The Wandering Arm (15 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: The Wandering Arm
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“He’s no one you need to concern yourself with,” Hubert answered. “I will deal with Menahem. He had no business coming here. But, Agnes, you should not speak so of your sister, who loves you very much.”
“She is no longer my sister,” Agnes said. “She abandoned her place in the convent and deserted our mother. If you speak of her again, I will leave.”
Hubert knew there would be no more discussion tonight. He waited until Agnes had gone up to her room, to the bed she had used to share with Catherine. Then he sat for a moment, too worn to attempt the stairs. He noticed a clay bowl nestled in the ashes and covered with a flat board. He fished it out carefully with the tongs and found a broth of herbs and barley, kept warm for him.
She never forgot. However deep her bitterness, Agnes always made sure he had his posset before bed.
Hubert cradled the bowl between his hands and salted it with his tears.
“You have three new burns on your thigh,” Catherine said to Edgar just before she snuffed out the lamp. “Do you need some salve?”
“You could just kiss them and heal me,” Edgar suggested.
“I think salve would be more effective,” she replied. “But I could try that first.”
It seemed to be enough. Edgar got into bed and arranged the covers. He settled gratefully into the hollow of the mattress. Every muscle in his body ached. He closed his eyes.
“Edgar?”
“Unh?” He was nearly asleep.
“I suppose that means you also have three new holes in your only leather
braies
.”
“Unh.”
“Good night,
carissime.”
“Mmmmmph …”
Morning proved Catherine was right. But the holes in the leather were small. She could patch them. She was more concerned with where Edgar was going.
“I’m beginning to believe that more happens under the Île than on it,” she complained. “You say this place is below ground?”
“No,” Edgar answered. “But we go under something to reach it and come up inside. It’s hard to keep one’s sense of direction with all the turns, but I think it’s still on the east end, near the bishop’s palace.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” Edgar answered. “You’d think someone there would notice the smoke and the fumes.”
She watched him pull his clothes on. He didn’t seem inclined to talk.
“Edgar, about this saint of yours,” she started.
“He’s not mine,” Edgar said. “But he doesn’t belong in France.”
“Even if he wants to be here?” she asked.
Edgar gave her a look of derision. “Why would Saint Aldhelm want to come to France?” he asked.
“You came to France,” she reminded him. “Why did you?”
“To study, of course,” he answered. “To drink wine and be seduced by beautiful French women. And don’t you dare make some sacrilegious comment, Catherine. This isn’t a joke to me.”
“I know that, Edgar,” she said. “But you aren’t thinking in terms of religion. You only see a Saxon being kidnapped by a Norman. Aldhelm isn’t in England or France really; he’s in heaven. No one here can make him do anything. If he has allowed his arm to be taken from Salisbury and then stolen from Philippe d’Harcourt, you might try to imagine what his purpose is.”
Edgar didn’t answer. She could almost see his mind turning her statement inside out, looking for a flaw in the logic.
“And,” she added, “you might ask what part he wants us to play.”
To her surprise, he grinned at that.
“I was worried,” he said. “It isn’t like you to suggest that we be patient and allow heaven to move according to its own design.”
“Do you think it’s prideful to believe we have a place in divine order?” she asked seriously. The sin of pride was the cause of most of her penances.
“No, I don’t,” Edgar said. “Everything else has a place, why shouldn’t we? But sometimes I wish we lived in the days of the prophets when signs from heaven were much more frequent and easier to understand.”
He put on his cloak and picked up his gloves. “I promised to show Solomon where the route to the workshop begins,” he said. “He’s going to try to discover where it comes out.”
“I would feel better if we knew where you were,” Catherine said. “Almost all the artisans are on this side of the river. I still don’t see why or how Gaudry could have put his atelier on the Île. Do you think he’s working on his own?”
“I haven’t seen enough to guess,” Edgar said. “That’s why I’m going back.”
Catherine swung her legs out of bed. Edgar paused to watch. She laughed and pulled her
chainse
over her head.
“Of course you are,” she said. “Tell that to John. I know very well that you love every minute you spend there. I only keep the secret because I want you to learn enough to fashion me a pair of silver earrings.”
When Menahem, the draper, returned from morning prayers he found Hubert waiting for him.
“You are never to enter my home again,” Hubert began without greeting, “unless at my express invitation. Moreover, under no circumstances are you ever to speak to my daughters, either of them. Do you understand?”
Menahem backed away, into the door of his shop. Hubert followed.
“I repeat,” he said, and he did. “If you come near my daughters, I shall see that you suffer for it.”
“You misunderstand.” Menahem held up his hands in supplication. “I have no intentions toward your daughters. I hoped you would be there, that is all. I only wanted to know more about my uncle’s death. I meant no disrespect, sir. I will walk round the city to reach the other side of the street if that is the only way to avoid them in future. I swear it!”
Hubert watched the man cringing before him, terror making him shake. What was the matter with him?
It came to Hubert in a thunderclap. Menahem assumed he was Christian. Hubert had gone to great pains that he should. The draper’s terror was not just for his own life as a man who had been threatened with dishonoring another’s daughter. He feared for the whole community. If Hubert should decide to punish one Jew for his effrontery, then the others would suffer. It was always so.
The thought made the bile rise in Hubert’s throat. It shamed him to be thought just like the great lords, who would burn a whole town to revenge themselves on an enemy. But it also shamed him to know that this servile thing before him was what his people had to become in order to survive.
“Stand up, man!” he ordered. He took a deep breath. “I apologize for my anger. But it would still not be wise for you to come to my home. It was not my daughter, Agnes, who was there when your uncle died.”
Menaham cautiously lowered his arms. “So I guessed from her answers,” he said. “Although I feared she might be lying to get me out of the house.”
“Agnes wouldn’t lie; she would simply refuse to answer you,” Hubert said with a sigh. “It was my daughter, Catherine, who was visiting Johannah. I don’t want you questioning her, either. If you wish information, come to me. What is it you are looking for now?”
Menahem bent to open a wooden chest and began taking out lengths of cloth, which he laid on a table.
“I’m expecting a customer from the king’s court today,” he explained nervously. “He wants rough wool to send to a monastery he has endowed. Says he doesn’t trust the prior to spend the money as directed. Everything needs to be ready to show him.”
Hubert wasn’t interested. “Agnes told me you wanted to know what Natan said before he died. Why?”
“A man’s last words are always important,” Menahem answered, fiddling with the cloth. “He might have had a final request or received a vision. It would be my duty to act upon such information.”
Hubert’s eyebrows raised at the image of Natan receiving a divine vision. “I have heard that Natan left nothing for his burial,” he said. “And yet, it’s rumored that he was a wealthy man.”
The draper’s fingers became more agitated as he smoothed out invisible wrinkles and plucked at unseen bits of fluff in the wool. “Ah, well,” he said at last. “My uncle was a trader, not in as grand a manner as you are, of course. But I’m sure you know that it’s an insecure profession. One lost shipment and all can be lost. That must have been what happened. The coffer he kept with me held only a few small coins. Perhaps he had been ruined by shipwreck or bandits. Possibly his mind was so affected by the loss that he took the poison himself, may he be forgiven.”
Hubert watched Menahem closely. The man was keeping something back, of course, but what? The idea that Natan had been driven to suicide was preposterous. He was the sort who drove others. But the part about not finding any treasure, that sounded honest. Why else would Menahem have dared come to his home, alone, so insistent to speak to the one person to whom Natan might have told his hiding place?
“Had he said anything to you about losing a shipment?” Hubert asked.
“He never discussed his business with me,” Menahem answered too quickly.
Hubert didn’t press any further. He knew that Menahem would never tell an outsider about such things, even under torture. He respected him for that. It was a marvel how cowardice and courage were so mingled in a man.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll ask my daughter and tell you if your uncle said anything to her regarding a cache of goods. But if you bother any member of my family again, I will go to your elders and have them place the
herem
on you. See how long you stay in business if no one will associate with you.”
“You know nothing about it,” Menahem replied. “They wouldn’t cut me off from the community on your word.”
“They might if they thought your behavior endangered their families, as well,” Hubert answered. “Do you want to take the risk?”
“I have already told you I’ll not go near your daughters,” Menahem grumbled. “May I be planted like an onion, head first in the earth, if I break my word.”
“I’ll dig the hole myself,” Hubert assured him.
Having discharged that duty, Hubert considered what to do next. A visit to Eliazar would be useless, he decided. Their conversation the night before had been full of evasions. Even though they had been raised apart, Hubert could sense when his older brother was keeping something from him. Eliazar had insisted that he had no idea how Natan had found his way to the cellar, had repeated that he had done some business with him last year and regretted it and that they had not had any dealings since then. It hurt Hubert more than he could say that his own brother didn’t trust him with the truth. He had said as much.
“It hurts me also,” Eliazar had answered, “that my own brother has no faith in my honesty.”
They had parted with a kiss of friendship, but Hubert had left with a feeling of lonely grief that was almost more than he could bear. And then he had come home to Agnes. He was almost afraid to go see Catherine. If she rejected him, he might be tempted to take poison himself.
Poison.
Menahem had been quite sure that poison was the cause of Natan’s death, not a fit or some other natural cause. Why? Had the body been examined by a physician? If so, what had been found? Perhaps Menahem had just decided that, knowing Natan, the unnatural cause was the more likely.
Now, whom could he ask to help him find out?
Hubert smiled and made his way out of the Juiverie to a tavern he knew of. The room above was the school, the room in back, a brothel. The woman who owned the building made a good living from both. As an extra, her tavern sold the best beer in Paris. At this time of day the odds were quite good he would find Solomon there.
Hubert spotted his nephew as soon as he entered, seated at a corner of the long table in intense conversation with a woman who had her back to him. After his recent encounter with Menahem, Hubert hoped Solomon had more sense than to negotiate with a Christian prostitute. Or, if he did, to be sure the light was out before he dropped his
braies.
Solomon nodded to him and the woman turned around to see who was there.
“Catherine!” Hubert roared. “Are you insane? What are you doing in a place like this?”
“Hello, Father.” Catherine rose and gave him a kiss and a smile. “I’m waiting with Solomon for John to finish teaching so that we can all go hear Master Gilbert speak.”
“You could find no better place to take her than this?” Hubert accused Solomon.
“She’s been very entertaining,” Solomon told him. “Bietrix has already gone out for another bundle of rushes after Catherine commented that they were a bit thin on the floor and greasy. They then had a long conversation about some form of cosmetic, I believe, after which a student came in and made a proposal to Catherine in Latin—why, I don’t know. Her response was brief, I’m glad to say, but the boy left at once, blessing himself repeatedly. She won’t tell me what she said.”
“I merely suggested that he not use the subjunctive mode until he had mastered it completely,” Catherine said.
Hubert could tell she’d been having a wonderful morning. He sat down next to Catherine on the bench and sniffed at the liquid in her cup.

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