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Authors: Sharan Newman

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Therefore, when the blow came, he fell facedown into the street, without ever seeing the one who struck.

Eighteen

A street on the Île de la Cité. A moment later.

… aliud est enim ex intimo et summo causarum cardine condere atque administrare creaturam, quod qui facit solus est creator Deus, aliud autem pro distributis ab illo viribus et facultatibus aliquam operationem forinsecus admovere, ut tunc vel tunc, sic vel sic exeat quod creatur, quod non solum mali angeli sed mali homines possunt …

It is one thing to create and care for the creation made through the deepest and highest cause (and the only one who does this is God the creator) and quite another for certain men to use these attributes and faculties to perform actions from the outside so that a created thing appears to be one thing at one time and another at another; it is not only evil angels but evil men who can do this … .

—William of Newburgh
History of English Affairs
Book I, Chapter 28

E
dgar fell facedown into the dirt. He had thrown his arms out to catch his fall and felt the pain in his right palm as he landed on a chunk of old masonry, jutting out of the earth.

Cursing mightily, he pulled himself to his knees and was helped to his feet by a passerby.

“What happened?” he asked, looking around.

For answer, the man pointed to a round rock in the street, still damp, with dirt and moss clinging to it.

“Someone hurled it from the crowd around the preacher,” he said. “That’s what comes of having all these strangers in town. If he’d hit your head, he could have killed you.”

Edgar rubbed his wrist, flexing his fingers. It seemed to be functional. He had felt a momentary terror at losing the use of both hands. The thought of having to be fed and dressed, constantly dependent on others, chilled his blood.

He bent to examine the rock. It was smooth and rounded, like many that one could find along the riverbank. Whoever had thrown it must have picked it up recently; the moss was still fresh.

“Did you see who threw it?” Edgar asked without much hope.

“I just saw it come through the air and strike you,” the man said. “But in such a crowd, someone must have marked the thrower.”

Edgar looked around. “Probably,” he said. “But if he hasn’t been cried against and caught by now, he’ll have vanished. Those who witnessed his deed don’t want to be involved.”

His back was throbbing. There would be a bruise he’d have to explain to Catherine. He’d also scraped his hand and torn the leather
patch on the other wrist. He scanned the crowd around him for a familiar face. Jehan’s came to mind. But he saw no one he knew. Had he simply been the victim of some villein’s anger at anyone better dressed and fed than he? Or had someone been following him, waiting for a clear shot? If so, was it a warning or a murder attempt? And, the most difficult question, why?

Yes, even though it would worry her, this was something he had to share with Catherine. It was possible that the person who attacked him wanted to hurt her, as well.

Even though he ached all over, Edgar made it home between the first bell tolling Vespers and the last.

The bruise upset Catherine more than the scrapes. She had known men to die from such a blow, seeming well for a few days, then suddenly collapsing.

“You think it was Jehan?” she asked as she made up a compound to rub on it. “It doesn’t seem like him, somehow, but he was by the river earlier today.”

She told him about the visit to the wizard on the bank, making sure she mentioned Maurice.

Edgar was still annoyed with her. “Maurice is a cleric. It’s already been proven that Jehan doesn’t repond to prayers. I would believe him stupid enough to think the wizard could help him.”

“You know this wizard?”

“A long time ago. Part of my student days.” Edgar quickly returned to speculate on his attacker. “It might have been Jehan, but he’s the kind who prefers to gloat at his strikes. He’d want me to know if he hit me.”

“Of course it might have been a robber or even some drunk acting on a befuddled urge to do harm,” Catherine suggested, still wondering about Edgar and the wizard.

“Only if he was aiming at something else,” Edgar answered. “The hit was too hard and accurate to have been thrown by one made witless from wine.”

“You were passing near the synagogue then, weren’t you?” Catherine asked.

“You think this has something to do with your father?”

“I don’t know.” Catherine bit her lip. “But everything that happens seems to come back to him. His ‘treasure,’ his secrets. Why couldn’t he have become a good Christian and spared us all this?”

Edgar closed his eyes. He was lying on his stomach on the bed. Catherine had rubbed the oil and herbs onto his back, and the warmth was easing the pain. Her question had no answer, so he gave none. The day had been long, and her hands were soothing. When Catherine continued her musings, his only response was a gentle snore.

She stayed by his side a while, watching his breathing. As she did, her mind kept gnawing at the tangle of recent events. She tried to follow one strand at a time, not sure what it would lead to. She started with the day they returned. The door was barred and shuttered. The lock had been rusty, and yet a body had been brought in recently and the men in the garden had expected to find the door open. The lock on the counting room had been freshly oiled.

How did the body enter the house?

Unlike poorer homes, theirs didn’t have ground-floor windows that opened directly onto the street and could be used as counters for business and sales. They had a stone wall that completely surrounded a small courtyard in front. The wall went on either side of the house and down within a few feet of the stream. Hubert had chosen the site because it was so well protected, from both thieves and fire.

Catherine tried to imagine someone hoisting a man’s body over the wall in the back from either the neighbor’s yard or the street on the opposite side. Perhaps it could be done on a moonless night, but it would be very dangerous. The watch passed here more often because the merchants paid them to. The stream wasn’t high enough most of the year to float anything on. No, the most logical way anyone could bring something as large as a body into the house would be through the gate.

She tried to remember the state of the front gate when they’d arrived. The vines were hanging over it, but it wasn’t boarded like the back. Could someone have entered through it, bold as a Norman lord, deposited a corpse and sauntered out the same way?

It seemed to Catherine that finding this out was more important
than identifying the body. That was the key to the whole thing, and she felt that the answer was hiding in some dusty corner of her mind refusing to show itself. Perhaps it was time for her to do some mental spring cleaning.

She left Edgar sleeping and joined the rest of the family for dinner. Astrolabe was there to say good-bye. He was planning on being at the Paraclete for the feast of the Ascension and was taking Catherine’s letter with him to give to his mother, Abbess Heloise.

“I really think you’ll like it there,” he was telling Margaret. “The countryside is pleasant, and it’s not as remote from the world as you might fear.”

“That’s certainly true,” Catherine said. “Mother Heloise felt it inappropriate for nuns, including herself, to be out of the convent for extended times. So what happened? Everyone now comes to the Paraclete. Remember how busy it was when we visited on our way to Trier?”

Margaret still wasn’t entirely convinced.

“Will you come visit me?” she asked. “If I decide to go.”

“Of course,
bele seur
!” Catherine said. “And I’ll bring James and Edana with me. You’re not going to be cloistered, only a student.”

“And I can come home if I want?” Margaret asked.

“We’ve told you that many times already,” Catherine answered. “Now, we won’t wait for Edgar to wake. Samonie! Can you bring the soup now?”

Martin appeared a few moments later, carrying the bowl. Samonie followed with bread and a pitcher of wine.

“Where will you go after the Paraclete?” Catherine asked Astrolabe as they dipped chunks of bread into the communal bowl.

“Back to Brittany, I think,” he said. “My cousins always have a place for me there, and I want to find out more about this heretic whom no one seems able to capture.”

“He does sound like one of the more bizarre of the malcontents running loose these days,” Catherine said. “But there are so many of them that I can’t tell one sect from another. They each seem to have some quirk, like those Manichees who won’t eat eggs or cheese.”

“Why not?” Margaret asked.

Catherine paused. “Well, it seems to have something to do with procreation.”

“They don’t even think animals should procreate?” Margaret asked. “What difference would it make? They don’t have souls to save. Or do these heretics believe that they do?”

“I don’t think so.” Catherine shook her head. “But what they do believe is no less strange. That’s what comes of not educating priests well enough to explain the Faith.”

“Catherine,” Astrolabe interrupted, “I’ll be listening to conversations of this sort soon enough. Could we discuss something less volatile?”

He nodded toward the other side of the table, where James and Edana were listening with interest. Wonderful. She could just hear James explaining to his friends that his aunt Margaret had told him his puppy had a soul. That would fuel the gossip for certain.

“James, we’re talking of poor, misguided people,” she said firmly. “Your puppy does not have an immortal spirit. That is reserved for humans.”

“I know,” James said, climbing onto the table to dunk his bread. “But he’ll have one when I give him a name.”

“Oh dear!” Catherine wondered if she could send James to the Paraclete along with Margaret. Instructing a four-year-old in doctrine was more than she was up to.

Astrolabe laughed. “Don’t worry. He’ll understand when he’s older. I have cousins who would be hard put to deny that their horses won’t go to Heaven with them.”

The conversation then returned to safer topics.

It was still light out when Astrolabe rose to go.

“You’re sure you won’t stay?” Catherine asked.

“No, thank you,” he answered. “Maurice is good about finding me an empty cot, and it’s much less trouble for the canons than for you.”

“And you’re unlikely to be wakened by small children and animals racing around your bed,” Catherine said. “A wise choice.”

There were still only a few stars showing when Catherine, the last of the household up, came into her room. She took off her clothes and folded them into the chest, then rinsed her feet in a basin on
the floor, put on her sleep cap and crawled over Edgar to her side of the bed.

He grunted in pain as she touched him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Do you need some more oil?”

“Mmmfnnn,” he said.

“Oh, well, good night, then.” She kissed the back of his head and went to sleep.

Bertulf and Godfrey had gone to Compline and, like most of the Knights of the Temple, had recited a set number of
Nostre Peres
to fulfill the Office. Then they went back to the dormitory with the other guests and men who had not yet taken their vows. They fell into bed fully dressed, only taking off their belts and shoes. Soon the preceptory was still.

Godfrey waited until the rustlings and tossing had stopped, then he slipped out of his cot, grabbed his shoes and tiptoed to the door.

He stood there a moment until he heard the guard pass on his way around the chapel, then he gently pushed the door open and eased out.

Hanging his shoes by the laces around his neck, Godfrey dashed to the wooden fence and squeezed through. Once outside, he put the shoes on, drew his knife in case of attack and set off for the Grève.

In the tavern next to their lodging, Lambert and Jehan were fortifying themselves for the evening’s work.

“Don’t you think that you should be the one to enter the house?” Lambert asked again. “I’m sure to lose my way and ruin everything.”

“Nonsense,” Jehan said heartily. “There’s nothing to it. Through the hall, up the stairs and in. The counting room is the first door on the right. You’ll have no trouble. My job is the dangerous one, watching out for the guards. You’re more agile than I. You can slip out the window with no difficulty.”

“You’ll be there to catch me, won’t you?” Lambert asked.

“Of course,” Jehan said. “But the drop isn’t that bad.”

“You’re sure the key will work?”

Jehan refilled Lambert’s bowl. “Certain. I’ve had it for years.”

Lambert shook his head. “I know I’ll drop it or knock something over. I’m not good at this kind of work.”

BOOK: To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

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