into the town. At least so far.”

He looked around with bloodshot eyes. His face and beard were streaked with soot and sweat.

“The granary is undamaged, not that there was much in it,” he muttered. “You can smell the last of the dried meat burning, if that’s not the body in the cellar.”

Edgar looked at Guillaume’s face. He wasn’t making a bad joke; he was too tired.

“I can’t go to Boisvert now,” Guillaume went on. “This isn’t a time to leave my people unprotected.”

Marie took the end of her sleeve and began to wipe his face. As she did, the first drops of rain began to fall. Within moments, it was pelting down hail that stung their raw skin.

Everyone scurried into the nearest refuge. In the melee Catherine, still holding Edana, was separated from the others. She found herself pushed into the corner of a hut that reeked of fish.

“Edgar!” she called. “Solomon!”

Her voice was canceled by the explosion of hailstones on the roof and the cries of the others crushed in with her.

She concentrated on making a space large enough for Edana to breathe. Someone in the room had begun a
Nostre Père
and soon everyone was praying together.

“This is what comes of arrogance,” someone hissed in her ear.

Catherine tried to turn away but there was no place to go in the darkness. She concentrated on the prayer.

“More will come if you don’t do as you were told.”

“Go away!” Catherine begged. “Who are you? What do you want?”

There was a low chuckle. “You have to save your mother. You can’t escape the prophecy. Sweet baby!”

Catherine felt a hand reach around her and brush Edana’s cheek. The child whimpered. Catherine grabbed at the hand, but only caught empty air. She wrapped both arms tightly about her daughter.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t let her hurt you. Mama’s here,
ma douz
.”

Edana’s body relaxed as Catherine rocked her. Catherine continued long after the child had fallen asleep on her shoulder. She only wished someone now could comfort her.

The rain eased sometime after sunset. Catherine emerged to a world that seemed to match her nightmares of Hell. The air smelt of things burning and even the untouched houses of the village were streaked with black. The crops that had managed to withstand the drought were now flattened by the hail. Puddles of mud and ash had collected everywhere. All the paths were slick and people trudging up and down were soon layered with gray-brown slime.

Catherine’s overfull breasts ached. Even though Peter was partially weaned now, she worried that he was crying for his dinner. No one in the fishing hut had brought any food or drink, so she and Edana were also suffering.