Cursed in the Blood: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (28 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: Cursed in the Blood: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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If so, he hoped the time would be short.
 
Catherine’s hair blew across her eyes. She tried to tuck it into her hood but it always escaped. Willa and Margaret had hair that obeyed. Willa’s deep brown braids and Margaret’s red-gold ones swung as they walked together ahead of Solomon and Catherine. Solomon had taken James and was singing to him as they walked.
“What is that?” Catherine asked him. “It sounds so mournful.”
“Just an old Hebrew song,” Solomon said. “Aunt Johanna used to sing it to me and I think my mother did too, before she died.”
“What does it mean?”
Solomon covered James’s head from the wind, but the baby seemed to like it. He shut his eyes from the force of it, but he was gurgling happily at the feel of the breeze on his face.
“I am my beloved’s and he is mine,” Solomon said, looking away from her.
It was a full minute before Catherine started laughing. “They sang you the Song of Solomon!” she gasped. “No wonder you grew up to be so arrogant.”
“I am not!” he protested. “Just because I don’t let you get away with your nonsensical logic when we argue!”
She laughed again. That was better. The old Solomon was creeping out from the cave of misery he had hidden in. Now if Edgar would only come home to them, they might start repairing their lives.
They climbed out of one of the hollows in the rolling land. Catherine glanced across the island and stopped short, frozen in terror.
“Saint Felicity’s seven sons!” she exclaimed, pointing at the edge of the stone hill at the north end of the island. “It’s followed us here! Solomon! Look! Over there! It’s the monster I saw!”
Solomon was fussing with James’s wrapping, which were going from damp to sodden. “Of course, Catherine, monsters.”
Willa screamed. Solomon looked up. He saw what Catherine was pointing at.
“What in hell is that thing?” he said.
It seemed to be a huge brown beast with wide-swinging arms and a dozen legs. It had a long tail dragging behind and, as they watched, two men popped out from under the monster and detached it, following behind with the tail now over their shoulders.
Solomon turned to Catherine. “This is what you saw?”
“In the mist I couldn’t see that the legs were human,” Catherine protested. “Even if I had, I might have believed it to be some demon. What would you have thought?”
Solomon studied the contraption that the men were apparently trying to set up. He had to admit that it could be mistaken for some crude dragon costume.
Up until now, Margaret had said nothing. Since the death of her mother, she hadn’t appeared to notice anything happening around her. Now she spoke up.
“It’s a secret,” she said. “You mustn’t tell.”
“Hell of a big secret,” Solomon said, looking at the monstrosity.
“Margaret, what do you mean?” Catherine asked.
“I’m sorry.” The child twisted nervously. “I promised Alfred and the other people in the village that I wouldn’t tell anyone. I swore on my Saint Cuddy’s feather! They were very angry with me.”
“Margaret—” Catherine began, but Solomon interrupted.
“If we ask the men what they’re doing and you translate,” he suggested, “that won’t violate your oath, will it?”
Margaret didn’t think so. So they all followed the “monster” as it moved up the hill and stopped at the top, where a thick log had been buried upright in the ground and secured with three wooden legs also sunk into the soft earth. Catherine had noticed the post before and wondered if it were for a cross to be erected on holy days.
The men noticed them watching. One of them gestured for them to come closer.
“Ask him what it is they’re building, Margaret,” Catherine said.
“Oh, I know already,” Margaret answered. “It’s a windmill.”
“A what?”
“It’s a mill for grinding flour, but instead of being pushed by the water, it’s pushed by the wind,” she explained. “The man wants to show you how it works.”
“He doesn’t seem to think it’s a secret,” Catherine said.
“No,” Margaret agreed. “I wonder why not. Alfred was very clear that I mustn’t say anything to anyone about the one at Wedderlie.”
The man was practically dancing in his eagerness to demonstrate the wondrous new machine. The others had removed the canvas over the thing and now Catherine saw that it was a small house, only large enough for one or two people to stand in. Attached to it were four long arms, with lengths of greased cloth nailed to each. With much effort and several near-disasters, the men managed to perch the house on the top of the pole in a hole designed for it.
The wind had caught the arms before the house was even in place. But it wasn’t until the tail was reattached and one of the men turned it slowly into the wind, that Catherine saw what an amazing thing it was.
“My goodness,” she said. “It’s like a bird or a ship, flying on the air. And there are wheels inside and a quern to grind grain?”
Solomon was staring in openmouthed astonishment.
“You can hear the millstones turning, even through the noise of the sails,” he said. “This is fantastic! Where did it come from?”
Margaret asked the man who seemed to be in charge.
“He says,” she told them, “that it’s a southern invention, from east of London. It’s new. The farmers there built one because they lived too far from …” She paused and asked the man to explain again. “A reliable source of swift water,” she concluded.
“Amazing.” Solomon couldn’t take his eyes off it.
“Edgar should be here to see this,” Catherine said. “He loves machines.”
“It doesn’t seem very stable, though,” Solomon commented. “If the wind catches it from the wrong side, the whole thing will go over. I don’t think it has much of a future.”
“I still don’t understand why the peasants at Wedderlie wanted to hide this,” Catherine was getting dizzy from watching the arms spin. “I see now that this is what flattened the grass on the side of the road there. But they couldn’t have gotten it down that narrow path on the other side. Where did they take it?”
She looked at Margaret, who tightened her lips and shook her head. Her eyes were frightened. Catherine knelt by her.
“You mustn’t break an oath,” she told the girl. “I would never ask it of you. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I was just curious.”
“Are you sorry it wasn’t a demon?” Margaret asked.
“Of course not,” Catherine said. “I’m relieved, of course. Why do you ask?”
Margaret fiddled with her braid. “I used to dream that a great dragon would come and lay waste all the countryside and then Mama and I would fly off on its back to the Western Isles, where it’s always summer and no one shouts at anyone. I guessed the windmill was your monster but I was hoping for the dragon.”
This came out as a confession. Catherine wasn’t sure how to respond. Solomon did it for her.
“I know about that dragon,” he told her. “I spent many a night in Paris listening for the sound of its wings swooping through the air. This mill sounds much like I imagined it would. A pity that it grinds flour instead of taking us to magic countries.”
Willa had not said a word since they had seen the mill. When it was set up, she had walked around it at a safe distance, and then sat down to study it more intently. Now she got up, brushed off her skirts and held out her arms for the baby.
“It’s just a machine, after all,” she said sadly. “It doesn’t even have a heart. I thought it might be a magical mill that a brave knight had stolen from the elves. But it isn’t even very well put together. Oh well, let’s go back.”
Catherine would rather have stayed and learned more so she could explain it all to Edgar, but James was in danger of floating
away in his swaddling, so she followed the others back to the priory.
There was still no message waiting for them when they returned. Only one of the monks, a Brother Hugh, greeted them. From the day they first arrived, he had taken the care of Lazarus on himself, teaching the poor prisoner how to sleep in a bed and eat with a spoon and a hundred other things he had forgotten in his captivity. Or perhaps, things he had never known.
“Your companion is growing stronger.” He greeted them. “He may be able to walk soon. He learns quickly and seems almost to understand my speech.”
“Thank you, Brother Hugh,” Catherine said. “He’s said nothing, himself, though?”
“Not a word,” the monk said. “But he does make noise when he’s startled so he’s not completely dumb. Perhaps he doesn’t want to speak, yet. He must have endured a long time in dark silence.”
“I’m afraid so,” Catherine said. “Where is he now?”
“I left him on the grass by the church,” Brother Hugh told her. “You can hear the brothers singing Tierce now. I should be with them, but I wanted to wait until you came back. He seems to like our attempts at music.”
“So do I,” Catherine said. She wished she could join them as well. The familiar psalms were comforting and reminded her of the days at the Paraclete. She had been eager to leave with Edgar and didn’t regret her choice. But sometimes she wished for the guidance of Mother Heloise and even of the termagant Sister Bertrada. The responsibility for the lives in her care was weighing on her almost as much as her worry for Edgar.
“I don’t wish to keep you from your devotions,” she said, “but do you know if anyone has arrived with a message for us?”
Brother Hugh shook his head. “But the tide is going out now. Perhaps word will come when the road is safe again.”
“Yes, of course.” Catherine could see that he was more concerned with missing singing the Office. He smiled an apology and hurried off.
Catherine left Willa to attend to James and went over to where Lazarus sat in the lee of the church, squinting at the light. She knelt down beside him.
“You need your hat.” She looked around for it, and Lazarus fussed at the cord as she put it on him.
“No, don’t take it off.” Catherine gently moved his hands away. “Your skin is too pale to stand the sun. You don’t want to get a fever from it, do you?”
She peered into his eyes for some sign that he understood. Was it her imagination or was there a flicker of comprehension there? It vanished so quickly that she wasn’t sure.
“Lazarus?” she said. “Do you know who you really are?”
There was no answer. He seemed to have become enraptured by the tiny white flowers in the grass. He lay full length to brush his cheek against them. Catherine picked one and gave it to him. He sat up, took it in his hand and folded his fingers over it. When he opened them, it was crushed and broken. He looked at it a moment, then closed his eyes and dropped it back onto the earth. Then he returned to his supine position and went back to caressing the growing plants.
Catherine gave up. Perhaps Brother Hugh could find a way into Lazarus’s lost soul. She hadn’t a clue how to reach him.
Willa brought the baby back to her.
“I only swaddled him from the waist down,” she said. “He seemed to want to move his hands about. And it’s warm enough if we stay out of the wind.”
Catherine took him gratefully. At least most of the time James was easy to decipher. Feed him, burp him, change him and cuddle him. The only mystery was how someone so perfect could have come from her. She looked down into Edgar’s grey eyes and felt tears start again.
That wouldn’t do; she sniffed them into submission. Edgar would find them and they would all go home together. Everything would be all right.
“And what of Margaret?”
Her voices intruded.
“And what will become of Lazarus?”
How did they always know when she was thinking selfishly? Catherine saw that Margaret was with Solomon again and Lazarus had gone to sleep, a daisy against his nose. For now, they were safe, because she and Solomon had brought them this far. No, she couldn’t abandon them now. Edgar wouldn’t want her to.
But she wished someone would send her a revelation, for she had no idea what to do next.
The ebbing of the tide brought no messenger. This was too much for Catherine. Everyone had told her that the journey to
Durham was only two or three days, even on foot. The man had had time to reach Edgar and be back many times over. And there was nothing she could do but plead with the prior to send someone else.
Waiting only soured her disposition even more. She snapped at Willa and was rewarded by an increased feeling of guilt from the hurt in the girl’s eyes. James became fretful again and she was sure the frustration had soured her milk, as well.
“Why don’t you ask if you can use the priory library?” Solomon suggested when she had annoyed him thoroughly with her pacing. “Perhaps you can find a collection of sermons on bearing one’s trials with fortitude.”
Catherine didn’t think it likely that she would be permitted to rummage through the scrolls and codices but Solomon was insistent that she needed something to distract her. She asked Brother Hugh if the prior would see her.

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