The Wandering Arm (25 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

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

BOOK: The Wandering Arm
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Hope was beginning to grow in Catherine. “Your mother wouldn’t be named Bietrix, would she?”
The man blinked. “Yes! Are you one of her girls? I don’t remember you.”
“No, but I know her,” Catherine explained. “She makes a wonderful bean and pigeon soup. If you take me there, my husband will come for me. He’ll pay you for your trouble.”
The carter didn’t seem to care either way. Catherine decided to take the chance.
She thanked the priest, who continued his journey with a look of relief. When the man climbed down to lift her into the cart, Catherine had brief second thoughts but kept her mind on being with Edgar again before evening. At the same time she tried to think of a saint particularly interested in protecting women who traveled alone. The only one she could think of was the Magdalen, although her early life was the example Catherine was at the moment trying to avoid.
“Please, Saint Mary,” she prayed. “Get me home safely and I promise I’ll go to Vézeley and light a candle at your tomb. I beg you, just get me home!”
She settled into the cart and tried not to let the empty barrels roll toward her. The one she was leaning her back against sloshed. She remembered the man’s offer. At first, thinking of the usual quality of the beer at Bietrix’s, she thought not. But she was thirsty, and her ankle hurt tremendously. So she untied her cup from her belt, found the spigot and managed to fill it without spilling much.
She drank it, flecks and all. This batch used a different flavoring. It was slightly bitter, but not bad.
“Excuse me?” She poked at the carter. “Thank you for the beer, and the help. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Goliath,” the man said. “At least, that’s what everyone calls me. My Christian name doesn’t fit anymore.”
“Thank you, Goliath.”
As Catherine settled back, it occurred to her that there were two things her father would be even more angry about than Jehan’s behavior. She was traveling in a cart and she was going to Bietrix’s tavern.
Catherine sighed. Sometimes one must simply bow to fate.
Lulled by the steady pace of the ox and the effects of the beer, Catherine relaxed and went to sleep.
The sun was setting when the placid ox finally pulled the cart past the Grande Chastelet and across the bridge to the Île. The cart was too wide for most of the streets, even now when the vendor’s stalls had been shut for the night. Goliath had to take a circuitous route, past the palace, across to the rue de la Calanore, then across the courtyard between the churches of Saint-Christophe and Saint-Etienne and then, very carefully, down the narrow alleyway behind the tavern.
Goliath leaned over to be sure Catherine was still there. “I need to unload the barrels for my brother but I’ll take you first,” he told her, climbing into the back of the cart. “We’ll have to go through the brewery, either that or the brothel.”
Catherine was too tired and her ankle was throbbing too much to care which. She let Goliath pick her up and carry her in through the back gate of the building. The garden was stacked high on one side with the barrels. The smell of yeast was overpowering. Goliath kicked at the door. To Catherine’s astonishment, it was opened by Lucia.
“Lady Catherine!” she exclaimed. “Goliath! Put that woman down this minute!”
“Lady?” Goliath struggled to understand this. “You mean she isn’t a whore?”
“He can’t put me down, yet, Lucia,” Catherine said at the same time. “I’ve hurt my foot and can’t walk. Your brother very kindly brought me home.”
“I’m sure that explains everything,” Lucia said.
She asked no more questions, though, but led them through the brewing room and opened the door to the tavern so that Goliath could take Catherine in.
On Saturday evening the room was packed with people, both men and women, local tradespeople as well as the students. As she had hoped, Catherine saw Edgar at the end of the table by the window, sitting with John and Andrew, the Norman canon from Saint-Victor.
“You can put me down now,” she told Goliath. “That’s my husband over there.”
But to Goliath, a delivery meant to the owner, so he pushed his way across the room, Catherine dangling from his arms, until he stood next to Edgar’s table.
Edgar looked up. He closed his eyes, opened them again. She was still there. John started laughing. Catherine smiled.
“
Diex te saut,
Edgar,” she said. “I’m back.”
Paris, Qaudry’s workshop, the feast of Saint Joseph, carpenter and loyal husband, Wednesday, March 19, 1141 / 9, Nisan, 4901
Mens humilis, studium querendi, vita quieta,
Scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena
Haec reserare solent multis obscura legendo.
A humble mind, a questioning desire, a quiet life
Silent investigation, poverty, a strange land.
These will resolve the problems of many.
—Bernard of Chartres
E
dgar had found a block of yew, split it, smoothed it, hollowed it out with slow care, using chisels of different sizes to make the curves. He spent so much time shaping the interior that Gaudry complained.
“If you can’t work faster than that, I’m going to pay you by the piece,” he threatened. “It’s only the inside of a box. There’s no point in smoothing and oiling it. No one will see, anyway.”
“I thought it was for a reliquary,” Edgar said.
“That’s what I was told,” Gaudry answered.
“Then this is where the bones of the saint will rest.” Edgar continued rubbing at the wood with a cloth dipped in oil. “It would dishonor him if I allowed his remains to lie in a roughly hewn box.”
Gaudry thought about that for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “That’s true. Whatever those others are plotting, it’s our duty to create something that we can display with pride on the Day of Judgment. Very well, take all the time you need, Edgar. You’ll still be paid by the day. But don’t let me catch you taking advantage of my pious nature, or I’ll knock your teeth out.”
Edgar nodded and returned to work, pleased that Gaudry had included him in the company of those who honored the Lord with the work of their hands. As each day passed he felt less like a foreign lordling come to Paris for an education and more like a member of another band entirely, one that was as fiercely proud as his own. It grieved him that he could never truly call himself part of that group. Gaudry’s grudging praise gratified him more than any he had ever received from the masters of the Paris schools.
Gaudry was busying himself fining the gold and pounding it into sheets the thickness of spring leaves. The men worked in silence for a time, except for Odo, who was sharpening the tools. He hummed the same two lines of a hymn over and over as he rotated the stone against the metal. This was punctuated by the rhythmic thud of Gaudry’s hammer. For Edgar it was the closest to heaven that he ever expected to be. It was a shame to disturb such peace, but he knew he would have to.
He dipped the cloth in the oil again. “Others?” he said to Gaudry. “Do you mean the ones who ordered the reliquary? What sort of plotting could they be doing? I don’t want my work used for sacrilege.”
“Once we’re paid for it, that’s not our concern,” Gaudry said.
But the rhythm of his mallet became more of a stutter. Finally, he put it down and leaned against the bench with a worried expression.
“The canon who ordered this told me our work was to replace a reliquary that had been damaged,” he told Edgar. “His partner was supposed to bring it to me to repair. But the man never came and Odo heard he was found dead somewhere. Now this canon wants a whole new reliquary. I keep telling myself it’s not my business. I take the payment and shut my eyes. But there’s something about the whole matter that smells. I don’t mind deceiving the bishop, the pope even, but I don’t want to offend the holy saints. There’s no telling what could happen. They take their revenge in the hereafter as well as the here.”
Edgar was astonished. It was the most Gaudry had said to him in the whole time he’d been there. The smith must be more unsettled than he had pretended to be concerning the nature of their task.
“Who is this canon who gave you the job?” Edgar asked. “Do you know what church he’s from? Is he an agent of Bishop Stephen?”
“He never said where he was from,” Gaudry admitted. “I figured Notre Dame, because it’s so close. But he might be from Saint-Victor, or even farther. He wouldn’t give me his name. I only saw him once and he stayed in the shadow as much as he could. He was thin and of middling height, like a thousand other men. He seemed nothing more than a minor cleric, a bit timid, even. I thought he might have been entrusted with the relic, accidently broken the case and be wanting to have it repaired before the bishop noticed.”
“But you don’t believe that anymore now that we’re crafting an entire new reliquary,” Edgar said.
“No, and not now that the other man is dead,” Gaudry said. “I saw him several times. An oily minor lord, looked from the south, though he spoke good French. He brought us other things before the reliquary was mentioned, broken church vessels that he wanted reshaped or melted down altogether. He told me they weren’t his, he was simply the courier for the churchmen.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Yes,” Gaudry answered with certainty. “He had the air of one doing a distasteful job as quickly as possible. He wasn’t the one giving the orders. For all his fine dress and manner he didn’t have the … I don’t know, the lordliness, perhaps. You know how they look, like they know they’ll always have food on the table and someone else to serve it. This man didn’t have that. I thought he might have been forced into being the courier because of something he’d been caught in.”
“Like a lady’s bed?” Edgar smirked.
In the corner Odo chuckled. “I’d believe that of him; probably the real reason he’s dead.”
“Maybe,” Gaudry said. “But I think it’s more likely he tried to cheat his employers or threatened to go to the bishop about these ‘repairs’ of church property and had to be killed to keep him quiet.”
“But you don’t know who any of these men were?” Edgar asked. “You never asked for a name?”
“I work outside the guild,” Gaudry said. “I don’t give them my name, either.”
Edgar returned to his work. The description matched. Both Maurice and Gaudry gave the same characteristics for the man who brought the goods to the smith. It sounded as if Natan had gone too far into the business of the Christians. Everyone said he had been greedy. Could he have been so foolish as to threaten the people he was working for? Or perhaps they had decided he was no longer of use to them. If he had been poisoned, then he may have eaten whatever it was thinking that he was among friends.
But what could he have eaten, and with whom? And which of the thousand canons living around Paris had told Gaudry to make a reliquary that could fit the arm of Saint Aldhelm? And how had they come by the arm at all? The unraveling of this knot was going as slowly as his carving.
Edgar gave up on identifying one canon in a city of clerics. His mind went back to how Natan could have been poisoned. How observant a Jew had he been? Solomon ate all sorts of things, except pork, although he preferred food made according to the Law. Eliazar and Johannah would only eat what was prepared in a Jewish home. But what of Natan? Edgar decided to ask Catherine to find out when he saw her tonight. It should make her happy to be given a task. Not being able to move about quickly seemed to be unbalancing her humors. After the consternation her arrival at the tavern had caused, her disposition had not been equable for the past few days. It was his duty as a husband to save her from melancholia.
Edgar was uncomfortably aware that it was also his duty to challenge Jehan for his behavior on the road. There would be a certain satisfaction in feeling his knuckles connect with the man’s chin, but Edgar was too rational not to know that the next thing that would happen would be his own chin hitting the dirt. Knowing that in abandoning Catherine Jehan had destroyed his own hopes for any preferment in the future didn’t make Edgar feel better. If he had been raised to fight as his brothers had, Edgar would have been duty-bound to challenge Jehan, to defeat him in open combat and strip him of all he possessed. That’s what he should do, even now.
Edgar made an altogether too vicious jab at the wood, creating a dent. He was startled to realize that he had not cast aside all the attitudes of the nobility after all. Silently, he apologized to Saint Aldhelm for his temper, adding a prayer that Jehan might be afflicted with boils.
With Agnes and her maids gone and no one left at his home on the Grève, Hubert had suggested that Ullo stay with Eliazar. Johannah was delighted to have a child in the house and had a hard time remembering that he was Christian and only a visitor. He, in turn, found it a novel experience to be listened to and given sweets every time he showed his face in the kitchen. His only tasks, it seemed, were to fetch things for Lucia from the cellar and to take the donkey to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois morning and evening so that Catherine could ride over.
That spring morning he was seated on a high stool at the kitchen worktable, happily cracking walnuts for a pudding while pretending they were Saracen heads. Catherine sat next to him, picking the seeds from dried fruit. Oddly enough, she was humming the same hymn as Odo, but she knew more than the first two lines.
“Verbum bonum et suave, Personemus illud Ave, perquod Christi fit conclave, Virgo, mater, filia,”
she sang, and Ullo pronounced the words in tune although he didn’t understand their meaning.
“I thought that was a song for Advent,” Lucia said, coming in with a basket of fresh herbs, the first shoots of spring.
“We should only praise the Virgin in one season?” Catherine asked.
Lucia set down the basket and went to the cupboard for a wooden bowl and curved chopping knife to mince the herbs for a meat sauce. “Forgive me,” she said. “I forgot I was speaking with an expert in doctrine, my lady.”
Catherine opened her mouth to apologize, but stopped. That would be even more condescending than giving Lucia a lesson in religion.
Lucia gave no sign of caring whether Catherine apologized or not. She stripped the fresh leaves into the bowl and began chopping them. After a moment, she stopped and looked through what remained in the basket.
“
Avoi!
” she said. “Not enough chervil. Ullo, do you know what dried chervil looks like?”
“Of course,” Ullo said.
Lucia rolled her eyes. Another arrogant petty lordling.
“Then go down in the cellar and get me three stalks from the dried bunches hanging from the ceiling,” she said.
Ullo went happily. He couldn’t reach the herb bundles without pushing the boxes to stand on. He would be Roland, caught in the pass, at the last minute climbing the rocks to sound his horn, just before death overcame him. Or maybe Godfrey of Boullion, scaling the walls of Antioch, just before death overcame
him.
Ullo was not at all bothered by the idea that Natan had stumbled into the cellar just before death overcame him.
“I hope you don’t want those herbs immediately,” Catherine said. “He can spend an afternoon down there.”
“Just so I don’t.” Lucia shivered.
Catherine prodded at a recalcitrant plum pit. “Yes, I can understand how you feel,” she said. “But I don’t think Natan’s spirit is lingering nearby.”
“No,” Lucia said, savagely ripping borage. “I’m sure you don’t. You think he’s roasting now in Hell, with imps making him swallow molten gold so that red-hot coins drop from his bottom. Don’t be sympathetic to me. I’ve heard you all. ‘Natan was a bad man. A bad Jew. He aped the Christian lords. He cheated and stole.’ No one shed a tear for Natan!”
Catherine got up and limped to where Lucia stood. In her wrath, the maid was in danger of cutting off one of her own fingers with the knife. Catherine laid a hand over hers.
“Someone did,” she said.
Lucia stopped the chopping. She looked directly at Catherine, her eyes wide and glistening. The pain hit Catherine as if it had been her own.
“You grabbed my shoulder when you learned who the body was,” she reminded Lucia. “Your nails left marks in my skin. He wasn’t a stranger to you.”
Without moving, Lucia seemed to crumple from within. “No,” she whispered. “I knew him.”
Even though Catherine had guessed, she was startled by the depth of Lucia’s grief. It was true. No one, not even Menahem, Natan’s own nephew, could find a good word to say for him. Death could not change the fact that he was despised by all who had known him.
But if he had been so evil, how could Lucia love him? If he had been so heartless, then why did she weep?
And she did. Lucia was bent over, sobbing out her loss. There was nothing Catherine could do but hold her. The weight was too much on her good foot and the two of them sank to the floor, Lucia with her head in Catherine’s lap, crying out the grief no one shared.
Catherine could think of nothing to do but sit and stroke her hair until the passion subsided. As Lucia quieted, Catherine leaned over her and asked softly, “Do you need help? Are you pregnant?”
Lucia almost laughed. “No. I wish to God I were. Then there’d be a piece of him left on the earth.”
“Yes,” Catherine said. “I understand that. I’m sorry, truly I am. Would it help to say that I intend to find out who killed him?”
Lucia pulled herself together and got up from the floor. She straightened her scarf and wiped her eyes. “No,” she said. “It wouldn’t.” She held out a hand to help Catherine rise.

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