She didn’t cackle gleefully, but there was a space in the air that indicated satisfaction with the way things were starting to go.
Marie went to the window of the keep as a crash told her another of the large clay water jugs had fallen onto the stones. She sighed and returned to where the bailiff awaited the last of her instructions.
“I don’t see why they can’t come here, where we still have water, by God’s grace. We can’t bring enough with us to do any good.”
The bailiff, Conon, had served her many years.
“I understand that it’s a family matter,” he said, hinting that someone should have told him all about it.
Marie nodded absently, her head full of lists.
“Lord Guillaume’s grandfather,” she said. “I’ve never met him. Now, we should be back before winter, but you are to see that our share of the harvest, such as it is, is collected. Half to go into the grain sheds and half to be sent to Boisvert. There’s enough smoked meat and salted fish to be distributed to the villagers on the appropriate feast and fast days. Should we, by some horrible chance, be delayed until after the Nativity, Hamelin has marked the wine casks you can open. Abbot Suger’s bailiff will be by around Michaelmas for what we owe the abbey.”
Conon already knew all this but waited in respectful silence for her to finish.
“I suppose that should take care of most problems,” Marie concluded doubtfully. “You can always send a messenger if necessary. Lord Guillaume can be back in two days.”
Conon nodded but didn’t take his leave.
“What is it?” Marie asked. “You act as if you have mice in your brais.”
“Yes, my lady,” he said. “I mean no, of course I don’t. It’s that my wife wanted you to speak to Lord Guillaume about the drought.”
“He has done everything he can,” she answered sharply. “We pray for an end to it every day. He has asked Abbot Suger to authorize digging a trench from the river to the fields but the abbot hasn’t responded.”
“I know, my lady,” Conon replied. “We don’t hold you at fault. But the women, that is all of us, that is. . .”
Marie was starting to understand.
“They want to do the old rite, don’t they?” she asked.
“Nothing else has helped,” Conon pleaded. “Beyond the drought, too many odd things have happened lately. Many among us think that it’s time to call upon the sylphids of the forest and streams.”
Marie thought about it. “Perhaps it might help. I can’t see how any harm could come of it. It’s not as if they were demonic spirits. Anything that brings us relief can only be on the side of good. Yes, I’ll let my husband know and see to it that all his men are accounted for on the night.”
“No fear there,” Conon said. “Any man found within the square won’t be walking straight for a month.”
“Very well,” Marie told him. “Let them know we won’t interfere. Just be sure that no one mentions this to Father Anselm or my sister-in-law. Catherine gets very upset at anything she can’t find in the Fathers of the Church.”
Edgar and Solomon rode slowly through the forest.
“This must be the spot.” Solomon pulled his horse up. “There are fresh tears in the underbrush and deep clefts in the dirt where the men tried to keep their horses from running into the one ahead.”
“But the trees here are thin,” Edgar objected. “How could the woman have hid behind them?”
Solomon gave him a perplexed look.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose this means you’re going to Blois?”
Glumly, Edgar nodded.
Marie had a quiet word with her husband, who agreed about keeping the ritual a secret from Catherine. Guillaume had been castellan of Vielleteneuse for nearly twenty years, and he knew that there were things done for the good of the crops and the village that the pope might not approve of. Following the old ways didn’t make anyone a bad Christian, he felt. In times like these it was best not to neglect the ones who had been caring for the land longer than Christians had lived on it. He just didn’t think his sister would see the sense of this.
Catherine knew Edgar thought they shouldn’t make the journey to Boisvert. He had agreed in the face of Guillaume’s insistence, but she knew he wasn’t happy about it.
“If you really are opposed, we can send word that it’s impossible to make the journey,” she suggested. “I’m not eager to see my mother’s family again. There are many who blame me for her madness and, even more, for my uncle Roger’s death.”
“I am just as much to blame as you,” Edgar reminded her. “It was to save me that you wove the tales that made your mother think you were blessed. And Roger might well have killed us both, if his own madness hadn’t overcome him.”
“Reason enough for us both to stay home,” Catherine said. “If only I were absolutely sure that there was nothing in this curse.”
They were standing at the edge of the field watching James and his cousins pretend to hunt down monsters. Catherine tried not to wince as the boys happily whacked at each other with wooden swords.
“Good blow, son!” Edgar shouted as James dispatched a withered sapling.
“Edgar.” Catherine tried to bring him back to the subject. “I can feel you simmering. Shall I tell Guillaume we aren’t going?”
Edgar kept his eyes on the field for another moment. Then he turned to his wife.
“I don’t want us to go,” he admitted. “I think it may be a ploy on your grandfather’s part to extract money from the rest of us. That was why he let your father into the family in the first place.”
Catherine agreed that it was not impossible. Edgar raised his hand to stop her.
“But when my father ordered me home to Scotland, you came with me.” He smiled at her tenderly. “I didn’t want to go then, either. Or course, I was right.”
He raised his left arm and looked at her. Even after five years, he couldn’t stand to see the empty space where his hand had been.
Catherine took his wrist. The stump never bothered her as much as how close she had come to losing him.
“My grandfather is strange, but not cruel.” She didn’t add, “As your father was.” But the memory floated between them of the sword shining in the candlelight and the blood and Edgar’s hand on the floor of the chapel, fingers outstretched.
Catherine took Edgar’s right hand in her own.
“I don’t know if there is anything to this curse,” she said. “It sounds like one of a hundred tales that every old family has. For all I know, Grandfather finally feels death approaching and wants to see his progeny before he goes. That isn’t such a great thing to do for an old man. It shouldn’t be as dangerous as other journeys we’ve been on.”
“Like going to Scotland to avenge the death of my brothers?” Edgar said it at last. “Or all the way to Trier to save your sister from a murder charge?”
“Or even just to Reims to keep a friend from being burnt as a heretic,” Catherine added. “Next to all of that, a few days’ journey to Blois seems. . .” She happened to glance at the field where the boys were playing. She caught her breath in horror.
“James!” she screamed. “Stop that! Stop it at once! Edgar! Do something!”
Edgar was already running across the field to where his son had knocked one of the other boys down and was now hitting him mercilessly with sword and fist.
“Enough!”
Catherine didn’t know where her brother had come from. Guillaume reached the children before Edgar and lifted James off his victim.
The boy struggled a bit and then dropped the wooden sword. He looked around as if puzzled to find himself hanging from his uncle’s arm.
Edgar arrived and bent over the child on the ground.
“Bertie, are you all right?” he asked.
Guillaume’s second son managed to stand on wobbly legs.
“I’d have got you if I hadn’t dropped my shield!” He glared up at James.
�
�Next time, don’t be so clumsy,” Guillaume told him. “Now go have your mother bandage those cuts.”
He handed James over to Edgar.
“You’ve got a fine warrior here,” he said. “Another couple of years, send him to me for training.”
Edgar took his son without comment. A part of him was proud of James’s fierce attack. A much greater part was terrified that the child was already becoming as brutal as his own father and brothers in Scotland.
James knew he was in trouble.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” he said, still confused. “I didn’t mean to hurt Bertie. I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Edgar asked.
“That he wasn’t really a monster.”
Edgar tightened his grip. He was more confused than James.
He didn’t know what to tell his son. However, Catherine was almost upon them and it was clear that she had plenty to say.
After the failure to discover a simple explanation for the appearance of the old woman, Solomon had offered to go back to Paris to make arrangements for the journey to Blois. He returned to Vielleteneuse just at twilight. The village was quiet and the castle windows showed only a few candles. He had brought sausage and bread with him as well as a skin of wine made by his old friend, Abraham. Rather than enjoy them under the scornful gaze of Christians, he decided to wander down to the river for a peaceful solitary meal.
The sound of the running water and the flow of wine made him sleepy and it was full dark when he awoke.
That was when he heard the chanting.
Normally, Solomon found the melody of women’s voices very appealing. However, there was something in the rhythmic sound, coming ever closer, that told him this was no place for a man. Slowly, he rose to a crouch and made his way up the riverbank and back toward the town.
He hadn’t gone ten paces when two shapes appeared from the field and blocked his path.
“Heu, peterin!” one of them said.
It was a woman’s voice, harsh with anger.
“You know the price, om sordois.” The other stepped close to him.
Solomon felt the prick of a knifepoint.
“Price for what?” he cried. “I fell asleep by the river. Now I’m going back to the keep. That’s all.”
“And tell them all what you saw?” the woman with the knife snorted. “Not likely.”
“I saw nothing!” Solomon insisted. “And could you move that knife a little higher? To my heart, perhaps, or my throat.”
There was a low chuckle from the other woman.
“There’s always a few who think they can have a peek and get away with it,” she said. “You’re lucky the Holy Virgin doesn’t strike you blind.”
“Maybe she didn’t because she knows I didn’t see anything.” Solomon tried to back away, but felt others coming up behind him. “I tell you, I woke up, heard voices, and decided to leave before I interrupted anything. That’s all.”
There was laughter at this. Other women had gathered to enjoy his plight.
“Cut ’em off quick, Rose,” one woman called. “We have no time to play.”
Solomon had been in danger of death many times before, but nothing had made him as terrified as he was at this moment.
Suddenly a lantern was held up to his face.
“Here, now,” the first woman said. “You’re that one with Lady Catherine, aren’t you? What would she say about this?”
“That I’d made a perfect fool of myself,” Solomon sighed. “But she’d also tell you that I’m not a man who needs to creep about in fields to get an eyeful.”
“I’d let you in the barn when my man was out,” called a voice from the rear.
The knife didn’t budge, but the atmosphere seemed to lighten.
Very carefully, Solomon reached down and turned the blade away.
“You’re doing an invocation to the river, aren’t you?” he asked. “No one thought to tell me or I wouldn’t have been a league from this place. My aunt knows about it. She said it worked when she was a girl in Troyes. A child pulls an herb up by the roots and then the other maidens sprinkle her with water. That’s all I know of it.”
“That’s right, young man.” The woman with the knife wasn’t convinced of his innocence. “The job is done by the virgins of the village and we mean to see that they remain so.”
“And fine guardians you are.” He backed a step, still trying to find a way out of the circle. “I wouldn’t want to disturb the rite for anything, truly. The drought has been bad for all of us. Look,” he said. “I swear on the soul of my mother that I came to this place all unknowing. My partner, Lord Edgar, and his wife, Lady Catherine, will be my gauge in this.”
“By the way,” he added. “Who is protecting your daughters while you’re busy with me?”
There was a moment of silent consternation then the group dissolved into individual worried mothers and aunts.
“Let him go, Rose,” one said. “We don’t want trouble with the castle.”
Reluctantly, Rose moved away a pace. Solomon dared take a deep breath.
It was too soon. Before he could react she slashed at his groin with the knife. He felt the point of it slide along his thigh before she turned and ran.
He waited until he reached the slopes of the bailey before he checked the wound.
His linen tunic had been cut through, but his riding pants had been too tough for the metal. Apart from the thin scratch on his leg, he was unharmed.
“Thank you, Lord.” He knelt in the dust. “Blessed be Your holy Name, I am eternally grateful that You made me a common trader, who always covers his privates with leather brais.”
He got up carefully, checking to be sure no one had seen his lapse into faith. Then he woke up the guard at the keep and went in to bed.
He fervently hoped that the morning would bring rain.
Four
Vielleteneuse, Thursday, 3 ides August, August 11, 1149.
Les aventures trespassees
Qui diversement ai contees,
Nes ai pas dites sans garants.
Les estores on trai avant
Ki encore sont a Carlion
Ens el moustier Saint Aaron. . ..
The tales of long ago that I have often told,
I don’t tell them to you without proofs.
I came across them at Carlion
In the monastery of Saint Aaron. . ..
—Lai de l’Aubépine, II. 2–7
The next morning, to Solomon’s amazement, the sky was full of clouds. The hot air had a breeze in it that smelled like rain. He actually recited the morning prayers out of grateful relief. Now no one would be tracking him down for desecrating the rite. He was just congratulating himself on another narrow escape when Edgar yanked him from the breakfast table and hustled him out into the bailey.
“They’ve found the body of the messenger from Boisvert,” he told Solomon. “Some peasants were out fishing at dawn and pulled him up in their nets.”
“Are you sure it was him? Has he been dead long?” Solomon asked. What if the women had snared another unfortunate man out to catch a glimpse of naked girls?
“At least since yesterday,” Edgar said. “He hadn’t been in the water so long that I didn’t know his face. Even more, the pouch containing the letter with Lord Gargenaud’s seal was still hanging at his belt.”
“Accident?”
“He had an arrow through his chest,” Edgar said. “Worse, there was no sign of theft. It wasn’t a chance attack. Someone didn’t want him to reach the rest of Gargenaud’s relatives. They must have been laying in wait for him.”
Solomon didn’t need time to think.
“I say we pack up and return to Paris at once,” he said. “Let Catherine’s grandfather rot. It’s not worth risking your lives.”
“I know,” Edgar snapped. “That’s what I think we should do, too.”
He was silent for a moment, staring at the floor as if there were a message in the broken rushes and bits of tra
sh.
“But. . .?” Solomon prompted.
Edgar shook his head as if to clear it. His fine blond hair flopped across unshaven cheeks.
“I think that we should go back home at once,” he spoke from behind clenched teeth. “But I feel that we must go to Boisvert. I can’t tell you why; I don’t know myself. Perhaps there is a curse that must be lifted, as Giullaume believes. What if by hiding we condemn all the others?” He grimaced. “All right, tell me I’m howling mad.”
“Oh, you are,” Solomon said. “But it’s beginning to appear that this is not just some moldy legend. Spirits don’t shoot arrows. There’s a living person who doesn’t want the message to reach the family. Maybe there’s something more tangible at stake here than a curse.”
“Somewhere in the story,” Edgar told him, “Guillaume did mention that this magical ancestress of theirs also guarded an ancient Carolingian treasure.”
“I thought so,” Solomon said. “There’s always something like that in these tales. What if the old man wants it discovered, perhaps divided among his descendants? And what if only those present have a chance at it?”
“That’s nothing to me,” Edgar protested. “We don’t need a treasure. We’re doing well enough on our own.”
“For now,” Solomon agreed. “But the wheel of life goes down often enough. And what if this is something that was once owned by Charlemagne himself? Would you want to deprive your children of a share in that?”
Edgar gave him a look of disgust.
“What side are you arguing on?” he asked.
“Neither. I want you to make the decision clearly,” Solomon answered. “I’m only throwing the merel on the table so you can make up your mind which ones to play.”
Edgar threw up his hands.
“I’ve already told Catherine that we’re going. If this poor man’s murder doesn’t alter her mind, we’ll leave from Paris within the week.”
“Murder hasn’t stopped her yet,” Solomon said. “Now, it so happens that I have friends in the town of Blois that I’ve been meaning to visit. Perhaps I should see you safely to Boisvert on my way.”
The Witch in the Well: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Page 5