Read To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Online

Authors: Sharan Newman

To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (8 page)

BOOK: To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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Brother Baudwin turned bright red, and Catherine feared he would choke on the second cake he had picked up as he was leaving. She moved behind him and tried to edge him out. One corpse to clean up after had been quite enough.
Neither of the emissaries said another word as they stomped down the stairs and out into the courtyard. Master Durand turned as they passed through the front gate.
“You’ll regret this!” he warned.
Edgar shook his head.
“Weak, very weak,” he commented. “I’ve received much better threats from simple knights. Until next time, Dex vos saut.”
He shut the door and leaned against it, exhaling in relief.
Catherine hugged him in glee.
“I love it when you act the haughty lord!” she exclaimed. “Except when you do it to me.”
She tweaked his nose.
“That,
ma dame,
is taking a dreadful liberty!” he said, and pinioned her with his left arm while he tickled her rib cage.
“Edgar! Stop!” She laughed.
There was a tug on her skirts. Still laughing, she looked down into James’s reproachful eyes.
“Mama, Papa,” he said. “You shouldn’t play without me.”
They both began laughing again, wounding their son’s budding pride. Catherine lifted him, and they held him between them, tickling until he started to hiccough.
Edgar patted his back. “There, there, son. Hold your nose and count back from ten. Now you see what happens when you play grown-up games.”
His face grew serious as he looked at Catherine.
“I only hope that isn’t what you and I are doing. Master Durand could well be a powerful enemy.”
“Better that than think him our friend,” Catherine answered. “He’s not a man to trust. You heard what he said to Brother Baudwin. He wants to blame us for the death. It’s simpler than investigating and perhaps finding something he doesn’t want to know.”
“Or for others to discover something Durand already knows.” Gently Edgar set James down. “There’s only one thing to do, isn’t there?”
Catherine nodded. “We have to find out first.”
 
Edgar saw that the mysterious knife was locked safely away in the spice box in the kitchen and spent the afternoon, once he had finished his business with the head of the water merchants’ association, hiring a couple of men to patrol outside the house from Compline to dawn. He accomplished this by going from one tavern to another until he found a friend who knew someone who knew someone who had a friend who knew of a man who had been one of the king’s guards until an unfortunate incident with a lady had left him with only one eye. This man had a brother, just arrived from the country, and they were looking for honest work and didn’t mind staying awake through the night.
Nothing to it.
Edgar was congratulating himself over a bowl of new beer when he heard his name called.
“Maurice!” he greeted the cleric standing at the door. “Come, sit with me. Have something to drink. How are things at the Cathedral? Have your precentor and chanter come to blows, yet?”
“Not since last night.” Maurice filled his bowl from the beer pitcher. “But our music is suffering from the animosity.”
He sat a moment in silence, rocking the bowl in his palms.
Edgar refilled his bowl. “The lack of melodiousness in your choir upsets you that much?” he asked, noting Maurice’s distraction.
Maurice came out of his reverie. “That? No, of course not,” he said. “I was thinking about something I heard this morning. There’s
talk of calling a meeting to make the bishop of Poitiers answer questions as to the orthodoxy of his teaching.”
“Really?” Edgar raised an eyebrow. “And who, besides perhaps Master Peter of Lombardy, could possibly understand his answer? I never made much sense from the subtlety of Master Gilbert’s lectures.”
“To my mind that is certainly the problem,” Maurice answered. “Master Gilbert is so subtle that someone not so gifted in theology could easily misinterpret his words.”
“And end up by assuming himself to be the son of God?” Edgar laughed.
Maurice joined him. “Perhaps not that radical a conclusion.” He sipped from his bowl. “You know, I think I may have seen some of those followers of that Eon or
Eum
near Nôtre Dame this morning. I hadn’t paid them much mind before, but there’s a clutch of beggars who, I swear, are wearing ragged silk and linen with bits of fine embroidery still showing.”
“That’s strange,” Edgar said. “Astrolabe gave me to understand that this heresy was confined to Brittany.”
“Well, these people may have been given worn altar cloths as charity,” Maurice said. “I suppose I assumed they were Eonists because the one crying alms had a Breton accent.”
He shrugged. The world was full of bizarre heresies. Most of them vanished quickly with a few well-placed sermons.
Edgar was spinning his bowl of beer, watching the residue settle on the rim like seaweed on the beach. He looked up to find Maurice watching him with amusement.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was worrying about that dead man left in our house. It seems no one at the Temple can name him.”
“You said his face was eaten away,” Maurice replied. “Why should it be odd that no one recognizes him?”
“Maurice, wouldn’t you be able to identify me, even if my face were gone?” Edgar asked.
“Of course, by your …” Maurice stopped suddenly.
“My hand, yes,” Edgar finished for him. “But apart from that?”
Maurice pursed his lips. “Yes, I could at least guess, by your hair and form.”
“Exactly,” Edgar said. “The knights are all noblemen, and they tend to join the order in groups of friends. Many know each other anyway. They’ve fought beside or even against one another over the years. This man would have had to come from far away for no one to know him.”
“You think he may not have been a member of the Order?” Maurice asked. “If so, then why was he wearing their white cloak?”
Edgar had no answer to that.
 
When Catherine had convinced her brother that they would not go back with him, then he insisted, despite protests from his wife and oldest daughter, on leaving at once.
“Catherine and Edgar seem to enjoy danger,” Guillaume stated. “I prefer to face it knowing that my family are on the other side of a motte behind thick walls. Come along, Marie, Evaine, we’ll return soon enough. I’m sure the commander of the Temple will have everything solved in a few days.”
Catherine refrained from answering that, if Master Evrard’s investigators had their way, the case would be resolved even more quickly. She just nodded.
Marie understood her expression. Taking Catherine aside, she made one more plea.
“Let me take your little ones back with us,” she begged. “Look at what’s happened to Edana already.”
Catherine wavered, then shook her head. “Accidents happen everywhere. Don’t you worry about Gervase every day?”
Marie pressed her lips together. Catherine realized that she had used an unfair tactic. Guillaume and Marie’s first child was now nine and had recently been sent to Vermandois for fostering and training. It was a coup on Guillaume’s part to have his son under the protection of the count, a great lord and cousin to the king, even though at the moment he was under a decree of excommunication. But, reasoned Guillaume, if the king didn’t mind that, why should they? This did not help Marie’s grief at sending her young son away.
“If you change your mind,” Marie answered finally, “we’ll always take them in.”
“Thank you.” Catherine hugged her. “It’s a comfort to know you’ll be there if we need a refuge.”
Still it was with relief that she waved them all out. The house, she reflected, was too small for four extra children. Before they had left for Trier, Edgar had been planning an addition on the back. She should remind him of it once things settled down.
If they ever did.
At the moment the house was as peaceful as it was likely to get. Edana was napping on the blankets that had yet to be put away. Astrolabe had left for the day. Samonie and her son were busy in the kitchen. She could hear James with them. But where was Margaret?
Catherine checked upstairs first, but all the rooms were empty. Then, stopping to be sure Edana still slept, she went into the kitchen, where Samonie was chopping early lettuce and carrot tops to add to a fish sauce for dinner. The two boys had cleared a space on the floor for a game of conkers.
“Samonie, have you seen Margaret?” she asked. “Did she go to visit Willa?”
“I don’t think so,” Samonie answered. “She knows Willa is busy today. She didn’t go out this way.”
“Yes, she did, Mother.” Martin looked up from the game. “Just before Lord Guillaume’s family left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Samonie turned on him. “I’m sorry, Catherine.”
“She’s fourteen, Samonie,” Catherine said. “She doesn’t need watching like a baby. There’s no reason for Martin to have reported it.”
Nonetheless, she was worried. The last time Margaret had gone missing, she had nearly died.
“I think I’ll just go to the market and see if she’s there,” Catherine decided. “Would you boys take the conkers into the hall in case Edana wakes?”
They didn’t dare grumble. Even James sensed that Catherine was worried.
 
Catherine hurried down the street hoping that she could find Margaret before Edgar returned home. She had told Samonie that Margaret was
old enough to look out for herself, but she didn’t believe it and feared that Edgar would blame her if anything more happened to his sister. But Catherine would blame herself even more.
She asked at all the places she thought Margaret might stroll to: the ribbon makers, the leather workers, the seller of embroidery thread. No one had seen a young woman with red-gold hair and a scar along the side of her face.
Catherine was beginning to panic when she caught a glimpse of a red braid swinging amidst the crowd. She pushed her way through and found Margaret heading in her direction on the arm of Abraham the vintner.
“Margaret!” she cried, gathering the girl into her arms. “What were you thinking of? Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”
She looked at Abraham. “Thank you for bringing her back. Where was she?”
The old man guided them to a quiet side street before he answered.
“She came to my door,” he said. “Unescorted.”
He gave them both a stern look.
“Margaret, why bother Master Abraham?” Catherine hadn’t even realized Margaret knew the man.
Margaret sniffed back tears. She knew she’d been foolish.
“I had to go, Catherine,” she said in a wobbling voice. “We’ve heard nothing, but I thought some one of his people might have had a message.”
Catherine finally understood. “Oh,
ma cossette
, if there had been word of Solomon in the Jewish community, they would have told us instantly.”
Abraham patted her shoulder. “Of course we would. But, Catherine, you must make her understand that it’s not safe for her to come to our homes without you or Edgar.”
“She should know that already,” Catherine said. “But I’ll explain again. Thank you, Master Abraham.”
The vintner bowed and turned back toward his home, ignoring the dirty looks some of the people in the street gave him.
Catherine let the lecture wait until they reached the house. She
paused only to be sure everything was quiet, and then she bundled Margaret upstairs and sat her on the bed.
“You should be whipped for doing something so stupid,” she began, fear making her harsh. “Your brother will be furious.”
But the stricken look on Margaret’s pale face was too much for her. Catherine relented and sat down next to her.
“My dear, after what happened to you in Germany my stomach freezes if I can’t find you,” she said.
Margaret leaned against her shoulder. “I know. I was frightened to go. But I had to find out. Why aren’t you worried about Solomon? What if those people who listened to the false monk in Köln come for him, too?”
“I am worried about him,” Catherine admitted. “But only a little. Solomon has spent most of his life among strangers. He knows how to protect himself.”
She didn’t add that, for the most part, the greatest danger to Solomon in the past had not been from anti-Jewish mobs but from the relatives of attractive young women he had encountered.
“There are a hundred reasons for him not being here when we arrived,” she continued. “All of them perfectly natural. He might have learned of a wonderful opportunity for trade and decided to follow that.”
Margaret wasn’t convinced.
“There’s another thing.” Catherine hated to mention it. Margaret should have understood without being told. “Abraham was not only concerned for you, but for himself and his community. If you had been noted going into his house, he could be accused of trying to proselytize and, if you were hurt, all the Jews might be accused.”
BOOK: To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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