Cursed in the Blood: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (43 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: Cursed in the Blood: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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Solomon left in search of Aelred, the only person left who could help him amidst all these foreigners. Going to a white monk for help! He hoped his friends never learnt of it.
Aelred was in the prior’s receiving room. Æthelræd and Robert were with them.
“How is he?” they asked.
“The bleeding has been stopped,” Solomon answered. “Beyond that, only the Holy One knows. What will happen to Waldeve?”
“He thinks he can appeal to William Cumin and be released with no consequences,” Aelred said. “What he’s forgotten is that Hexham is a dependency of York and Archbishop Thurston isn’t about to be so lenient. Of course, he can appeal to King David, but I believe I can convince the king that his pardon wouldn’t be appropriate here.”
“But Alfred admitted that he had plotted against his lord, and he sent the men who killed Adalisa,” Solomon said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Prior Richard said harshly. “Sanctuary is inviolable. What Alfred and his people did was a mortal sin and an affront
to authority. What Waldeve did was an insult to God, himself. He must pay.”
“With his life?” Solomon said hopefully.
“In a way,” Aelred explained. “The least he could be made to pay is Alfred’s
weregild,
his man-price, but as he was only a peasant, that’s not very high. However, Waldeve could be sentenced either to perpetual imprisonment or, which I prefer, to life as a
grithman.”
“A what?”
Prior Richard smiled. It did not bode well for Waldeve’s future. “It means he becomes a serf of the church. He must stay here for the remainder of his days. If he leaves, his life is immediately forfeit.”
“That’s diabolical,” Solomon said in admiration.
“That is justice,” the prior corrected.
“But Duncan will still get Wedderlie,” Solomon remembered.
“Until his oldest nephew is of age to fight him for it,” the prior agreed. “That is also justice.”
 
Catherine hadn’t realized how much of Edgar’s blood had spilled onto her until she started to feed James and saw that she had to wash it off herself before he could nurse. Even then it was the next day before Willa, along with a woman from the town who spoke French, could convince her to come with them to be cleaned.
“I must stay,” she protested. “What if he wakes?”
“He won’t,” the infirmarian said. “Not with the inhalant I put under his nose. Go. You stink and are an offense to my sight. Don’t worry. I’ll readmit you.”
Catherine squinted in the bright sunlight. In the churchyard the monks were setting up a table hung with altar cloths.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“They can’t say Mass in the church until it’s been cleaned and purified,” the woman told her. “Don’t think about that now.”
“Edgar’s hand!” Catherine stopped. “Where is it? What did they do with it?”
“I have no idea, dear.” The woman pushed her to get her moving toward the gate again. “It’s better not to know.”
“No, I must know,” Catherine insisted. “I have to ask Prior Richard.”
“Not now; it’s Sunday.” Another gentle shove. “A fine way to greet the Lord, with your clothes stuck to your body and your hair uncovered.”
“Please, Mistress,” Willa begged. “Come with us. If you could see yourself, you wouldn’t argue.”
It wasn’t until her head came out of a dunking in the warm water that Catherine thought to ask, “How is Margaret?”
Willa grinned. “Awake again,” she said happily. “Solomon came looking for us last night. The moment she heard his voice, she opened her eyes and stretched out her arms to him. I don’t suppose he’d wait a few years until she’s of age and convert for her sake?”
“It seems impossible, but greater miracles have happened,” Catherine said. Then she grew sober again. “If only we could be granted one now.”
 
It was late that night when Edgar finally regained consciousness. He was first aware of the sharp headache, a result of the opiate. Then he felt the deep throbbing pain in his arm and hand. He lifted his left arm and opened his eyes. He saw the bandages wrapped around the end of his arm and the void beyond.
“Oh, God no,” he said, dropping his arm. “I thought it was a nightmare. It is a nightmare. I’ve got to wake up.”
Catherine was next to him at once murmuring wordless syllables of comfort, wiping his face with a cool cloth. He tried to kiss her fingers as they passed over his mouth, then fell back into a stupor.
Slowly he came alert, but not alive. When he understood the permanence of his injury, he retreated into an apathy that not even James could rouse him from.
“Edgar, please, eat something,” Catherine begged. “You have to get strong again so that we can go home.”
“Home to what?” Edgar answered listlessly. “What good am I to anyone now?”
Catherine tried pleading. She tried cajoling. She tried anger and seduction. Nothing would bring him round.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she wept to the infirmarian. “If he won’t live for us, what more is there?”
The monk shook his head in worry. “I’ve seen cases like this before. Sometimes the patient develops his own desire to heal, others … well, it’s still early. He’s young and has a devoted family. That would be enough for most men.”
“He’s a craftsman,” Catherine said. “He’s happiest when making things, carving bits or shaping jewelry. See the cross he made for me?”
She pulled it out of her tunic. The ivory tusk had been turned
into a piece of white lace, with swans and spirals. It was a work of art and love.
“He’ll never be able to do that again,” she said.
The infirmarian wasn’t impressed.
“A man of his birth shouldn’t have been doing anything like that in the first place,” he stated.
One afternoon Robert came to the infirmary and offered to sit with Edgar while Catherine went out for some fresh air with Solomon and Margaret.
“You’re looking paler than he does,” he told her.
Catherine didn’t want to go, but Edgar waved her away with a gesture that hurt her deeply and so she went.
Edgar turned his face away as Robert sat down.
“If you’re going to give me a lecture on self-pity and the sin of despair, you can leave right now,” he warned. “I’ve heard them all.”
“Actually,” Robert said. “I was going to tell you how Lufen is doing.”
“Lufen?” Edgar was vaguely insulted. “Very well, how is your dog, Robert?”
“She’s recovered as far as she’s going to,” he said. “She trips now and then and can’t go up stairs the way she used to. She’ll never hunt again, of course.”
“Sounds fairly useless,” Edgar said.
Robert pursed his lips, considering. “To most people, yes. Duncan would have let her die when she was hurt. But I couldn’t. Do you know why?”
“Because you have a soft head and a soft heart,” Edgar answered, sensing a moral coming.
“That too,” Robert admitted. “But I had a much more selfish reason. She loves me. I think she’s the only one who does. For that love I will carry her up and down stairs and pick her up when she trips. As long as she lives, I don’t care if I ever hunt again. I didn’t want her to survive for her sake, but for mine.”
“I understand your point, Robert.” Edgar sighed. “But Lufen is just a dog. I’m a man.”
“That is my point, Edgar,” Robert said. “Lufen is nothing but a dumb creature and yet I would die without her love. You’re human. Think how much more you have to offer.”
Edgar was silent for a long time. He thought of Catherine and how little he felt he could give her now, of how he hated the idea of
being dependent on her father. Then he turned it about and looked at the situation from her side. How could she face going back to Paris alone, with a small child to care for? No, he knew her better than that. It wasn’t a time for false modesty. He knew perfectly well what he meant to her, what would happen to her spirit if he died.
“Oh, Robert!” he said. “You are a complete ass.”
“So I’ve been told.” Robert smiled.
Edgar felt a weight rise from his heart, he smiled back at his brother, then fell onto his pillow.
“All right, go on and gloat,” he said. “Then go tell my wife that I’ve decided she’s worth living for.”
“I suspected it all the time.” And Robert ran to get her.
Paris, the home of Hubert LeVendeur, merchant. Friday, 9 kalends July
(June 23), 1144. Saint John’s Eve.
 
 
Ford ic gefare, frind ic gemete …
Bidde ic nu sigeres god godes miltse
si∂fœt godne, smylte and lihte
Windas on warothum … .
 
 
I fare forth, friends I shall meet …
Now I pray to the god of triumph to God’s mercy
that the journey be good, a mild and light
wind from the shore … .
 
—A journey spell,
MS 41 Corpus Christi College,
Exeter Book
 
 
E
dgar didn’t heal all at once. There was no miraculous cure. His recovery was slow and there were many days of despair. They left Hexham for Berwick in the middle of October. Robert made a deal with Duncan to recover his house in the town that had been illegally ceded to William Cumin. They settled into it with Margaret and Willa to wait out the winter. James took his first steps in Scotland and his first word was “Cuddy,” the nickname for the birds that gathered in their garden each morning.
Solomon left soon after they settled to head south to London. Margaret was devastated.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” she asked.
“I promise I’ll be here in the spring and we’ll all sail home together,” he said.
He and Edgar had a long discussion the night before he left.
“My friend Samson has sent a message,” Solomon explained. “The man who came over from France with us, the clerk that I thought was following me, seems to have become interested in Samson. The man has been seen in London. They say he’s asking questions about Samson’s connection with the French. There’s something wrong in this and I don’t think it bodes well for the Jews.”
“Has there been any word from Hubert?” Edgar asked.
“Not directly, or I would have told you,” Solomon said. “But I heard that Uncle Eliazar has petitioned the community at Troyes to be allowed to settle there. I fear his connection with Uncle Hubert has become too suspect.”
“And what about you, then?” Edgar worried. “Will you relocate, as well?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t risk the lives of my people for my own friendships. Perhaps it won’t come to that.”
“Margaret would never forgive you,” Edgar reminded him.
“Take good care of her,” Solomon said. “Let her be a child.”
“That won’t be hard with Catherine around,” Edgar said. “She forgets too often that she isn’t one herself.”
“One of the reasons I love her.”
After he left Edgar absently raised his left arm to scratch his ear. It was still a shock when the leather-covered stump touched his flesh. He could almost feel the missing fingers still wiggling. Prior Richard told him that they had buried the hand so that on Judgment Day it would be ready to rejoin his resurrected body. This didn’t give him a great deal of comfort.
It was a long time after he was well enough that he felt he could make love with Catherine again. Her patience was sorely tried. Finally one night she had grabbed his left arm and run the end of it up and down her naked body.
“There,” she said. “I’m not disgusted. I’m not repelled. Are you? It there something wrong with me? Have I aged so? Do you find my swollen, drooping breasts repulsive? Your son certainly doesn’t. Edgar, I can’t wait any longer. Don’t you love me anymore?”
She looked at him in exasperation.
Edgar didn’t know how to answer. Then he realized that he didn’t have to. His body was doing it for him. Catherine noticed. She grinned in anticipation.
“Oh, Edgar, I have missed you so.”
“I’m sorry,
leoffest.
” He pulled her closer. “I’ll never go away again.”
 
Solomon came back from London in the spring looking more worried than Catherine had ever seen him. When questioned, he would only say that there had been some sort of trouble in the town of Norwich but that he was sure it was an isolated incident. He didn’t want to talk about it but busied himself with the interrupted negotiations with Robert, taking Margaret with him to translate as her mother had.
The arrangements for taking Margaret to France with them weren’t as difficult as Catherine feared. Waldeve was too concerned with fighting the judgment of the archbishop of York, that he became a serf of Hexham to live out his days in penance for the double crime of maiming his own son and attempting murder in a place of sanctuary. He felt no guilt, only rage. He had no interest in what happened to his daughter.
Duncan, as her eldest surviving brother, was relieved to be free of the responsibility.
“Just so you’re responsible for her dowry,” he told Edgar. “I don’t want you applying to me for funds to marry her off.”
He returned to Wedderlie, to rebuild the castle with the king’s permission. By the winter of 1144, even Duncan had realized that following William Cumin was hopeless. It was only a matter of time before he would be forced to turn over the keys to the palace to William of Saint-Barbe. Duncan decided to stay on land he could be sure of.
He tried to get Robert to help him.
“The villagers can’t be trusted not to put a knife in my back,” Duncan pleaded. “You’re not good for much, but I know you won’t murder me in my sleep.”
“Only because you’re not worth the trouble,” Robert answered. “No, they’re your people now. You deal with them. I’ll stay on my own land, thank you. I don’t want to be lord over anyone. I can’t even master my own soul.”
Duncan rolled his eyes in disgust. “Sweet Saint Sidwell’s bloody scythe! You should be enslaved to Hexham instead of Father. You’d never know the difference.”
He went back to the ruins of Wedderlie, determined to make life miserable for everyone there. The villagers, in turn, planned to do the same to him.
No one ever told Duncan about the windmill, and he spent the next twenty years wondering why revenues from his mill on the river were so meager.
 
It was almost summer before they boarded the boat to take them back to France. Catherine spent the entire voyage with her head in a bucket again, but this time she suspected her stomach problems might be compounded by morning sickness. It didn’t seem a good time to tell Edgar, though. She decided to wait until she was certain and they were settled at home again.
Hubert had been warned in a letter from Catherine of what had happened to Edgar. He kept his doubts to himself and greeted them with all appearance of delight, genuinely rejoicing at his healthy grandson. He showed Edgar sympathy but no patronage.
“No work has been done on the extension since you left,” he
grumbled instead. “A year I’ve had the back of the house torn up. Do you think you can get it completed before the rain comes this year?”
“I’ll see if the men I hired are still available,” Edgar promised. “We can start work within the week. Are you sure you want to commit to rebuilding? Are matters here settled?”
Hubert pursed his lips.
“The bishop seemed satisfied that the rumors about me were slanders, spread by competitors,” he said “But Eliazar and Johanna have received permission to move to Troyes and they intend to go. It grieves me greatly, but it may be for the best. Things in Paris are too unsettled. There’s even talk of King Louis taking the cross and mounting an army to the Holy Land in penance for the fire at Vitry.”
Edgar knew what had happened to Hubert’s family the last time a great army was raised to take back Jerusalem. He could almost read the memory in Hubert’s haunted eyes.
“Well, then,” Edgar said, “returning pilgrims often bring back a taste for foreign goods and spices. Business should increase.”
Hubert smiled. “I’ll need help, you know. A trader only needs his right hand, after all. Don’t be offended, man. You can’t fight and you can’t carve toys, thank goodness, but you can shake hands to seal a pact and raise your hand to Heaven to swear to your promise. You may not think you have much of a future, but you can be of use to me, if you will.”
Edgar thought a moment, then nodded. “I’ve cut all the bonds to my family, except my sister, who is now under my care. For her sake, and that of my son, I accept your offer.”
He held out his good hand. Solemnly, Hubert took it.
 
Margaret was welcomed into the household and soon knew all the corners of Paris almost as well as Willa. There were still nights when she woke up crying for her mother. Catherine realized that there would always be such nights, as long as Margaret lived. But the joy of living in a place where everyone was fond of her and each other helped the child recover. Catherine and Edgar fretted over what would become of her but for now it was enough to let her heal and be a child. Everything was fine, except for Eliazar’s proposed move to Champagne. One night Catherine started to put James in his own cradle and then realized that he had outgrown it.
“We’ll put him in an open chest for now,” she told Edgar. “But you’ll have to make him a new bed soon. Oh, it’s so good to be home.”
Edgar lay awake long after she had gone to sleep, thinking of her unconscious comment. A year before he could have made a child’s bed in a day. Now … now the only work that gave him joy was gone. He heard the bells of Paris toll the hours calling the various monks and canons to their prayers. Finally, he slid quietly out of bed and down to the back garden.
It was still there, propped up in a corner. James’s Trojan horse. There were a few dried walnuts in the basket next to it. Edgar sat on his stool and stared at it for a long time.
At last he picked it up with his good hand. It slipped and he caught it against the stump of the other. He swore. Then he pushed the basket of nuts across the floor with one foot. He sat back on the stool and wedged the horse against his chest with his left arm.
He picked up a walnut and began to rub the wood smooth, tears streaming down his face.

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