Read To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Online

Authors: Sharan Newman

To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (40 page)

BOOK: To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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“Another soldier or pilgrim?” Edgar suggested.
“Doing a little robbery on the way to the Holy Land?” Solomon liked that idea. “That wouldn’t leave out Jehan. Did they say anything was taken?”
“I don’t remember, but he was still wearing his mail and boots.”
Edgar ripped off another hunk of bread. “Archer does seem the most likely culprit, after all.”
“I wonder if Richilde will keep the mill going,” Solomon said.
 
Catherine heard their footsteps in the hall and came to meet them. She hugged Lambert and Clemence, asked if they needed anything, then mentioned that she had just changed their bedding that morning. She didn’t wait for their reply but turned to Edgar.
“I wish you’d sleep down here,” she told him. “To make sure the children are all right.”
Edgar pushed away a stray curl on her forehead and kissed it.
“It would be a shame to waste freshly cleaned sheets,” he said. “Would you two mind taking our room for the night?”
Lambert looked as if he’d just been given the keys to Heaven, but Clemence protested that they couldn’t possibly take such an honor.
“Yes, you can,” Catherine told her firmly. “After what you’ve been through in the past few days, you need some spoiling. Only, Lambert, I’d like you to help us for a moment first.”
“Anything you wish,” Lambert said instantly.
“We need to carry Willa’s bed out into the garden,” Catherine said. “I know the night air is harmful, but she can’t seem to breathe very well in the house. The air is warm, and we’ll bundle her up. Will you take a corner? We don’t want to jar her.”
“Of course.” Lambert took Clemence’s hand. It seemed selfish to be looking forward to carnal joy while another woman, no older than they, lay dying.
Catherine read their thoughts.
“What could be a better tribute to a life lost,” she said, “than a new one made?”
Only the children slept that night. Just before dawn, Willa’s wrenching breaths finally stopped. A breeze blew through the garden, dislodging the apple blossoms above her and the first light of the sun found her, her body covered in drifting petals.
Sunday, kalends June (June 1), 1147; 1 Tammuz, 4907. The feast of no one special.
 
Par communal consel de trestout le chaspitre nos contredisons et commandons a estre detrenchié si come familier vice, ice que sans descretion estroit en la maison de Dieu et des chevaliers dou Temple que les sergans et les escuiers non aient blanches robes.
 
By common consent of all the chapters, we forbid and command, in order that he be separated by a known emblem which without doubt marks him as of the house of God and the knights of the Temple, that the sergents and the squires may not have the white cloak.
 
—Rule of the Temple, 28
 
 
C
atherine would have preferred Samonie’s grief to be more spectacular, as hers had been when baby Heloisa died. Instead, Samonie had bundled all the pain inside and released it through scrubbing anything within reach. Margaret and Catherine stitched Willa’s shroud, weeping as they sewed. Clemence contributed a length of embroidery she had made.
The funeral was the Sunday after the Ascension. Edgar paid for Masses at the local church and, when Maurice learned about it, he arranged for one to be said by Bishop Theobald at Nôtre Dame.
Word had been sent from Commander Evrard for Archer to present himself at the Temple preceptory that afternoon to answer the accusation of murder made by one Bertulf, soon to be a sergeant of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon. Edgar and Catherine and their family also were told to come to give testimony.
Catherine and Edgar were finishing their breakfast. By mutual consent they had hired a woman to take care of the cooking and the children until Samonie had scrubbed out her grief.
“Clemence and Lambert went back up to bed after Mass,” Edgar noted. “They didn’t seem interested in their breakfast.”
“Neither were we, when we were first married,” Catherine said. “Even now most of the time we don’t go to Mass at all.”
“I worship at another shrine,” Edgar replied.
“Edgar, that’s blasphemy!” Catherine was half-scandalized and half-pleased. The latter won.
“If they don’t get up soon,” Edgar said, “we’ll let James and that puppy of his play outside their door for a while.”
“Is he ever going to name it?”
“So far it answers to ‘puppy,’” Edgar said. “It may progress to ‘dog.’”
“At least I don’t have to deal with him wanting to baptize it for a while.” Catherine sighed. “I don’t know why we have to be at the Temple this afternoon. Our witness won’t make a bit of difference to the outcome.”
“Aren’t you at all curious?” Edgar was surprised. “I would have thought you’d want to hear every argument.”
“I think I’ve already heard them all,” Catherine said. “I wish Commander Evrard could also judge Jehan. Every day he stays in the
Chastelet
, I worry that somehow he’ll escape.”
“He has no tricks to melt locks,
carissima,
” Edgar said. “His trial will wait. I still have hopes that the body of the wizard will turn up.”
“With Jehan’s knife still in it?” Catherine was doubtful.
“I think it was stuck in the breastbone,” Edgar said. “It didn’t budge when Solomon and I touched it. And Jehan isn’t the type to panic and leave a weapon unless he couldn’t free it.”
“I know,” Catherine said. “Edgar, how much force do you think it took to drive the weapon that killed ‘Lord Osto’?”
“His attacker was either very strong or perhaps on horseback,” Edgar said, considering. “But the angle wasn’t right for that.”
“Edgar,” Catherine asked, “could a stick, spear, beanpole, whatever, have been damaged in making a blow of that force?”
“Perhaps,” Edgar answered, calculating in his head. “Depending on what it hit, the kind of wood, if it were iron-tipped, things like that. Why?”
“Bertulf and Godfrey moved the body here,” Catherine said. “They’ve told us as much. We couldn’t look for a weapon because we didn’t know where the man was murdered. Now we do.”
“But that was over a month ago,” Edgar said. “There won’t be any evidence left by now.”
“No bloodstains or dropped gloves,” Catherine said. “They would have been washed away or taken. But who would notice a broken piece of wood? And, if the wood were soft enough, mightn’t there still be stains on it, even with all the rain?”
Edgar put down his spoon.
“You have an idea, don’t you?” he said. “Someone other than Archer.”
“The glimmer of one,” Catherine admitted. “It came to me while listening to Samonie at Willa’s bedside. There was someone with far greater reason to kill Bertulf than poor hot-tempered Archer.”
Edgar tried to follow her logic. Sometimes Catherine’s thinking was more convoluted than that of the bishop of Poitiers. Slowly, he began to see.
“It will be hard to prove,” he said. “Harder than convincing a judge that Archer did it.”
“I know,” Catherine said. “That’s why we have to find the weapon. No, not us. We should have nothing to do with finding it. We need someone completely trustworthy and unbiased.”
“It’s too bad Astrolabe has gone,” Edgar said. “Who else do we know …”
“Maurice!” They said it together.
“I’ll go ask him at once,” Edgar said, getting up. “I’ll tell him to bring anything he finds directly to the preceptory.”
“Do you think he’ll think such a task beneath him?” Catherine asked.
“Maurice? You know him better than that,” Edgar said. “Especially when I tell him his work may save an innocent man.”
He noticed that Catherine was putting on her street shoes and getting the children ready to go out with her.
“We don’t all have to see Maurice,” Edgar said.
“I know,” Catherine answered. “You go ahead. I have an errand to run. We’ll be back soon.”
 
At the preceptory, Lord Osto felt as if he were the one about to be tried. The grand gesture of taking on his friend’s identity seemed much more ridiculous now. Bertulf wanted to make a place for himself and Lambert by becoming a hero in the battle against the Saracens. That was fine for Bertulf. He might have been born a miller, but he had the spirit of a warrior. And he knew horses better than any knight Osto had ever met.
Bertulf would have been a hero. But Osto wasn’t one, and calling himself Bertulf didn’t change his nature. He was only a caretaker, seeing to the needs of the people in his village, protecting them from the worst of the tithes and taxes the higher nobility would place on them. He loved horses but was happiest just watching them, raising them. Other men could ride them into battle. He was content with his lot. He’d even been happy with the wife his father had chosen for him. Poor Edwina! How he would miss her!
Nothing had gone right since Bertulf died. He had been the true leader of the group. Osto was beginning to doubt that Godfrey would hold firm to his pledge to go with him, now that there was no reason to send him home. He was even starting to be unsure of his accusation of the man in the tavern. The voice, yes, that was the same, he’d wager his life on that. But was the man a murderer? Could it have been a passing stranger instead? Some drunken knight eager to test his lance. He didn’t know anymore. He wanted so much to go home.
But what would happen to Clemence if he failed? Jordan might well take her inheritance and give it, with her, to one of his landless friends. She would have to give her consent to the marriage, of course, but Osto knew what kind of pressure could be brought upon her to do so. When she had been missing, all he had cared about was finding her alive and whole. Now that he knew she was safe, her future was once more his concern. Even more, he admitted, he wanted a grandson of his to hold his land, not some stranger. He wanted that man to be Bertulf’s grandson, too.
“Godfrey!” he called. “Aren’t they ready for us, yet?”
“I can’t see, Master,” Godfrey called back from the window on the floor above. “There are too many people milling about.”
Osto got up and joined him.
“I can’t believe Commander Evrard is taking the time to decide this, himself,” he said. “I thought he was leaving tomorrow.”
“I don’t think he’s happy about it,” Godfrey said. “But that will be all to the good. He’ll hear our testimony and make his judgment quickly. The matter of your true name may not even arise.”
“Let’s hope not.” Osto put on his black cloak and was Bertulf again.
 
 
“Chaim, the men are here,” Abraham said. “It’s time to go.”
Hubert sat on a bench, his few clothes packed in a bag wrapped around the Torah. He looked up sadly.
“Did you tell Catherine I was leaving?” he asked.
“Solomon did.”
“I had hoped she would come to say good-bye.” He got up slowly and slung the bag over his shoulder. “I’m ready.”
The weight of it bowed him over. He was grateful that one of the other traders had offered to let his mule carry Hubert’s pack. Now, if someone would just offer to bear the weight in his heart.
They loaded up the pack animals in Abraham’s courtyard and then went out the gate, single file. Hubert was almost at the end, walking beside the mule. He kept his face down, to avoid being recognized. Behind him, Joel gave him a nudge. He looked up.
There, across the street stood Catherine, holding the hands of James and Edana. Hubert lifted his hands to her and would have crossed but for Joel’s hand on his arm. Catherine shook her head.
The children were admiring the animals and paid no attention to the bearded man who was staring at them, marveling at how much they had changed in only a few months. He tried to imprint every line of their faces in his mind, knowing this was the last time he would ever see them.
“We must be going,” Joel said, leading him into the line of men and beasts.
Catherine stood there watching, until they turned the corner, Hubert turning to gaze at them one final time before he vanished.
 
When she and the children arrived home, it was time to go to the preceptory.
“Will you be all right, Margaret?” Edgar asked. “I don’t think Samonie is well enough to care for the children.”
“I don’t mind staying home,” Margaret said. “I never liked trials when Father presided. I don’t think I’d like this one, either.”
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” Lambert said. “I can’t get used to knowing my father’s dead and that it will never be known.”
“It’s what he would have wanted,” Clemence reminded him. “I also find it difficult to have my father addressed as ‘Bertulf.’”
When they reached the Temple preceptory they were told that Commander Evrard was holding the proceedings in the chapter room. A number of people were headed that way, including Archer, supported by Richilde and his fellow water merchants.
“I don’t know what you and that Picard have in mind,” one of them shouted at Edgar. “But we stand with Archer!”
“Do you think you’ll be heard?” Catherine asked Edgar.
“Of course,” Edgar answered. “I only hope Maurice finds the weapon.”
“Our case is good without it.”
“But with it, there would be little room for doubt.”
The room was already crowded when they got there. There were two chairs set up in one corner, one for Evrard de Barre. Catherine wondered who the other one was for. Another judge?
She was astonished when the commander did not enter the room first. Instead she saw a man in episcopal regalia. But it wasn’t the bishop of Paris but Pope Eugenius. Catherine wasn’t the only one surprised; there were murmurs all around her.
They were followed by kights and chaplains of the Temple, including Master Durand. The sergeant accompanying the commander and pope called for silence. The voices all rose for a moment, then the room was still. Commander Evrard stood in front of his chair and adressed them.
“While this is a trial for the crime of murder,” he began, “I have been advised that there are other issues involved here that I have no power to decide. Therefore I have asked our revered Father, Eugenius, Bishop of Rome, to listen to the arguments and give his judgment along with mine.”
He sat. Everyone began talking again, asking each other what could be meant by this. It took the sergeant several minutes to restore order.
Archer was brought in from one side, Bertulf and Godfrey from the other. The charge was read and loudly denied by Archer.
“Do you have any who will swear to your innocence?” Evrard asked.
Giselbert Trickster stepped forward. “Archer is a member of the water merchants of Paris. We pledge our surety that he has done no murder.”
“And you,
dant
Bertulf.” Evrard turned to him. “Are you prepared to swear to this man’s guilt?”
BOOK: To Wear The White Cloak: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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