The Outcast Dove: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (36 page)

“I don’t understand, either,” Solomon said. “But I’ll wager a
sestier
of good pepper that he wasn’t faking.”

“Did she know him?”

Solomon hadn’t considered that.

“I think so,” he said. “She kept looking from him to me, as if not sure what was happening.”

“Quiet!” Jehan warned. “They’re just down there. Now how do we get their attention?”

The women were crouched behind a shed, looking toward the commotion at the church.

“There’s always the old standby.” Solomon picked up a small rock and threw it at the shed wall.

One of the women turned and saw them. Solomon tried to crouch and wave at the same time. The other woman turned as well. Solomon gestured for them to come up.

There was a brief conversation between the women, then the taller took the other’s arm and the two made a dash for the rocks.

“Mayah!” Solomon whispered. “Hurry! We’ve got to get away from here before they find out you’re missing.

“Solomon!” Mayah climbed the last few feet and collapsed into his arms.

“It’s all right.” He held her tightly. “You’re safe now. I promise.”

“You knew me.” She tried to control her tears. “I saw it in your eyes. But Aaron…”

“Could we talk later?” Jehan suggested.

“Of course.” Mayah took the other woman’s hand and said something in rapid Arabic. “Which way?” she asked.

They had reached the horses and were heading back to the town when the uproar behind them died abruptly and then became one collective cry of horror.

“I think someone’s found out you’re missing,” Jehan said as he urged his horse to a trot on the uneven ground.

“Don’t worry,” Solomon answered with a smile of pure malice. “Brother James is there to explain.”

“Guy! Look what I found!” Berengar came out of the inn dragging Arnald by one leg. “Sitting there with a platter of sausages and wine like an
autun
lord. Thought you’d escape us, did you?”

“OW! Let me go, Berengar!” Arnald yelled. “You didn’t need me anymore. Stop that!”

Berengar dropped him on the ground in front of Guy.

“I nearly got flayed alive because of you!” Guy squatted beside him. “You were supposed to keep me from tricksters and thieves. Instead you ran off with your Jew friends.”

“It’s not my fault!” Arnald said. “I only said I’d join you so that I could get out of Toulouse and help Aaron get his betrothed bride.”

“But you were happy to take the money from the monks,” Berengar sneered.

“But he offered…Oh, you mean Brother James,” Arnald said. “I don’t want his money. You two can have my share.”

Berengar had drawn his knife and was idly brushing it across Arnald’s cheek.

“What’s that? I thought you were desperate to get enough to buy a vineyard or some such,” he said. “Of course, you wouldn’t be paid anyway. You haven’t done anything to earn a reward, trying to ape the nobility. Do you know what a fool you look, with your fancy clothes and your airs? All of Toulouse laughs at you.”

“Good. Fine. Let them laugh.” Arnald squirmed away from the knife. “Now let me get back to Aaron. All this trouble and the woman turns out to be dead. The news has destroyed him.”

Guy had had enough. He gripped Berengar’s arm until the nobleman relaxed his hold on Arnald’s collar. Arnald fell into the dirt, rubbing his neck.

“Dead!” Guy laughed. “So there’s another captive our Brother James won’t be able to ransom. I’ll bet if he said he was going to buy back the souls in hell the devil would have freed them the week before. Look, Arnald, you and Berengar may have gone on this expedition for glory but I need to fill my stomach and buy a new horse. And Jehan won’t take well to any more phantom prisoners. This mission was cursed from the day Brother Victor was killed.”

Berengar gave Arnald a kick to relieve his feelings. “Get up, you
malestruc om.
You’re right, Guy, I’ve had enough, too. When those monks get back, I’m telling them I’ll play guard only if they are going back toward Toulouse. There are easier ways to make my fortune than putting up with the likes of you.”

Arnald scrambled out of the way. He made it to the door of the inn before retorting.

“You don’t deserve to be knights! You’re no different than anyone else. All you want is wealth and power!”

He ducked inside the curtain.

Guy looked at Berengar. “Wealth and power? What is he talking about? What else is there?”

“Babylonia!” James called from halfway up the ladder. “You remember me, don’t you? Brother James? We know you escaped your master. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from Yusef. A good Christian woman like you should never have been forced to serve him.”

“Pig!” Babyonia shrieked. She tried to push the ladder over but the weight of the monk held it in place. “Don’t you touch me! You’re all the same.”

For a moment, James thought she had recognized him as a Jew. Then he decided that she must have meant men.

“I won’t hurt you, Babylonia.” He went up another rung. “I’m trying to save you. This is a dangerous place. You don’t want to fall.”

“I said, stay back!” Babyonia wasn’t looking at him, though, but at something in the distance.

Suddenly she arose once again, flapping her cloak and screaming. All eyes turned up to her.

“What’s that she’s saying?” Martin asked the monk next to him.

“Some demon tongue,” he guessed. “Or maybe Greek.”

But James recognized it at once. The shock of it almost made him lose his grip on the ladder. The language was Aramaic. Babylonia was saying
kaddish
, the prayer for the dead. Did she know what it was or had she picked up the words in Yusef’s home?

“Dayenu!
Babylonia, enough!” he cried. “Stop this and come down.”

She stopped in mid-wail. James was almost close enough to reach her. Instead she reached down and grabbed his shoulders.

“I know you, Jacob ben Solomon,” she said. “Yusef told me what you did. What happened to your wife, Jacob? The Holy One knows you, even with your beard shaved. I thought Aaron was better than the rest. I came to help him get her back. But she told me he rejected her, just like my husband did. All of you prideful monsters!”

Her grip was surprisingly strong. James could feel her nails digging into his flesh.

“Don’t let the
Edomites
take her!” She spat the words in James’s face. “Do you know what she told me? That men may have betrayed us but not the Holy One, the Creator of All. After all that has been done to her, she still prays. In that place, worse than any I’ve ever seen, she has faith. She told me I was the angel sent to comfort her.”

Bablyonia’s face altered before James fearful gaze. The madness slid away, replaced by radiant joy.

“Babylonia,” he said softly. “Please come down.”

“Oh, no.” She smiled. “Never again. I was weak before but now I know I can be a witness to the truth. Tell your pious Christian friends that I died for Israel.”

She stood and spread her arms again, not flapping as before, but to dive like an eagle from the sky to the earth.

They were on the edge of Fitero before Mayah lifted her head from Solomon’s back and spoke.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked.

“For now, to an inn,” he answered. “After that, I don’t know.”

“You stole us,” she said. “They’ll make you give us back. They may even try to hang you for theft.”

“That won’t happen,” Solomon said firmly. “We brought enough gold to buy your freedom a dozen times over.”

“And Zaida’s?” Mayah asked.

Solomon glanced at the other woman, riding behind Jehan, her brown legs bare. Both women had tied their skirts up between their legs as makeshift riding pants. This was no time for the delicacy of riding pillion.

“Of course we’ll ransom her, as well,” Solomon said. “Who is she?”

“Her father is a merchant in Almeria,” Mayah said. “He and my father have been friends for years. I was visiting them when the Edomites attacked.”

“Is she one of ours?” he asked.

“She’s Moslem, if that’s what you mean,” she answered. “Does that matter to her freedom?”

“Of course not,” Solomon answered. “If she’s your friend. I thought there were three of you. Where’s the third?”

“She died.” Mayah’s tone warned Solomon not to ask anything more.

They slowed their pace as they approached the town. Suddenly Mayah called out to Solomon to stop. She spoke rapidly to Zaida who nodded eagerly.

“Please, Solomon, can you loan us enough money for a bath?” she asked. “I need to wash and scrub and scrub and scrub and…”

The tension in her body told Solomon that she wasn’t as composed as she had at first appeared.

“Don’t you want to go to the inn first?” he asked.

“No,” she said, dismounting. “And clothes. We must have new clothes. Can you find us something, anything clean and plain. Very plain. My father will pay you back for anything you spend. You know that.”

Solomon gulped. Of course she hadn’t heard that her father and all his possessions had been lost at Córdoba. Now wasn’t the time to tell her.

“I’ll get you the best in town,” he promised.

The woman at the bathhouse wasn’t eager to let them in, but Solomon’s coins soon convinced her. Mayah and Zaida vanished behind a curtain of steam.

“I’ll keep watch out here until they’re done,” Jehan offered. “In case the monks send men to find them. You go buy the
chainses
and
bliaux
and other female fripperies.”

Solomon gave a short laugh. “You? A man who once kidnapped a woman from the streets of Paris. Not likely. I’ll stay.”

Jehan’s eyes narrowed. “I was bewitched then, mad. However, you might remember that even then, I did the girl no harm. I don’t take women by force.”

Solomon did remember that Clemence had not been violated. He had thought then that it was only because Jehan had not had the time.

“You never committed rape? Not even at Lisbon?” he asked. “When you took the city?”

“Look, I know this sounds strange,” Jehan said in disgust. “But sticking it to a woman who’s screaming her head off with terror is not my idea of fun.”

Solomon was inclined to believe him, against his common sense.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If I find that you’ve bothered them in any way, your life will be worthless.”

Jehan gave a mirthless laugh. He seated himself on a boulder and began polishing his knife.

“Just go,” he said. “Don’t waste your breath with hollow threats.”

Babylonia’s leap took James by surprise. Arms flailing, he slid the last half of the way down the ladder. The men below caught him roughly and set him upright.

“Are you unharmed?” Brother Martin ran up to him. “I prayed for you every minute.”

“Thank you.” James tried to smile at him. “I shall live. Where is Babylonia?”

“Her body is over here,” one of the white monks said. “Where she fell. We’ve sent for the prior to tell us what to do.”

“You need instructions to attend to a dying woman!” James glared at the monk in outrage.

He went over to where the body lay and knelt next to Babylonia. He started to make the sign of the cross on her forehead, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. The woman had said
kaddish
for herself! Why? James had heard that at the time of the massacres in the Rhineland, when he was a boy, whole Jewish communities had committed suicide rather than submit to the Christian mobs. The tale was that they had also said their own
kaddish,
since there would be no family left alive to perform the ritual.

But Babylonia! It made no sense. She had done nothing but revile Jews throughout their journey. Yet she wanted the world to know she died faithful to the God of Israel. And now it was too late to convince her otherwise.

James reached out and closed her empty eyes.

One of the local monks knelt next to him.

“Who was she?” he asked. “Why was she here, of all places?”

“Just a poor madwoman,” James answered, “who escaped from her keeper. Why was she here? I don’t think I can say.”

“No one can follow the reasoning of one whom reason has deserted,” the monk agreed.

“Brother Gerond!” a workmen called to the white monk. “The Saracen girls have escaped!”

“Saracen girls?” James looked at Brother Gerond in shock. “Why would you have Saracen girls here? Were they being instructed in the faith?”

“It’s nothing.” Gerond got up hurriedly, dusting off his robes. “Servants, that’s all. What are you going to do with the body?”

James remembered something Yusef had said when they met him on the road.

“I’ll have someone see to it,” he said. “Do you have a cart we could borrow? She should be buried in Tudela.”

Solomon went first to the inn. He found Aaron just as before, prone with anguish. Arnald sat next to him trying to get him to eat.

“Did you find Brother James?” Arnald asked.

“Yes.” Solomon didn’t elaborate.

As Arnald ate, Solomon took a good look at him. “What happened to your face?”

Arnald rubbed the red welt. “I was trying to scrape off my own beard, but I don’t have the knack.”

“Don’t you want money for a barber?” Solomon fished in his purse again. “You can go now, if you like. I’ll stay with Aaron for a while. Then I have some things to buy.”

Arnald took the money with a smile. “I won’t be long,” he promised.

Solomon sat next to his friend. He had known Aaron since they had been boys together. But he had known Mayah almost since she had been in swaddling. It was amazing that the torture she had endured hadn’t left her as mad as Babylonia; at least he hoped it hadn’t. Mayah had a core of strength that she had always been careful to hide. After her mother died, she had ruled her father and the household with a will of iron and still found time to become a brilliant scholar, fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and French.