The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (25 page)

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Authors: Sharan Newman

BOOK: The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery
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“No more than usual,” she said. “He was trying to teach me German words. But now and then he would stop and stare over my shoulder, as if he saw a ghost … Oh, Catherine, you don’t think first wife was haunting us, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Catherine said. “Go on.”
“I’m trying to remember.” Agnes pressed her fingers to her head.
“We prepared to sleep. He had a mat on the floor in front of the door. I presume he didn’t want anyone to know we didn’t share the bed. We knelt together and said our prayers, but he kept stumbling over the words. He seemed exhausted and confused. I blew out the lamp.”
“And then?”
Agnes drew away as if even the memory could hurt her.
“Far into the night I was awakened by his screams. He was having some sort of fit, thrashing about and yelling. I called for help as I ran to him. I tried to keep him from hurting himself. Aren’t you supposed to put something in their mouths? I was feeling about for a stick when he began to gasp for air. I thought he’d swallowed his tongue. All the while I was screaming. It seemed days before anyone came. By then he was almost dead.”
Catherine went over this slowly. “Can you remember what he was saying at the end?”
“No. He said my name once. Then it was just gibberish. Oh, yes. Sometimes he would shriek ‘min Got.’ That means he was asking God to save him. I’ve been learning the language, you see.”
“Could he have been accusing you of poisoning?”
Agnes seemed surprised. “I … I don’t know,” she hesitated. “No, if he had been, then there would have been no doubt and I’d be dead or in chains by now.”
Catherine’s head had begun to ache, too. There was something she should be asking.
“Who arrived at the room first?”
“They all came in at once,” Agnes answered. “Hermann first, I think. He broke in with some servants who brought light. Then Folmar and Maria. She tried to keep Peter out but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Oh, poor boy!” Catherine exclaimed. “Now, this may be important, did someone say then that he had been poisoned? Who accused you first?”
“I don’t know, Catherine,” Agnes said. “It was horrible. Gerhardt on the floor, thrashing among the rushes, and there were people everywhere. I was afraid they’d start a fire. Everyone was shouting at me and I couldn’t understand. Hell could be no worse.”
“Oh Agnes, I’m so sorry.” Catherine took Agnes’s arms and slid
her down until they were both on the floor. She held her sister and rocked her just as she would have Edana. “This should never have happened to you. You’re the good one; the dutiful child.”
“So was Job,” Agnes snuffled.
“I never really understood that book,” Catherine said. “But life did turn out well for him in the end and it will for you, too. You’ve given me enough to work with. I’ll find how who did this and how. Or I’ll find a way to prove Gerhardt died naturally. But I promise, promise that we won’t ever leave you here alone.”
Agnes suddenly realized that the monk was awake and watching them. She pulled away from Catherine and straightened her head scarf. Catherine had forgotten all about him. She got up and went over to his corner.
“I know you didn’t understand all of that,” she said in Latin. “But my sister made no confession. What she did tell me has created a lot of questions. Will you help me ask them?”
Berengar let his cowl fall back. He smiled at her. She realized that he had been awake all along.
“I saw nothing that would make me believe that child could do murder,” he said. “Yes. I will help.”
Catherine was halfway back to town before it occurred to her that neither she nor Agnes had once mentioned their father.
 
In Trier, Hubert made his way slowly to the Judengasse. At first he was so angry at Catherine that he could have struck her. Then, as he walked off some of his fury, he realized that she had only spoken the truth as she had learned it, a truth self-evident to most of the people around her.
That didn’t make it any less bitter.
What could he tell her, that he would be a good Christian for her sake? He’d already tried that and all he could manage was an outward image. The pain of having to do that much had always been like a dull knife cutting into his gut. But in recent years the knife had grown sharper and the pain could no longer be ignored.
As he approached Mina’s door, he was relieved that this wasn’t a day of rejoicing. His grief would be unfeigned, although the destruction of the Temple was not such a loss to him as the tearing apart of his family.
Mina greeted him quietly. “The men are all at the house of prayer,” she said. “My oldest son has gone there, to represent the family until Simon returns. I’m telling the other children stories. Would you like to join us or the men?”
“You, please,” Hubert said. “I never learned the prayers and my ability to read Hebrew is only good enough for simple things. I am ashamed of this. I wasn’t much older than Asher when I was adopted. Almost everything I know was learned after I was grown.”
“We won’t mock you for it,” Mina led him in. “Asher hasn’t started proper school, yet. His father will take him to the teacher’s home for the first day when he returns from England.”
Asher overheard this. “But when will that be? Abba said he’d be back by today,” he complained.
“He hoped to be,” Mina answered. “But you know how many things can delay one.”
“I certainly do,” Hubert agreed. “Buyers who can’t decide, sellers who don’t appear when they said, goods that are not what was promised, all these things cost days. And add to that bad weather, detours because of bad roads or sickness in the towns. I could tell you so many tales of woe!”
“But you always made it home,” Mina said.
“Oh yes, of course,” Hubert added hastily. “All I had to do was think of my children waiting for me and I packed up my horse, no matter the weather, and stayed on the road until I saw the spires of Paris.”
“And your Abba will, too, Asher,” Mina finished. “Now, you and Rebecca may go and and play … but quietly.”
“I would offer you something,” she added to Hubert when the children had gone. “But not today. There is a bit of information I can share, though.”
She seemed eager and Hubert felt a dawning of hope for Agnes.
“Of course, something that will help?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she said, seating herself by the window where she could keep an eye on Asher and his sister. “According to a Christian woman I know, Gerhardt was in the habit of going to Köln every month or so. He said it was to arrange for the shipping of his wine, but really, no one needs to do that every month! And Maria’s husband, Folmar, does most of the shipping, anyway.”
“So why did he really go?” Hubert asked.
“That’s the odd thing; no one is quite sure,” Mina answered. “At first it was believed that he had a concubine there, perhaps one of our women, whom he would be ashamed to bring home.”
“That’s most unlikely!” Hubert said.
Mina gave him a look of derision. “Surely you don’t think it never happens? There is a man in town, we call him Shem. He lives with his father, Moshe. His mother was a Christian girl from a village downriver. Her family disowned her, of course, when she went to live with Moshe, but she never became one of us. So of course, Shem isn’t either. And yet he still insists he’s a Jew.”
“So he willingly attaches himself to a ‘despised race,’ even when they don’t want him,” Hubert turned this over in his mind.
“What did you say?”
Hubert looked up. “Nothing. So now you don’t think it was a woman that drew Gerhardt to Köln?”
“Not according to my friend.” Mina dropped her voice to a whisper. “She says her brother saw him coming out of the home of a man who just three years ago was tried for heresy.”
“That doesn’t agree with the things I’ve heard about him,” Hubert said. “He was supposed to be exceedingly pious.”
She shrugged. “I’ve heard that these heretics are bad even for Christians. They don’t accept the Torah at all, and only some parts of the books of the crucified one. They have strange rites where they perform acts only done in Sodom and Gemorrah.”
Hubert nodded. “I have heard of these things in the past few years, but I thought them only idle gossip. Are you certain of your information?”
“I’m certain of where he was seen,” Mina said. “As for the rest, it’s only hearsay. For all I know, the man no longer lives there and it’s now a convent. But it’s something for you to look into, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do,” Hubert rose. “I’ll go myself. Thank you, Mina.”
 
By unspoken agreement, Catherine and Hubert said nothing of their argument that morning. Both prefered to spill out all they had learned.
“From what Agnes told me, it’s possible that Gerhardt’s death
was from illness, not poison,” Catherine said. “We have to find out if he’d been behaving strangely or acting as if he were in pain before Agnes arrived in Trier.”
“And I’m leaving as soon as possible for Köln to investigate Gerhardt’s actions there,” Hubert added. “We may yet find someone who wished him dead.”
Edgar and Margaret listened politely. In the middle of Hubert’s talk Edgar noticed that Edana had grabbed a table leg and was leaning back with a reddening face. He picked her up with a practiced motion and deposited her on a handy chamber pot.
“Stay there until you finish,” he ordered her. “Now, Catherine, you haven’t asked what we did today.”
Margaret was grinning. “You aren’t the only ones who can get information, you know.”
“But how?” Catherine asked. “Who could you talk to?”
“We didn’t have to talk,” Margaret said proudly. “We just watched.”
She meant to tease them for leaving her behind but Hubert had spent too hard a day.
“Please, child, tell us,” he begged.
Margaret glanced at Edgar who was still monitering Edana. He gestured for her to continue.
“Well,” she began, “we were resting under the trees by the cathedral. James and I were counting the different pilgrims. Eighteen on crutches, five children carried, three women heavily veiled, eleven lepers with a keeper …”
“I’m sure that was very good for teaching James to count,” Hubert said. “But then what happened?”
Margaret took pity on him. “Among all the pilgrims we saw someone familiar. It was Lord Hermann.”
“So?” Catherine wasn’t impressed. “Why shouldn’t he be at the cathedral?”
“In a hooded cloak in the middle of summer?” Margaret rebutted. “And sneaking in a side door? He was on some secret business, I’m sure of it.”
“But why should he want to enter the cathedral secretly?” Hubert asked, looking toward Edgar.
“We could think of no reason that was honest,” Edgar replied.
“But there is all this unrest between the archbishop and the burghers. What if Hermann has changed sides?”
“I don’t know,” Catherine said. “Edana, stay there until Papa says you can get up! Lord Hermann seems so willing to let us prove Agnes innocent. If he were doing something underhanded, wouldn’t he want to make sure the blame was firmly on her?”
“If he knows she didn’t kill his brother then just keeping her confined at the castle might be enough to draw attention from himself,” Edgar suggested. “His conscience might be strong enough to prevent him from turning her over to the town or the archbishop.”
“He doesn’t strike me as being capable of such subtle thought,” Catherine said. “I’ve observed him closely. Sometimes not knowing what people are saying makes it easier to see what they really mean.”
Just then, Hubert realized that there was someone missing.
“Where’s Walter?” he asked.
Edgar grinned. “He has volunteered to be our spy and is at this moment sitting in the tavern across from the cathedral, suffering through flasks of wine and tedious ribaldry just to gather information for us. Yes; if you promise you’re finished, you may get up, Edana. Is there anything to wipe her bottom with?”
“Here.” Catherine gave him some straw from the floor. “I can see you’re jealous of Walter’s job. I only hope no one realizes what he’s doing. After all, the whole town knows he’s with us.”
“But he’s also a lord and a pilgrim,” Edgar said. “And he’s very large, even among Germans. He also radiates goodness, haven’t you noticed? People trust him.”
“That’s true,” Catherine conceded. “In that case, I ought to be putting together a remedy for the effects of drink. Do we have any almonds?”
“Catherine.” Hubert had noticed that Catherine was avoiding delicate subjects, but he had to know. “How was Agnes? Did she look well? You said nothing about her health.”
“She’s fine, Father,” Catherine said curtly. Something of the anger she had felt that morning came through. Then she paused, considering. “She’s in excellent health. And yet, if she’s right in that she and Gerhardt ate and drank the same things from the same dishes, she shouldn’t be, should she? At least she should have been ill if Gerhardt was being given poison, don’t you think?”

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