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Authors: Sharan Newman

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BOOK: Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur)
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She couldn’t see Mondete’s face, but the tone of her answer told Catherine her opinion of that theory.
“You should have stayed in the convent, young Catherine,” Mondete said. “Pretty stories like that are only for the cloistered. I think the river maidens were driven away by the missionaries because they had no sin, no part in the curse of Eden. They needed no savior. They were already as pure as the water. So there was no place for them among us.”
This idea opened up intriguing intellectual explorations for Catherine, but she reined them in. Mondete wasn’t interested in debating the nature of humanity or redemption.
“You’ve repented, changed your life, and are doing
penance,” she said instead. “Those will restore purity. Look at the vita of Saint Mary the Egyptian. Her sins of the flesh were all forgiven when she washed herself in the River Jordan.”
Mondete turned and lowered her hood to look at Catherine more clearly. “What book have you lived in all your life, girl?” she asked in exasperation. “I’m not repenting sins of the flesh. I’ve committed none.”
“What? You mean you weren’t a whore?” Catherine blurted.
“Oh yes, that I was,” Mondete assured her, “since I was given to old Norbert in the first month after I became a woman … almost twenty-five years and hundreds of men ago. Maybe thousands, I don’t know.”
She stopped herself and looked at Catherine with curiosity. “Tell me,” she said, “in confidence, how many men have you had?”
“Me?” Catherine was shocked. “Only Edgar, of course. That’s all. Truly!”
“And you enjoy the act, don’t you?” Mondete pressed. “Of course one is allowed to in marriage, as long as it’s only to engender children, and that’s the only reason why the two of you do it, right?”
Catherine blushed, but felt she had to be honest. Mondete had answered her blunt question truthfully. It would be wrong to dissemble now.
“No, it isn’t,” she said softly. “When I look at Edgar, when he touches me, all I want is to be one with him, so close that not even death could tear us apart. I want children because that’s the only way in this life that the two of us can be one. But if Saint James doesn’t grant this, and even if I know there is no possibility of a child, I’ll still long for the times Edgar’s body is with mine and greet them with joy.”
Mondete’s head snapped back as if Catherine had slapped her.
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I don’t normally speak of such things. Forgive me.”
Mondete took a deep breath. “No, I asked you and you
told me. It was an unforgiveable question. But you will agree that the sin is not in the act but in the lust, the giving way to carnality?”
“Yes, so we are taught,” Catherine answered. “Where did you learn that?”
“Oh, Catherine,” Mondete almost laughed. “When priests are unable to do anything else, they talk. I
know
my catechism.”
This means of acquiring a religious education was not one Catherine had thought of. She was not so naive as to assume that all priests were chaste, but she hadn’t considered that they might be both preacher and sinner at the same moment. Well, almost the same moment.
“I think I understand,” she told Mondete. “Long ago, when the Visigoths captured Rome, the nuns there were raped by the soldiers. Saint Augustine wrote to the women that as they had not acquiesced in or enjoyed the experience, they were still virgins in the eyes of God.”
Mondete was not impressed with Augustine’s generosity. “They should have been crowned as martyrs,” she said bitterly. “It’s strange, you know. Can you think of one saint’s life wherein she was threatened with rape and had to endure it? No, those women are torn with hot pincers and thrown to lions. They have their eyes gouged out and their breasts torn off, but they always die with their maidenheads intact.”
Catherine tried to think of an exception. She couldn’t. “Now I’m confused,” she said. “If you mean that you didn’t sin because you never
wanted
to be violated, that would make sense. But what has it to do with virgin martyrs?”
“Everything, Catherine.” Mondete was shaking with the intensity of her words. “I would have been happy to be a virgin martyr. But no one gave me the option. Don’t you think I prayed? I prayed to God and the saints. I prayed while Norbert was pinning me down and prying my legs apart, while he was slicing me in half with that horrible thing of his.”
Catherine wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn’t move. She was as fixed by Mondete’s words as Mondete had been by Norbert’s body.
“I prayed and then I screamed.” Mondete’s voice grew soft
and hollow. “I screamed and screamed, but no one came to save me, even though the keep was full of people. There was no angel to stand between me and shame. No hero to rescue me. No father to run home to on earth or in heaven. They had both abandoned me. Everyone had.”
She turned her face up to Catherine’s. Her eyes were dry and burning with emotions Catherine could sense but not share.
There was nothing to say. Catherine knelt on the stone and put her arms around Mondete, holding her until her shoulders relaxed and her head bowed into the folds of Catherine’s cloak … and then they cried together.
 
Edgar was waiting for his wife back at the inn. “Your father tells me we’ll start into the mountains tomorrow,” he told her. “They were hoping for the weather to improve, but Aaron says that might not be for weeks. Is something wrong?”
He touched her arm and she pulled back. “Oh, Edgar,” she said, “I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel terribly selfish.” She leaned against him. “I am so lucky to have found you.”
Bewildered, but too smart to question, Edgar kissed her forehead. “I’m glad you realize it,” he smiled. “I think I’ve had more than my share of good fortune as well.”
Catherine was grateful that he asked nothing more. She was still confused by Mondete’s outburst. If the woman had hated the things she had been forced to do, there did seem nothing to repent of. So why was Mondete on the pilgrimage?
Had Brother Rigaud been one of the clerics who taught Mondete her catechism? Mondete certainly had reason to hate Norbert; and Hugh also lived near Mâcon and might have used her, as Gaucher and Rufus had. Could Rigaud have been another? Catherine refused to believe the conclusions that kept leering in her face. But logic told her that if she didn’t want to suspect Mondete of having been the murderer, she had to find someone else who had a better reason to kill those three men.
 
The next morning was cool and still. The fog wasn’t as thick and there was a golden tone to it that indicated the sun might
burn through. As soon as there was light enough to find the road, groups started out. The small church on the edge of town was full of those asking one last blessing before facing this great challenge. Small offerings of candles or flowers, or coins worn almost thin enough to see through, were left next to the altar.
Edgar’s fear of the steep path ahead was so great that he became unnaturally jovial, calling out to the others, laughing loudly at the slightest joke, making an uncommon amount of noise with the harness. Solomon, who had crept upstairs just before dawn, wasn’t amused.
“What did you drink last night?” he demanded. “Or is it the air up here? They say that some men go mad from being so close to heaven.”
Edgar sobered at that thought. “I can well believe it. Saint Anselm dreamt once that the throne of God was on a mountaintop. But I think it’s more likely that the way to heaven from here is straight down.”
“Your Saint Anselm dreamt of the Throne?” Solomon asked, suddenly awake. “What was it made of? What did it look like? What was it resting on?”
“Oh, Solomon, not now!” Catherine appeared, carrying her bundle of clothes. “Anyway, I don’t think there was a description of the throne in his account of the dream. Now find a place for this, would you?”
Solomon took the bundle and began tying it to the rest of the packs with leather thongs, muttering all the while.
“You can go on forever speculating on the nature of the universe. You can spend hours spouting nonsense to prove that your three gods are really one, but if I ask one little question about the merkavah, then, ‘Oh no, Solomon, it’s not the right time, we’re all too busy.’”
Catherine overheard him, as he intended, and laughed. “You’re feeling better,” she said. “I’m glad. I should thank our hostess for cheering you. We won’t let that nasty Brother James near you again if he makes you such boring company. Has anyone even seen him since we left Moissac?”
“I did,” Edgar said. “I think. He looks oddly familiar. I keep wondering where I saw him before.”
“I had the same feeling,” Solomon said, cinching the packs tightly. “And I don’t want to know. I just don’t want to see him again.”
Catherine patted his back in sympathy. “You know, I don’t think he likes women any more than he likes Jews. The few times he’s passed me, he always turns away, crossing himself as if I were a demon about to pounce on him.”
“Oh, would you, Catherine?” Solomon laughed. “It would be worth what he put me through to see him quail.”
“Don’t tempt her!” Edgar said. “I was nervous enough when you were taken. All I need is to have to defend my wife on a charge of demonic possession. Are we ready? Aaron just signaled that his party is leaving.”
They crossed the stream that would soon become the River Nive and started up the path.
“I can’t believe it,” Catherine said to Edgar as they followed the long line of pilgrims. “Tonight we’ll sleep in the hostel at Roncevalles and worship in the church built on the rock Roland split. We’ll see where he and Olivier fought the Saracens. And after that,” she told him reassuringly, “it will be downhill all the way to Compostela.”
Edgar closed his eyes. “Catherine, haven’t I explained? Down is much worse than up. When we’re descending, I can see even more clearly how far I might fall.”
 
The promise of sunshine was never fulfilled. The fog lifted to become a hard, biting rain, augmented by sudden gusts of wind whenever they rounded curves in the path. They went up and up and the earth fell farther away on their left, until only the occasional bleat of a wandering sheep was all that told them there was land at the bottom of the precipice.
Despite his terror, Edgar insisted on walking on the outside, keeping Catherine on the other side of the horse, nearest the mountain. When it was too narrow to walk three abreast, he still kept her on the inside as he led the mount.
He didn’t speak, and Catherine was afraid to break his concentration with the wrong words. She didn’t tell him how much she wanted to look over the edge. Clouds were drifting far
below them, swirling about and giving glimpses of rivulets and what might be tiny settlements. She thought of Mondete’s river maidens. If they hadn’t been driven away but stayed and married humans, then this was the sort of place she could imagine them living. It was so frustrating not to be able to climb down into the valleys to see if it were true.
Looking up into a tree overhanging the road, Catherine was startled to see a face looking back at her, upside down. It was just the sort of person she had been imagining: half-human, half-spirit, with skin so white it was almost blue, great eyes of grey, like Edgar’s, the color of the storm. But instead of the fine blond Saxon hair of her husband, this apparition had long straight braids as black as Catherine’s own.
She started to cry out, but the face vanished, leaving her to wonder if she had created it herself from her daydream.
They stopped once to rest and eat, although there was no way of telling if it were morning or afternoon. Partway up the long climb, there was a huge stone cross, said to have been erected by Charlemagne in memory of Roland and the brave men who had died with him. Around it were hundreds of smaller crosses, most of wood, that pilgrims had pounded into the earth to mark their passing. Here the latest pilgrims leaned against the rock cliff and munched on hard cheese, washed down with raw wine that tasted of the untanned skins they carried it in.
Catherine wondered if the Lady Griselle had somehow managed to stay dry. It would have comforted her greatly to see those fine silks bedraggled with mud and the fur lining of Griselle’s cloak matted and sticking to her skin. She told herself sternly that it was an unworthy desire. But it would have been so satisfying.
It was also not to be. Griselle was far ahead of them, traveling in the shadow of the monks and their guards. By the time the rest of the pilgrims arrived at the hostel, Griselle would have had time to put on dry clothing and have Hersent arrange her hair and sew her into a clean
chainse
. Catherine felt the drops trickle off the end of her nose and the ends of her braids
and tried to remember that suffering willingly endured was good for the soul. But her mind kept drifting to hot soup.
She caught up to Eliazar, leading his horse just in front of them. “Do you think we’ll be across by dark?” she asked.
“We’ll have to be,” he answered, pulling his hood closer to his chin. “Don’t worry, sweet. If that
noisous
nephew of mine can get through here in one day when the snow is waist-deep, then we can do it despite a bit of wet.”
BOOK: Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur)
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