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Authors: Sharan Newman

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BOOK: The Wandering Arm
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Catherine laughed. “So you and that scrawny boy who isn’t even a canon yet are going to build a new cathedral.”
Edgar grinned. “Not tomorrow, of course, but someday. I was simply explaining that there are a lot of possibilities. And, remember, I’ve proved that, whatever happens, I can take care of us. Even with no land, no name, no wealth, I know that we’ll never starve.”
He began to whistle. Catherine stared at him in delight.
“Thank you, Saint Aldhelm,” she said. “You gave me a miracle after all.”
TWELFTH-CENTURY
PARIS
Many thanks to the following people for their help in making this book as historically accurate as possible. Without their generosity, I would have made many more mistakes:
Mr. Bob Caplan, for brewing tips.
Dr. Robert Chazan, for advice on Jewish communities in France.
Dr. H.A. Drake, UC Santa Barbara, for Latin obscenities; I didn’t think I knew any until he started questioning me at my doctoral exams.
Dr. Richard Hecht, UC Santa Barbara, for advice, reading lists, many Hebrew translations, and for checking the finished manuscript.
Joan Hecht, for reading and commenting on the manuscript.
Rebecca Hill, RN, for looking up medical information.
Dr. Stephen Jaeger, University of Washington, for giving me a copy of his paper on Abelard’s silence at Sens.
Dr. Constant Mews, University of Monash, Victoria, Australia, for references concerning twelfth-century scholastics.
Dr. David Rollason, University of Durham, U.K., for helping me find the arm.
Dr. Mary Rouse, UCLA, for finding it first and tracking it further.
Dr. Jeffrey Russell, UC Santa Barbara, for reading and commenting on the manuscript and for putting up with a neurotic writer for a student.
Jennifer Russell, for being a sister in neurosis and telling me where the good parts were.
Dr. Michael Signer, Notre Dame, for information on medieval Judaism.
Dr. Kenneth Stow, University of Haifa, Israel, for advice and references on the Jewish communities of France.
Dr. Judith Tarr, who is not only a brilliant writer but also a fine Latin scholar. Thanks for checking my grammar and for suggestions on streamlining.
Dr. Richard Unger, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, for information on boats and brewing and for giving me a murder weapon.
Dr. Frans VanLiere, Gronigen and Princeton, for information on Andrew of Saint-Victor.
Dr. Bruce Venarde, Harvard, for sending me a copy of his wonderful dissertation,
Women, Monasticism and Social Change: The Foundation of Nunneries in Western Europe, c 890–c 1215
and for being my Harvard library liaison.
Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell, Gethsemani Abbey, for enthusiastic support, editorial comments and liturgical advice.
Dr. M. Theresa Webber, University of Southampton, U.K., for information on Salisbury and its archives.
I would also like to thank all the members of the mediev-1 listserv for references, comments and suggestions for further research.
All these people did their best to supply me with information. Any historical errors are due solely to my perversity or lack of comprehension.
For more information on the scholarly work done by many of these people, and other sources used for this book and earlier ones in the series, please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to me in care of the publisher and I will send the full bibliography for the series.
Death Comes As Epiphany
The Devil’s Door
The Wandering Arm
Death Comes As Epiphany
“Breathtakingly exciting and full of mystery and adventure.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Death Comes As Epiphany
is a wonderful story, tender and breathtakingly exciting.”
—Roberta Gellis, author of
A Silver Moon
“Fans of Brother Cadfael should rejoice at this new find.”
—
Deadly Pleasures
“Will captivate readers, especially women whose only complaint with Brother Cadfael is his gender.”
—Rue Morgue
“Gentle humor and a popping plot, the novel offers a most likable heroine.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Newman skillfully depicts historical figures and issues in a very different age, one in which piety and great beauty coexist with cruelty.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is the sort of novel I love best—an action-filled historical with an exciting, original heroine and a complex mystery at its heart. Newman’s twelfth-century French setting comes to brilliant life through her judicious use of detail. Her characters, including the illfated Abelard and Heloise, are drawn with exquisite care, and the story moves with the speed of a team of wild horses. I really can’t imagine anyone reading the first chapter of this book without wanting to devour it!”
—Molly Cochran, coauthor of
The Forever King
“The proverbial page-turner … as suspenseful as any hard-boiled mystery.”
—Santa Barbara News-Press
“The author’s attention to details makes this book one of the most compelling mysteries I’ve ever read—it’s a passport to a medieval world that might have been.”
—Aimee Thurlo, author of
Black Mesa
“A spellbinding debut … No snivelling if you miss this one!”
—
The Poisoned Pen
“Don’t start this one if you have anything very pressing to do; it’s not a book you’ll find at all easy to set down.”
—The Purloined Letter
“An engrossing novel that will surely delight readers who enjoy history seasoned with mystery and adventure. Sharan Newman depicts the Middle Ages—the grim realism of castle life and political intrigue of the Church—with the immediacy and credibility one normally expects only in contemporary fiction.
Death Comes As Epiphany
is a good read, and her protagonist is full of spunk.”
—Leonard Tourney, author of
Low Treason
“The pages of this remarkable and original novel glow with a strange light. The characters are clear and sharply focused, but the medieval setting establishes a mood and tone that is simply never encountered in even the best of the modern murder mysteries.”
—Steve Allen, author of
Murder in Manhattan, Murder of the Glitter Box,
and host to the PBS series “Meeting of the Minds”
“Beautifully vivid and neatly executed … [
Death Comes As Epiphany
] is a superb example of the kind of book that lovers of first-rate historical mysteries treasure.”
—Tower Books Mystery Newsletter
“A twelfth-century thriller with guts, verve, and soaring imagination.”
—Erika Holzer, author of
Eye for an Eye
“An extraordinary work of the imagination not to be missed.”
—Andrew M. Greeley
“In
Death Comes As Epiphany,
Sharan Newman weaves dark mystery and sparkling romance into a fascinating and richly detailed tapesty of everyday life in twelfth-century France.”
—Nancy Atherton, author of
Aunt Dimity’s Death
The Devil’s Door
“History, philosophy, religion, socioculture, murder, and mayhem combined with a sharply defined sense of time and place, original characters, and a magnificently medieval plot—there is little else one can ask for in a book.”
—Ellis Peters Appreciation Society Journal
“Catherine and company continue to sparkle with intelligence, wit, and compassion.”
—Deadly Pleasure
“Sharan Newman’s fresh, provocative view of women’s roles in the medieval milieu offers a background as richly detailed as fine stained glass.”
—Carole Nelson Douglas, author of the Irene Adler series
“Strong characters, sparkling dialogue, sound scholarship, and rich historical setting make this series one to read and collect.”
—Poisoned Pen
“A bubbling brew of nuns, noblemen, not-so-noblemen, conspiracy, and vexing mystery.”
—Mystery Scene
“I did not think Sharan Newman could surpass
Death Comes As Epiphany,
but
The Devil’s Door
is an even better mystery … one of the most exciting detectives to come along in many years.”
—Andrew Greeley
“Rich in history, romance, and adventure, absolutely impossible to put down. Fans of Ellis Peters will be thrilled to add Sharan Newman’s work to their reading list.”
—Aimee and David Thurlo, authors of
Second Shadow
“Newman has an excellent narrative sense and all of her characters are depicted vividly and come to life on the page.”
—Mystery News
“Sharan Newman is scholarly, clever, earthy, funny, whimsical, warm, tender, and enormously entertaining. This is sure to become a very popular series.”
—Grounds for Murder
The story of the arm of Saint Aldhelm is based on a note in Orderic Vitalis’s history mentioning that, while at Salisbury with King Stephen, Philippe d’Harcourt took, among other things, a relic,
“Brachium unum, aureis lammis coopertum, et lapidibus preciosis ornamentum”
(an arm, gold-plated and ornamented with precious stones). This relic was later returned to Salisbury through the offices of Hugh, Archbishop of Rouen. The relic was not named but my preliminary research indicated that it belonged to Saint Aldhelm, monk of Malmesbury, Latin scholar, preacher and the first bishop of Sherborne, the diocese that became Salisbury.
However, when I dug further into this, I began to doubt that the arm was Aldhelm’s. For one thing, his reliquary is listed in 1096 and 1214 as being silver, not gold, and yet, in each mention I found of the arm in connection with Philippe, in the 1140s, it was gold. What bothered me most was that the relic never was named. Orderic doesn’t say who it was; neither does Hugh. And William of Malmesbury, who wrote a biography of Aldhelm, never mentions the theft in his
Historia Novella,
although he tells about Stephen’s occupation of Salisbury.
Now, in my misspent academic career, I had never before run into Aldhelm. Since I started this book, I can’t get away from him. He was very well known in the Middle Ages and beyond and a particular patron of Salisbury. John Crowe Ransom even wrote a sonnet to him in this century, for goodness’ sake. It made no sense that there would be so little mention made of the theft of his relic. So now I was partway through a book and not sure I had the correct relic.
Not to bore the reader any longer, I am at this writing convinced that it probably wasn’t Aldhelm that Philippe stole. Therefore I worked my story around the facts as I knew them. I don’t know whose arm it was, but I’m still looking.
Many of the other characters in the book really lived: Hugh and his nephew, of course; Abbot Suger and Prior Hervé. Suger’s nephews, Gerard and Simon, were mayor of Argenteuil and canon of Notre Dame, respectively, and the next abbot of Saint-Denis had some trouble with them, but that is all I know of these men. I have used them for the purpose of the story because they were in the right place for my fiction, not because I have any reason to think that they did something similar. Canon Simon eventually became one of Louis VII’s chancellors. I did a lot of reading on Andrew of Saint-Victor and then he didn’t appear as much as I expected. He may well return in a future book. Maurice de Sully is a Horatio Alger of the twelfth century, starting as a poor student in Paris and ending up bishop of the city. I hope he lets Edgar help when he starts to rebuild the cathedral of Notre Dame.
John of Salisbury has left so much of his personality and life in his voluminous writings that one can’t take too much liberty with him. I don’t think Catherine and Edgar could have a better friend.
Writing about Jewish life in France at this time is particularly tricky since so much of the primary documentation has been destroyed. I have tried to extrapolate from what has survived, especially legal documents concerning both Christians and Jews and the responsa of the Tosafist scholars that have been translated. (It is a deep sorrow to me that my Hebrew has never progressed beyond the rudimentary.) Many of these sources indicate both business and personal contact between Jews and Christians. King Louis VII was known to be “soft” on Jews, a failing not shared by his son, Philip Augustus. But Philip won’t be king for another forty years. At this time Jews in Paris did not wear badges, were not forced to live in ghettos and did not speak Yiddish. They could own property, do business with and testify in court against Christians. Life was not wonderful, of course. There were repressive taxes and regulations as well as religious and economic animosity from the Christian majority. But there were conversions in both directions and even occasional intermarriage, although both sides found the idea horrifying. While Catherine’s acceptance of her family may be unusual, I do not think it impossible.
Despite the above lecture, I want to make it clear that this is a work of fiction. Catherine, Edgar and their families never existed. The plot and action of the book are my own invention. Because I am also a historian, this book is placed as accurately as possible within my vision of a particular time and place in history. I try very hard to be as accurate as possible. But, as I have said before, I’m not writing a textbook. The main thing is for the reader to enjoy the story. I hope you did.

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