Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur) (31 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

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“Why not?” Rufus countered. “We’re a lot closer to the flames than we were thirty years ago. I need remission of my sins more than gold these days.”
“You won’t have either if you turn back now, old friend.” Gaucher leaned closer. “What’s your real fear? Do you think someone else is trying to keep us from retrieving the treasure? Does your
culet
pucker thinking of what happened to Rigaud?”
“Doesn’t yours?” Rufus retorted. “Whoever did that was incredibly powerful. It seems to me there would have had to be at least two of them, one to spit him and the other to hold him down.”
Gaucher thought about it. “But then you’d expect him to have yelled loud enough to awake the pilgrims sleeping in the narthex. I wish we’d been able to examine the body. What could Brother James know about violent death?”
“From what we heard at Roncevalles, Brother James has more to vex him than Rigaud’s murder,” Rufus grumbled. “I didn’t understand all that talk about family and converting, but I wonder now if he might not ignore anything that incriminates those men from Paris.”
“I wonder, too,” Gaucher said. “I think it’s up to us to find out more.”
“And if the evidence leads me to you?” Rufus asked.
“Don’t worry, Rufus.” Gaucher gave him a thin smile. “If I were the one doing this, you would have died first.”
 
Brother James greeted the three men from Barcelona with less warmth than was normal for a representative of Cluny.
“I have had no word from the abbot as to when he’s returning,” he explained to them. “We’re waiting to hear the results of the emperor’s siege of Coria.”
“As far as I know, it still continues,” Robert said. “Where is the abbot now? Perhaps we should go to him.”
“He’s moving from one of our houses to the other,” James said. “You could easily miss him if you doubled back. But it’s certain that he’ll come this way. I would suggest that you travel with us as far as Najera and await him at our monastery there. You might begin the translation work at once.”
Robert consulted with the other two men. “We are not simple translators,” he told Brother James. “The abbot has promised us substantial inducements to abandon our examination of the movements of the stars for this undertaking.”
Brother James was shocked. “You can’t believe that the study of astronomy is more important than the refutation of heresy!”
Robert and Hermann seemed to consider this; then they both nodded. “What is forbidden today may be permitted tomorrow,” Hermann said in thickly accented French. “But the stars do not change with the popes.”
“But you’re both clerics!” James was now outraged. He pointed at Robert. “You say you’re a deacon of Pamplona?”
“Yes, and I must go there someday, when I can spare the time from my work,” Robert said. “I assure you, Brother, that I am as devout in my own way as you. However, my studies are expensive. If the abbot wants me, wants all of us, to give them up, we need to gauge the weight of his money first.”
Brother James was in dire danger of exploding. “Come to Najera,” he said finally. “You will be paid your pieces of silver before you touch pen to parchment.”
“Of course we will.” Robert bowed to him. “Thank you for your time, Brother James.”
 
The next morning, Solomon remembered why he rarely drank when he was miserable. “I’m going to die,” he said.
“Not soon enough,” Edgar told him cheerfully. “Here, drink a bucket of water and then throw up a few times. You’ll feel better.”
“Is that what you do in Scotland?” Solomon sneered. “We have much more efficacious remedies.”
“Like cutting off your head?”
Solomon used both hands to support his. “That would be a good start. Where’s Catherine?”
“She was up most of the night poring over those pages the two of you found at Moissac,” Edgar told him. “Now she’s waiting for you to become human again so that you can go with her to show them to this Robert of Ketton and his friend Hermann.”
“Who?”
“Mages, I believe. They arrived while you were indisposed.”
Solomon’s red eyes opened wide for a second, then closed in agony. “I’m cursed,” he said.
“That’s a distinct probability.” Edgar had no sympathy for him. “Considering the life you’ve led.”
He stood and stretched. “Catherine’s still asleep. I promised I’d try to find her some green vegetables. She saw some at the market yesterday but we had no money with us. Don’t make any noise to awaken her.”
“You have my word,” Solomon said. “Stop shouting.”
He sighed in relief when Edgar had gone and settled down to await the passing of his self inflicted torment. It wasn’t to be. A few minutes later, Catherine came down the ladder from the sleeping room.
“Solomon!” she cried. “Did Edgar tell you? I think I’ve deciphered enough of those pages so that we can ask those astronomers to expound the rest. Solomon? What’s wrong?”
A shadow moved in the corner. Mondete unfolded out of it. “He needs a mixture of olive oil, myrrh and raw eggs,” she said.
Catherine’s stomach roiled at the thought, and Solomon gagged audibly. “Does it work?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Mondete said. “There are those who insist it does.”
“I’ll try anything,” Solomon said. “Can you get myrrh here? I have to be able to go with Catherine to see these men.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Mondete said and left.
“I didn’t even notice her there,” Solomon told Catherine. “Unlike you, she knows how to be silent.”
Catherine started to reply sharply, then took pity on him. “Would you like me to tell you what I’ve found in these pages?” she asked. “I can speak softly.”
“Very well, what are they about?” he grumped.
“Not all of it is clear, of course,” Catherine began. “Some of the symbols are unknown to me, and the writer occasionally uses words in his own language, German perhaps. However …”
She bent down to peer into his averted face. Solomon opened one eye. “I’m listening.”
“However,” she went on, “most of this seems to be a series of lecture notes by a student of someone in Toledo who has studied the arts of astrology, necromancy, astronomy and something called ‘algebra.’ I’m not sure what that is, perhaps another way of foretelling the future. Or it might be the name of the master. It’s not clear.”
“Just tell me what is clear.” Solomon lifted his head a fraction.
“He writes about new ways of charting the stars more accurately, especially the wandering of the planets, and deducing the ways we are affected by their temperaments. I’d say you were suffering from a confluence of Mars and Saturn in Pisces, myself.”
“Very funny. What else?”
“There’s a lot here about geomancy, how to set the points randomly so that they will be uninfluenced by the desires of the astronomer, and then a list of masters who have made up astrological tables to chart the results.”
Solomon sat up carefully. He looked at the papers, trying to piece out familiar words.
“Yes, that’s what they were talking about in Cardoba last winter,” he said. “The Arabs have made great strides in perfecting the accuracy of the prognostications. What are the names of these masters?”
“I can’t make them all out.” Catherine pushed him aside.
“You’re standing in the light. Avois, here are some: Abdallah, Alkindi, Alpharinus; then some Christian names, Gerard, Guillaume, Petrus, Bernardus. But the tables aren’t here. Unless there is something in these symbols I can’t read, I’m afraid it won’t help you much.”
Solomon smoothed the parchment with his hand. “Yes it does,” he said. “It tells me that there is someone in Toledo who might help me.”
“I see. Does that mean you will abandon us now for Toledo?”
Solomon looked up but didn’t meet her eyes. “It might be better if I left, while that man travels with you.”
“Do you mean your father?”
Now he did look at her. Catherine moved away. Solomon’s green eyes were as hard as jade chips. “I mean Brother James, who seems determined to see that one of this family is executed.” He sat down. “Did that woman go all the way to Jerusalem for myrrh? There’s a stampede of horses in my head.”
Catherine rolled up the parchment pages again. “Do you believe that you will waver in your faith because your father did?” she asked.
“Don’t you want me to?” he countered.
“Not if you can’t do it with joy,” she said. “I have never denied that I pray for your eventual baptism, but not unless your heart and soul are converted as well as your body.”
“And in the meantime?” he asked.
“I can love you for the man you are,” she answered. “There’s no possibility of my giving up the true faith, so no reason why I shouldn’t continue to associate with you.”
Solomon gave her a crooked smile. “And therefore no reason why I shouldn’t stay with you and Edgar, at least as far as Compostela.”
“None at all,” Catherine said. “Ah, here’s Mondete. If you’re really going to drink that concoction she has with her, I think you should do it outside.”
 
In the end, it was Catherine who left. The smell of the mess in the cup Mondete brought back was too much for her. She
wandered down the main road to the church, not paying attention to the traffic, brooding about Solomon’s dilemma.
“Catherine.” The voice was soft and unmistakable. “When will you learn to watch where you’re going?”
“Edgar! You’ve found new peas and lettuce,” she cried. “I love you! Can we eat them at once?”
Her dormant appetite awoke roaring. Greens! It had been too long since she’d had anything but cabbage and roots.
“Here.” He scooped up a handful of peas for her. “They’re young enough that you can eat the whole pod. Don’t worry. I have plenty, enough to share with the others.”
She had been shoving them into her mouth like Golias at the table, but now she slowed, chewing ecstatically.
“You know,
carissime,
I think we should take some of these to Lady Griselle,” she said. “And while we’re enjoying them together, it would be quite natural to ask her if she happened to notice a ring without a stone in it among the coins Father spilled on the table the other night.”
“Only you could move a topic from lettuce to rings,” Edgar said. “But I’m willing to come with you and pretend it’s a perfectly normal change.”
 
Griselle received the offering graciously, although Edgar suspected that her interest in fresh peas was slight.
“How kind of you to think of me,” she said. “Please, sit down. Hersent, pour some wine for Hubert’s daughter and her husband.”
They were settled into the small room that Griselle had once again managed to get for herself and her maid. The bed had been set up and hung with curtains, and Griselle had her own folding chair and pillow. The others sat on the bench provided by the inn to serve as both table and bed.
“I’ve been wanting to know you better,
ma douce
,” Griselle told Catherine. “Your father has explained to me all of the history behind that horrendous scene at Roncevalles.”
“He has?” Catherine nearly dropped the wine.
“Well, I had to coax it out of him a bit,” Griselle smiled. “You must be very proud of him.”
“Well, of course.” Catherine looked to Edgar for guidance, but he seemed as bewildered as she.
“That Brother James is a dreadful coward,” Griselle continued, “hiding in the monastery rather than staying among his former coreligionists and fighting for their souls, as Hubert as done.”
Catherine was too stunned to answer. Edgar stepped in to save her. “I’ve heard my father-in-law give many an inspiring sermon,” he said. “It would not be surprising to find the entire Jewish community of Paris coming to Notre Dame as one, clamoring to be admitted into the Church on the strength of his example.”
He thought he had gone too far for credibility, but Lady Griselle smiled her agreement. “Greater miracles have occurred,” she said. “And through far less noble men than Hubert. Do have one of these
gastels
.” She passed them the plate. “There is an excellent baker in this town. So rare to find good quality in a place that provides for the needs of travelers.”
The conversation continued along those lines for nearly an hour. Finally, Catherine realized that she couldn’t find a way to introduce the topic of the ring. She was forced to surrender to a more worthy opponent.
“We must get back to our inn,” she said, standing. “Thank you for the cakes and wine.”
Griselle rose and kissed them both. “I hope you’ll both come see me often, not only during the journey, but after I return to Burgundy.”
They promised they would and made their escape gratefully.
“Catherine—” Edgar began, but she interrupted.
“Don’t say it, Edgar. Don’t even think it.”

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