The Devil's Door: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Sharan Newman

  With a sigh, Lisiard got up, stumbling a bit over the bench.

  “I forgot to mention, I’m in service with Nocher for now. My older brother gets our castle, so I have to try to earn my own.”

  He leaned down to speak to her again. “I can tell you a lot more about Raynald of Tonnerre and his family, if you like gossip, too. Perhaps you’ll sit with me again, tomorrow?”

  “If the countess permits.” Catherine smiled at him, then closed her eyes against the reek of his breath. She was already cataloging in her mind the information she had just been given, and could hardly wait to share it with Edgar.

  The meal lasted well into the evening. At the end, gastels and dried honeyed apples were passed around, along with sweet raisin wine. A man came in with a viele and began to play and chant a story, but after a few lines, Catherine recognized the Vie de Saint Alexis and lost interest. With no one to talk to, she fiddled with her cup. The man on her left roused himself to offer to pour her more, but she shook her head. She didn’t want to drink too much raisin wine, although she loved it. In case she and Edgar found a place together, she didn’t want to fall asleep as soon as she lay down.

  She looked down the table at him again. Richilde had turned her attention to Solomon. Edgar was looking back up the table at her. She tried to smile at him, but all at once her exhaustion, the wine and her longing were too much and she began to cry.

  He was with her in a moment, settling into the place Lisiard had vacated.

  “I liked the barn better,” she sniffed.

  “So did I,” he answered. “Do you ever think we’ll be alone again?”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Catherine answered.

  She took his hand.

  Even a seemingly interminable evening is eventually over. The countess signaled the end of the meal at last. Solomon got up and came over to where Catherine and Edgar were still seated.

  “I’m going back to Joseph ben Meïr’s tonight,” he said. “That woman is entirely too friendly. She has brothers. Very large and stupid brothers. I don’t think they would appreciate me.”

  “Will you be safe walking back?” Catherine asked.

  “Yes; you didn’t notice our path here,” Solomon told her. “The Juiverie is almost in the shadow of the count’s palace. And not by accident.”

  “Very well,” Edgar said. “We’ll meet you tomorrow on the steps of Saint-Frobert.”

  After Solomon had left, the page, Gervais, came up to them.

  “Countess Mahaut has asked me to show you to your bed,” he said with a flourish. He was about ten years old and full of his own importance.

  “Did he say bed?” Catherine said hopefully.

  He led them to an alcove between floors. It was small and curtained off. The boy tried to pull the curtain aside, but was too short. Edgar did it for him.

  There, crammed into the space, a bed had been set up. A proper bed with a mattress covered by several feather beds. There were blankets and soft linen sheets and bolsters covered in fur. How they had managed to assemble it in such a small area, Catherine couldn’t imagine.

  “Thank you,” Edgar told the boy, then propelled him back to the stairs and pulled the curtain shut firmly, hooking the edge to a ring in the wall. At once he began pulling off his boots and stockings. Catherine pulled the bliaut off over her head and started ripping the stitches out of her sleeves.

  “How can we ever thank the countess?” she said as they finished undressing.

  “We’ll name our first daughter after her,” Edgar said as he lifted the blankets and drew her into bed.

  Some time later, Catherine woke up. A frantic search around and under the bed made her realize that the countess’s servants had neglected to leave them a chamber pot. With a sigh of resignation, she wrapped herself in Edgar’s cloak and set off to find the latrine.

  She knew which side of the palace the canal was on, and the odds were that was where the garderobe would be, but on what level?

  After a few trips up and down stairs, she finally found a small door set into the stone wall with the sound of water trickling below. She opened the door and went in, feeling her way.

  There was a window high in the wall and enough starlight to guide her. As she sat, she felt a drop of something wet on her head. She rubbed her hair. It was damp and cold and sticky. She looked up.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and in it she saw the sheen of a large, pale object, hanging above her. Then she recognized the curve of a back, a shoulder, another shoulder and, in between, a dark emptiness from which drops of blood were dripping slowly onto her upturned face.

  Eleven

  Roughly thirty seconds later,

  the time it took for Catherine to make her legs move

  Ille gladius carnalitate spoliat: hic carne. Quis mihi dabit sic spoliari et sic suspendi?

  This sword strips us of carnality: this one of flesh. Who will aid me to be so stripped and so suspended?

  —Gilbert of Hoyland,

  Sermon on the Protomartyr Stephen

  “Edgar, wake up,” Catherine prodded at him. “Wake up, please. There’s a body in the privy.”

  Edgar rolled over and pushed her hand from his side.

  “Must have been the meat sauce,” he mumbled. “Leave him alone.”

  “Edgar, listen to me.” Catherine’s words ran together. “There’s a body hanging there like a gutted deer draining into the canal only it’s not a deer, it’s a man because it has skin and no fur and no head, just an empty hole and the blood is dripping out of it and I don’t know what happened to his head. Edgar? Are you listening?”

  He was awake now. She was shaking and her teeth were chattering. He put his arms around her.

  “Sweet Jesus, Catherine, you’re like ice! Let me warm you.”

  She pushed away. “Edgar we have to do something! There’s a dead body in the privy!”

  He sighed. “Of course there is. I don’t suppose we could leave it there until morning? It doesn’t sound as though we could give it any aid tonight.”

  “Edgar, there are murderers wandering the castle. Would you want to leave them free to kill us all?”

  Slowly he swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  “Help me find my braies,” he said. “And my boots. This floor is cold as Lazarus’s tomb.”

  She handed them to him and then found her own shoes and started putting them on.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, although he knew the answer quite well. “You stay in bed and get warm again.”

  “Oh, no,” she said firmly. “I’m not staying anywhere alone until I find out where that man’s head is.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Which way is the garderobe, up or down?”

  “Down,” she said. “The second turn of the staircase, a small door in the wall.”

  He led the way, pausing to take an oil lantern from an iron hook at the first turn of the stairs.

  “There,” she said. “I must have left the door open when I ran out.”

  “Naturally,” he answered.

  Standing on the threshold, he shone the lantern into the tiny room. Catherine closed her eyes.

  “Catherine?”

  She opened them and looked in first at the floor and then up and up to the ceiling. There was nothing there.

  “Edgar,” she said with deceptive calmness, “it wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a trick of the dark. There was a body there not ten minutes ago.”

  “I believe you,” he said, to her great relief. “For two reasons. One, it’s just the sort of thing that would happen to you, and two, you have blood on your face.”

  He wiped his fingers across her cheek. They came away red.

  “And,” he continued, “this blood is colder than you are. He must have been dead for several hours.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked, feeling the stickiness in her hair, as well. “We can’t very well raise the watch to tell them a headless body has vanished and may be roaming about
the house, as well as its murderers. They’d laugh or think us mad. Do we dare wake the countess?”

  Edgar held the lantern close to the floor and the privy seat.

  “If there was blood here, it’s been washed,” he said. “The only evidence is on you. I don’t know. We’re strangers here, even if the countess does know your father. It’s not good for visitors to notice trouble.”

  “Yes, but we can’t ignore it.” The shock was wearing off now, leaving her feeling almost as drained as the body. She shuddered. “And we still don’t know where the head is.”

  Edgar looked at her. Standing there, in only her shoes and chainse, her face smudged with red, Catherine looked about twelve years old. Her eyes were big and frightened and her curls had come loose so that tangles fell across her forehead. She looked completely lost and vulnerable and he loved her so much that it hurt. He had no idea what they should do. Spending the rest of the night wandering about the castle, half dressed, searching for the missing head to a missing body would only result in great embarrassment, if nothing worse. And, to be honest, he didn’t want to meet anyone strong and ruthless enough to kill a man, decapitate him, gut him, and hang him up to season. And why, he thought suddenly, had the body been removed?

  “Catherine, when you saw this thing, did you scream?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I was too frightened. I think I may have croaked or wheezed, but nothing louder would come out.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what you sounded like when you woke me. Then it’s not likely that anyone heard you and decided that it was too dangerous to leave the body there.”

  “How close is it to dawn?” she wondered.

  “I’d have to see the stars to tell you,” he said. “But, you’re right, that might be the reason it was taken. They left it here to drain but had to remove it before the castle awoke. You said the blood was dripping slowly. He must have been brought here immediately after everyone went to bed. I wish we had the head.”

  “So do I,” Catherine said. “I’m not getting into bed again until we’ve checked under it.”

  “No, I mean, then we might know how he was killed, not to mention who he was.” Edgar considered. “From what you said, I’d guess he was strangled and then brought here, where they trussed him up and eviscerated him. Then everything was thrown into the canal, where it would be washed down to the run off from the abattoir by the tanneries.”

  “Yes, by morning no one would notice,” Catherine agreed. “But a human head …”

  “Yes, that they would have to hide somewhere else.” He began leading her back up the stairs. “I think the first thing we should do is wash your face and then return to bed. There doesn’t seem to be any point in waking anyone, except to let those responsible know we’ve discovered their work. The odds against making anyone else believe this tale are too great to calculate. Even if we can’t sleep after this, at least we can be warm. Then, in the morning, we should see if we can have a private audience with Countess Mahaut.”

  They reached the niche where their bed was. Before replacing the lantern, Edgar checked under the bed and even among the covers. Then he picked up one of her sleeves from the floor, spit on it, and began cleaning Catherine’s face and hair.

  “Edgar,” she said as they climbed into bed, she making sure she was nearest the wall. “I just thought, the countess couldn’t be involved in this, could she? Her piety is famous; they even say Count Thibault married her for it.”

  “The countess?” He paused, one knee on the bed, a foot on the floor. “No, of course not. She might order someone’s death in her court, if she had no alternative, but not a murder in her own house. This is the work of someone who makes his own justice.”

  He tucked the blankets around them and Catherine wrapped herself around him, her head on his chest.

  “Edgar?” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m still frightened, are you?”

  He started to say, “No, of course not,” but that was a lie.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “This whole thing terrifies me. But I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  “I know that,” she answered.

  She was quiet a moment. Then she began to murmur something, almost in a drone. He turned her face upwards to catch it.

  “Ecce enim Deus audivat me, et Dominus susceptor animae meae,” she chanted.

  “Averte mala inimicis meis, …” he responded.

  They finished the psalm together. “Quoniam ex omni tribulatione eripuisti me, et super inimicos meos despexit oculus meus.”

  “Amen,” Catherine said. “I will take care of you, and you of me, but it never hurts to have someone caring for us both.”

  And, holding each other so tightly that not a breath of evil could come between them, they both slept soundly until morning.

  The bells awakened them. Troyes was full of bells, from Saint-Frobert, Saint-Pierre, the abbeys of Saint-Loup and Nôtre-Dame-aux-Nonnains, from Saint-Stephen, Saint-Urban and Saint-Remi. Catherine covered her ears against the tolling. It was as loud as Paris. She’d forgotten how insistent the bells could be, even when one wasn’t required to recite the Divine Office.

  They picked up their finery, sadly crumpled, and put on more serviceable clothing.

  “What shall we tell the countess?” she asked Edgar as they made their way to the Great Hall.

  “‘Thank you for your hospitality,’” he said.

  “Nothing more?”

  “We could ask if someone is missing,” he considered. “But people seem to come and go rather casually here.”

  “Still, the man might have been one of the servants,” Catherine said. “She should be told something!”

  “Yes, but not before everyone,” Edgar said. “Can you arrange to see her privately, to return the jewelry, perhaps?”

  “I’ll try. Goodness!” she said as she saw the angle of the sun through the window. “It’s late. Solomon must have been waiting for us for hours. You should go and tell him what’s happened. Then come back for me. We have a lot to do.”

  “Very well,” he agreed. “But, if you tell the countess about what you saw last night, please notice who’s listening.”

  “I will. Don’t worry.” She kissed him absently before he left, her mind already on the interview ahead.

  This death has nothing to do with you, her voices intervened. Tell the countess what you saw and leave the matter to her wisdom to handle.

  “Yes, of course,” Catherine murmured. “But doesn’t it seem odd that the poor man was hung at a place so near to where I was sleeping?”

  Not at all; it was far from most of the other sleepers. A private place, they argued.

  Catherine felt herself blushing. The countess was a very thoughtful woman. It seemed a shame to repay her kindness with trouble.

  Catherine reached the top of the stairs to the countess’s private rooms. She knocked timidly and the door was opened by one of the girls the countess was fostering. Past her, Catherine saw Mahaut seated by the window, her embroidery frame placed where it would receive the light. She looked up and smiled as Catherine was let in.

  “Ah, Catherine,” she said. “How fortunate you’ve come at this time.”

  Her smile faded and she sorrowfully indicated the woman sitting next to her, a petite person in her forties, nicely rounded, with hair of a shade of blonde only achieved with assiduous use of saffron.

  “This is Constanza of Quincy. The poor thing is desolate from the loss of her only child,” Mahaut almost whispered. “Perhaps you can give her some comfort, since you were at the Paraclete when Alys died.”

  Catherine bowed to the woman, who extended a limp hand.

  Saint Veronica’s veil! What could she possibly say to Alys’s mother? Why did you give your daughter to a cruel monster like Raynald? That didn’t seem a good beginning.

  You were taught manners, girl, Sister Bertrada’s voice resounded in her head. Would you have your behavior shame us?
r />   “We cared for her as best we could,” Catherine blurted to Constanza. “She died a sister of the Paraclete, surrounded by our love.”

  Lady Constanza’s lips tightened a fraction. “So my son-in-law has told me,” she said. “What prayers have been arranged for her?”

  “I don’t know, Lady Countess,” Catherine said. “But I’m sure Mother Héloïse will do everything for her that she would for any of our house.”

  Constanza turned to Mahaut. “You are very kind, my lady, but this visit has been difficult for me, so soon after losing my child. Still, I would like to hear more of the Paraclete and the place where poor Alys is buried. Perhaps you would allow this young woman to come to my home for the afternoon?”

  “I would be happy to,” Catherine broke in. This was fortunate. Now she had no need to create a reason to visit Constanza.

  Countess Mahaut nodded agreement.

  “But,” Catherine added, “I would like to speak to you, my lady countess, before I go. Last night …”

  “When you return,” Mahaut interrupted. “Constanza is in no condition to wait through social trivialities.”

  “But …” Catherine tried again.

  Her hostess shook her head decidedly. “Later,” she said.

  Catherine saw there was no use in trying to explain. But why wouldn’t the countess allow her a moment? Did Mahaut already know about the body? Or did she think there was some other matter Catherine needed advice on, something more to do with marriage than murder? She gave up and followed Constanza down the stairs.

  It wasn’t until they had left the castle and were out in the street that Catherine remembered Edgar. But, she considered, Countess Mahaut would tell him where she had gone and he might have better luck telling her about the body. The chance to speak with Constanza about Alys was too important to risk losing.