The Wandering Arm (38 page)
“Very well.” The archdeacon accepted the statement. He went over to the arm and studied it. “Are we supposed to assume that Saint Aldhelm desires his arm to be the foundation of a new church in Paris?” he asked.
“Perhaps we should see if he will consent to be moved?” John suggested.
“Yes, I’ll agree to that.” Giles nodded. “I’ll ask him; you two attempt to remove it. Use no unusual force, however. That saint must come of his own free will.”
Giles raised his eyes to heaven. Unfortunately, his view of paradise was obscured by the faces of the unwashed, but now well-fed, poor of Paris staring down at him.
“Go away!” he shouted. “You people have no business here. I’ll have the bishop put you out into the streets!”
The faces vanished. Giles composed himself to pray. He closed his eyes this time.
John got down on his hands and knees. Beside him, Edgar did the same. They approached the relic with great respect and not a little fear. Not sure of the efficacy of the archdeacon’s petitioning, Edgar quietly asked Saint Aldhelm’s permission for what they were about to do.
He put both hands around the reliquary. The wood had bent and cracked when the pillar landed. He thought it might come to pieces in his hands, leaving him holding the bones themselves, something he knew he wasn’t worthy to do.
John held the top of the broken reliquary as Edgar slid the bottom toward himself. It came away easily, leaving the pillar above in place.
Edgar let John take it to Giles.
The archdeacon looked at it. “Oddly enough,” he said, “a certain Canon Simon came to me today with a story of how he had recently discovered an arm in a gold reliquary of English design. He told me that it had been among the goods of a repentant thief who had come to him for absolution. He wondered if it might not be the one I was looking for.” He looked at each of them in turn. “I told him that it might,” he said.
Catherine slept that night in a clean feather bed. Hubert had insisted that they return to his home. There Catherine had had the bathing tub in the back garden filled and heated. Then she had scrubbed and scrubbed herself from head to toe and between the toes to get out the grit, the dust and the shock.
Edgar helped.
She woke up far into the day, feeling like a piece of laundry twisted first one way and then the other before it’s put into the mangle. She opened her eyes to find Edgar staring into them.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Sad,” she said. “And grateful.”
She snuggled closer to him.
“Saint Aldhelm saved my life,” she continued. “But he was the reason it was in danger. I don’t understand what he was trying to accomplish, leaving Salisbury and coming here. Three men are dead, four if you include the priest from Evreux, and I can see nothing good that has come of it all.”
Edgar picked up one of her frayed braids and wrapped it around his hand. “I know. I don’t understand, either,” he said. “We can’t expect to comprehend the ways of heaven, of course, but it seems to me that some things could be made clearer. For instance, how could Samson have murdered Gaudry and Odo? Who told him where the workshop was?”
“And was it Samson who found out about Uncle Eliazar and Canon Thomas?” Catherine asked. “I can’t believe that he’s the one who attacked you last year. Even without a knife, he could have killed you easily.”
“Yes, I got the impression of a much smaller man,” Edgar said.
“You believe it’s Suger’s nephew, Simon, don’t you?”
Edgar unwrapped the braid and twisted it the opposite way around. “I do,” he admitted. “He has the connections to have discovered both about Natan’s selling Brother Thomas’s possessions and to be involved in the transporting of the stolen relic. But I don’t think we can prove it. His story about receiving the reliquary that Gaudry and I made as restitution from a thief is plausible enough that anyone who wanted to believe it, could.”
“Father won’t let him escape so easily,” Catherine assured him.
“But if he knows about Thomas’s conversion, our silence may be the price for his,” Edgar sighed.
“I think that’s something we have to let Father and Uncle Eliazar handle.”
“As long as Aldhelm eventually is taken home,” Edgar said. “I only wish he could travel in the reliquary I carved for him.”
“Why can’t he?” Catherine said. “Ask Archdeacon Giles. You don’t need to say it’s your work. The other box is certainly not fit for a saint now.”
“Catherine,” Edgar said, “about that pillar.”
She smiled. “I know. I saw how it was resting. It only shows that Saint Aldhelm is as practical as you. He used the niche to help him protect us.”
“I hoped you would see it that way,” Edgar said.
That evening they all dressed in their best clothes and went to Eliazar’s for dinner.
Catherine was astonished to find Lucia serving at the table.
After the meal she stopped the maid in the hallway.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you’d never want to come here again.”
“Mistress Johannah needed someone,” Lucia said simply. “I told her I would stay through Easter.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Mother needs me to help her,” Lucia said. “Goliath does his job if you explain it to him carefully, but he can’t manage the brewing and keeping track of the payments. Someone has to.”
“Lucia, I haven’t said anything about the gold,” Catherine said. “You could use that to start again somewhere else.”
“I don’t have it anymore,” Lucia said. She seemed embarrassed about it.
“Lucia?”
Lucia looked away, then back at Catherine. She sighed. “I told you what the priest at my parish says. The saints have no need of gold. They don’t get hungry or thirsty. They don’t have children to care for.”
“You gave it to Gaudry’s wife, didn’t you?” Catherine guessed.
Lucia nodded. “My brother was the cause of her widowhood. It’s my duty to see that she’s taken care of. Goliath will bring her a cask of our best beer every week and check to see that she and her children are well.”
Lucia hurried back to the kitchen. The last look she gave Catherine was a warning.
Catherine returned to the dining hall slowly. She told herself that she wouldn’t interfere in Lucia’s duty, but that she would see to it that Hubert bought every extra barrel of beer they made, no matter what domestic animal it was wrung from.
A week later, the holy days having been observed, Hubert met at his home with Eliazar, Solomon and Baruch to decide what to tell Abbot Suger about the vipers in his family nest.
“We must tell him something,” Baruch insisted. “At least about Gerard. That can be proved. He not only trades in church property, he cheats on the tolls.”
“Are you positive we can prove it?” Hubert asked. “What evidence do we have for anything? Gerard had apparently been using Natan to do the actual transactions ever since the mayor caught him selling Brother Thomas’s clothes. If Natan wasn’t available, he sent goods to Paris with Goliath. But do you think anyone would credit the word of Samson’s brother against Suger’s nephew?”
“And my word is worth nothing?” Solomon asked.
“Three Jewish witnesses are needed to refute one Christian,” Baruch reminded him. “And it still isn’t certain we’d be believed. And what if Gerard accuses you of robbing him that night?”
“I see your point,” Solomon admitted. “Then what about the tolls? I’m sure there are any number of Christians who would complain.”
“The water merchants’ association has already decided to send a delegation to the abbot concerning his nephew’s extortions,” Hubert told them. “I will add my voice. We’re a powerful group. The abbot may weigh his love of Cistercian wine against the profit Gerard is making and decide that he prefers the wine.”
“And Simon?” Solomon added. “He was the one working with Samson and Natan in Paris. He must have been frantic when the arm was lost. I would wager that it was his idea to kill the smiths when the duplicate reliquary was finished. I’d believe he was the one who kidnapped Silas and hit me over the head.” Edgar rubbed at the sore spot.
“I know,” Hubert said. “But he insists that he came by the box in the course of his pastoral duties. It will be almost impossible to prove otherwise.”
“That archdeacon believes us,” Solomon said. “I was surprised to find myself almost liking him.”
“His orders were to find the arm and the chalice and return to Rouen with them,” Hubert said. “He may leave with a word of caution to the bishop to keep a close eye on Brother Simon.”
“Maurice will keep a closer one,” Solomon laughed. “I would trust him to settle the score with that Simon long before Bishop Stephen does.”
“I would like the criminals punished for their deeds,” Eliazar said, “but I know that in this world that doesn’t always happen. My heart is more concerned with my brethren, and with my brother. Do you forgive me for putting all of us at such risk last year? When that boy came to me and begged for circumcision, I couldn’t deny him.”
“We have said it; you could do nothing less,” Baruch told him. “It is only your secrecy that we regret.”
“Then I ask your forgiveness for that,” Eliazar said.
“I, for one, give it gladly,” Baruch said.
“Of course,” Hubert agreed.
“Solomon?” Eliazar asked.
“Yes, I forgive you, Uncle,” Solomon said. “But I still say you should have asked me. Haven’t I always been willing to carry out your requests?”
“Ah, well, since you mention it,” Eliazar said, “Hubert and I do have another little job for you. Not too long a trip, just to Lombardy and back.”
“Alps.” Solomon put his head in his hands. “You want me to climb those blasted mountains again. When must I leave?”
The little room was cleared out and most of the furniture put on the woodpile. Catherine stood in the center of the empty space and turned around slowly, remembering.
This had been her healing place. Ugly, cramped and cold, it had taken her grief and made her look beyond it. She knew there were people who would think it a palace. Those beggars who slept between the fallen timbers at Saint-Étienne certainly would.
She still didn’t know if their mission had been of any use. Saint Aldhelm was on his way back to England. Edgar had seen the arm laid gently into the box he had crafted so carefully. Catherine had thought he would be proud, but his expression was one she’d never seen before and couldn’t decipher.
And now they were going back to her father’s home. She would settle in with her books and accounts just as if she had never been away. Only Edgar would be there, too.
Doing what?
He hadn’t mentioned it again, but she knew he thought about it constantly. He would have made a bad monk but a good prior. He might even have been happy as a lay brother, working in the smithy at the abbey. But what was left for him here? He wasn’t a knight; he certainly couldn’t lower himself to be a merchant. Knowing that all her father expected was for him to provide grandsons was not good for his confidence. The work he did best was denied him. Marrying her was a step down socially. They couldn’t live the rest of their lives over a weaver’s shop while Edgar peddled handmade spoons.
Pity.
She couldn’t bear to see him so miserable and she had no idea what to do about it.
She picked up the last of the bundles and went down the stairs to where he was waiting with the donkey.
He was silent as they walked, brooding, she was sure, on the mistake he had made in adding her to his life.
Suddenly his head went up.
“Deofoles belg!”
he shouted. “Of course! Where else?”
he shouted. “Of course! Where else?”
“What is it?” Catherine asked.
“I know where that workshop was!” he said. “I should have realized it at once. So stupid. It just shows that we never see the obvious answer. It was right there under my nose. Hunh! It was right there in my nose.”
“Is that what you’ve been worrying about?”
“Of course,” he said. “I hate to leave a problem like that unsolved. It wasn’t under the cloister. It was under the brewery. The smell of the malting and the brewing as well as the oven there would cover up anything from the metalworking.”
“And that’s why Natan also had that odd sulfuric scent on his clothes!” Catherine said. “Yes, it is good to have that settled. I thought you were wondering what you were going to do with yourself now that we’ve moved in with Father.”
“Oh, that.” Edgar shrugged. “I’ll find something. At least I’m far enough from home that my father doesn’t have to know about it. I was talking with Maurice. He thinks that someone should pull down Saint Etienne and rebuild Notre Dame, using the extra space to make it twice as large. The cathedral is in almost as bad repair as Saint Etienne. Stephen de Garlande put a new roof on it a few years ago, but that just kept the rain out. It’s too small, especially on feast days.”
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