“I’ll ask Edgar,” Catherine said. “But I don’t see why not. Is Ullo still staying with you?”
“Yes, but I think he’s leaving for Vielleteneuse later today,” Solomon said. “Uncle Hubert felt that he should be with his own people for Easter week. He didn’t want anyone thinking we were trying to convert a Christian child.”
Catherine nodded. “This time of year people are reminded too often of the primary difference in our beliefs.”
They were upstairs now. Catherine put the food away and unstoppered the jug. She sniffed.
“It’s close to vinegar, I’m afraid,” she said. “But we can mix some with water, if you’re thirsty.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said.
He took off his cloak and handed it to her. Catherine sneezed and sneezed again.
“Marpe,” Solomon said automatically. “To your health.”
“Thank you,” Catherine answered. “But I’m not ill. There’s some sort of powder on your cloak that’s tickling my nose.”
“Oh, that. Sorry.” Solomon took the cloak back and hung it on the hook himself. “I forgot. It’s something they put in beer to clarify it. Ground cherry leaves, Lucia said.”
“Ground cherry?” Catherine repeated. “Are you sure? I thought that was one of the solanem plants.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I be? They aren’t difficult words to remember.”
Catherine ignored that. “Ground cherry is not used in medicine, as far as I know, but Sister Melisande used to warn us not to eat the berries. She said they wouldn’t kill us, but we’d get sick. I thought she also said that the poison was strongest in the leaves and stems.”
She went over to Solomon’s cloak again and sniffed cautiously. “There’s something familiar about this,” she said. “I wonder what it smells like when it’s mixed with beer.”
“I thought you said it was poison,” Solomon said. “They wouldn’t sell very much if the customers died before the first refill.”
“I don’t think it’s that toxic,” Catherine answered absently. “You’d need a large dose. And if it were used to settle the dregs, most of it would stay at the bottom of the keg, I’d imagine. Now, where have I smelled this before?”
She closed her eyes and suddenly it came back to her. The odor of smoke in wool, beer and this acrid tang. She had thought it breath from the Hell-mouth as it blew at her that night.
“Natan,” she said. “He must have drunk this powder in something the night he died. Beer would make sense. You say Lucia told you about it?”
“Yes.”
“She told me Natan loved her,” Catherine said. “He would have taken a cup from her hand. But she insists she loved him, as well. Why would she kill him?”
“I can think of a dozen reasons,” Solomon said. “Each one ending with ‘ … because she loved him.’”
A year ago, Catherine would not have understood. Now it only surprised her that Solomon did.
“Don’t say anything to anyone, please,” she begged him. “Let me talk to her. For all we know, every brewer in Paris uses this. Or I might be mistaken. We can’t accuse her without more proof.”
“I agree,” Solomon said. “But you shouldn’t see her alone. Who knows what she might do if you accused her? And don’t forget, she has a weapon, too. She can always expose Uncle Eliazar. She’ll be helping Aunt Johannah today. I’ll take you there. It will be much safer than if you go to the tavern.”
Catherine went with him but vowed to find a way to see Lucia alone. Solomon cared only about proving that Eliazar had nothing to do with Natan’s death. He had no concern about finding a treasure or the arm of a saint he didn’t believe in.
Perhaps Lucia had told her only the simple truth. But perhaps Natan had promised her a legacy and she had murdered him to keep it.
Then she might be the only one left who knew where Aldhelm was hiding.
Eighteen
Johannah’s kitchen, the night of the sarch for unleavened bread, Saturday, March 22, 1141/13, Nisan, 4901
… nec tam culpas quam opera punimus, nec in aliquo tam quod eius animae nocet quam quod aliis nocere possit vindicare studemus ut magis publica preveniamus dampna quam singularia corrigamus.
… we punish not so much faults as deeds, and we attempt
to correct in someone less what harms his soul than that
which can harm others in order to prevent public injuries,
rather than correct individual ones.
—Peter Abelard
Ethics Book I
Lucia was preparing to serve the Holiday meals. She did not appear happy to see either Solomon or Catherine.
“We’re busy here,” she told them shortly. “I’ve no time to talk with you.”
“I thought you wanted our help,” Catherine said.
“I did,” Lucia said. “But it seems to me that I’ve been helping you more. Finding the one who killed Natan clearly has no importance for you.”
“Yes, it does, Lucia,” Catherine assured her. “I promised I would find out who it was, no matter where the investigation led.”
“Even if it came back to your own family?” Lucia asked.
“Yes,” Catherine answered. “But my father never did any business with Natan. He’s not involved in this at all, even though Menahem still doesn’t believe us.”
“Catherine, I’m not deaf or blind,” Lucia said with scorn. “Nor was I born an idiot. I overheard you talking with the master and mistress. I can see that you and Solomon might be twins, and not just by your looks, either, although I would wager that under his beard, Solomon has your chin, as well. You both move the same way and you talk to each other the way Goliath and Samson and I do. Catherine, you have much more to hide than I, much more to lose. I’ve known for a long time that you are related to these people, and I don’t think you’re that careful about hiding it. How can I trust you? I don’t even know if you’re Christian.”
“Oh, yes, I am that,” Catherine said wearily. If anything, the past two years had forced her to examine her faith more intensely than she would have ever imagined necessary. “Although none of us can be certain until Judgment Day, I fear.”
Lucia took out the Sabbath platter. “And you.” She turned on Solomon. “How do I know they didn’t tell you to poison Natan? You’re the one who seems to get all the dirty jobs around here.”
“This is true,” Solomon answered. “I’ve been saying so for years. It’s a shame that you’re the only one who has noticed. And I admit that you can’t know I didn’t kill Natan. I had no reason to, but who can prove that? Personally, I wouldn’t poison anyone. It seems so cowardly. There are better ways, especially while traveling.”
“Solomon!” Catherine said.
“I am not stupid, either, Catherine,” he reminded her. “I’ve survived journeys as far east as Rus and as far south as Toledo. An unsuspicious man would have his goods stolen and his throat cut the first night out.”
Lucia smiled at him. “Maybe you didn’t kill Natan,” she conceded. “If you wanted to, you would have done it with that knife in your sleeve.”
“That’s right.” He felt for the knife. He had thought it well hidden but must have been careless within the house. Solomon had worn it so long it was as unfelt as his skin. He resolved to take his own advice to heart. “Jews aren’t allowed weapons,” Lucia reminded him. “You’re protected by the king.”
Solomon didn’t blink. “The king has never been with me when I needed protection.”
At that moment, his resemblance to Catherine almost vanished. Beneath his teasing and joking, Catherine realized, he was hard and wary as a hawk. If she had thought about it before, she would have realized that he had to be. In her mind, he was still the little boy who had pushed her out of the tree at the fair at Provins so many years ago and then cried because he thought he had killed her.
It was with difficulty that she remembered why they had come.
“Lucia,” she said,
“I do have one more question for you. Please. Solomon says you use a powder made from ground cherry in your brewing?”
“No, it goes in after,” she answered. “To draw out impurities.”
“Then what happens to it?” Catherine asked. “It doesn’t float around in the beer like those herbs you put in, does it?
“Wouldn’t be much use in that,” Lucia answered. “No, it sinks to the bottom of the keg, below the spigot. We scoop it out when the kegs are rinsed.”
Catherine was still concerned. “I’d always heard ground cherry was poisonous.”
“Poison?” Lucia repeated. “Can’t be much, if at all. I’ve got it on my hands and licked a bit off now and then. It’s drying and bitter but it didn’t make me sick.”
“So you don’t think it could kill anyone?” Catherine persisted.
Lucia scrunched her face in thought. “I don’t see how,” she said at last. “We’ve been known to tip the keg to get the last of the liquid out. Some probably got into the cup. If anyone has died, it hasn’t hurt business. So what are you saying?”
“I’m sure I smelled this powder on Natan’s breath as he came at me,” Catherine told her. “I thought it would explain how he died.”
Lucia stared at her for several seconds. “I see,” she said. “You thought I lured him into my bed and then poured him a cup of poison. Do you imagine I saw myself as Judith? We’re supposed to die for the Faith, not kill for it.”
“By Saint Vitus’s guardian eagles!” Catherine said. “You told me to hunt for the truth, but of course you wanted it to fall elsewhere than at your door. You were right before. No one really cares who murdered Natan. All anyone wants is the treasure he left behind. And if it really is the arm of Saint Aldhelm, I’m ready now to let the holy relic take care of itself.”
Lucia’s expression changed in an instant. “A relic? You think Natan stole a holy relic?”
Solomon answered. “It seems there’s one missing and a lot of people believe that it was Natan who had it last.”
Lucia sat down. “That’s impossible,” she said. “He wouldn’t have gone near such a thing. It would have disgusted him.”
“You’re quite sure he never said anything to you about the people he was dealing with or what he was trading in?” Catherine asked once more.
“Nothing more than I’ve already told you,” Lucia said. “I can’t help you anymore. And if all you can discover is that Natan may have been given ground cherry powder and it killed him, then you can’t help me.”
“Do all the brewers in Paris use it?” Catherine asked.
“What?” Lucia was getting up. She left the knife on the table and went for her cloak.
“This powder,” Catherine repeated. “Do you grind it yourself, or get it from a peddler? Is it common?”
“I have no idea,” Lucia answered, tying the hood. “Goliath gets it in some village. I suppose it grows there. Other brewers must use it, too. I have to go. Tell Mistress Johannah I’ll be in later to serve the food for her.”
She hurried out, refusing their offer of company.
When she had gone, Solomon and Catherine looked at each other.
“Which do you think upset her more,” Solomon asked, “the source of the poison or the relic?”
“The relic, I’d say,” Catherine said. “She didn’t seem to believe me about the poison.”
“Either that,” Solomon said, “or she already knew. I wonder where she’s going?”
Catherine took his hand. “Shall we find out?”
Edgar knew there was something wrong before he opened the door. Usually the warmth came through the cracks in the wood. Today it was cold. There was no noise, either. No clank of metal or creak of the bellows. Nothing.
He didn’t want to open that door.
He was being foolish, he told himself. Worse, he was acting like a coward.
He fumbled for the handle to lift the latch. The click sounded like a thunderclap in the dark silence. The door opened inward. He pushed it with his foot until it swung all the way to the table, where it stopped with a thump. At least he knew there was no one hiding behind it, ready to spring at him. He looked in.
The windows were mere slits high in the wall, just above ground level. This early in the day, they let in very little light. The old workshop was better in that respect.
He made out Odo first. He was slumped over the oven in a way that told Edgar the fire must be out. He stepped closer. The back of the journeyman’s head was crushed as if with a huge hammer. Edgar crossed himself, mumbling from some forgotten corner of his mind, “Beati mortui, qui in Domino moriuntur.”
Blessed are those who die in the lord. Edgar hoped it was true.
Gaudry was sprawled across the table, one hand still clutching a chisel. He had apparently tried to fight off his attacker, but a chisel was no use against the knife that had slit his throat through.
“A porta inferi, Domine, erue animas eorum.”
Deliver their souls, Lord, from the gates of Hell.
Edgar looked around. He didn’t know what else he expected to see. None of the tools had been touched. Nothing broken but the bodies of the men he had worked with. Then he noticed the box where Gaudry had kept the precious metal they used. It was open. He bent to examine it.
The lock had not been broken, but opened with a key. Gaudry had made the lock. He wore the key around his neck. Was it still there, under all the blood? Edgar’s courage failed him. The box was empty, as he expected. The reliquary they had labored over for weeks was gone.
Edgar stood up. He thought he was in complete control of his faculties.
“I have to tell someone,” he said aloud.
But who? He had no idea where these men lived, who their families were.
At least now there was nothing to hinder finding out exactly where he was.
“No,” he said. “First I have to see to the bodies. They need … I must find someone to tell.”
He backed out of the room. There was a seed of panic sprouting in him. What if he were found down here by the ones who had done this? Did they know they had missed one silversmith? Just as frightening, what if someone else saw him coming from a place where two men had been slaughtered? How would he explain what he was doing there? Who would speak for him?
Despite the darkness, he started to run down the tunnel, heading for the exit by the river. He had to get out into the light, to breathe clear air.
He burst out the door of the shed. A fisherman casting his net above the mill gave him a startled glance, then returned to his work.
Edgar stood bent over, his hands on his knees, gasping. His head started to clear. He checked his hands and feet for bloodstains. None. None on his cloak, either, that he could see. He hadn’t touched either body.
I should have at least made the sign of the cross on their foreheads, he thought.
He was suddenly angry with himself for forgetting that simple act of kindness. Catherine’s voices would have had a few sharp words for him on the futility of self-recrimination, but they had never bothered to speak to him and he wouldn’t have listened if they had. Edgar knew better than to pay attention to such things.
Now he had to decide what to do next. His first thought was to go to his father-in-law, but Hubert wasn’t in Paris. Eliazar had nothing to do with this, he fervently hoped. His mind recoiled from telling Catherine, although he knew he would have to eventually. He didn’t want her involved in this before it was necessary. Even in his present jumbled thinking it never occurred to him that she wouldn’t be, sooner or later. Who else in Paris could he trust?
Only John.
Edgar went in search of him.
“We’re wasting our time, Catherine,” Solomon said. “She’s just going back to her mother’s.”
“Yes, it looks that way,” Catherine admitted. “No, wait, step back. She’s turned the other direction, toward Notre Dame.”
“Maybe she’s going to pray for guidance,” Solomon said.
“I hope so.”
If Lucia had thought to look back, she would have spotted them instantly. But she didn’t even seem to notice what was in front of her, pushing her way through the crowd as if the people were no more than branches in her path.
“That’s funny,” Catherine said. “She’s going into Saint-Étienne.”
“I don’t know why the bishop doesn’t tear that church down,” Solomon said. “The place is full of beggars and ripe for a fire.”
“Ask him, next time you meet,” Catherine said. “Should we follow her in?”
Solomon gritted his teeth. He hated being in those buildings. Even half in ruins, it was still a church. But he couldn’t let Catherine go alone.
“We can’t stop now,” he sighed. “You go in. I’ll be just behind you.”
At this time of day there was a great deal of activity inside the church. Between fallen roof timbers whole families had settled, with their few belongings. Small children peered at them from behind makeshift barricades along what had once been the ambulatory.
It took a moment for Catherine’s eyes to adjust to the dimness of the light. She thought she saw Lucia at the other end of the nave, heading out the door of the left transept. Catherine hurried after, hoping to catch her before she vanished into one of the dozen alleyways radiating from the court.
They came out into the light again. Catherine blinked and spotted the woman they had followed.
It wasn’t Lucia.
“What do we do now?” Solomon panted.
“I don’t know,” Catherine said. “Go home, I suppose. We won’t find her in this crowd. I wish we knew where she was going. She hasn’t told us everything, I’m sure she hasn’t. And I know the news about the relic surprised her.”
“Yes,” Solomon said slowly. “But was it because she didn’t know Natan had the relic or because she didn’t know that we knew?”
“You would have to ask something like that,” Catherine said. “I hate it when I think I have a problem neatly worked out and you add a new perspective.”
The Wandering Arm: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Page 29