“Oh, there is,” Edgar said, smiling. “Catherine is better than either of us at geometry. She could triangulate the map.”
Catherine was doing her best to return to Paris. For a place that did so much trade with the city, it was odd that so few people were going that way from Argenteuil in the next few days. There were barges being hauled upriver and she might have found passage on one of those, but the Seine meandered so that it took three times as long to take that route, especially fighting the spring current.
Solomon could take her as far as Saint-Denis, but he planned to spend the Sabbath with Baruch. That would mean she would lose a day and have to travel on Sunday. It appeared that the only person in the world who was heading back to Paris was the one she most dreaded traveling with.
He wasn’t any more thrilled than she.
“But this is a way to redeem yourself, Jehan,” Hubert assured him when he offered Jehan the assignment. “I’m trusting you with my elder daughter’s safety. That’s a sign of my continued faith. You can tell Count Thibault so. It won’t delay you. She’s packing her things now. You can leave at once.”
Jehan stood by the bed, twisting his gloves with his strong fingers until the leather squeaked. Agnes sat next to her father, preferring to look out the window than at either of them. It occurred to Hubert that this mission might well be the damnation Jehan had feared.
“Will you take Catherine to Paris?” He repeated.
Jehan tried in vain to get Agnes to look at him. What did she want him to do? Was there any way he could win back her respect?
“Very well,” he said at last. “Whom do I deliver her to?”
“I imagine she’ll tell you,” Hubert said. “She’s staying near Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. One thing,” he added firmly. “Whatever she says, don’t leave her at Bietrix’s on the Île.”
Jehan knew the tavern well, and the back room. It seemed to him a perfect place to leave Catherine. She would deserve whatever might happen to her there. However, he promised reluctantly that he would deliver Catherine to her husband.
Outside the priory, Jehan indulged in some vicious cursing before he was able to feel up to the task.
So now he and Catherine were riding down the crowded rue Saint-Denis in bright, springlike weather, surrounded by merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, peasants and occasional noblemen. The only danger they were in was from each other.
Catherine persuaded herself later that she had been unduly tempted by a loose demon of the lower ether. Why else would she have given in to the impulse to taunt Jehan? She set herself a week on bread and water to atone. Her contrition was real enough. Unfortunately, it came too late.
“Have you heard that Agnes is going to Grandfather’s keep in Blois?” she asked Jehan. Since she was riding behind him, her face pressed against his mailcoat, there was no way he could pretend not to hear her.
“To Raoul?” he replied. “I didn’t know the old bastard was still alive.”
“Very much so,” Catherine told him. “Despite the earnest prayers of half the family.”
She waited, but Jehan seemed content with his own thoughts. Later she realized she had failed her second spiritual test. She ought to have stopped talking then.
“Grandfather still has enough connections in Blois and Anjou to find Agnes a powerful husband,” she went on. Her face was tilted up to Jehan’s shoulder to be sure every word was clear. She could feel his muscles tensing. “He’ll find her someone with land of his own, a castle, perhaps a family monastery she can be patroness to.” Catherine shoved the words at him like a cattle goad. “She needs a man who can protect her, take care of her. Someone she can be proud of.”
He whipped around and pushed her so quickly that she was on the ground before she realized what was happening. As she sat in the road, staring stupidly up at him, Jehan threw her bag down on the ground beside her.
“You meseleuse bordelere!” he shouted. “Engineuse! Jael! Filles d’Aversier! You cursed woman! I’ll not go another step with you. Not if your father paid me in Venetian gold! Find your own way home. I hope you have your throat cut! You deserve worse, you lice tornadereuse! May you be raped a hundred times by leprous Saracens!”
Catherine was too stupefied to answer.
A priest passing by with a basket of onions stopped and tapped Jehan’s leg.
“My lord,” he began, “whatever this woman has done, you have no right to admonish her on a public road in this manner. As the Apostle says—”
“Stay out of this!” Jehan yelled, kicking him away.
The onions spilled out across the road and the priest scurried after them. There was an angry shout and a screech of wheels.
Jehan didn’t bother to see what had happened. Fury had overcome a lifetime of training. Throwing a last oath at Catherine, he set off down the road at a trot, causing those on foot to jump quickly aside to avoid being run down.
Catherine still sat where she had landed in the middle of the road. She felt soaked by invective, half expecting her clothes to be drenched in obscenities. How could he have done such a thing? He had sworn to protect her. Jehan must have gone mad!
Someone took her by the elbow gently.
“Are you all right, my dear?” It was the priest. He was holding his empty basket in one hand.
“I think so. Thank you for trying to help,” Catherine said. She noticed the basket. “Oh, he spilled your load, as well! I’m so sorry! Let me help you pick them up.”
The old man shook his head. “There’s nothing to pick up. The other travelers got them all.”
“Then I must give you something to recompense you for your loss.” Catherine fumbled about under her cloak for the bag tied around her neck. “I have only a coin or two, but you’re welcome to them.”
“Since the onions were to give to the poor of my parish, I will accept them gratefully,” the priest said.
He leaned over to help Catherine to rise. As she did so, she cried out in sudden pain. “Oh, Saint Barnabas’s blistered bunions! I’ve sprained my ankle.”
For the first time, the consequences of her impulse to torment another were made manifest to her. Apart from shock at Jehan’s storm of oaths and horror at his betrayal of his duty, she hadn’t been much concerned when he left her. It was bright daylight and only another three or four miles to Paris on a crowded road. She could have walked it easily. She had done it often before. Now, she had no idea what was to become of her.
Ahem, her voices said smugly. May we remind you what a haughty spirit goes before?
“No, you may not” Catherine muttered.
The priest let go her arm.
“Oh, forgive me, sir,” she said. “I didn’t mean you. Could you help me over to the side of the road? I believe that this man wants to get his cart through.”
She hadn’t actually seen the cart, just the ox pulling it. It stood peacefully blocking the road, chewing on an onion. The carter held another onion by the stalk and was also munching contentedly. Neither appeared that eager to continue their journey.
As Catherine hobbled out of the way, the man driving the cart called out to her. “Did that avoutre toss you out without paying?”
Catherine pulled herself up and started to make a scathing reply to this when she realized that the man wasn’t being insulting, but concerned. His indignation was for a knight who would take something without paying for it, not for a woman who would sell. Still, she felt obliged to correct the carter’s misapprehension.
“The man had agreed to take me home to my husband,” she explained. “But he changed his mind,” she ended lamely.
The man took another bite of onion. “Just as I thought,” he said. “They always do.”
Catherine sat on a Roman milestone and tried pulling off her boot without screaming. The priest pulled at the heel for her and it finally came off. The ankle was swollen to the size of a cabbage. The only thing she could think of to wrap it with was her woolen stocking. She managed to peel it off without sh
owing too much leg, for she was acutely aware that the carter hadn’t yet moved but was watching her with the same steady gaze as his ox.
“There’s no room on the seat,” he said, when she had tied the stocking as securely as possible. “But if you want, you can ride in the back with the barrels. I’m going to my mother’s house on the Île.”
The old priest was obviously torn between getting back to his church and making sure that none of Jehan’s wishes for Catherine’s future came true.
“Perhaps I could come with you and then walk back,” he suggested.
Catherine bit her lip. She would be glad of his moral protection but didn’t want to inconvenience him any more than she already had. She looked at the carter.
He was an extremely solid man. Large, broad-shouldered, thick-necked, stolid. She wondered if he and the ox were related.
“Where on the Île are you going?” she asked.
“Near Saint-Christophe,” he told her. “My mother keeps a tavern there. My brother makes the beer for her. I take the extra to Auberville and La Villette to sell. I still have half a barrel left. You can have a cup.”
Hope was beginning to grow in Catherine. “Your mother wouldn’t be named Bietrix, would she?”
The man blinked. “Yes! Are you one of her girls? I don’t remember you.”
“No, but I know her,” Catherine explained. “She makes a wonderful bean and pigeon soup. If you take me there, my husband will come for me. He’ll pay you for your trouble.”
The carter didn’t seem to care either way. Catherine decided to take the chance.
She thanked the priest, who continued his journey with a look of relief. When the man climbed down to lift her into the cart, Catherine had brief second thoughts but kept her mind on being with Edgar again before evening. At the same time she tried to think of a saint particularly interested in protecting women who traveled alone. The only one she could think of was the Magdalen, although her early life was the example Catherine was at the moment trying to avoid.
“Please, Saint Mary,” she prayed. “Get me home safely and I promise I’ll go to Vézeley and light a candle at your tomb. I beg you, just get me home!”
She settled into the cart and tried not to let the empty barrels roll toward her. The one she was leaning her back against sloshed. She remembered the man’s offer. At first, thinking of the usual quality of the beer at Bietrix’s, she thought not. But she was thirsty, and her ankle hurt tremendously. So she untied her cup from her belt, found the spigot and managed to fill it without spilling much.
She drank it, flecks and all. This batch used a different flavoring. It was slightly bitter, but not bad.
“Excuse me?” She poked at the carter. “Thank you for the beer, and the help. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Goliath,” the man said. “At least, that’s what everyone calls me. My Christian name doesn’t fit anymore.”
“Thank you, Goliath.”
As Catherine settled back, it occurred to her that there were two things her father would be even more angry about than Jehan’s behavior. She was traveling in a cart and she was going to Bietrix’s tavern.
Catherine sighed. Sometimes one must simply bow to fate.
Lulled by the steady pace of the ox and the effects of the beer, Catherine relaxed and went to sleep.
The sun was setting when the placid ox finally pulled the cart past the Grande Chastelet and across the bridge to the Île. The cart was too wide for most of the streets, even now when the vendor’s stalls had been shut for the night. Goliath had to take a circuitous route, past the palace, across to the rue de la Calanore, then across the courtyard between the churches of Saint-Christophe and Saint-Etienne and then, very carefully, down the narrow alleyway behind the tavern.
Goliath leaned over to be sure Catherine was still there. “I need to unload the barrels for my brother but I’ll take you first,” he told her, climbing into the back of the cart. “We’ll have to go through the brewery, either that or the brothel.”
Catherine was too tired and her ankle was throbbing too much to care which. She let Goliath pick her up and carry her in through the back gate of the building. The garden was stacked high on one side with the barrels. The smell of yeast was overpowering. Goliath kicked at the door. To Catherine’s astonishment, it was opened by Lucia.
“Lady Catherine!” she exclaimed. “Goliath! Put that woman down this minute!”
“Lady?” Goliath struggled to understand this. “You mean she isn’t a whore?”
“He can’t put me down, yet, Lucia,” Catherine said at the same time. “I’ve hurt my foot and can’t walk. Your brother very kindly brought me home.”
“I’m sure that explains everything,” Lucia said.
She asked no more questions, though, but led them through the brewing room and opened the door to the tavern so that Goliath could take Catherine in.
On Saturday evening the room was packed with people, both men and women, local tradespeople as well as the students. As she had hoped, Catherine saw Edgar at the end of the table by the window, sitting with John and Andrew, the Norman canon from Saint-Victor.
“You can put me down now,” she told Goliath. “That’s my husband over there.”
But to Goliath, a delivery meant to the owner, so he pushed his way across the room, Catherine dangling from his arms, until he stood next to Edgar’s table.
Edgar looked up. He closed his eyes, opened them again. She was still there. John started laughing. Catherine smiled.
“Diex te saut, Edgar,” she said. “I’m back.”
Fourteen
Paris, Qaudry’s workshop, the feast of Saint Joseph, carpenter and loyal husband, Wednesday, March 19, 1141 / 9, Nisan, 4901
Mens humilis, studium querendi, vita quieta,
Scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena
Haec reserare solent multis obscura legendo.
A humble mind, a questioning desire, a quiet life
Silent investigation, poverty, a strange land.
These will resolve the problems of many.
—Bernard of Chartres
Edgar had found a block of yew, split it, smoothed it, hollowed it out with slow care, using chisels of different sizes to make the curves. He spent so much time shaping the interior that Gaudry complained.
“If you can’t work faster than that, I’m going to pay you by the piece,” he threatened. “It’s only the inside of a box. There’s no point in smoothing and oiling it. No one will see, anyway.”
“I thought it was for a reliquary,” Edgar said.
“That’s what I was told,” Gaudry answered.
“Then this is where the bones of the saint will rest.” Edgar continued rubbing at the wood with a cloth dipped in oil. “It would dishonor him if I allowed his remains to lie in a roughly hewn box.”
Gaudry thought about that for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “That’s true. Whatever those others are plotting, it’s our duty to create something that we can display with pride on the Day of Judgment. Very well, take all the time you need, Edgar. You’ll still be paid by the day. But don’t let me catch you taking advantage of my pious nature, or I’ll knock your teeth out.”
Edgar nodded and returned to work, pleased that Gaudry had included him in the company of those who honored the Lord with the work of their hands. As each day passed he felt less like a foreign lordling come to Paris for an education and more like a member of another band entirely, one that was as fiercely proud as his own. It grieved him that he could never truly call himself part of that group. Gaudry’s grudging praise gratified him more than any he had ever received from the masters of the Paris schools.
Gaudry was busying himself fining the gold and pounding it into sheets the thickness of spring leaves. The men worked in silence for a time, except for Odo, who was sharpening the tools. He hummed the same two lines of a hymn over and over as he rotated the stone against the metal. This was punctuated by the rhythmic thu
d of Gaudry’s hammer. For Edgar it was the closest to heaven that he ever expected to be. It was a shame to disturb such peace, but he knew he would have to.
He dipped the cloth in the oil again. “Others?” he said to Gaudry. “Do you mean the ones who ordered the reliquary? What sort of plotting could they be doing? I don’t want my work used for sacrilege.”
“Once we’re paid for it, that’s not our concern,” Gaudry said.
But the rhythm of his mallet became more of a stutter. Finally, he put it down and leaned against the bench with a worried expression.
“The canon who ordered this told me our work was to replace a reliquary that had been damaged,” he told Edgar. “His partner was supposed to bring it to me to repair. But the man never came and Odo heard he was found dead somewhere. Now this canon wants a whole new reliquary. I keep telling myself it’s not my business. I take the payment and shut my eyes. But there’s something about the whole matter that smells. I don’t mind deceiving the bishop, the pope even, but I don’t want to offend the holy saints. There’s no telling what could happen. They take their revenge in the hereafter as well as the here.”
Edgar was astonished. It was the most Gaudry had said to him in the whole time he’d been there. The smith must be more unsettled than he had pretended to be concerning the nature of their task.
“Who is this canon who gave you the job?” Edgar asked. “Do you know what church he’s from? Is he an agent of Bishop Stephen?”
“He never said where he was from,” Gaudry admitted. “I figured Notre Dame, because it’s so close. But he might be from Saint-Victor, or even farther. He wouldn’t give me his name. I only saw him once and he stayed in the shadow as much as he could. He was thin and of middling height, like a thousand other men. He seemed nothing more than a minor cleric, a bit timid, even. I thought he might have been entrusted with the relic, accidently broken the case and be wanting to have it repaired before the bishop noticed.”
The Wandering Arm: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Page 22