The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (2 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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“I agree,” Catherine said. She sniffed and tried to hold back the tears.
Edgar got up and went to Catherine, putting his arm around her shoulders. Catherine brushed her cheek against the empty space where his hand should have been. He pulled away a fraction. She sighed. Two years now since the hand had been lost and he still needed her to remind him that his touch didn’t upset her. Why
couldn’t he believe that she loved him no matter what life did to his body?
She looked at him and he smiled.
“Um … Catherine.” Solomon’s voice brought her back with a start. “No woman should look at her husband like that. It makes other people discontented.”
Edgar laughed. “If you stayed in one place long enough, Solomon, you might have a wife, too.”
“Ah, but what kind could I hope for?” Solomon laughed. “With my luck she might be just like Agnes.”
Hubert had been paying no attention to the conversation. His thoughts were jumbled and his throat tight from the pain of his daughter’s rejection. He picked up the beer pitcher and shook it. Empty. He glared at Solomon.
“This will wait until tomorrow,” Hubert stated. “We’ll send word to Agnes that we’ll see her in the morning instead of tonight. I need to sleep on this news. And to think that just a few moments ago I had nothing more to worry about than war and impoverishment. I should have rejoiced.”
 
Solomon left soon after and Catherine and Edgar went upstairs to check on the children and prepare for bed. In the alcove James was sound asleep, a toy horse clutched in his fist. Next to him lay Margaret, Edgar’s half sister, one arm thrown protectively over her nephew. Edana, the daughter conceived in the midst of war in England, was in the trundle bed beneath. She was now a year and a half old and would be promoted to sleeping with the others as soon as she stopped wetting.
Edgar drew open the curtain hiding their bed. He had brought up a pan of coals to warm the sheets before they got in, but he was hoping Catherine would help him heat them further.
Catherine took her time undressing and rebraiding her hair. Edgar could tell she needed to talk.
“There’s nothing you can do for your sister now,” he said gently. “Not unless you renounce the rest of us.”
“I know that.” Catherine slipped into the bed and rolled toward the wall to make room for him.
Edgar dropped his
brais
on the floor and climbed in. She rolled back against him, her head on his chest.
“It just seems so odd that Agnes would want to go so far and marry a stranger,” she continued. “It’s not as if she were a princess or a great lady who needed to seal an alliance with her body. She could have chosen someone she already knew.”
“Like you did?” Edgar smiled.
“Well, since the first time we met you threw yourself at me and knocked me to the ground, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“There was a body falling on you,” Edgar reminded her. “I was trying to save you from being hurt.”
“That’s what you say now.” She idly spun circles around his navel with her finger. “I think you just wanted to get on top of me.”
The circles spiraled down his belly, and Catherine found something rising to greet her.
“How nice.” She smiled contentedly. “Some things never change.”
Edgar reached up and closed the bed curtain.
 
At the abbey of Clairvaux in Champagne there was also worry about the king’s plan to wage war in the Holy Land. Abbot Bernard considered it only proper that Louis should go. The king still hadn’t done penance for his sin of burning a church full of people at Vitry during his war with Thibault, Count of Champagne. Saving a city for God would be the least he could do after committing such an enormity. But Bernard was not as enthusiastic over the rumors that Queen Eleanor had decided to accompany her husband.
As usual, it had been laid on the abbot to bring the people of Christendom together for this great expedition.
Both his former acolyte, now Pope Eugenius III, and King Louis had begged him to preach. Only his influence, they insisted, would convince both the lords and the people to give their support to the endeavor.
Bernard sat in the speaking room, surrounded by monastic secretaries and piles of parchment and writing tablets. He was a man of middle height, thin and pale from ascetic fasts. Yet there was nothing weak about his spirit. All the energy he might have spent as a warrior,
lord and husband he had channeled into his quest for God and the service of the faith.
The abbot looked up from the letter he was reading.
“Nicholas,” he said.
The clerk was beside him in an instant.
“Are the encyclicals ready to be sent out?” Bernard asked. “Have you finished copying the letters for me to sign?”
“All complete, my lord abbot,” Nicholas answered. He was an energetic young man, with sharp eyes and an air of competence.
“Have them ready for me after morning work,” Bernard told him. “Have you ordered that crosses be made to give out to the pilgrims?”
“Yes, lord, the cellerar has arranged for the nuns of Jully to cut them for you.”
Nicholas bowed, waiting for another command to perform perfectly.
Bernard only nodded. “Excellent, as always, my son. Now, I should like to retire to my cell for a time to meditate alone. Thank you for your assistance.”
The monks bowed and left. Nicholas remained a moment.
“Is there nothing more I can do for you, my lord?”
The abbot shook his head. He eyes had already closed as he prepared to pray. They opened again.
“Yes, Nicholas,” he said quietly. “Please close the door when you go.”
Nicholas returned to the scriptorium, where a dozen men were making copies of the abbot’s writings.
“Brother Geoffrey,” he said, looking over the monk’s shoulder. “I believe the ablative form is called for in this sentence.”
Geoffrey looked up. Nicholas could tell he was almost biting his tongue in half in the effort not to make a sharp retort.
“The accusative would be more appropriate, in my estimation,” Geoffrey said finally. “But I shall, of course, change it according to your wishes.”
“Not mine!” Nicholas held up both hands in denial. “Abbot Bernard’s. All I do is at his command.”
Geoffrey returned to his work. Once he was certain that Nicholas was out of the room, he allowed himself to mutter his disbelief. The monk next to him nudged him.
“Don’t worry, Geoffrey,” he said. “The abbot is too trusting of his friends, but one day even he’ll see the truth about Nicholas.”
“And until then?” Geoffrey scowled.
“Do what I do.” The monk smiled. “Offer up time spent with him as a penance.”
Geoffrey considered. “Yes, I suppose I could also pray that he receives a martyr’s death, as such a saint deserves.”
He went back to his work in a much more cheerful frame of mind.
 
Jehan returned to the convent to tell Agnes that her family would call upon her. She met him in the portress’s hall. As always, her frail blond beauty took his breath away. He never understood how she could be sister to Catherine, who was dark and headstrong. Jehan had long suspected that Catherine was some sort of demon insinuated upon Hubert as a false daughter in order to destroy the world. She seemed very talented at destroying his.
“I don’t know why you insist on seeing your family,” he complained to Agnes. “They haven’t changed at all. I saw that Jew when I left, coming in as if he had a right to be there.”
Agnes cringed.
“That’s why I won’t have them interfering in my life,” she said. “I only want what’s mine by right. Afterwards I plan to get as far away from them as possible so they can’t shame me before my husband’s family.”
It was Jehan’s turn to cringe.
Agnes noticed. She put her hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Jehan,” she whispered as the portress looked on, guarding against any improprieties. “And I’m very proud of you for planning to join the soldiers of Christ and find glory in the Holy Land.”
“Yes,” Jehan answered, mindful of the woman listening. “It is, of course, the closest a man like me can come to the religious life.”
His expression suggested that it was a lot closer than he had ever intended.
“I plan to come to Vézelay.” Agnes tried to cheer him. “To see you receive the cross from the hands of Abbot Bernard, himself.”
“The day will be that much brighter because of your presence,” he answered, his voice toneless.
When he had left and Agnes was alone in the guest house, she sank down onto the bed. After a moment, she pulled herself onto her knees, reached out and slid the curtains shut. Then she allowed herself to lie flat, her face in the pillows, crying silently but thoroughly.
 
The winter rain streamed down on the house, causing sudden eruptions of steam in the hearth. It was barely past midday but gloomy and dark out. Catherine, Solomon and Edgar sat on pillows by the fire, baby Edana asleep on Catherine’s lap. James, his brown curls perpetually tangled, was being chased around the hall by twelve-year-old Margaret. Edgar and Catherine had brought her back from Scotland with them after her mother died. Her long red braids had come undone and, as she passed Solomon, he would make a feint at catching the loose hair. She would get close enough to make him think he could grab her and then slip away laughing.
Hubert sat on the one comfortable chair next to the fire and watched them with a lump in his throat.
This is how it should always be, he thought. Why do moments like these never last?
As James went flying past, Edgar reached out with his good hand and caught him, tumbling him onto the pillows.
“Aren’t you ready to take your nap yet, young man?” he asked.
“No, Papa.” James grinned. “First I kill the dragon.”
He got up again at once and began racing the circuit of the room again, yelling battle cries.
“I almost think he does see a dragon,” Catherine said.
“At his age, I always did.” Edgar smiled.
Catherine gave him a sideways glance. Having met Edgar’s uncle Æthelræd, she was half inclined to believe he had. She decided to change the subject.
“Shall we all go to visit Agnes this evening?” she asked. “Perhaps seeing the children will soften her heart.”
“Or convince her never to have any of her own,” Solomon suggested as James careened into him. “I’m not your dragon, Sir James!”
James, switching roles, roared at him.
Edgar watched them. “I think James and Edana can remain here,” he decided. “I don’t remember Agnes as being that fond of small children, do you?”
Catherine was embarrassed to realize that she didn’t know.
“It’s been so long,” she said. “I don’t know my own sister anymore.”
She bit her lip in worry.
“What am I going to wear?”
 
Catherine settled for a proper matronly
bliaut
of green and blue embroidered with spring flowers at the collar and hem. With some effort, she had managed to get all of her hair braided and covered so that no stray curls emerged from under the scarf. That didn’t keep her from being ridiculously nervous as they were ushered into Agnes’s presence in the convent visitor’s room.
Agnes looked at them all as if meeting strangers. Then her eyes widened as she saw Edgar’s left arm.
“Saint Ambrose’s three-tailed whip!” she exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
She stopped. “I mean …” she started again.
“It’s all right, Agnes,” Edgar said. “I got between a man with a sword and his victim. That’s all.”
“I … I see.” Agnes couldn’t keep her eyes from the emptiness at the end of the arm.
“Is that what you called us here for?” Catherine asked, ever protective of Edgar’s feelings. “If so, we can leave at once.”
“Catherine!” Hubert’s voice was sharp. “This is as hard for her as it is for us. Agnes, I’m very happy to see you again. You are more beautiful than ever, just like your mother.”
He paused at her expression. He shouldn’t have mentioned Madeleine.
Agnes took a deep breath. “Perhaps we could all start again,” she said. “Father, Sister, I wanted you to rejoice with me at my contract of marriage. I ask nothing from you but the dowry and property that is rightfully mine.”
She was daring them to object.
Hubert nodded slowly. “I trust that your grandfather investigated this man before he allowed you to agree to the contract.”
“Of course,” Agnes answered. “Grandfather is old, but as sharp as ever. Sharper. This time he made sure that Gerhardt’s family was also above reproach.”
“Agnes!” Catherine shouted. “How can you hurt our father so!”

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