Astrolabe got down to help first Catherine, then Samonie, into the cart. He handed them the children.
“I’m sure there’s no danger,” he told them, “but we must be cautious.”
“Of course,” Catherine answered. “So must you. Tell Godfrey to have the other guards pull their hoods down to shadow their faces. You mustn’t chance being recognized, especially dressed like that.”
The driver stopped the cart as the riders drew near. Astrolabe and the other two guards positioned themselves around it, prepared to draw their swords. Godfrey held up his hand in greeting.
The two men slowed and then stopped.
“Dex te saut!” Godfrey called. “And good journey on this grey day.”
“God save you, as well,” the larger man answered. “A strange time of year to travel with your family.”
He nodded to where Edana’s face peered over the edge of the cart. It vanished at once.
“My master’s family is fleeing illness in Paris,” Godfrey answered.
“They may be going into greater danger,” the man told him. “We are chasing heresy in Champagne. One heretic, especially, who escaped from my lord the archbishop of Tours.”
“You’ve followed him a long way if you’ve come from Brittany. But why here? Would he not have headed to Gascony or Italy, to the refuge of his fellows?” Godfrey asked.
The man shook his head. His hood fell back, revealing a strong, lined face with protruding blue eyes. His short, tonsured hair was dark blond.
Godfrey knew him from the tavern in Provins. “Not this one,” he said. “He seeks refuge closer to hand. Don’t fool yourself, good man. There are heretics even in Champagne. Those who follow the false preacher Henry, and those who deny the efficacy of the sacraments and the humanity of Our Lord.”
“Is the man you seek one of these Henricians?” Godfrey asked.
“No,” the smaller man spoke. He was also tonsured with a fringe of dark hair that was already thinning, despite his youth. His long nose twitched as he spoke. “He follows a mad cutthroat named Eon. Just as bad. Another Breton. The place breeds troublemakers. This bunch has been roaming the forests despoiling churches and robbing priests and hermits.”
He spat in the road.
“They sound as lawless as they are misguided. We wish you speed and luck in your search,” Godfrey said.
He signaled the driver to start off again. Astrolabe kept his head down. He didn’t recognize the big blond man, although he seemed familiar, but the other man’s voice was that of the one who had led him to the peasant’s hut the night before. How had they managed to follow him so far without knowing how he was traveling? He wondered if they were playing with him. All he could do was keep his face shadowed and pray that they would be on their way.
But the men didn’t move.
“You must see that we are men of the church and unarmed,” the first cleric said. “So we can only ask your permission to look inside the cart.”
He moved toward it.
Godfrey and his men moved to block him, but their intervention wasn’t needed.
“That will be quite enough!” Catherine rose from the cart like Venus from the sea. Her veil was askew and her bliaut stained by paw prints, but her wrath was divine.
“How dare you keep my children sitting here on the road like common peasants?” She leaned over the edge of the cart, gripping the rail. The round of her stomach was clearly visible. “How do we know you’re clerics? Searching for heretics! A fine excuse to rob us!”
The clerics backed away.
Godfrey stared at her. “My lady…” he began.
“You are not to be blamed, Godfrey,” Catherine said. “It is these stulti who should apologize at once. Heretics! Why should heretics travel on the open road? We are respectable people from Paris, not Breton indocti. Perhaps you should return to Tours and continue your work there.”
Astrolabe coughed. Catherine stopped.
“My lady,” Godfrey spoke again. “I don’t know what you’re telling them and I don’t think they do, either.”
“Oh dear!” Catherine said, realizing. “I was very angry. I didn’t think.”
“I understood you quite well, my lady,” the blond cleric said. “And, as a canon of Notre-Dame, I ask myself how a respectable woman from Paris learned such fluent Latin.”
Catherine flushed, still angry. “Paris is a center of learning, as you may have noticed.” Her tone implied that the cleric hadn’t benefited from it. “‘Many women attend the lectures of the Masters. The queen herself speaks Latin with ease. I’ve heard her. I have often listened to the scholars debate. Therefore, I assure you that I know what orthodox teaching is. Now, you will go on your way and allow us to continue on ours. My children are cold and tired and we wish to make Nogent by nightfall.”
The blond man opened his mouth to argue again, then shrugged, bowed and slapped his reins to make his horse move on. The second cleric followed him, looking back over his shoulder in puzzlement.
“They were at the tavern last night,” Godfrey said. “I knew them at once. Do you think they didn’t remember us?”
“They certainly will remember us now,” Astrolabe said from behind Catherine.
“No,” she answered. “They’ll remember me. You were just a blurred face in chain mail.”
“They couldn’t have thought that we would turn Astrolabe over to them, if he had been in the cart,” Godfrey said after thinking. “They could see we were armed. If we had really been heretics, we could have killed them and left their bodies by the road. I believe that they meant to warn js not to harbor him. Perhaps we should not stop at Nogent tonight.”
“But where?” Catherine asked. “Samonie is still weak and the children…”
“… will be fine,” Samonie finished. “So will I. If we ride with the guards, the mule will have less to pull. We may be able to go around Cogent and arrive at the Paraclete before compline.”
“You mustn’t risk yourselves for me,” Astrolabe insisted.
Catherine bit her lip. They would have to make the river before sundown. If they did, then the rest of the trip would be short. If not, they might be forced to spend the night in the forest. Should she risk all their lives, including the one within her? But what was the risk that they would reach Nogent to find soldiers ready to take Astrolabe into custody? How could she face Mother Heloise if she let that happen?
“We shall go on,” she decided.
They turned south on a trail that would take them to a ferry across the Seine.
And so, when Edgar and Solomon arrived at Nogent that afternoon, they found no one who could tell them what had happened to their family.
“We can’t have missed them on the road from Provins,” Edgar said for the tenth time. “Godfrey wouldn’t have let anything happen to them. He’s completely dependable.”
“You’ve convinced me of it,” Solomon said, although he was equally worried. “There must be someplace that we haven’t asked yet.”
“But where ?” Edgar looked around as if a new monastery might pop up in the landscape.
Solomon didn’t want to suggest it but he did anyway. “If one of the children fell ill, they might have been stopped outside of the town. They wouldn’t be allowed to bring sickness in.”
He knew that Edgar had been thinking this as well.
“Yes, if we can find no one in town who has seen them then we’ll have to retrace our route.”
Edgar fell silent and didn’t respond to any more comments from Solomon. He was impatient to be on their way. Where could Catherine have gone?
They came to an inn on the far side of town. Solomon dismounted and questioned the innkeeper, who was trying to chip the ice off the path to his door. Edgar stayed on his horse.
“We haven’t time for beer,” he reminded Solomon.
Solomon grunted a noncommital reply. He approached the innkeeper, who looked up hopefully. He was disappointed to find that all the stranger wanted was
information.
“No, I haven’t seen them,” he answered, puffing as he worked. “What’s so special about these people, anyway, that so many are looking for them?” “Edgar,” Solomon said, “I think that, after all, we need to stop long enough to talk with this man. And in that case, a warm spiced beer wouldn’t come amiss.”
Heloise had just come from Vespers. The sisters were all in the refectory, eating their evening bread. Only one meal a day was served in the winter, but they were allowed a bit more in the evening to see them through the Night Office. Heloise usually ate hers alone in her room. As she crossed the cloister, she noticed some commotion at the gates. She hurried over, ready to call on the lay brothers if there should be any trouble.
Sister Thecla met her halfway.
“It’s only Catherine,” she assured Heloise. “The poor thing was so eager to be home with us that she pushed them all to travel after dark. Most foolish, even with the guards.”
“Are they all right?” Heloise asked as she continued to the guesthouse.
“The serving woman has a cut on her head from some accident,” Thecla answered. “I’ve sent for Melisande to tend to her. She should look at Catherine as well. I’d say she’s about four or five months with child.”
“Again?” Heloise shook her head. “That one was certainly not meant for a life of celibacy. I’m sure it’s just as well she never made her profession with us. And her children?”
Thecla smiled. “You won’t believe how they’ve grown. Both look healthy and very lively.”
“We should send someone to tell Margaret they’ve arrived,” Heloise said.
“I’ll go myself, in a moment,” Thecla assured her. “Don’t you want me to send Catherine to you later to greet you?”
“No, I’ll meet them at the guesthouse. Catherine must be exhausted from the journey.”
“That she is.” Thecla grinned to herself. “Where shall I put the guards?”
“Where you always do,” Heloise answered. “Is there a problem with them?”
“No, not at all,” Thecla answered, her face alive with suppressed delight. “I just wanted to be sure.”
Heloise followed her, wondering what could have made the usually reserved woman so elated.
They entered the guest house. Catherine stood to greet the abbess. Heloise started to go to her, arms outstretched, when she noticed the guard standing to one side.
She stopped, all the blood draining from her face.
“My Lord!” she cried. Then she looked again.
“Oh, Astrolabe, my dear son!” she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms. “Whatever are you doing with a beard? You look so different! Oh, I’ve been so worried about you. My very dear Astrolabe!”
She released him at last and held him at arm’s length, gazing at him hungrily.
“Oh, my precious,” she breathed. “What has happened to you and when did your beard start to go grey?”
By the next day the ice had melted at last, leaving grey drizzly weather that chilled the bones worse than the cold. The Paraclete, built near the river, was enveloped in morning fog through which the bells rang the hours of the Office, guiding travelers to the convent by their sound.
James and Edana regarded the place as a second home, where the nuns spoiled them dreadfully. No one complained when they came in covered with the thick green mud of the area. They were slipped honey cakes in the kitchen by the cooks and sugared walnuts in the scriptorium by Sister Emily, who received a box from her mother every winter.
But Catherine drew the line at their attempts to join the nuns and students as they processed around the cloister and into the oratory for Ash Wednesday services. She stood them next to her in the little church and made sure they followed the Mass as far as they could, repeating the responses even though they didn’t understand them. They lined up with the townspeople to receive the ash cross on their foreheads, a reminder of the reason for the forty days of fasting to come.
Afterward Catherine discovered that the two children had decided that the one cross wasn’t enough. They had gotten a piece of charcoal from the brazier in their room and happily drawn x’s all over their bodies.
“They look like plague victims,” Catherine grumbled as she poured water over James, who was standing naked in a tub protesting the removal of his artwork. “Stay still, James! You’ve been very naughty.”
Next to her, Emily was washing Edana and trying not to giggle.
“You’ll have to explain to them about ostentatious piety,” she said. No, Edana, the cross the priest put on stays until tomorrow.“
“So I can show it to Papa?” Edana asked.
“Yes,” Catherine said. “As soon as he arrives.”
If he arrives, Catherine thought. She should have sent one of the guards on to Nogent to wait for Solomon and Edgar. What if they were wasting time going back over the route, looking for them? She scrubbed James’s legs harder and then his cheeks. He lifted his chin and set his lips, lot willing to admit that she was hurting him. Oh dear, Catherine nearly laughed. Who is he being now, a martyr being gnawed by lions or a hero facing an army? She wiped the soot off more gently.
Margaret had dutifully walked in the procession and attended Mass, but when the other nuns and boarders went back to the dormitory to pray or study, she had gone to the guest house. Astrolabe found her sitting at the window, watching the empty road.
“They’ll be here soon,” he assured her.
Margaret looked up at him with a rueful smile.
“I know,” she said. “And staring at the road won’t make them arrive any more quickly. I’m glad you’re here, of course,” she added. “I was so surprised to see you dressed like a guard. I hardly knew you.”
They stood together in silence for a while. Margaret seemed so frail and lonely that Astrolabe was tempted to put his arms around her and tell her to cry until she didn’t hurt anymore. But he didn’t want to insult her with pity so he simply stayed near.
“Astrolabe,” Margaret said after a while, “Catherine said that it wasn’t right for her to tell me your secrets, but will you tell them to me? Someone said you were rescued from a band of Breton heretics. That can’t be true, can it?”
“Oh, dear.” Astrolabe shook his head. “I appreciate Catherine’s unusual discretion, but I’d rather you understood the truth than add to your worries with rumors about me. Come over here and sit down. I’ll tell you all about it. You can still see the road from the bench.
“It all started when I went to visit my aunt Denise in le Pallet.” He began the story as he had to Solomon, Edgar, Catherine and his mother. But somehow telling Margaret was easier, and he found himself making it more a story and less a defense.
“One day,” he continued, “an old friend came to see me. He comes from Dol and has a small holding there. He told me that he needed help. A cousin of his had invented some sort of strange belief and then hidden himself in the forest of Broceliande. He had begun preaching and had gathered a group of followers who were causing trouble.”
“Why didn’t the bishop of Dol stop him?” Margaret asked.
“I asked that,” Astrolabe told her. “He said that the bishop had his hands full with more serious heresies, bandits and lords who were flaunting his authority. No one cared about Eon.”
“That’s a funny name,” Margaret said.
“It’s an old Breton one, but that was what caused all the trouble.” Astrolabe smiled. “His family knew he wasn’t very bright and sent him to a monastery where they thought he would be safe, not likely to come under the influence of anyone unscrupulous. Well, one day he was listening to the monks praying and heard the words ” ‘per eum qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et seculum per ignem…’ “
“Through him, who shall come to judge the living and the dead and the world through fire,” Margaret translated.
“Right, but poor Eon was entranced by the word eum. He thought they were saying his name so he asked what the passage
meant and someone told him. He must have brooded on this for a long time because eventually he decided that he was the one the prayers were talking about and that he must be the son of God.”
Margaret gasped. “But surely the monks would have explained it to him!”
“I don’t know if they even knew.” Astrolabe shrugged. “By the time I became involved, he had wandered off in the forest. When I found him, he told me that his abbot had given him permission to become a hermit, but I can’t believe that.”
“And you say people believed his fantastic claim?” Margaret was finding this hard to credit.
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