The Outcast Dove: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (27 page)

The first rigidity had passed and Samuel’s features were becoming more natural, even with the wound on his neck lying open like the gateway to hell.

“You would have been a good husband to Belide,” Solomon told him. “You would never have noticed that she was running your life.”

He tried to think what he could have done to prevent this. Samuel should have been the safest of all of them, sitting comfortably at the inn. Why hadn’t he stayed there?

An abrupt thought hit him. In his desire for Caudiza’s body and her bed, he had completely forgotten to ask if she had seen Samuel go out. A flush of shame rushed over him. The answer might explain everything. If he had asked it at once, there might even have been the chance of catching the one who had killed him.

He nearly got up to go find Caudiza before he remembered his obligation to see that Samuel was not left alone. He passed a few moments in cursing his own selfishness and stupidity, then he noticed something about the body.

Samuel lay wrapped in the cloak he had been wearing when he was found. The silver brooch at the neck was still pinned to the wool. Solomon checked the man’s hands. The index finger on the right one wore a gold ring set with onyx. Had it been too tight for the robbers to remove? He grasped it and it slid off with ease. Quickly, he put it back.

That was puzzling. Even in pitch blackness an experienced thief could strip a body almost before it fell to the earth. Had Samuel been killed by apprentices? Or had “Brother James” been mistaken. Perhaps Samuel had gone out after Babylonia despite his orders and she had sprung at him, her disordered mind seeing him as an enemy.

Solomon wished he had stopped long enough to drink a cup of water or clabbered milk. His empty stomach was making too much noise for him to think.

It wasn’t fair. It was his cousin, Catherine, Hubert’s daughter, who seemed unable to move without tripping on a murder victim. True, he had been dragged into the consequences of her discoveries, but he had always felt it was some flaw in her that caused it.

Now he wondered if it could be a family curse.

A shadow blocked the sunlight coming in from the doorway.

“I brought you some bread and grape juice,” Berengar said. “The monks are here. They want to know how soon we can leave.”

“It’s not up to me,” Solomon told him. “I’m just the guard here, like you. And thank you for the food, but I can’t take it while watching.”

Berengar took a bite of the bread and washed it down with the juice.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

Solomon waited. Berengar took another bite.

“Perhaps you could finish my breakfast somewhere else?” Solomon suggested.

“What? Oh, yes. Sorry.” Berengar finished the juice. “I was just thinking, once he’s in the ground, then what? I mean, you don’t have Masses said for his soul. How do you help him get into Heaven?”

“We don’t,” Solomon said. “I think Samuel will get there well enough on his own merits. That’s what the Last Judgment is for, to assess each man in himself, not to see how many saints his family was able to bribe to plead for him in heaven.”

He shouldn’t have said that. It just came out. More than thirty years of sermons and earnest lectures had given him a deep aversion to any discussion of dogma.

But Berengar didn’t seem inclined to debate. “Funny idea,” was all he said.

Yusef returned soon afterward.

“Aaron thinks he has found someone who will let us bury Samuel safely on this side of the mountains,” he told Solomon. “But he wants you to help convince your friend at the inn to sell us material for the shroud and find a seamstress. I’ll stay here for now.”

Solomon was glad to have a second chance at some nourishment but he didn’t think he was really needed to bargain with Caudiza. If she had material to sell or knew a seamstress for hire, she would set the price with Aaron. He knew he didn’t mean enough to her to make a difference.

He was hurrying, following his nose to the scent of fresh porridge burning and so didn’t see the man coming out of the door to the inn as he was going in.

At the last moment, the man looked up and avoided the collision.

Solomon felt as though a battering ram had run him down.

He was looking directly into the face of his father, Brother James, and at eyes that were azure blue, the color of lapis, at the rim and near the pupil, with the rest of the iris a startling shade of green, flecked with gold.

“Will you let me pass?” the monk said coldly.

Solomon backed away, still spellbound by the eyes that were exact mirrors of those of the innkeeper’s child. Brother James pulled his cowl down over his forehead and stalked off.

Solomon realized that he was shaking. He took a deep breath and forced his body to appear calm.

“What did that man want?” he asked as he entered.

Jehan was twisting rope into a cradle for lowering Samuel’s body into the earth. The younger guards had been sent out to dig the grave.

“To know if we would be ready to continue tomorrow,” Jehan answered. “Aaron says that will be time enough.”

“Heartless
mesel,
” Solomon said.

Jehan shrugged. “The dead man was nothing to him. Nor me. We have a mission to complete. None of you knew him that well, either, did you?”

“No,” Solomon admitted. “He was just a harmless scholar who thought he should have an adventure before he settled down.”

“Well, he’s settled now.” Jehan tugged on the splice to make sure it would hold. “Shouldn’t we make some sort of marker?”

Solomon grimaced. He should have thought of that.

“Where are we putting him?”

“There’s a plot some peasant set aside for foreigners,” Jehan said. “Saracens, Jews, excommunicants, that sort. Makes a good living with it, looks to me. Samuel won’t be alone.”

The last was said with a tremor that Jehan covered with a cough. Solomon pretended he hadn’t noticed.

“We can make something, a cairn of stones,” he suggested. “So his family will be able to find him if they want to take him back to Narbonne. What about a coffin?”

“That wasn’t hard to find in a pilgrim town,” Jehan said. “For every person healed by a miracle, there are a thousand God ignores.”

“So all we need is the shroud,” Solomon said.

“Right,” Jehan said. “Then we can be on our way.”

“I should speak to Caudiza about that.” Solomon looked around. “Do you know where she is?”

“In the kitchen, I think,” Jehan answered vaguely. “Or out at the oven.”

Solomon found her at the hen house. She had put Anna on a barrel to keep her from getting pecked. The girl sat happily watching as her mother tossed grain to the scrabbling chickens. Solomon took the opportunity to check her eyes again. They were identical to his father’s.

“Caudiza,” he asked. “The monk traveling with us, does he pass this way often?”

“What?” she asked. “Here, toss some of this toward the geese, would you.”

“Solomon took the dish of grain but didn’t move. “Brother James,” he repeated. “Is he a frequent visitor at the inn?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Caudiza said. “I never get monks. They stay for free at the priory.”

“Maybe he wasn’t dressed as a monk,” Solomon suggested. “An old man, almost completely gray, but with black eyebrows, no beard and eyes”—he paused—“eyes much like Anna’s.”

She took the dish from him. “Here, if you won’t help, let me get on with the work. No, Solomon, he doesn’t sound like anyone I know. Why? Do you think he had something to do with the death of your friend?”

“No, I…” Solomon stopped. That hadn’t occurred to him. Could Brother James have somehow left the priory, found Samuel and killed him in the time Jehan had taken to explore the area? Possibly. But what could Samuel have done that could make the monk angry enough to kill? And why would James have then insisted that Babylonia wasn’t the murderer? It would have been easy to place the blame on her.

Reluctantly, he gave up the idea. It would have been so satisfying to mark Brother James as a profligate who seduced women at inns and murdered inoffensive Jews. After all, a man who would abandon his wife and young son to poverty and starvation would commit any crime.

“Caudiza,” he started again.

“That Yusef told me you needed linen for a shroud.” She gave him the empty bowl and plucked Anna off the barrel. “I told him I didn’t have any, but he seemed to think you could make me unlock a secret cache.”

“He’s distressed by all that’s happened,” Solomon said. “I know that if you had any linen, you’d sell it to us.”

“If I had any, you
zozo,
I’d give it to you,” she retorted. “However, I’ll send Xabier to ask the neighbors. Someone will have enough.”

“I’m surprised that, with a coffin maker and a plot for alien dead, there isn’t someone who specializes in shrouds, as well,” he commented.

“Perhaps I should,” she said. “There’s no shame in supplying the needs of the pilgrims, after all. And this is just another.”

He followed her back inside, feeling well chastised but not sure why.

That afternoon two girls from the town came in to help Caudiza. She sent them out to kill and dress two of the hens that hadn’t resumed laying that spring. Then she started an enormous kettle of soup, throwing in spices recklessly.

“We’ll consider it the funeral feast,” she told Aaron, who had come in to thank her for her help. “If that doesn’t offend your customs.”

“It’s kind of you,” he said. “The smell of this soup alone would lure me back from the precipice of death.”

It wasn’t until after he had left that Caudiza remembered. No matter how good it might be, Aaron would eat her food only if it were that or starvation. Not all Jews were as careless as Solomon about their laws.

“Well,” she comforted herself. “At least I didn’t use the bacon. If I tell him that he might take a sip.”

They buried Samuel that afternoon. Solomon was surprised to see Brother Martin at the gravesite.

“I thought you were ill,” he said.

“It was nothing,” Martin told him. “I felt that, since Samuel was one of our party, I should attend his burial. And, I thought you might need help in lowering the coffin.”

“Thank you, but we’ve managed,” Solomon said. “You can tell your partner that we shall be ready to continue tomorrow morning.”

“My partner? Oh, Brother James!” Martin smiled. “Yes, he’ll be glad to know that. We mustn’t let this delay us. Those poor men have been languishing in Saracen prisons too long already.”

Solomon felt no sympathy for the Christian knights. Poor Mayah was in a far worse place because of men just like those. Why should they be freed? He was glad that Belide had accepted the money from Brother Victor. It was only fair. With luck and good weather, they could be at Fitero within a week.

And then what? Solomon had tried not to imagine what they would find at the monastery. He couldn’t bear to think of Mayah with a painted face and cheap bangles forced to offer herself to any man. He wondered how Aaron stayed sane, knowing what must be happening to her. Some part of him hoped she had already died.

The inn was full when they returned from the burial. It seemed that most of the villagers had smelled the soup and followed their noses there. There were also a few people carrying a pilgrim’s staff and wearing the cockleshell on their hats denoting that they had achieved the shrine of Saint James at Compostella.

One of Caudiza’s helpers gave Solomon a bowl of soup when he came in. Not having Aaron’s or Yusef’s scruples, he took it gratefully and looked around for a place where he could eat it without being elbowed by one of the other guests.

In a corner near the wine cask an old woman was sitting on a bench. She had a bowl of soup in her lap and was soaking bread in it. Next to her on the floor, sat Anna. She had her face turned up, mouth open, and every few moments the woman would feed her a piece of the softened bread.

Solomon noticed a space at the end of the bench and carefully wedged himself into it.

The woman moved to make room, giving him a smile that showed her five remaining teeth.

“Agur yauna andrea,”
she greeted him.

“Bai zuri ere,”
he answered, then continued quickly. “I have few words in your language. Do you speak French?”

“Oc,”
she answered. “But your northern accent is hard to follow.”

She took another bit of the bread, soft and dripping, and gave it to Anna. “Are you family?” Solomon asked.

“Caudiza is my sister’s child,” the woman answered. “I am Zurialdi. And you are Solomon. Caudiza told me.”

Solomon wasn’t sure this was good, but the woman showed no animosity.

“I was surprised to find she had a child,” he said. “Of course, it’s been some time since I was last here. Did Anna’s father live here?”

“No, he was just a traveler.” Zurialdi laughed. “I wish I had been widowed young, like Caudiza. She can choose anyone she fancies, any time. Ah well, come up here,
uso,
and sit on my lap.”

“Excuse me?” Solomon said. Then he realized that Zurialdi was speaking to the child.

Anna clambered up, the last piece of bread hanging from her mouth. She wouldn’t sit still, though, and kept trying to get back onto the floor.

“No, Anna.” Zurialdi tried to hold her but the child seemed able to slide out of any grip.

“She’ll be stepped on in this crowd,” Zurialdi explained to Solomon. “Anna, please stay here.”

“Anna,” Solomon asked. “Will you come to me?”

“Bai,”
she answered and threw herself onto him.

He accepted her gingerly. There seemed a lot about her that was damp, from nose to feet. The soup-sodden bread was smeared around her mouth. He wiped at it with his sleeve, finishing up on her perpetually runny nose.

He couldn’t pretend that she was a pretty child, or graceful or bright. But there was something about her. He didn’t understand it but having her snuggled against him, planting puppy kisses on his hand, eased his heart. The grief and guilt over Samuel’s death, the resentment against his father, even the deep hopelessness that was a part of his soul, all of those still existed. They simply weren’t so important.

Next to him Zurialdi laughed.

“I can see it in your face,” she said. “Our Anna-
uso
enchants all but the most unrepentant sinners. Our little dove could truly make the lion lay down with the lamb.”

Anna had quieted now. She curled sideways on his lap, holding tightly to his hand. Her attention was on a pair of singers on the other side of the room. They didn’t seem to be professionals; they had no instruments. The song was pretty, even though he couldn’t understand the Basque words. Anna’s head moved back and forth in time to the music.

“She likes it?” he asked Zurialdi.

“Oh yes,” she answered. “She loves music. But she enjoys the poetry more. It should be good tonight. Three of the best
olerkari
are here.”

Solomon was fairly sure the woman was joking. He had been to a Basque poetry contest before. It went on forever. Each poet was expected to improvise on the spot and they seemed to have no trouble finding the words. He suspected that even if he had understood the language, he would have found it tedious.

Jehan, Berengar, Guy, and Arnald were at a small square table across the room from him, deep in conversation. It looked more serious than the usual tavern banter. Solomon wished he could find out what they were plotting. With Jehan involved, it wouldn’t be anything good. He wondered if they would use Samuel’s death to insist on leaving the Jews behind. Arnald looked worried. Solomon hoped he wouldn’t be convinced to abandon his friend Aaron.

Guy noticed Solomon watching them. He smirked and nudged Jehan. Berengar looked over and said something that made all but Arnald laugh.

“Would you take Anna in to her mother?” Zurialdi asked him. “She has to be washed before bed and I don’t want to miss the poetry.”

It was a natural favor to ask. A moment before, Solomon would have been happy to oblige. But between him and the door to Caudiza’s room were the three Christian guards who seemed to find his connection to this child very comical.

There was no way he could refuse.

“Anna, I’m taking you to Mama,” he said.

“Mama.” She nodded happily.

As they crossed the room, Anna twisted in his arms to keep the singers in view. Solomon was hard put to keep from dropping her.

Berengar stretched out his legs as they approached, blocking the way.

“Solomon!” he said. “We were just wondering about your pet monkey there. Is that what happens when a Christian woman couples with a Jew? She’d have got a prettier child if she’d lain with the sheep in the field.”

“Ah, now I know why the lambs on your father’s land are all so ugly,” Solomon answered. “Move your feet, Berengar. You don’t want to hurt the child.”

“Looks like a monkey to me,” Guy joined in. “Just the kind of soulless creature you’d whelp. Heh,
ma douz.
” He tried to tickle Anna. “Are you a little jew monkey, just like your papa?”

“She’s none of mine,” Solomon said. “Some good Christian pilgrim planted her on his way home to his devout wife, I’ve no doubt. Perhaps your father?”

Guy was on his feet at once. “How dare you!”

“Give me my daughter!”

Anna was snatched from Solomon’s arms. Caudiza spun around to face Guy.