The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (3 page)

Read The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Online

Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
2.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
She wished she were still young enough to pull Agnes’s hair and rub her face in the mud.
Agnes faced her, fury barely in check. “I see that you at least, are just the same, beloved sister.”
Catherine heard the scorn in Agnes’s voice. She pressed her lips together to keep from answering in anger.
“I was once just that, Agnes,” she said softly. “Just as you were to me.”
Her sister blinked hard for a moment, but no tears escaped.
“That was long ago,” Agnes stated. “Now we have only duty holding us to each other. I am here to ask if you’ll fulfill yours.”
Hubert answered for all of them.
“You are welcome to all we have, Agnes, to impress your new husband. I’ll send a troop of men to guard you and find waiting women. We wish you well in your new life.”
Agnes’s expression didn’t change. She might have been carved from the wall she stood before.
“Very well,” she answered. “That’s all I need from you. You may go.”
“Agnes, please!” Catherine stepped toward her.
“Don’t touch me!” Agnes was on the edge of screaming. “All of you. Don’t try to pacify me. There’s nothing you can do. All I want is my share of Mother’s jewels and never to see any of you again.”
“Of course, child,” Hubert said. “If you insist. But you must understand …”
“I do, Father, all too well.” Agnes turned away from him. “You chose those infidels instead of me, instead of my poor mother and instead of Our Lord. I refuse to be damned along with you. There’s nothing more to say.”
She fumbled with the latch on the door and swore under her breath. Then the door opened and she was gone.
Edgar, Catherine and Hubert looked at one another.
“That didn’t go very well, did it?” Edgar said.
Hubert’s face was grey. “My beautiful, golden child. What have I done to you?”
Catherine put her hand on his shoulder. “We are all to blame,” she said. “I could have helped her understand when she found out you and Eliazar were brothers. Even earlier, I ignored her for my books. I should have helped her more when Mother began to fail. But it’s too late for regret.”
Hubert sighed. “My poor Agnes; I only wish I could win back her love.”
“Father,” Catherine said. “She’s made it clear. She doesn’t want our love. She doesn’t want us at all.”
 
In her room, Agnes sat and unfolded a square piece of vellum. She touched the wax seal, feeling the pattern beneath her fingers. It was her betrothal contract, her last chance for the security she craved.
Happiness was more than she expected.
 
The castle of Gerhardt of Trier was perched north of the city high above the east bank of the Moselle River. It had been rebuilt in stone by his father only ten years before. The walls were still raw from the quarry and the ruts made in the earth from dragging the the blocks up the hill were still deep in the road. Below, the slope was covered in vines all the way down to the river path. Grapes were his family’s gold. They owed the land and military service to the archbishop, but the vines had been theirs since the time of Constantine and Gerhardt was as proud of the wine from them as any other craftsman of his work. As he should be; the wine was among the best in the region. Gerhardt oversaw its production personally. He was the one who decided the days for picking and pressing and when the barreling should end. It was a long family tradition.
This day he was being unpleasantly reminded of another long family tradition.
“How could you do this without asking me!” he wailed at his brother, Hermann.
“We did ask you,” Hermann said patiently, glancing around at the rest of the family, consisting of their sister, Maria, her husband, Folmar, and Peter, Gerhardt’s thirteen-year-old son.
“He did, Father,” Peter confirmed. “I said I wanted a new mother and you said you hadn’t time to find me one and so Uncle Hermann said …”
Gerhardt put his hands over his ears.
“I know what Hermann said.” He glared at them all. “But I can’t believe he would act on it. I don’t want another wife. I can’t marry again.”
“But, Gerhardt, you signed the contract!” Maria was shocked. “You can’t change your mind now!”
“But I never made up my mind!” Gerhardt uncovered his ears only to tug at his long, blond hair. “How could I have signed a contract?”
Hermann coughed. “Well, do you remember when I gave you those documents having to do with the purchase of the property in Köln?”
“The houses I bought from the monks of Regensberg.” Gerhardt nodded. “Of course. You and Folmar handled that well, Brother.”
“Yes, thank you.” Hermann smiled tightly. “The fourth one, and I told you quite clearly, was the contract of betrothal to Agnes de Bois Vert, of Blois.”
Gerhardt sat stunned. He hadn’t been paying much attention at the time. There were so many other things to do. Could he have signed himself, body and soul, to some woman from France? He shivered. It was possible. And it was impossible. He rounded on his brother-in-law, who had stayed silent up to now.
“Folmar, how could you agree to this?” he asked. “You know well that I can’t remarry now!”
Folmar gave a gesture of helplessness. “I wasn’t consulted, Gerhardt.”
Gerhardt raised his eyes to heaven, but no advice came from that direction. So he pounded the wall with his fist.
“There is no way I will marry this woman!” he shouted.
Maria took his hand and gently examined his fingers to see if any were broken.
“
Wie gehabet ir dich so?
” she asked her brother. “From all accounts this Agnes is beautiful, docile and pious. She comes with a fine dowry and an excellent lineage on her mother’s side. Her father is a wealthy merchant of Paris—very wealthy. I don’t believe there is
any thing you can find fault with in our selection, Gerhardt. It’s not as if our family were that well born.”
“It’s not that.” Gerhardt knew he couldn’t give them the real reason for his intransigence. They’d never accept it. “I don’t want to remarry. I’m happy as I am. I have a fine son. There’s nothing more I need, least of all a French bride. You have to cancel the contract.”
Hermann pursed his lips. “We can’t do that, Brother,” he said. “We swore oaths before witnesses and you signed the contract. By now the girl’s most likely ordered new robes and begun packing. No, if you don’t want to marry, you’re going to have to tell Agnes yourself, and take the consequences.”
Gerhardt groaned. They found his misery baffling and a bit amusing. Even Peter, his own child! They all thought that once he saw she was a perfectly nice young woman, he would accept his fate and go happily into wedlock.
But Gerhardt knew that to do so would be to send himself straight to hell. And, if he revealed his reasons, he feared that the fires would reach him long before he died.
A field outside Vézelay. Sunday, pridie kalends April (March 31), 1146; 15 Nisan, 4906. Easter Sunday, the first day of Passover.
 
 
Anno Verbi incarnati millesimo centesimo quadragesimo sexto, gloriosus rex Francorum et dux Aquitanorum Ludovicus, regis filius
Ludovici, cum esset viginti quinque annorum, ut dignus esset
Christo, Vezeliaco in Pascha baiulando crucem suam, agressus est
eum sequi.
 
 
In the year of the Incarnation of the Word 1146, the glorious king of the Franks and duke of Aquitaine, Louis, son of King Louis, in his twenty-fifth year, in order that he might be worthy of Christ, at Vézelay on Easter resolved to follow him by carrying the burden of his cross.
 
—Odo of Deuil
Book I
De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem
 
 
T
he crowd in the field was so thick that Catherine couldn’t see the men standing on the platform. Someone jostled her and she would have fallen if there had been space. As it was, she was pushed back into Edgar’s arms.
“I’m glad now that we left the children with Willa and Margaret at the inn,” he said, setting her upright with his good hand.
“I suppose they’re too little to remember anyway,” Catherine agreed. “I only wanted them to be able to tell their children that they had heard the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux.”
“We may be too far back to hear it ourselves,” Edgar said. “In this mob, there’s no hope of getting closer.”
Catherine looked up at the platform tower at the north edge of the field. It had been built hastily when it was realized that the number of pilgrims come to take the cross was far more than would fit safely in the cathedral. Edgar shook his head when he saw the rickety structure, muttering that he hoped Saint Mary Magdalene, the patron of Vézelay, was guarding those present for it would be a miracle if anything built so roughly on that damp and sloping earth survived.
Catherine felt out of place among the mass of the faithful. She and Edgar had no intention of pledging themselves to a pilgrimage. They had already taken one to Compostela and received the miracle of James when they had almost given up ever having a living child. It would be hubris to ask God for more. But the excitement of the moment had drawn them to come and cheer those who did take the cross.
All pilgrimages were dangerous, of course. It was traditional to prepare for them as if one would never return. But this journey was
even more likely to result in martyrdom for it was to be one of battle. The fall of the Christian town of Rohes, once called Edessa, to the Saracens the year before had stirred the young king to raise an army to free it.
Edgar noticed how many men of fighting age stood around him. He could feel their tension, almost see their visions of conquest and glory. He forced down the bile that rose in his throat. He told himself he had never been much of a warrior in any case. Now there was no chance of it. A soldier with one hand was as useless as a three-legged horse.
Sometimes he felt that his life had been a series of sudden changes. Meeting Catherine had taken him from the path his father had set him on toward a bishopric in Scotland. He had hoped that this would leave him free to work at carving and metalwork, something a nobleman should never do. Then, one stroke of a sword and he had been forced to begin again, teaching himself to work with only his right hand. His anger at the loss still bubbled close to the surface.
His bitter reflections were interrupted as he and Catherine were pushed forward by the throng around them. The abbot of Clairvaux, accompanied by the king, the bishop of Liege and other dignitaries, had climbed to the tower and begun to speak.
Catherine stood on tiptoe and squinted in an effort to make out the abbot’s face clearly. She hadn’t seen him since the day at Sens when Bernard had spoken out against her teacher, Peter Abelard. It had been hard for her to feel kindly toward the man, even though it was generally agreed that he was a living saint. But when she learned that Abelard and Bernard had been reconciled just before Abelard’s death, she had decided she could do no less than forgive as well.
The faces of the people around her were upturned to catch the words like rain on dry earth. But she could hear nothing. The abbot’s arms spread out, inviting all to join the king in his pilgrimage. Then he stopped and waited.
The response was instantaneous.
“Give us crosses!” the crowd roared. “Crosses!”
They surged toward the platform, causing some alarm among those perched on it. It swung wildly and one corner suddenly
collapsed. The crowd gasped in horror as the abbot disappeared, leaving the king hanging from the railing, the floor sloping away from him. He was able to pull himself up as retainers rushed to shove the populace away and rescue the abbot.
“Dear Virgin, save them!” Catherine cried, echoing the shouts of the others.
Everyone held their breath until the head of Abbot Bernard appeared and he waved to show that he was unharmed.
Catherine exhaled in relief and joined the rejoicing.
“I thought he would be crushed!” she exclaimed to Edgar. “It’s a miracle he wasn’t.”
“It’s a miracle that thing didn’t fall apart sooner,” Edgar answered. “And look, those idiots are putting it together again so that Bernard can finish his sermon. Only a fool would go back up there!”
“Or a man of faith,” Catherine reminded him.
Edgar gave her a look of exasperation. “
Carissima
, faith in God’s providence is one thing. I have none in the skill of those carpenters.”
Nevertheless, within a few moments, the platform had been repaired and Bernard and Louis climbed the ladder to resume.
The crowd chose to see this as an omen of success in the retaking of the city, and the level of fervor increased tenfold.
After he finished speaking, the abbot reached into a bag at his feet and began to distribute the cloth crosses to the men and women who pressed forward to receive them. Soon he began scattering them like seed upon the people below until the bag was empty. Still more people reached out to him. Bernard looked about for help and, getting none, took off his cowl and tore it to make more crosses for the faithful.
Despite himself, Edgar was carried along by the enthusiasm of the others. For a moment, it seemed to him that there was something he could do, that he mustn’t be left behind. He started toward the platform.
“Edgar?” Catherine was left behind and tried to shove her way through, terrified of losing him in the throng. “Edgar!”
He didn’t hear her. Someone knocked her aside and she fell in the muddy grass. Still the people moved forward, stepping over and then on her every time she tried to get up.
“Edgar!” she screamed again.
She felt someone grab her about the waist from behind and lift her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she gasped. “I thought they would trample …” Her eyes grew wide as she saw the face of her rescuer.
“Jehan! I thought you’d be in the front of that mob!”
The man had recognized her, as well, and gave her a look that said he would have stomped on her, himself, if he had known who she was.
“I received my cross last night from the abbot personally,” he answered proudly.
“Is my sister here with you?” Catherine asked. Perhaps here, amidst the fervor of the faithful, the two of them might find some reconciliation.
Jehan’s face grew bleak. “I haven’t seen her yet today. As she promised, she was here last night to see me accept my cross but then she vanished. I don’t know where she is.”
“But she must be here someplace!” Catherine automatically looked around, although it was impossible to see more than an arm’s length and she was in danger of falling again as people pushed around her. “Help me search for her!”
Jehan didn’t bother to answer. He simply gave her another look of disgust and vanished back into the crowd.
Catherine pushed against the mass of people, squeezing between bodies until she reached a less-populated area. Then she took a deep breath, shaken as much by the sight of Jehan in a pilgrim’s cross as by nearly being crushed in the wild rush of the people to receive their badges.
Jehan. Solidier, knight, warrior. Implacable enemy. He had been on the fringes of her family for years, first as the friend of her uncle Roger, then as messenger for her father and grandfather and then as guard to Agnes. Through a number of ill-fated events Jehan managed to blame Catherine for every piece of misfortune he had ever had, not least that he had no chance of ever marrying Agnes.
She tried to find the charity to pity him. After a moment she shook her head. She wasn’t a good enough Christian for that.
She climbed a bit up the opposite side of the field, trying to spot
Edgar’s blond head above the others. It was hopeless. What could have possessed him to leave her like that? She could only hope he would find her later.
The tumult was far too great to find anyone. Catherine decided that the only sensible thing to do was to find a soft place to sit and eat the bread and cheese she had cached in her sleeve that morning. She found a mossy spot under a tree and settled, shaking the crumbs from the cloth as she munched. Sooner or later, someone would find her.
 
In another part of the field, Solomon watched the escalating madness with growing horror. He was uneasy among large numbers of Christians at the best of times and was only here because his uncle Eliazar had asked him to observe and report back to him. As more and more of the pilgrims came past him, faces effulgent with the vision of salvation and crosses pinned to their tunics, Solomon’s disquiet became physical.
“Wait until they find that a piece of cloth won’t stop an arrow,” he muttered to his friend.
The man standing next to him smiled. It might have seemed odd that a cleric would respond so mildly to a slur on his faith, but Astrolabe came from an unconventional family and he had known Solomon a long time.
“I’m sure most of them will realize that and find some mail and a shield to add to their protection,” he told Solomon. “People are looking at you, by the way.”
An old woman was certainly staring at him. She caught Solomon’s eye.
“What’s wrong with you,” she shouted. “A big, strong boy like you not going with the king! What’s the matter? Think you have no sins to repent of?”
Solomon backed away from her. “If I thought I could free the Holy Land, I assure you,
bonne feme,
I would leave tonight.”
She started to say more to him, but Astrolabe pulled his friend away.
“Don’t even suggest it,” Solomon snapped. “I won’t put one of those things on, not even to save my life.”
“I don’t expect you to, but others will wonder.” Astrolabe
grinned at a sudden idea. “I know. If anyone else asks why you’re not taking the cross, I can tell them you have an serious infirmity that keeps you from fighting.”
“Circumcision?” Solomon asked.
This time his friend laughed aloud. “Not at all. The fatal disease of levity,” he said. “It will be the death of you, yet.”
Solomon shook his head. “I don’t take this lightly, I assure you. All I can think is, how long will it be before someone decides it would be easier to attack the Jews in France instead of going all the way to the Holy Land for Saracens?”
“That won’t happen this time, Solomon,” Astrolabe assured him. “Abbot Bernard wouldn’t allow it. He was very clear about who the enemy is and he didn’t mention Jews.”
Solomon gave him a look of disgust. “He didn’t have to, Astrolabe. What has been the text of the sermons for the past week? The death of your god at the hands of the Jews. Do you think none of these people listened to that?”
The other man’s laughter stopped cold. “I’m not so naive as that, Solomon,” he admitted. “I know that many of these people see no difference between the Jews in their midst and the Pharisees of old Jerusalem. Logic has no place in their world. My father learned that all too well.”
“And I don’t believe he ever changed his beliefs either,” Solomon replied softly.
“No, he reconciled with Bernard but felt himself answerable to God alone,” Astrolabe agreed. “Very well, point taken. I promise not to suggest it again.”
“Thank you, now if you could only get my cousin Catherine to stop trying to get my soul into her heaven, I’d be much obliged.”
“A woman taught by both my father and mother, are you mad?” Astrolabe gasped in mock horror. “I’d sooner try to convince a band of Saracens racing toward me with swords.”
“In that case, why don’t we go back to the inn and have some beer before that mob drinks the village dry?”
Astrolabe thought that a fine idea and the two men went back up the hill in complete accord. Behind them people stood proudly clutching their cloth crosses, aware only of the glory to come when they marched triumphantly through the Holy Land.

Other books

The Summer of Me by Angela Benson
Not Your Father's Founders by Arthur G. Sharp
The Realms of Ethair by Cecilia Beatriz
Cursed (The Brookehaven Vampires #4) by Sowles, Joann I. Martin
Trust Me to Know You by Jaye Peaches
Iron Butterflies by Andre Norton
Vain: A Stepbrother Romance by Hunter, Chelsea
The White Flamingo by James A. Newman
Lost in Rome by Cindy Callaghan